Community-led Housing: Postcapitalist perspectives

Postcapitalism is a project that seeks to resolve the crises of capitalism. The project seeks to deconstruct the hegemony of capitalism and identify, nourish and grow a variety of socialised and commons-based practices. In its infancy, postcapitalism has neglected property relations. This research seeks to remedy this neglect by considering whether the community-led housing movement (CLH) presents a postcapitalist housing sector. CLH, a decommodifying and non-profit housing movement, in principle reflects postcapitalist theory and therefore could be used to theorise postcapitalist property relations. CLH potentially constructs commons, provides social value and fosters non-capitalist relations - all features of postcapitalist theory.

Yet, it is developing through messy socio-spatial realities entwined with capitalism; realities that may erode the alignment to postcapitalism. For instance, barriers to growth like finance or land acquisition result in CLH groups pursuing partnerships and making funding and skills decisions that reformulate foundational tenets, modes of organisation and governance. Interaction with the capitalist market economy and professionalisation is inevitable for CLH; commercial mindsets must operate alongside idealist visions and grassroot organisation, like in partnerships with for-profit developers.

How this impacts CLH groups and their potential connection to postcapitalism is ambiguous; do groups retain their non-capitalist orientation or undergo an isomorphic development towards capitalistic housing provision? If CLH is going to be used to theorise postcapitalist property relations, these empirical realities need to be understood.

Research Question

This project seeks to advance the interesting connection between the postcapitalist project and CLH, while acknowledging empirical nuances, with the following research question:

Does community-led housing present the potential of a postcapitalist housing sector?

Method

A collection of four CLH groups in Bristol, an epicentre of the UK's CLH, will be studied through a qualitative method, including interviews and surveys. This research will use empirics to interrogate theory, rather than use theory to explain empirics, through a critical realist approach.

Two dimensions of Bristol's CLH sector will be analysed.

1. The organisation of the CLH groups

To interrogate the groups' organisation, the research will consider their alignment to the following three terrains of postcapitalist transformation, as defined by Chatterton and Pusey:

Transforming sites of enclosure into commons

Transforming practices of commodification into socialised non-commodified production

Transforming alienated labour into "socially useful doing"

The principles, labour form, property models and organisational design of the groups will be assessed. It is anticipated that the project will engage with concepts like social capital, common property/goods and communing.

2. The operation of the CLH groups

How groups work with stakeholders and partners on their delivery, housing management and land acquisition will be the focus of analysis here. Thus, this dimension will consider the inter-organisational relationships between partnerships, sites and groups that operationalise Bristol's CLH, utilising theory like horizontally-networked economies, Gibson-Graham's diverse community economies and practice theory. Of particular interest is whether Bristol's CLH presents a countertopography, connected, localised conflicts of social reproduction that produce structural change.

Contribution of Research

The findings will fill a gap in postcapitalist thinking, whilst concurrently illustrating the potential of CLH and strengthening the relationships and practices that configure Bristol's CLH.