Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 25 (2009) 250–253252

but a large city bias in the identification and interpretation ofhomelessness as a social issue in much research and policy anal-ysis at that time.

The editors of this new volume have already made a substantialcontribution to challenging the urban bias in homelessnessresearch and to understanding the subtleties and nuances of ruralhomelessness in the UK (notably in Cloke, Milbourne and Widdow-field, 20022). This international volume adds a welcome ruralperspective to the growing comparative literature on housing andhomelessness issues and will hopefully be equally welcomed byscholars of rural studies.

The book sets out to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge ofthe ‘different visibilities and complex spatialities of homelessnesswithin contemporary society’ (p1). It does this by presenting 13chapters from eight countries including the USA and Canada,Australia and New Zealand and five European countries. Thisgeographical spread is commendable given that it is not clearwhether specific resources were ever available to commissionand edit the volume. Overall, the chapters contain a wealth ofstatistical and qualitative data which give an invaluable insightinto both the nature of rural homelessness and the related progresson policy and research/evaluation in the selected countries.

As might be expected, a number of chapters address issues ofhow both rurality and homelessness are defined and analysed indiffering national contexts and review the existing, if limited,research available within their countries. Some chapters draw onspecific studies conducted by the authors; the first of it’s kind, forexample, in the case of Spain (Chapter 9, Lopez Ruiz and CabreraCabrera). Others comment on how rural issues have beenapproached in national or local policy making and research, oftenfinding the evidence base highly lacking, for example (and perhapssurprisingly) in Ireland (Chapter 11, O’Sullivan). Two chapterswhich struck me in particular were those which dealt with thehousing situations of indigenous populations in the USA (2, Aron)and New Zealand (14, Kearns). These authors raise issues of humanrights and land rights in an analytical context which, while stillrural, is politically and culturally very different from that of theUK or most of the other European countries included. They go tothe very heart of the meaning of home – in any location or society.

One of the intriguing strengths of homelessness research whichhas a rural focus is the greater recognition of the broader circum-stances of homelessness beyond street homelessness and livingin specially provided temporary accommodation. We are presentedwith accounts of life in mobile homes/‘trailer parks’, life on themargins of the home ownership and private rental markets, andlife in a wide range of insecure and transitory housing situations.Many of these situations will also be characteristic of the homeless-ness experience in mixed/urban/city areas but are too often over-shadowed by the over-emphasis on populations in contact withstatutory and voluntary sector agencies, who are more likely tobe living in specialist homeless accommodation (hostels and sup-ported housing) or to be literally roofless and using day-timeservices and emergency night shelters. So as well as enlighteningus as to the differentiated patterns and processes of homelessnessin rural areas – the volume contributes significantly to broadeningthe overall analysis of homelessness beyond that recognised bycontemporary urban policy (which still tends dominate thenational agenda and legislative framework).

For me, the strongest chapters analytically were those whichwere able to offer comparisons across the urban/rural spectrumsuch as Robinson’s chapter (7) on three areas in England;

2 Cloke, P., Milbourne, P., Widdowfield, R., 2002. Rural homelessness: issues,experiences and policy responses. The Policy Press, Bristol.

Milbourne and Cloke’s own chapter (6) which looks across thewhole of the UK; and Lopez Ruiz and Cabrera Cabrera’s chapter(9) on Spain. This of course raises the next challenge for Milbourneand Cloke, and indeed Huth and Wright, or their respective succes-sors. Both books (though a decade apart) are collections of nationalcase studies – not the outcome of an internationally comparativestudy. In the case of ‘International Perspectives on Rural Homeless-ness’, they are useful and interesting case studies which highlightareas of similarity and difference in rural homelessness acrosssome of the world’s wealthiest nations. They represent a hugelyvaluable starting point to the development of research and under-standing of rural housing and homelessness issues in the interna-tional context. Hopefully the infrastructure is increasingly inplace to begin to develop more rigorous and systematic compara-tive studies across countries and embracing the rural–urban hier-archy in order to further elucidate the changing nature ofhomelessness in urban and rural communities in the twenty-firstcentury. This book will undoubtedly, and rightly, be widely read –but hopefully there are more volumes to come as this excitingresearch agenda progresses.

Isobel Anderson*

University of Stirling,Applied Social Science, Stirling, Scotland, UK

� Tel.: þ44 1786 467 718; fax: þ44 1786 466 323.E-mail address: ia1@stir.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.09.002

Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Researchand Method. Schram, S.F., Caterino, B. (Eds.). New York Univer-sity Press, New York, (2006). 304 pp., paperback, ISBN 13: 978-0-8147-4033-0.

Bent Flyvbjerg, perhaps best known for his book Rationality andPower and the more recent Making Social Science Matter, now hasthe honour of seeing a book published about his own work andthe intellectual issues which it has raised. He has of course writtenmuch more than these two books, but together those two haveraised his prominence to such levels. Flyvbjerg is Professor of Plan-ning at Aarlborg University in Denmark. Rationality and Power isa theoretically driven study of the history of a bus station; MakingSocial Science Matter is a commentary on research method and epis-temology built on the bus station experience and set against the‘science wars’. But why might rural researchers take inspirationfrom the saga of a bus station? Because Flyvbjerg uses it to chal-lenge social and political scientists to get over their methodologicaland epistemological inhibitions which have stemmed from posi-tivism and get on with earning themselves a significant place inthe political process by way of a new approach (with Aristotelianorigins). He calls this new approach ‘Phronesis’. He has founda following, referred to in this book as the Perestroikans. Thisbook debates the value of Phronesis, but supporters form a substan-tial majority of the contributors to its 14 chapters. Not that thesupporters accept everything Flyvbjerg has said, but the book isa critical celebration of his work.

Rural studies have their methodological and epistemologicaltensions. Rural sociology in particular has origins in both positivism,traditionally strong in the USA, and critical/qualitative work comingfrom the anthropological community studies tradition and Marxismthrough work like that of Howard Newby and the late Fred Buttel inparticular. But surely we have resolved these issues, now that our

Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 25 (2009) 250–253 253

journals accommodate positivist research alongside post-structur-alism, post-Fordism, Bourdieu and Foucault? Does Flyvbjerg takeus back to old territory we might not want to revisit? I don’t thinkso, because Phronesis challenges us to do more than move beyondold epistemological antagonisms. It challenges us to make researchrelevant and take policy, if not political, action by applying whatthe Perestroikans term ‘practical judgement’.

Making Political Science Matter is in three parts. After the editors’introduction, the first part presents the debate about Flyvbjerg ina quantitatively rather unbalanced manner: one chapter criticising(without attempting to destroy) Phronesis and the other three(including one by Flyvbjerg himself) supporting it while occasion-ally attacking the critic. The second section, of five chapters, ismore deeply theoretical while the third discusses the question ofwhat we should do with the social and political disciplines tomake them acknowledge power as the centre of their being andget on with it in theory and practice.

In the first chapter of Part one, Sanford Schram sets out thePerestroikan agenda without hiding his enthusiasm for it. The nextchapter, by David Laitin, presents the main attack on Flyvbjergfrom a positivist angle but argues for pluralism nevertheless.Flyvbjerg responds in chapter three and is supported by PatrickThaddeus Jackson who puts a case for pluralism in chapter four.Chapter five presents an application of Phronetic research by wayof a case study, though a little more explicit discussion of findingshere might have helped strengthen the Perestroikan case.

The middle, more theoretical section provides detailed interpre-tation of Flyvbjerg and works towards refinement of Phronesis. Inchapter six, Theodore Schatzki offers more support for a pluralisticPhronesis in what reads like a review of Making Social ScienceMatter. The subsequent chapters by Caterino, Hawkesworth, Clegg

and Thiele consider Flyvbjerg’s ideas from the theoretical perspec-tives of their disciplines. None of these explicitly encompasses ruralstudies, but many issues raised in these chapters would be appli-cable. For example, it should take only a little imagination to applyClegg’s consideration of power and causation and Hawkesworth onthe production of knowledge to important points of rural researchand policy.

The third part addresses the relationship between theory andthe politics of political research. Schwartz-Shea argues for method-ological pluralism and seeks reflexivity on the politics of researchaimed at revealing who benefits from it. Kettler’s chapter reflectson the work of F.L. Neumann to call for research which eschewsanalysis for the sake of refining analysis. The last chapter, byLuke, follows a similar logic and advocates Phronesis as the wayforward for a liberating political science.

This would be a challenging book for undergraduate students. Butany student contemplating a research career which is relevant torural policy and politics should find the book helpful in establishingan epistemological footing and a personal agenda for activism. If youfind anti-humanistic policy from governments and non-reflexivityfrom rural people to be frustrating, you might find the Flyvbjergagenda to be refreshing.

Ian Gray*

Charles Sturt University,Boorooma Street, Wagga Wagga,

NSW 2650, Australia� Tel.: þ61 2 6933 2701.

E-mail address: igray@csu.edu.au

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.05.004