Chapter 2 House and home: methodology and methods for exploring meaning and structure

Abstract

The social scientific and humanities literature on house and home continues to grow (Perkins, Thorns, & Winstanley, 2002a; Perkins, Thorns, Winstanley, & Newton, 2002b; King, 2004; Mallett, 2004; Blunt & Dowling, 2006; Gorman-Murray & Dowling, 2007). Researchers have interpreted home in a number of ways. For some, it represents a centre, a place in which possessions and display represent identity. For others it is the existential space of being where the nature and limits of centre and universe, sacred and profane, are created and maintained. Home can also be a material place in which the production and organisation of housing and neighbourhoods necessarily entails certain kinds of social interaction and relations. The recognition here that housing has both a use and exchange value is crucially important. Depending on one's cultural group, home is imbued with greater or lesser degrees of privatism and home-centredness. Some writers see the growth of technologies that permit the development of home-based work and individualised leisure practices as factors likely to strengthen home as the centre of future activity. Homes are also important in the creation of privacy, tranquillity, stability, conventional behaviour, meaning and transformation.

Citation

Perkins, H.C., Thorns, D.C. and Winstanley, A. (2008), "Chapter 2 House and home: methodology and methods for exploring meaning and structure", Maginn, P.J., Thompson, S. and Tonts, M. (Ed.) Qualitative Housing Analysis: An International Perspective (Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1042-3192(08)10002-7