The moral economy of housing provision in Scandinavia and beyond: A conversation

Housing is crucial for people to flourish, as it is more than shelter and physical infrastructure. The conversation discusses trajectories and ‘variegations’ in universal, decommodified, non-profit housing provision in Scandinavian countries, focusing on Sweden ( allmännyttan ) and Denmark ( almen). It explores how Sweden’s municipal rental housing was transformed by neoliberal market fundamentalism, while the Danish tenant-owned housing associations turned out to be more resilient to neoliberal reforms. The conversation’s second part discusses the potential of a moral economy perspective to enrich our understanding of contemporary transformations. Such a perspective involves reintroducing moral arguments pointing towards a sustainable organisation of livelihoods, not least with regard to privatisation, individualisation and financialisation and their impact on inequalities. A moral economy approach allows to broaden the objects of study, moving towards an integrated analysis of habitation, including sustainable and caring neighbourhoods, by transcending academic habits of myopic disciplinary isolation.