Housing Estates as Experimental Fields of Social Research

Abstract

This paper discusses researchers’ relationships with their research object and its transformation in empirical sociology by examining “danchi” (housing estates) studies conducted by Japanese sociologists. The Japanese housing policy system was quickly established in the early 1950s, and the reinforced concrete housing complexes stimulated journalistic interest. Most influential researchers in postwar Japanese sociology launched into research on these newly constructed housing estates. One reason was that social surveys with standardized questionnaires to individual respondents were compatible with the new housing form. Danchi became experimental fields of social research. Some early researchers emphasized the sparsity of neighbor relationships in danchi and the surviving kinship across geographical boundaries. However, the image of danchi as pictured by sociologists transformed around 1960. Studies of residents’ associations showed that danchi communities were being formed through cooperative solutions found for residents’ common problems. Whether or not a housing estate was formed as a community depended on how the residents related to the space. This change was also reflected in the relationships between the researchers and the respondents in that the distance between them under the standardized attitude and opinion survey was lost. The change in the image of housing estates in the 1960s can be said to overlap with a turning point in social research.