Housing injustices and epistemic injustice

Carr, Helen and Cowan, David (2026) Housing injustices and epistemic injustice. In, Flear, Mark L., Davies-Tyrie, Ceri and Wincott, Daniel (eds.) Socio-Legal Studies on Epistemic Injustice and Spaces and Places. Springer Nature Switzerland, pp. 73-97. (doi:10.1007/978-3-032-07581-9_3).

Abstract

This chapter examines the consumer turn in housing policy in the context of post-Grenfell politics, to assess its potential to address long-standing housing injustices using notions of epistemic injustice. Noting the inevitability of spatial and temporal dimensions to housing injustice, we complicate monochrome renditions of the consumer by emphasising, in the context of the home, consumption as a dynamic, interactive, social and political process and the different positionality of those that policy seeks to treat as consumers. Using three examples of housing injustices, those suffered by residential leaseholders, social tenants and private sector tenants, we illustrate how injustices can be understood in a nuanced way using the lens of epistemic injustice and the complex work of ignorance in perpetuating injustices. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the limits of a consumer-oriented response to housing injustice arguing that understanding housing injustice as epistemic injustice reveals the limits of consumerism as a response to injustice framed as it is by a belief in the market. However, it also suggests that a renewed commitment to a form of consumerism committed to full knowledge may be productive of justice if those in dominant positions address their own wilful ignorance.

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Contributors

Author: Helen Carr

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