Paper short abstract:

The talk, which is based on an ongoing dissertation project, concerns the question of how people create a feeling of ‘being at home’ in nature in their leisure time. An account is given of the cultural practices by which people experience an emotional connection with the Swabian Alb.

Paper long abstract:

The empirical study that is the basis of the talk focuses on the ways in which people experience a feeling of 'being at home' by means of emotional engagement with the nature of the Swabian Alb in southern Germany. The study addresses the question of what strategies people employ in order to make themselves at home in their spatial surroundings, as well as the question of how they interpret and ascribe meanings to their spatial surroundings. The cultural practices reveal how performative confrontations with the (material, social, cultural, etc.) pre-conditions in a given space give rise to the significant places and surfaces that individuals need. The study aims thereby to shed light upon the relationship between postmodern individuals and nature, a relationship which is characterized by the need for balance and serenity. The data we have gathered has revealed a central role for the 'sensory perceptions' which are to be the topic of panel 202 an which are taken to be an elementary means of binding individuals to their surroundings.

On the methodological level, how can an enquiry into bodily practices yield knowledge about the experiential space of the Swabian Alb? The talk will utilize the practical report to address the ethnographic possibilities for approaching sensory and emotional experience and the feeling of 'being at home' that results from them. The aim will be to show how it is possible to take advantage of the potential of various approaches, such as 'mental maps', substitutive questionnaires and 'go-alongs'.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that in order to reach a meaningful understanding of citizenship and national identity one must first focus in on the spaces and encounters of everyday experience that give embodied, emotional content to the concept of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

Political drives to redefine national identity and to emphasize the role and responsibilities of the citizen in Britain have fallen short of engaging young people. My research revealed that Government definitions of these concepts find little resonance, remaining largely abstract and empty of direct experience and relevance. This research, involving young people from diverse backgrounds across England, utilised participatory visual and virtual methods to explore what it meant to each individual to 'belong'. Moving gradually away from the political and structural territory the research led me to the sphere of the personal, the particular, the mundane; a sphere filled with the emotional content of embodied experience. This paper will consider the potential that an embodied, emotionally rich understanding of belonging has for informing political debates into national belonging and citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

Football (soccer) fans create homes and their antipodes out of stadia and neighborhoods in Istanbul through the experience and practice of fandom. I investigate the definition of "home" anthropologically to further its theoretical implications and to define its contingencies.

Paper long abstract:

Football has a crucial spatial component. The neighborhoods which host football stadia and other built environment around the sport (i.e. parks or pubs) make up considerable components of how fans practice and experience their fandom. As such, the meanings inscribed in these spaces of different scale become representations and reinforcements of fan identity and belonging. The most familiar way in which fans express their affiliation with space is by demarcating it as either "home" or "away."

In this paper, I study the spatiality of football in Istanbul through the fans of the three most popular Turkish football teams. Particularly, I investigate the conceptualization of "stadium as home." Secondly, I problematize the relation between the "safe home" and the "outside" from which it protects one through the lens of football. While "home" can shield one from the 'dangers' outside (cf. Bachelard), it also helps produce the conception of the "outside" with due agoraphobia. Finally, I try to challenge a rigid definition of "home" whereby its safety is conflated with its immobility. In other words, I try to understand how fans react to the relocation and/or reconstruction of their home stadia to which they can be said to have an intimate attachment.

I conducted initial research for this paper between March-June 2009. In August 2010, I started my PhD dissertation fieldwork on football in Turkey which will continue until September 2011. The proposed paper is a product of this fieldwork.

Paper Download (239 KB)

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the home-making practices of Kurdish refugee women from Turkey living in council housing dwellings in North London in order to discuss the meanings of home and home-making in the context of migration.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the experiences of Kurdish refugee women from Turkey living in council housing dwellings in North London. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews and participant observations in their homes, the paper discusses home-making practices performed by these women in their attempts to re-create a home-place away from their familiar milieus in Turkey, and tries to uncover what 'home' and 'home-making' mean to them. While the focus is on present dwellings, the idea of home as historically constituted and renegotiated across a variety of spaces and social relationships is a guiding theme. Therefore home-making is investigated as an evolving process beginning from women's childhood homes in Turkey and continuing with their transition into their new dwellings in London.

The practices of home-making the paper dwells on range from everyday practices of domestic labour to the display of objects representing cultural identities and national belongings, the use of diasporic forms of mediation, and to practices of decoration and transformation of domestic spaces as indicators of Kurdish women's ongoing efforts to deal with the disparity between their own conceptions of a 'proper home' and the housing spaces available to them. With reference to these practices, the paper discusses the multiple meanings and values Kurdish women attach to their dwellings, and argues that the private sphere of domesticity, as a place where they can reconstruct links with their personal and collective histories and the home-places they left behind, plays a central role in their struggles to recreate a sense of stability and familiarity in London.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how older persons define aesthetic qualities of modification installed in their homes through moral judgements of the actions and circumstances materialised in the home modification, as experienced through their senses.

Paper long abstract:

In spite of the ambition to support everyday activities in the home for persons with functional limitations, home modification interventions are often experienced as intruding, rather than supporting everyday activities at home by the users. Drawing on empirical research on older persons receiving home modification in Sweden, this paper suggests that a shift in focus from activity performance to an aesthetic quality of the everyday can contribute to provision of home modifications that better manage to support everyday activities at home for this group. Based on a theoretical framework combining theories of the aesthetics of the everyday, anthropology of the senses and anthropology of morals, this paper examines how older home modification receivers define the aesthetic quality of the modification through moral judgements of the actions and circumstances materialised in the home modification, as experienced through their senses. The findings indicate that modifications perceived to result from actions -own and others - and circumstances that were in accordance with values associated with being part of the construction of the Swedish welfare state during the first half of the 20th century were experienced as supporting everyday activities and 'sense of home'. A conclusions that can be made from this paper is that better understandings of how experiences of aesthetic qualities in the everyday use of the home are generated and expressed contributes knowledge about how sensory experiences take on meaning within larger cultural and political contexts.

Paper short abstract:

Juvenile facilities avoid making and make their residents feel at home since they are defined as "a temporary or transitory place" as well as "a place to live". By studying social workers' practices and speeches we analyse these seemingly contradictory statements and their implications.

Paper long abstract:

Social workers define juvenile facilities* as "a temporary or transitory place" as well as "a place to live". Its definition includes two seemingly contradictory statements.

Indeed the first statement indicates that institutionalized juvenile are supposed to stay only as long as personal and family problems have been solved. The second statement points out that youth frequently spend several months, sometimes even years, in these facilities.

The sensation of being at home in a facility can help teenagers to grow up, become more autonomous and better integrated into the global society and, at the same time, it can keep them apart from their family and the actual world.

Towards the feeling of "being at home" that juveniles may develop after a few months of residency, social workers have contradictory perceptions and strategies. First we investigate facility spaces, geographic organization, furniture and decoration on the walls that reveal the ambiguity between personal and impersonal atmospheres. Second we analyze social workers' speeches on how teenagers should feel, how some discomfort has to be convene to help their pupils moving on.

How do juvenile facilities make or avoid making their residents feel at home? What does it mean feeling at home while living in an institution? What are the possible implications for post-institutional life? These are the questions we attend to answer in this communication.

* A study (using participant observation, photographs and interviews) was conducted in Geneva in three juvenile facilities for teenagers (14-18 years old) institutionalized because of parental abuse or delinquency.

Paper short abstract:

This paper sets out to explore an understanding of (sensual) perception and emotional experiences as shaped by "everyday life" experiences. The 'feeling of home' then depends on the possibility of experiencing the social and material world in a familiar way and/or of dealing with dissonance.

Paper long abstract:

If we ask how sensory perception creates experiences of "home", we need to take into consideration that perception itself evolves through processes of learning and habituation. Based on conclusions drawn from my master thesis, this paper focuses on two questions: How do experiences shape our perception and how does this effect whether we feel comfortable within space or not. Discussing psychological approaches on perception (i.e. cognitive schema and cognitive dissonance), a 'more' cultural understanding of sensory perception will be suggested, within which "everyday life" functions as a training of people's "personal dexterities without reflecting much on" (Ulf Hannerz), i.e. a trained (in)capacity to see, smell, taste, feel things in a certain way. To 'feel at home' then is an attempt to stick to the way one has learned to perceive ones everyday social and material world.

The argument will be exemplified by fieldwork in Stuttgart (Germany). Through perception walks, the (sensory) perception of first, second and third generation migrants of different descent as well as of Germans was surveyed. It can be concluded that they conceptualize "home" and perceive their environment differently according to the way they experienced it as habitual: The Migrants' as well as the Germans' 'feeling of home' depends on their capability to deal with unfamiliar or irritating perceptions.

Paper short abstract:

The empirical study reflects on new roles of everyday city landscapes as platforms for vitalization, use and public engagement. Site specific design interventions by and for people looks into design qualities, activities and socio-cultural environment including four levels for participation.

Paper long abstract:

The work is based on an ongoing research aiming at studying the qualities and reasons of site specific design interventions for engaging the public into everyday landscapes. The research lies in the vitalization of public environments through site specific design interventions created by and for people. The notion of design interventions in public places consist of design ideas, understanding the identity of an area and creating a place in which people can participate and relate to. They start with designing for a humane-scale size and developing awareness into everyday public places for public use. The empirical work consisted of two design interventions, Canvass and Anima. The reflections demonstrate that everyday city landscapes serve as platforms for besides imagining the possibilities of future landscapes also for creating a place for dialogue and concern. The study is based on the premises that people's participation and engagement into everyday environments can enhance and promote a process of public change and place making. The work deals with narratives and site specific experiences for encouraging participation, and for provoking city inhabitants to think about the roles they play and pleasures they want to experience in the future city. Within the scope of design qualities, activities and socio-cultural environment of site specific design interventions by and for people four level for participation were encountered; motivational, physical, intellectual and emotional.