The School of Geography and Sustainable Communities at the University of Wollongong is very excited to be hosting the 2018 instalment of the Housing Theory Symposium, centred on the theme of ‘The Financialisation of Housing’. Please see the attached PDF for the extended call for papers; alternatively this is available at: http://www.uowblogs.com/ausccer/2017/09/28/hts-2018-cfp/. We have extended the deadline for abstracts until December 4th, 2017. 

2018 Housing Theory Symposium Call For Papers

The Financialisation of Housing

School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong

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5-6 February, 2018

Convenors: Nicole Cook and Charles Gillon

Housing has always been entangled with finance in market-based societies. The proliferation of owner-occupation hinges on financial instruments extending interest-bearing credit to individuals and corporations. The deregulation of Anglo-US credit and the ensuing global financial crisis revealed housing as a contingent production of domestic economies, financial policy and global credit. With the ascendancy of finance over other economic sectors (such as retail and production), market-based societies have arguably entered a new phase of financialisation. Within housing research, it has inspired (at least) four new research themes.

1. The rise of the investor-subject. As citizenship is framed around property ownership, the values and rationales of home-owners, along with the uneven impacts of asset-based welfare have attracted increasing attention.
2. The financialisation of residential development and planning. Capital routinely switches circuits, but financial policies and instruments increasingly intersect with planning controls to reframe neighbourhood renewal, public green space and social and community housing management around financial logics.
3. Examining the contingent, emergent character of financial services, policies and practices. Financial forms may gain stability over time, but they are also shaped by technological, legal and regulatory change. Attending to this ‘restlessness’ denaturalises finance, tracing its transformation across diverse sectors and spaces.
4. New spaces of financial-activism. To what extent are affordable and community housing sectors, municipal governments and non-government organisations using alternate financial mechanisms to destabilise dominant financial logics?

Recognising the central role of market-based housing in Australia, and the uneven ways in which financial instruments, policies and capital shape (and are shaped by) local economies and cultures of housing, we are seeking 300 word abstracts that address one (or more) of the themes set out above.

Please email abstracts to geography-admin@uow.edu.au by December 4th 2017, and feel free to get in touch with myself or Nicole (ncook@uow.edu.au) if you have any questions or ideas. 

Cheers, Charlie

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Charles Gillon | PhD Candidate

Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research

School of Geography and Sustainable Communities

University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

E cwg317@uowmail.edu.au | Tw @CharlieGillon 

University of Wollongong CRICOS: 00102E

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