City and Social Policies of Housing: Conceptual and Methodological Pitfalls

Abstract

The relevance of housing as an object of priority interest in social life turns it into the target of varied equations, perspectives and initiatives. Specifically, public intervention in this specific field has led to the development of an area of ​​activity(s), particularly important in the interior and in the surrounding area of ​​our cities, which we can call Social Housing. In this article we seek to raise the discussion about the analytical traps that result from the way in which the speeches - political, technical and scientific - and the various professional practices and valences involved in defining the best form of state intervention in the field of housing reflect and express conflicts of interest of professional, political, social and economic groups. We try in two stages to present examples of what we refer to as conceptual traps and methodological pitfalls. We try to identify the difficulties that the sociologist who investigates these domains finds in dealing with the pre-notions resulting from the intense experience that this (social housing) problem implies. Not lloking to exhaust this question, we first intend to make a first point of view through the experience of a relationship with the world of the interveners, and then, following the personal experience of investigation of the process that gives rise to the current public interventions in this sector of this problem.