The Category of Housing in the Classical Sociology

Abstract

Sociology of housing (sociology of dwelling, sociology of home) is a branch of sociology, the central category of which is housing. The article explores a theoretical reflection on the concepts of the house and home, habitation and dwelling. They were analyzed by scholars belonging to different scientific schools and paradigms: O. Comte, E. Durkheim, M. Mauss, M. Halbwachs, P. Bourdieu, H. Spencer, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, B. Malinowski, Z. Bauman, A. Giddens, K. Marx, F. Tönnies, M. Weber, G. Simmel, W. Sombart, K. Mannheim, M. Horkheimer, Th. Adorno, A. Schütz, P. Berger, Th. Luckmann, N. Luhmann, N. Elias, T. Parsons, R. Merton, Th. Veblen, Ch.H. Cooley, P. Sorokin. The study reveals a wide variety of theoretical approaches to housing, however, the very interpretation of housing and the identification of its functional properties allow us to talk about a certain commonality of approaches of various authors. Based on the existing classifications of approaches to the study of housing, five main areas in the work of the classics of sociology were identified: family life in the home-group; privacy and security of home; housing luxury and inequality; dichotomy “home-work”; housing and architecture. The dual approaches to understanding the housing were analyzed allowing to distinguish between the subject areas of the sociology of architecture and housing sociology. The results of this study delineate the subject of housing sociology and trace its development as a separate industry along with the sociology of architecture and the urban sociology.