Home: International Perspectives on Culture, Identity, and Belonging

This book presents fourteen original contributions by authors examining the importance of dwellings and local communities in people’s everyday lives. Through qualitative research conducted in North America and Europe, the volume explores the ways in which home is created both ideally and practically, at levels ranging from individual housing units to neighborhoods and public spaces. Even when the circumstances of making one’s home deviate from cultural ideals – for instance, in crowded, institutional, or stigmatized housing contexts, in disadvantaged or transient neighborhoods, or when one has no permanent dwelling at all – the authors illuminate how experiences and practices of home are central to what it means to be human.

Margarethe Kusenbach is Associate Professor and Graduate Director in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Florida, Tampa. She has published numerous articles and chapters on neighborhood, community, emotions, and disasters. Issues of home and belonging, social marginality, and sustainability are central to her current research.
Krista E. Paulsen is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of North Florida. She has published widely on culture and change in urban places, and the human experience of cities. Her current work examines the creation and persistence of urban and suburban neighborhoods.