Housing and social theory: testing the Fordist models, or, Social theory and afFORDable housing
Date
1995
Authors
Greig, Alastair Whyte
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Urban Research Program. Research School of Social Science. Australian National University.
Abstract
Although the concept of Fordism has been used to help explain a wide range
ofphenomena in Australian post-war political economy, there have been few
attempts to assess its utility within the field of housing provision. This paper
is a preliminanry attempt to 'test' the Fordist model.
It distinguishes between two uses of the concept: a narrow 'productivist'
approach which focuses on the 'backwardness'ofthe housing industry\ and a
broader 'societal' approach which focuses on the interrelationship betw een
dominant production techniques, patterns of mass consumption, and urban
form.
The first section examines the narrow> use of Fordism and argues that it has
only limited practical and analytic value for explaining developments within
the Australian housing industry. However, the second section of the paper
suggests that the broader use of the concept—derived from the regulation
school ofpolitical economy—is usefulfor explaining the coincidence between
suburbanisation, mass consumption and mass production during the golden
era ofFordism after the Second World War.
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Working/Technical Paper
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Open Access
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Australia (CC BY-NC 3.0 AU)
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