Article

'People and their homes rather than housing in the usual sense'? Locating the tenant's voice in Homes in High Flats

Details

Citation

Hazley B, Wright V, Abrams L & Kearns A (2019) 'People and their homes rather than housing in the usual sense'? Locating the tenant's voice in Homes in High Flats. Women's History Review, 28 (5), pp. 728-745. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2018.1472890

Abstract
In recent years, the social research of Pearl Jephcott has been subject to scholarly reappraisal on the grounds that it displays an early commitment to the unmediated reporting of ‘the authentic voice of her participants’. This article investigates the extent to which this claim holds for Jephcott’s seminal 1971 study Homes in High Flats. It suggests that, although Homes in High Flats sought to investigate ‘people and their homes rather than housing in the usual sense’, the study’s ability to realise this aim was complicated by the social distance obtaining between researcher and researched. Based on re-analysis of the study’s archived research materials, the article explores how this distance mediated the researchers’ interpretation and re-presentation of the tenant’s voice, deepening understanding of the epistemological premises of Jephcott’s work.

Keywords
History; Gender Studies

Journal
Women's History Review: Volume 28, Issue 5

StatusPublished
FundersLeverhulme Trust
Publication date31/12/2019
Publication date online09/05/2018
Date accepted by journal09/05/2018
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/30643
PublisherInforma UK Limited
ISSN0961-2025
eISSN1747-583X

People (1)

Dr Valerie Wright

Dr Valerie Wright

Research Fellow, Dementia and Ageing