(De)constructing the financialised culture of owner-occupation in the UK, with the aid of the 10Cs

Taking owner-occupation as the quintessential form of financialised housing provision, this paper investigates how housing cultures, understood as a set of shared behaviours and beliefs about housing, have been (re)shaped in the UK in a way that favours owner-occupation, and the implications of this shift for agents’ subjectivities. Utilising the systems of provision/10Cs approach, which takes as its starting point that the norms and meanings associated with homeownership are complex and conditioned by the contradictory interaction of cultural and material factors, the paper shows how the rise of owner-occupation reflected changes in socially shared images and meanings around housing as well as material benefits associated with the tenure. However, the complex analysis of material culture facilitated by the 10Cs reveals that the culture of owner-occupation is not hegemonic. While housing policy since the 1980s has given material and cultural impetus to owner-occupation in Britain, the reflexive and resistive capacities of consumers, when coupled with the competing meanings attached to housing and the growing dysfunctionality of the current housing model, have constrained the dominance of the ethos of owner-occupation and render its future vulnerable.