Residence - House as Home PDF

## Residence ### House-as-Home For many people house is home; the dwellings people live in, and the meanings ascribed to them, constitute feelings of belonging described as being 'at home' or 'homely'. As we outlined in Chapter 1, and as is now commonly accepted, home is more than house: home is co...

## Residence ### House-as-Home For many people house is home; the dwellings people live in, and the meanings ascribed to them, constitute feelings of belonging described as being 'at home' or 'homely'. As we outlined in Chapter 1, and as is now commonly accepted, home is more than house: home is constructed at multiple scales and takes material forms beyond that of a physical shelter, and house-as-home is dynamically created. In this chapter we chart the myriad relationships between house and home. We firstly aim to investigate how home as an ideal is materialised in the form of dwelling structures. Through an analysis of the spatial layout and form of dwellings, we can begin to comprehend the diverse historical and geographical meanings of home. Our second aim is to illustrate ways of thinking home geographically. House-as-home brings to the fore the identity politics of home. Whereas the spatial layout and perception of many forms of dwelling correspond to dominant ideologies of home, these ideas are constantly resisted and recast through homemaking practices. In our discussion of various forms of housing, we use people's house-based practices to illustrate their active engagement with ideas of home, especially those bound to family, comfort, and security. Finally, house-as-home demonstrates the multi-scalar politics of home. Certainly, much of the discussion of this chapter confines itself to houses and domestic practices. However, we also show the multiple scales of these places and practices, whereby home can be stretched beyond houses or shrink to the body. ### Home Economies Just as home is not divorced from economic relations, houses are the source and location of diverse economic relations. For example, the provision of housing is monetised in many societies, and houses are parts of non-monetary systems of exchange in many others. Houses are commodities, which means that houses become assets and sources of wealth for some or are associated with poverty for others. We consider three different aspects of economic meanings and connections of home in this section: the monetary significance of housing to both national economies and individuals (and hence the imbrication of the domestic with other scales); the intertwined social, economic, and cultural distinctions between people or groups of people that emanate from home economies; and home-based work. #### Economic Significance of Housing In most societies people have to pay for a physical structure that they can call home. Consequently, the provision of housing is connected to wider circuits of capital accumulation and labour processes. A substantial amount of money in many nations is spent on building and renovating houses. In the United States, over 2.5 million new dwellings are built each year, over 900,000 in Japan, just under 200,000 in Canada, and around 175,000 each in Australia and the United Kingdom. Housebuilding also provides employment for many. Another measure of the economic significance of housing is the percentage of private wealth held in housing. In Australia, for example, residential property accounts for around 56% of total wealth held by individuals; the comparable figure for the United States is around 37%. Housing-related wealth is increasing with the emergence of new financial products that allow residential property owners to use property as a foundation to invest in non-housing. 'Investor subjects' deepen the economic significance of home, in particular its connections to socio-economic inequality and the volatility of economies. Though variable across different countries, it is nonetheless the case that domestic building remains important to national economies and the wealth of individuals. One further aspect of the economic significance of housing is captured in Figure 3.1. #### Housing Tenure, Social Divisions, Identities, and Home There are three main ways of paying for housing: purchasing or owning (termed owner occupation), renting from a private landlord (private rental), or renting from the state (public rental). Tenure mixes vary considerably across developed countries. Cutting across these national differences are the social divisions created and sustained through housing tenure. In other words, how a dwelling is paid for is related to, and influences, identities of class, gender, race, sexuality, age, and other social divisions. #### Home as Work House-as-home is also a space of production or work. When household tasks like cooking, cleaning, and caring for children occur outside the home they are classified as work, enumerated, and remunerated. Yet household or domestic work that occurs in the home as part of relationships of kin and caring is, in the main, not remunerated and not counted in the compilation of national accounts. Attempts to measure time spent in domestic work, and ways of estimating its economic value, are varied and contested. All measures, nonetheless, show that home-based unpaid work is substantial in both time and economic terms. #### Residence as Homely: Suburban Homemaking The suburban home is a relatively recent phenomenon that has quickly become synonymous with dominant notions of home. A detached or semi-detached house, built in the image of a family and individually owned, is considered the dwelling that can most easily and 'naturally' become home. Yet the suburban home is quite young. The large-scale presence of detached and semi-detached houses on large blocks of land on the outskirts of cities emerged as part of the development of the public-private distinction in late-Victorian Britain. #### Home as Unhomely Embodied experiences of home engender homeliness and unhomeliness. Physical disabilities are one form of embodiment that shape home. #### Residence as Homely: Homemaking in Shared, Temporary, and Institutional Dwellings From the perspective of a critical geography of home, suburban dwellings are homely, but not exclusively so. First, suburban residences can be alienating and unhomely, as the connections between home, power, and identity craft materialities and imaginaries of home that are socially exclusionary. Second, the detached dwelling is just one residential building type. Institutional, temporary, and mobile dwellings are significant residences. They include student dormitories, migrant worker dormitories, prisons, homeless shelters, and detention centres. Lying outside the idealised imaginary of home, homemaking practices persist in these dwellings such that they are made both homely and unhomely. #### Home and Domestic Violence The home can be a place of violence and abuse as well as comfort and security, particularly for women. Domestic abuse is 'controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence, in the majority of cases by a partner or ex-partner, but also by a family member or carer'. Domestic violence is not only a significant cause of homelessness for women but is also experienced by homeless and insecurely housed women. #### Conclusions This chapter has canvassed some though not all of the numerous ways in which houses become home and home becomes attached to physical structures we call dwellings. There is not one type of dwelling that always, everywhere, and for all people assumes the label home. Suburban, city, and homeless dwellings each illustrate the key elements of a critical geography of home, albeit in different ways. The multiple scales of home, home spaces, and home life are evident in each.