Meanings of home.

The meaning of ‘home’ has attracted considerable critical attention in recent years. The study of home has yielded an extensive literature and several leading journals – for example, Social Research (1991); New Formations (1992); Women’s Studies International Forum (1997); and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (2002) have all dedicated special issues to the subject of home. The launch of the interdisciplinary journal Home Cultures in 2004 is testament to the sustained level of interest in the meaning and concept of home, particularly in the social sciences and the humanities. Empirical research studies and the construction of a substantial body of theory in several disciplines have established the complex psychological, social–psychological and territorial, identity, and emotional and cultural attachments that occupiers associate with their homes. From speculative origins in the 1970s, analysis of the meanings and values of home became increasingly sophisticated and scientific as researchers from a range of disciplines developed a substantial body of empirically based, theoretically underpinned research literature. Analysis of home has drawn on various sources, and home scholars in various disciplines have drawn on the tools of their own disciplines to offer a range of perspectives from which to view the meaning and values of home, as well as emphasising the importance of cross-disciplinary communication. A substantial body of literature, based on both empirical studies and theoretical analysis, has sought to unpack and to identify the meanings and values that home represents to occupiers, for example, family, privacy, security, control, continuity, self-expression, and personal identity.