Housing: A Lens to Rural Inequalities

Abstract

Housing research in the rural global north With few exceptions (see special issue of Housing and Society 2014; Planning Practice and Research 2009) most housing research focuses on urban areas. This section aims to place housing research in an international, and ambitiously comparative, context within existing rural development literature. Comparative rural housing research is important because it creates opportunities for policy transfer and 'lesson learning' (Hantrais 2009), while demonstrating the potency and limitations of knowledge itself (Lowe 2012). Comparative research is challenging because different contexts demonstrate contrasting and complex rural housing issues (Gallent 2009). Furthermore, rural areas are characterised by high levels of differentiation (Murdoch et al. 2003), including the socioeconomic structure of rural areas from agriculture-dominated to consumerist area types, multiple community stakeholders with unequal powers relations guiding the development narratives, and contrasting policy interventions regarding housing from tight regulation to absence of intervention. Another difficulty in comparative analyses is identifying what is 'rural'. Definitions of rural, especially in regards to housing policies, vary widely across the global north (Bertolini, Montanari and Peragine 2008). This highlights the need for interpretive comparative approaches that look beyond efforts to