Types and forms of housing tenure: Towards solving the comparison/translation problem

Abstract

Comparing housing tenures cross‐nationally is difficult because any comparison is bound to find that there is a bewildering variety of kinds of housing tenure and that the same tenures in formal terms will in fact vary in content in different countries. Also anyone who wants to communicate results of research on tenures in her/his own country to a foreign audience is bound to face these difficulties. The comparison/translation problem raises more general questions about the nature of housing tenure. According to the constructivist view on housing tenure, tenures are formal categories whose content is determined by the nationally and historically specific social relations of housing. When drawn to its ultimate limits this view would seriously undermine any attempts to compare and translate. In its extreme form the constructivist view cannot be sustained. Housing tenures can be shown to consist of a set of necessary rights and duties and a set of rights and duties that are contingently related to them. The proposed solution to the comparison/translation problem is based on a moderate constructivist view of housing tenure: we should look at tenures on two levels, that of general ideal types defined by the necessary features of different kinds of tenure and that of historically and geographically specific actual forms. The article presents a simple ideal type of housing tenure and illustrates the use of the two‐level approach with a comparison of owner‐occupation in Sweden and Finland.