Alison Blunt, Robyn Dowling - Home (Key Ideas in Geography)

Home is a key idea in numerous traditions of geography as well as a key site and spatial imaginary in the contemporary world. This book provides a critical geography of home from domestic to transnational scales.Through an engagement with geographical, feminist, cultural studies and postcolonial scholarship, the book demonstrates the complex nature of home as a place and as a spatial imaginary: home can invoke a sense of belonging as well as alienation; ideas and emotions about home can be stretched across the world, connected to a nation and attached to a house; the spaces and imaginaries of home are central to the construction of people's identities and are materially manifested in a wide range of home-making practices. The argument is made through diverse historical and contemporary examples, including:
* the linking of home and nation in contemporary US politics
* the historical experiences of the British in India
* the social correlates of the suburban house and high-rise apartment
* home as work and the transnational migration of domestic workers

This book provides an essential guide to studying home and domesticity. Each chapter includes text boxes, research boxes and is well illustrated throughout with photographs and figures.

Reviews

Its scope is broad and Home is at all times rich and engaging
Franklin Ginn, Kings College London