I was reminded recently that I have been teaching, researching and writing about housing for more than 45 years. During that astonishingly long period of time my ideas and approaches have changed considerably as I have been on a personal journey of discovery on which this book is a further (and hopefully not final) step. In discussions on the book with colleagues, it was suggested that I try to outline the main elements in this enjoyable and absorbing journey and, in particular, to describe how this latest step relates to those that preceded it in order to further understanding of the ideas in the book and my reasons for thinking that they are important.

I graduated with a degree in business studies which gave me a good grounding in many of the social sciences including economics, sociology, psychology and politics. After some time working on housing issues in local government, I returned to study social administration and did my PhD on policy planning in local government. With this background it is not surprising that my early research in housing had a very interdisciplinary and empirical focus and reflected my continuing concern with the implications of research for policy and practice. However, I was soon influenced by my friend Jim Kemeny to apply social theory in my work. Unsure where to look for this, I turned to social constructionism, which was his adopted framework and one that I had studied in my undergraduate days where I developed an interest in phenomenology as a research philosophy. Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality was my source of knowledge and inspiration in this work and I tried to apply the ideas in my research on housing management and other areas. Along with a growing understanding of the constraints and contradictions of that approach, I became increasingly interested in some ‘postmodern’ sociologists such as Bourdieu, Beck and, in particular, Giddens. I was heavily influenced by the concept of structuration that promised to make a major contribution to resolving the long-standing agency/structure division that dominated sociology.