ABSTRACT

Dwellings become home through the social, emotional and psychological meanings that dwellers attach to them. These meanings often revolve around home as a haven, a site of autonomy and a vehicle for the expression of social status. Yet, homes can also be unmade, not only through external acts of ‘domicide’, but also through networks of local social relations in which homes are embedded, such as those with neighbours. This paper explores the role of “unneighbourliness” in home unmaking as recounted by clients of neighbourhood mediation services in Queensland, Australia. It shows that disputes with neighbours can undermine one’s sense of home as haven, autonomy and status. But it also reveals how home (un)making occurs as a dialectic in the context of physical proximity and shared boundaries between residential dwellings where the homemaking practices of one neighbour spill over into, and impede, the sense of home of another.

摘要

住房通过人们对它们的社会，情感和心理含义而成为家。这些含义通常围绕着家庭，作为避风港，自治的场所和表达社会地位的工具。但是，房屋不仅可以通过外部“杀人”行为，而且可以通过嵌入房屋的地方社会关系网络（例如与邻居有联系的房屋）而被伪造。本文探讨了“陌生”在房屋拆迁中的作用，正如澳大利亚昆士兰州的社区调解服务的客户所叙述的那样。它表明，与邻居的争执会破坏一个人的家庭意识，如避风港，自治和地位。