David Mullins – författare

Social housing has long been delivered through mixed economy mechanisms, but there has been little focus in housing studies on what this means for housing organisations themselves. This book presents recent international research applying concepts of social enterprise and hybridity to illuminate organisational behaviour in the housing sector. It addresses critiques of the explanatory value of these concepts by exploring their underlying meanings and their application to diverse case studies worldwide. The concepts are found to be most useful where they inform dynamic analysis of hybridisation and identify underlying change mechanisms, rather than simply providing static descriptions of hybridity. Various chapters in the book show how analysis can be enriched by drawing on institutional theory to develop concepts such as competing organisational logics, trade-offs between social and commercial goals and resource transfers. The Book also looks at policy as a driver for hybridisation and to the regulatory challenges for policy systems that have come to rely on hybrid forms of delivery. A research agenda is proposed building on these conceptual frameworks to develop systematic approaches to data collection and analysis to enable clearer and more consistent meanings to emerge.

This book was published as a special issue of Housing Studies.

Social housing has long been delivered through mixed economy mechanisms, but there has been little focus in housing studies on what this means for housing organisations themselves. This book presents recent international research applying concepts of social enterprise and hybridity to illuminate organisational behaviour in the housing sector. It addresses critiques of the explanatory value of these concepts by exploring their underlying meanings and their application to diverse case studies worldwide. The concepts are found to be most useful where they inform dynamic analysis of hybridisation and identify underlying change mechanisms, rather than simply providing static descriptions of hybridity. Various chapters in the book show how analysis can be enriched by drawing on institutional theory to develop concepts such as competing organisational logics, trade-offs between social and commercial goals and resource transfers. The Book also looks at policy as a driver for hybridisation and to the regulatory challenges for policy systems that have come to rely on hybrid forms of delivery. A research agenda is proposed building on these conceptual frameworks to develop systematic approaches to data collection and analysis to enable clearer and more consistent meanings to emerge.

This book was published as a special issue of Housing Studies.

This book represents a new direction in the study of religion and marriage by using a postmodern theoretical framework focusing on gendered discourse and culture, to examine the meaning of sacred marriage within social contexts. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews of couples in long-term, sacred marriages living in the American Midwest, together with an analysis of Christian marriage advice manuals, Sacred Marriages explores how couples use religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures to give their marriages meaning, and how those sacred meanings are used in their daily lives and the spaces that they embody. The study shows how religious and secular beliefs are combined to formulate cultural strategies for approaching the sacralization of marriage, and how religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures are ordered, depending on circumstances and social contexts. This often results in other relationships being subordinated in favour of the sacred bond believed to exist between husband and wife. The book argues that sacred marriage is a malleable concept, as people bend religious culture to form new and altered sacred marriages during emotional extremes. A thoughtful examination of long-term Christian marriages, this volume will appeal to scholars of religion and sociology with interests in marriage and the family.

This book represents a new direction in the study of religion and marriage by using a postmodern theoretical framework focusing on gendered discourse and culture, to examine the meaning of sacred marriage within social contexts. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews of couples in long-term, sacred marriages living in the American Midwest, together with an analysis of Christian marriage advice manuals, Sacred Marriages explores how couples use religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures to give their marriages meaning, and how those sacred meanings are used in their daily lives and the spaces that they embody. The study shows how religious and secular beliefs are combined to formulate cultural strategies for approaching the sacralization of marriage, and how religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures are ordered, depending on circumstances and social contexts. This often results in other relationships being subordinated in favour of the sacred bond believed to exist between husband and wife. The book argues that sacred marriage is a malleable concept, as people bend religious culture to form new and altered sacred marriages during emotional extremes. A thoughtful examination of long-term Christian marriages, this volume will appeal to scholars of religion and sociology with interests in marriage and the family.