Introduction
Sociology comes with a broad array of ideas and theories that describe every-day things like identity, social integration and others. Some of these concepts include the concept of the home and identity/belonging. “Home” is where a person has an attachment and builds social and political identity. On the other hand, “Belonging” is about a sense of identity and connection to a particular community. The concept of home has been split along the lines of local and global perspectives in the 21st Century. This is because in a generation of individualism, technology and globalisation, it is easier than ever to have connections to different lands and communities as a single individual. This was not the case in the 20th Century where everyone was expected to be domicile in a small geographical niche and build an identity within that small area. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the concept of “home” and “belonging” in the 21st Century and analyse its implications for sociology as a social science discipline.
In a simplistic definition, Huggan identifies that “home is where the heart is”. This lends itself to numerous philosophical explanations which have a diverse background of interpretations. This is because the concept of “home” has many facades and possible explanations.
The concept of “home” as we have it in the English language is not universal and some countries do not have such concepts. In French for instance, the concept of a “house” or “home country” replaces what we might call a “home” in English. This implies that the idea of having a home is something that is distinct to the English language and its speakers. Thus, the best way of inferring what a home means to formulate a universal conception acceptable to all sociologists around the world is to critique the phrase “where the heart is”.
“Where the heart is” asserts the conception of belongingness. This is because home can only be a place where a person lives and has a high degree of comfort. There is a juxtaposition of human homes with the situation of silkworms and ants weaving webs and anthills as structures of communal significance in which all the members of the insect colony can inhabit. This reflects the simplistic notion of housing.
There is more to a home than just a house and family – it has to do with belonging, identity and a culture that defines one group. Belonging and identity comes in various facades and must lead to different definitions and conceptions. Thus, a universal definition for belonging gives the conception of home and can build a conception of globalisation.
One definition of belonging states that it is “to identify with a nation or group like this is to take up a collective identity.”. Thus, where you identify with and connect with the people is the place your heart it and by extension, the place you can call home.
Identity is about familiarity and acceptance of symbols in a given society and being comfortable with those symbols. Symbolising is defined as “making one object, word or image stand for or signify another. For example, a red light at traffic lights symbolizes 'stop', and green means 'you can go'.”. Thus, if you are in a place where you identify with the symbolism physically and emotionally, you can call that place “home”.
However, sociologists come together to agree that there is nothing universal about the definition of identity. Hence, it is said that “time passes unevenly from place to place, has different weight and value”. Thus, what defines your sense of identity becomes the basis for the conference of your identity and if you are comfortable with that, it becomes your home. This is because society has patterns of behaviour that determines roles and routines in a given community. And if a person identifies with that of a particular community or society, such a society becomes home.
On the other hand, identity lays the foundations for the formulation of the concept of community. “Community has many meanings; it involves different sets of experience for different groups of people, and indeed for the same people at different times in their lives.” .
Community is about sharing territory and this could be notional rather than realistic or definite. This is because Sociology being a social science, it needs to have various underpinnings to promote a higher level of consistency and applicability of concepts through different circumstances. Hence, the concept of community asserts various flexible basis that can lead to discussions in our era of globalisation.
Home and Place Identity in the Globalised World
There are many definitions of the concept of “community”. Some writers mention the concept of geographical areas in defining community whilst others did not. Community is therefore viewed either as a shared commonality or a shared locale. Thus, there are different modes of belonging that could possibly define the extent through which people can belong to a given society or community.
Community is viewed in terms of multi-stranded ties. In the local context, members of a settlement have a high level of social solidarity and personal knowledge of each other to form a close-knit community. However, there are other possibilities of long-distant communities and societies that could be stranded together to create a new identity.
The notion of everyone knowing everyone else is common in a small town or a traditional university campus. This brings to mind the idea of local belongingness. However, the concept can be modified to define a set of relevant traits that can form the basis of the definition of a different community structure
This leads Anton and Lawrence to present the concept of place identity versus the concept of place dependence. Place attachment is about cultural and ethnic connections to a particular space or locale. Hence, it is possible for a person to live in a small room in South America and provide services to a company in Sydney, maintain contacts with English speaking friends and never have to learn a word in Portuguese or Spanish. Thus, such a person might be existing in Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro but might be “living” in Australia. That is because his presence is known for being a part of the Australian society and its polity. Such a person might not call Rio de Janeiro home, but Sydney will be his or her home because he might be spending 95% of his time with activities and friends based in Australia. This negates the old system whereby a person had to be Brazilian or Argentine and have to call such a country or community home because his or her physical presence is in that country.
Thus, in an era of globalization, identity is about defining ties that bind a person and by defining legitimate social boundaries. Dempsey goes on to state that three main things define the identity of home in a global context or discourse:
Communion,
Constant Communication and
Interactions
This means that where a person has his greatest connection and linkages in terms of communication, interaction and activities defines that person’s home. Thus, it can be argued that physical presence and living in a physical structure in a particular location is not enough to /.define a person’s home, but the willingness to undertake social immersion and become a part of the community makes a location home in the globalised world.
Therefore, a more liberal perception of the concept of home is that it is “whatever one carries inside him around the world”. This implies that the idea of a softer version of defining home is essential to establish the boundaries of home. This is because technology has come to make it easier for conceptions and ideas to be carried around the world in a soft form – thus, people are able to do a lot of things in the global village and define limits of belongingness on the basis of what they can do online and within the context of technology rather than where they are physically present.
Elements of Defining a Home in the New World Order
Place attachment is about cultural and ethnic connection to a particular space or locale. In the 21st century, this kind of attachment has evolved significantly to encompass place dependence. Home is more about how much you rely on or depend upon a particular location for your needs. Thus, if you have to fly back to another part of the world where your wife and children live each week, you might be merely existing in another part of the world. And as such, it will be wrong from an empirical sense to define you as coming from where you might be living or have to spend time in.
“Place dependence arises from a positive evaluation of a place on the basis that it meets an individual's needs and allows them to achieve their goals”. Therefore, the concept of place dependence comes to replace place attachment which is the classical approach of defining the concept of “home”. This provides a dynamic and a circumstantial yardstick for defining what home will be for a given person.
The main yardstick for defining whether a particular area is home or not includes length of residence, level of education, property ownership and ability to achieve aims in a given community defines the extent of place attachment a person might have. All of these go to define the extent and depth of connection and attachment a person has in the actual and realistic sense as opposed to a metaphysical sense which could negate Sociology’s credibility as a Social Science.
Another set of variables that defines whether a person belongs to a place include the following pointers:
Family
Friendship
Lifestyle choice
Nationality
Professional Entity &
Team spirit and shared interests
This is necessary because in our time, individualism, technology and globalisation makes it possible to maintain identity across different international spectrums so there is a global node of interaction as opposed to a strict local system. Global distance is disappearing and emotional homes are rising which could be distant lands. Thus, home is where you were born and lived a significant percentage of your life and will want to die there. All this is dependent on the values of an individual in question.
Conclusion
The conception of home is something that has evolved over the years due to the dynamism of society. Home can best be described in the context of sociology as the point where a person has his or her greatest attachments. Therefore, the idea of a home is based on a sense of community and values that a person is comfortable with and can adapt to. This is opposed to the classical system where home was just where a person was born. Rather, where a person spends time and depends upon. That becomes the sociological yardstick for defining a home. The process includes where a person built his or her formative years, maintains a family and builds a desired lifestyle. In the global world, the localisation argument of defining home in the context of a geographical area is fading. A home is based on the values of a given person and it is about the extent to which a person’s circumstances causes him to feel most comfortable and willing to return to and dwell at.
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