The Meaning of Home Part II
What kind of place is home?
Lots of interesting developments in the PRS this week which I want to mention briefly before diving in to the second part of the ‘meaning of home’ series. The Residential Tenancies (No.2) Act 2021 was signed into law. The highlight of the Act is that it restricts any rent increase in an RPZ from exceeding general inflation, as recorded by Harmonised Index of the Consumer Price (HICP). I hope to return to this issue in the future as it is a major change for the PRS. The RTB also published the Rental Sector Survey. The launch on Wednesday was fascinating and hopefully the research is something we can return to in future weeks. Read the summary report here of access the full set of reports here.
Last week we looked at the theoretical foundations for a theory of home. This week I want to be more specific about what ‘home’ in contemporary societies involves. The academic literature, which is reasonably well developed at this stage, can be boiled down into two main arguments. The first, seemingly obvious, argument is that a home is a kind of place (never underestimate the ability of academics to write large theoretical tracts on the bleeding obvious!). The second, is that home is characterised by two key dimensions: ontological security and social reproduction. Let’s look at these two arguments in turn.
The nature of place has been theorised and disputed by geographers for many decades. While I don’t pretend to have a full handle on these debates, the key feature of place is that it is defined by the interaction of physical space (in the case of housing, typically a built environment/dwelling), social practices/relations, and subjective experience. In this sense, places are ‘doubly constructed’ (Gieryn, 2002), in that they can be physically constructed but also subjectively constructed through interpretation and the investment of meaning. Both the construction of physical dwellings and their subjective construction are a function of social practices and social relations (Clapham, 2011), including relations associated with the legal and market systems.
Ok, so if home is a ‘place’, what kind of ‘place is it? The literature tends to converge on two key concepts: ontological security and social reproduction.
Ontological security is a function of the ‘the interrelationships between the physical dimensions of housing (such as basic safety and security) and the psycho-social dimensions of home such as privacy, emotional security and identity’ (Hulse & Milligan, 2014: 638). There are two key features of ontological security. First, central to ontological security is the subjective experience of the reliability of things and places over time (Easthope, 2004). This reliability and stability allows residents to ‘derive an enhanced sense of emotional security’ (Walshaw quoted in Easthope, 2004: 581; see also Hulse & Milligan, 2014). Security is about the subjective sense of safety, as well as the sense of permanence and predictability, which reduces the uncertainty associated with the future (Bate, 2020; Dupuis & Thorns, 1998; Hulse & Milligan, 2014).
Second, ontological security derives from home as a place of control (Bate, 2020; Soaita & McKee, 2019). Control relates to the ability to determine who can enter the home (sort of like territoriality, see Porteous, 1976); the related experience of privacy, which allows freedom from social pressures and stresses (Easthope, 2004); and the ability to shape the dwelling itself (including is physical appearance) and the organisation of objects and belongings within the dwelling (Marcus, 2006; Soaita & McKee, 2019). This last aspect of control is central to the ways in which home can become an expression of identity and aesthetic preferences (Bate, 2020).
So, the concept of ontological security basically tells us that ‘home’ is about having a place where you feel safe and secure and where you feel in control.
Now for ‘social reproduction’, a concept popularised by feminist political economists in recent years. The point here is that home is a place of work, specifically care work (Blunt & Dowling, 2006). Power and Mee (2020: 484) conceptualise homes as ‘hubs of care practices and relations’. The work of social reproduction, such as the preparation of food, cleaning, rest, care for the inform etc, is carried out principally in the home. The importance of social reproduction to home is suggested at the most basic level by the fact that the spatial layout of dwellings is often organised around aspects of social reproduction, i.e. the division of space around sleep, eating and hygiene (Blunt & Dowling, 2006). A home is also somewhere in which the objects, tools and technologies associated with care work (such as, for example, white goods, cooking appliances etc.) can be stored and operated. Of course, both social reproduction in general and domestic spaces in particular are heavily gendered.
These two aspects of home (ontological security and social reproduction) are heavily interconnected. For example, one reason why you keep all the stuff you need for care work in your home is because it is not likely to be nicked there (because you can control who enters your home, at least ideally). Moreover, it makes sense to obtain objects like fridges, cookers, beds etc. and arrange them at home because home provides stability over time, i.e. you would ideally be able to stay there into the future. Home is also a place of rest, another aspect of care, because it is private and safe. So while we can distinguish between social reproduction and ontological security conceptually, we cannot do so empirically.
Next week I want to move on from the theory and look at some of the ways private rental housing does not provide homes. This is important in its own right, but I also think it can help clarify some of the theoretical stuff we have been talking about this week and last week.
References
Bate, B. (2020). Making a home in the private rental sector. International Journal of Housing Policy, 1–29.
Blunt, A., & Dowling, R. (2006). Home. Routledge.
Clapham, D. (2011). The embodied use of the material home: An affordance approach. Housing, Theory and Society, 28(4), 360–376.
Dupuis, A., & Thorns, D. . (1998). Home, home ownership and the search for ontological security. The Sociological Review, 46(1), 24–47.
Easthope, H. (2004). A place called home. Housing, Theory and Society, 21(3), 128–138.
Gieryn, T. (2002). What buildings do. Theory and Society, 31, 35–74.
Hulse, K., & Milligan, V. (2014). Secure occupancy: A new framework for analysing security in rental housing. Housing Studies, 29(5), 638–656.
Marcus, C. . (2006). House As a Mirror of Self: Exploring the deeper meaning of home. Nicholas-Hays.
Porteous, J. (1976). Home: the territorial core. The Geographic Review, LXVI, 383–390.
Power, E., & Mee, K. (2020). Housing: an infrastructure of care. Housing Studies, 35(3), 484–505.
Ronald, R. (2008). The Ideology of Homeownership: homeowner societies and the role of housing. Palgrave Macmillan.
Soaita, A., & McKee, K. (2019). Assembling a ‘kind of’home in the UK private renting sector. Geoforum, 103(148–157).
Events
On the 22nd of July Rachel Walsh is launching her new (and very relevant in the Irish context) book Property Rights and Social Justice.
What I’m reading
The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence has a new report on PRS tenant participation in Northern Ireland. This is an issue that is very seldom spoken about, never mind researched, so it’s well worth checking out the report here. The Nationwide Foundation in the UK have released a very interesting new report looking at the supply of PRS housing at the ‘lower end’ of the market. This has been an issue in the UK but also closer to home over the last few years. It’s important in terms of understanding the overall dynamics of supply but also for those lower income households who are unlikely to be able to rent from institutional landlords, who are dominating new supply at the moment. Last but not least Juliana Sassi has a piece in the RTE brainstorm series based on the research we did together on Covid and the PRS.