The Dictionary of Human Geography

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concepts, inextricable from that of self, family,

nation, sense of place, and sense of responsi-

bility toward those who share one’s place in

the world’ (Duncan and Lambert, 2004,

p. 395). Although home might take the mater-

ial form of a house or other shelter, it extends

far beyond a material dwelling, the household

and the domestic. Rather than viewing the

home as a private sphere that is separate

from the public world of work,citizenship

and politics, a wide range of research in his-

torical and contemporary contexts has ex-

plored the importance of paid and unpaid

work within the home, the ways in which

home-making practices are tied to ideas

about citizenship, and the political signifi-

cance of the home anddomesticity(seedo-

mestic labour;private and public spheres).

The home has long been part of a geo-

graphical imagination, as shown by early

research oncultural hearthsand thediffu-

sionof different house styles. More recently,

humanistic, feminist and post-colonial geog-

raphers have been particularly influential in

studying the home. Humanistic geographers

have written eloquently about the home as a

site of authentic meaning, value and experi-

ence, imbued with nostalgic memories and the

love of place. In the 1970s and 1980s, human-

istic geographers, in contrast to the abstrac-

tions of spatial science and inspired by the

phenomenological work of Gaston Bachelard

(1994 [1958]), described the home as a per-

sonal, intimate and poetical place. For Bache-

lard, ‘a home, even though its physical

properties can be described to an extent, is

not a physical entity but anorientationto the

fundamental values. .. with which a home, as

an intimate space in the universe, is linked to

human nature’ (Bunksˇe, 2004, pp. 101–2; ori-

ginal emphasis). Humanistic geographers

(including Bunksˇe, 2004) continue to write

evocative accounts of home that bind individual

dwelling to the wider cosmos (seehumanistic

geography). Other geographers have begun to

study the home as a ‘more-than-human’ place,

reflecting the entangled geographies and

complex co-habitations ofnatureandculture

(including Kaika, 2004).

Feminist geographershave also been con-

cerned with the relationships between the in-

timate relationships of home and the wider

world, but in very different ways. Across a

wide range of areas and contexts, feminist

geographers have analysed the home as a gen-

dered place, shaped by different and unequal

relations ofpower, and as a place that might

be dangerous, violent and unhappy rather

than loving and secure (on home and feminist

politics, see Young, 1997a).feminist geog-

raphieschallenge themasculinismthat either

ignores the home or overlooks the power rela-

tions that exist within it. Inspired by the work

of many black feminists who have rewritten

home as a site of creativity, subjectivity and

resistance (including hooks, 1991), such stud-

ies also challenge a white, liberal feminism that

has understood the home primarily as a site of

oppression for women. For socialist feminists,

the home is a site ofsocial reproduction–

for housing, feeding and nurturing workers –

and is crucial for analysing the wider interde-

pendence ofcapitalismandpatriarchy. For

thosegeographersdrawntopost-structuralism

andpost-colonialism, the home is part of a

wider spatial lexicon that has become import-

ant in theorizingidentity, often closely tied to

ideas about the politics of location and an

attempt to situate both knowledge and iden-

tity (Pratt, 1997).

Post-colonial geographershave also explored

the relationships between home,nationand

empire;the materialand symbolic geographies

of home and homeland; and the spatialities of

home, dwelling and belonging in relation to

indigeneity, settlement anddiaspora(includ-

ing Blunt, 2005). A central theme within this

research is the home as a site of power and

resistance, as shown by studies of imperial

home-making, the importance of the home in

anti-imperial nationalist politics,social just-

ice, belonging and the politics of home for

indigenous people, and the contemporary pol-

itics of homeland (in)security. Rather than

viewing the home as singular and static, a

wide range of research onmigrationand dias-

pora unsettles notions of fixed roots and ori-

gins (including Ahmed, Castan ̃eda, Fortier

and Sheller, 2003), revealing multiple attach-

ments and belongings that are materially man-

ifested in home-making practices and

material cultures at home (Tolia-Kelly,

2004).

Reflecting the current vibrancy of geograph-

ical interest in the home, Blunt and Dowling

(2006) have developed a critical geography of

home, arguing that:

 Material and imaginative geographies of home

are closely intertwined. ‘[H]ome is arelation

between material and imaginative realms

and processes, whereby physical location

and materiality, feelings and ideas, are

bound together and influence each other

... Moreover, home is aprocessof creating

and understanding forms of dwelling and

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