The information infrastructure of land registration in England: a sociology of real estate at the intersection of elites, markets and statistics

Monteath, Timothy (2021) The information infrastructure of land registration in England: a sociology of real estate at the intersection of elites, markets and statistics. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This Thesis presents a sociology of the development of land registration in England and examines its relationship to understandings of the housing market, statistics, and elites. Through approaching land registration as an information infrastructure, this research prioritizes the previously overlooked foundations of the housing market, that underpin how it operates and through which it becomes known. To do so, this Thesis combines historical methodologies with computational methods utilising contemporary big data. It seeks to track how land registration in England from its 19th century origins, solidified into an information infrastructure and by utilising this understanding to ask questions of the modern land registration, highlighting these ongoing legacies of elite power, through an analysis of its transactional data. This Thesis is split into three cases. Firstly, an examination of the early land registry, its legal and socio-material organization and standardization, addressing the context of elite aristocratic power in which the system arose. Secondly, an analysis of housing market statistics in the UK, addresses how their relationship to the information infrastructure of land registration has allowed for the exclusion of elite housing practices from official statistics. The third case study, through utilising computational methods, paints a different picture of the UK housing market by adding back in the ‘missing’ houses of contemporary elites, which are owned through offshore shell companies. This research therefore contributes to the study of inequality in the UK through revealing the extent of elite housing wealth held in offshore jurisdictions. Arguing that in order to better identify the relationship between the housing market and elite power the importance of understanding land registration as an information infrastructure underpinning it, cannot be understated.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2021 Timothy Monteath
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD100 Land Use H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Sets:	Departments > Sociology
Supervisor:	Savage, Mike
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4293

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