The meaning of home: from theory to practice

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to analyse the development and application of the conceptual framework within which housing scholars can think, talk about and advocate for “home”.

Design/methodology/approach

It reflects on the theoretical progress that has been made in embedding a legal concept of home in the last decade, and identifies opportunities for this scholarship to support critical engagement with laws and policies that give content to home meanings.

Findings

A key goal for the concept of home is to help us to think about problems differently, by highlighting important issues flowing from the human relationship with home; with the ways in which the idea of home is present or absent in legal responses to home issues. A focus on home meanings enables us to examine questions which are not always deemed “relevant” to legal proceedings, for example, the human, social and personal costs of displacement and dispossession. The concept of home provides the vocabulary, and the theoretical framework, for articulating these human claims more coherently. It enables us to identify those problems in need of policy attention; to develop a narrative to express them; and to generate support for solving them.

Originality/value

Ten years after the publication of “The meaning of home”, this article reflects on the development of the legal concept of home, and the range of contemporary housing issues to which its applications are both relevant and significant.

Citation

Fox O'Mahony, L. (2013), "The meaning of home: from theory to practice", International Journal of Law in the Built Environment, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 156-171. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLBE-11-2012-0024