Housing and ethopolitics: constructing identities of active consumption and responsible community

Recent developments in social housing policy, including large-scale stock transfers, have been proclaimed as marking 'the death of council housing' in the UK. The decline of public housing and new techniques for the governance of social housing provision are symbolic of the transformation of welfarist social regimes in advanced liberal democracies. This paper explores recent social housing policy in the UK and suggests that policy developments reflect changes in technologies for governing the conduct of social housing tenants and practitioners. The ethopolitics (Rose 2001) of social housing are characterized by emerging identities of active, entrepreneurial consumption and the invocation of responsibilized community. The paper examines how ethopower is manifested through technologies of social housing governance and identifies conflicts inherent within this new politics of conduct.