Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Multiple Meanings of Homes: A Changing Social and Political Domain across Cultures

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Home and Sexuality

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life ((PSFL))

  • 509 Accesses

Abstract

The 1990s saw anthropological studies renew its longstanding interest in space and place. This called for a re-conceptualisation of theory and research which shifted the perspective of spatial dimensions of culture and behaviour to the foreground (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995; Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2008 [2003]; Buchli 2013). This shift re-ignited a longstanding political debate on doing anthropology at home, mainly in Europe and the UK (Okely 1999). Thus, this renewed interest turned the gaze from the ‘savage other’ and the ‘noble savage’ onto the Western home. Okely argues that due to this ‘anti-Europeanist ethos in favour of an exoticised elsewhere,’ the discipline of anthropology suffered from a lack of Western ethnography (1999: 40). This may explain why the Western home featured less in the ethnographies of the home.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 105.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://disgorgedintotalrecall.tumblr.com/post/28717267311/igor-kopytoff-the-cultural-biography-of-things, accessed 22/05/2015.

  2. 2.

    Article 25, Act 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. It states that:

    Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/eng.pdf, accessed 03/03/2016.

Bibliography

  • Attfield, Judy. 1997. Design as a Practice of Modernity: A Case for the Study of the Coffee Table in the Mid-Century Domestic Interior. Journal of Material Culture 2(3): 267–289.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bachelard, Gaston. 1958[1969]. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bender, Barbara. 1993. Introduction: Landscape—Meaning and Action. In Landscape, Politics and Perspectives, ed. Barbara Bender. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birdwell-Pheasant, Donna, and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga. 1999. House Life: Space, Place and Family in Europe. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blunt, Alison. 2005. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. UK, USA and Australia: Blackwell Publishing.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. The Berber House of the World Reversed. In The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, eds. Setha M. Low, and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga 2008[2003]. Australia, UK, USA: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Kabyle House or the World Reversed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Helen C. 1998. Social Work and Sexuality: Working with Lesbians and Gay Men. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchli, Victor. 2013. An Anthropology of Architecture. London and New York: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchli, Victor, Alison Clarke, and Dell Upton. 2004. Editorial. Home Cultures 1(1): 1–4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carsten, Janet. 2000. Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carsten, Janet, and Stephen Hugh-Jones. 1995. About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cieraad, Irene. 1999. Introduction: Anthropology at Home. In At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space, ed. Irene Cieraad. New York: Syracuse University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Csordas, Thomas J.  2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Collier, Jane, Michelle Rosaldo, and Sylvia Yanagisako. 1997. Is there a family? New anthropological views. In The Gender/Sexuality Reader, ed. Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo, 71–81. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2012. Migrating-Remitting ‘Building’ Dwelling: House-Making as ‘Proxy’ Presence in Postsocialist Albania. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 761–777.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daniels, Inge M. 2010. The Japanese House. Oxford and New York: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidoff, Leonore. 1995. Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender & Class. Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Das, Veena, Jonathan Ellen, and Lori Leonard. 2008. On the Modalities of the Domestic. Home Cultures 5(3): 348–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Douglas, Mary. 1991. The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space. Social Research 58(1): 287–307.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyck, Isabel, Pia Kontosb, Jan Angusc, and Patricia McKeeverc. 2005. The Home as a Site for Long-Term Care: Meanings and Management of Bodies and Spaces. Health & Place 11: 173–185.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elwood, Sarah A. 2000. Lesbian Living Spaces. Journal of Lesbian Studies 1(4): 11–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fortes, Meyer. 1958. Introduction. In The Developmental Cycle of Domestic Groups, ed. Jack Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1977[1991]. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London, USA, Australia: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorman-Murray, Andrew. 2008. Masculinity and the Home: A Critical Review and Conceptual Framework. Australian Geographer 39(3): 367–379.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorman-Murray, Andrew. 2012. Que(e)rying Homonormativity: The Everyday Politics of Lesbian and Gay Homemaking. Paper Presented at the Sexuality at Home Workshop, London, 10–11 December 2012, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab/news/SexualityatHome.

  • Gorman-Murray, Andrew, and C.J. Nash. 2014. Mobile Places, Relational Spaces: Conceptualizing Change in Sydney’s LGBTQ Neighborhoods. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32: 622–641.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hage, Ghassan. 1997. At Home in the Entrails of the West: Multiculturalism, ‘Ethnic Food’ and Migrant Home-Building. In Home/World: Communality, Identity and Marginality in Sydney’s West, eds. Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth, and Michael Symonds. Sydney: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Eric, and Michael O’Hanlon. 1995. The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space, 1–30. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurdley, Rachel. 2013. Home, Materiality, Memory and Belonging. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Humphrey, Caroline. 1974. Inside a Mongolian Tent. New Society, October—reprinted in The Third World, New Society Social Studies Reader, IPC Magazines Ltd, 1976.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, Tim. 2011. Against Space: Place, Movement, Knowledge. In Boundless Worlds: An Anthropological Approach to Movement, ed. Wynn Kirby Peter. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, Wendy. 1996. 1990 debate Human Worlds are Culturally Constructed: The Presentations. In Key Debates in Anthropology, ed. Tim Ingold. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jansen, Stef, and Staffan Löfving. 2015. Struggles for Home: Violence, Hope and the Movement of People. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, Richard. 1999. Pierre Bourdieu. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Matthew. 2010. English Houses 1300–1800: Vernacular Architecture, Social Life. UK: Pearson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahn, Miriam. 1996. Your Place and Mine. In Senses of Place, eds. Steven Feld and Keith Basso. Santa Fe and New Mexico: School of American Research Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitchin, Rob, and Karen Lysaght. 2003. Heterosexism and the Geographies of Everyday Life in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Environment and Planning A 35: 489–510.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. In The Social Life of Things, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 64–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lawrence-Zúñiga, Denise. 1999. Suburbanizing Rural Lifestyles through House Form in Southern Portugal. In House Life: Space, Place and Family in Europe, eds. Donna Birdwell-Pheasant and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga. Oxford and New York: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1949[1969]. Les Structures Elementaires de La Parente. Paris [English version of revised edition London, 1969].

    Google Scholar 

  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1970. The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science Mythology: I. Thirty Bedford Square London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Löfgren, Orvar. 1984. The Sweetness of Home: Class, Culture and Family life in Sweden. In The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, eds. Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga. UK, USA, Australia: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lovell, Nadia. 1998. Introduction: Belonging in Need of Emplacement? In Locality and Belonging, ed. Nadia Lovell. London, USA and Canada: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: Dutton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty. 1962[1945]. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mauss, Marcel. 1979[1950]. Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo: A Study in Social Morphology. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Keagan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Daniel. 2001. Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors. Oxford and New York: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Daniel. 2009. The Comfort of Things. Cambridge and USA: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Okely, Judith. 1983. The Traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Okely, Judith. 1999. Writing Anthropology in Europe: an Example from Gypsy Research. Folk 41: 40–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Okely, Judith.2007. Fieldwork Embodied. The Sociological Review 55(15): 65–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peace, Sheila, Caroline Holland, and Leonie Kellaher.2006. Environment and Identity in Later Life. UK: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scicluna, Rachael M. 2010. A Study of Older Lesbian in Southern England. Masters Dissertation: University of Sussex, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Short, Rennie. 1999. Foreward. In At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space, ed. Irene Cieraad. New York: Syracuse University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoller, Paul. 2009. The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Lawrence. 1991. The Public and the Private in the Stately Homes of England, 1500–1990. Social Research 58(1): 227–251.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tambiah, Stanley J. 1969. Animals are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit. Ethnology 8(4): 423–459.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Kent, UK

    Rachael M Scicluna

Authors
  1. Rachael M Scicluna
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Scicluna, R.M. (2017). Multiple Meanings of Homes: A Changing Social and Political Domain across Cultures. In: Home and Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46038-7_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46038-7_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-46037-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-46038-7

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation