Conclusions and Reflections

Abstract

It is perhaps a truism to say that social rented housing has failed to be embodied as a principal element of the welfare state; commodified housing forms are the norm under advanced capitalism. We can acknowledge that during ‘abnormal’ times decommodified, large-scale, mass models of social housing forms can emerge, because they hold significance for the dominant social and economic order (Harloe 1995), and do so without suggesting a crude determinism. Indeed, we should distinguish the role of reformers and the organized working class (and other interest groups). But we must, in so doing, appreciate the changing social, economic and political environments in nation-states that mould relationships between subordinate and dominant interests, which give rise to particular housing forms in general, and mass social housing in particular, in advanced capitalist societies. Moreover, we must understand that these struggles take place in a context where earlier developments have left ideological and concrete legacies (Harloe 1995). In this way, functionalist relationships between the needs of capital (accumulation and legitimacy) and social policy are not assumed, neither is social welfare seen simply as a product of workingclass struggle, or benevolent states responding to reformist elites (Harloe 1995).