Home: The Foundations of Belonging

208 Pages·2017·0.877 MB·English

by  O'Connor, Paul

Home: The Foundations of Belonging
Questions of home and belonging have never been more topical. Populist politicians
in both Europe and America play on anxieties over globalisation by promising to
reconstitute the national home, through cutting immigration and ‘taking back
control’. Increasing numbers of young people are unable to afford home-ownership,
a trend with implications for the future shape of families and communities. The
dominant conceptualisations of home in the twentieth century – the nation-state
and the suburban nuclear household – are in crisis, yet they continue to shape our
personal and political aspirations. H ome: The Foundations of Belonging puts these
issues into context by drawing on a range of disciplines to offer a deep
anthropological and historical perspective on home. Beginning with a vision of
modernity as characterised by both spiralling liminality and an ongoing quest for
belonging, it plumbs the archaic roots of Western civilisation and assembles a wide
body of comparative anthropological evidence to illuminate the foundations of a
sense of home. Home is theorised as a stable centre around which we organise both
everyday routines and perspectives on reality, bringing order to a chaotic world
and overcoming liminality. Constituted by a set of ongoing processes which
concentrate and embody meaning in intimate relationships, everyday rituals and
familiar places, a shared home becomes the foundation for community and society.
The Foundations of Belonging thus elevates ‘home’ to the position of a foundational
sociological and anthropological concept at a moment when the crisis of
globalisation has opened the way to a revaluation of the local.
Paul O’Connor completed his PhD at University College Cork. He is currently
assistant professor of sociology at the United Arab Emirates University, where he
specialises in cultural sociology.
Contemporary Liminality
Series editors:
Arpad Szakolczai
University College Cork, Ireland
Series advisory board:
Agnes Horvath
University College Cork, Ireland
Bjørn Thomassen
Roskilde University, Denmark
Harald Wydra
University of Cambridge, UK
www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1435
This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imita-
tion’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefl y deploy the notion of ‘liminal-
ity’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically focused paradigm in social theory. With
its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling and even going beyond mainstream
concepts such as ‘system’, ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality is increasingly con-
sidered a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought.
I n spite of the fact that charges of Eurocentrism or even ‘moderno-centrism’ are
widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, it remains the case that most theo-
retical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on taken-for-granted approaches
developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts
developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which chal-
lenged commonplaces of modernist thinking have been either marginalised and
ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the assumed neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian
foundations of modern social theory, and by helping to shed new light on the fun-
damental ideas of major fi gures in social theory, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber,
Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, whilst also establishing connections
between the perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology
and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology, C ontemporary
Liminality offers a new direction in social thought.
Titles in this series
3 Walking into the Void
A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking
Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai
4 Home: The Foundations of Belonging
Paul O’Connor
Home: The Foundations
of Belonging
Paul O’Connor
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Paul O’Connor
The right of Paul O’Connor to be identifi ed as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O’Connor, Paul, 1978– author.
Title: Home : the foundations of belonging / Paul O’Connor.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; NewYork, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series:
Contemporary liminality | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2017033829 | ISBN 9781138633148 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781315207865 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Belonging (Social psychology) | Home.
Classifi cation: LCC HM1033 .O283 2018 | DDC 392.3/6–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017033829
ISBN: 978-1-138-63314-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20786-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Áine

Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Antaeus and Hercules 8
2 The web of meaning 24
3 The cultivation of place 51
4 The landscape of memory 69
5 Habits of home 91
6 A sacred economy 108
7 Gifting and recognition 129
8 The boundaries of home 141
9 Parish and province 160
Conclusion: the future of home 174
Bibliography 180
Index 193
Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who helped and supported me
in the course of writing this book, and without whose encouragement and assis-
tance it would not have been completed.
Special thanks are owed to Professor Arpad Szakolczai, who supervised the
writing of my PhD thesis at University College Cork (UCC). My intellectual debt
to him is clear from the following pages. His work has been a constant source of
stimulation and inspiration, as well as an example of what social theory can be,
but all too often is not – an effort to grapple with the fundamental issues which
inspired the founders of the discipline, and to promote meaningful forms of social
inquiry. His moral support throughout the lengthy process of research and thought
which led to this book, as well as his forensic reading of my work, have been an
immeasurable resource.
M y thanks are also due to Kieran Keohane, for his encouragement and support
over the past seven years; to Feilm O hAdhmail, for his assistance in returning to
academic life after a decade-long hiatus; to my fellow veterans of the GREP pro-
gramme at UCC, for their companionship on the journey; to my colleagues in the
Department of Sociology at UCC, in particular Niamh Hourigan, Ger Mullally and
Jerry O’Sullivan, for their advice and support; to the editors of the journal I nter-
national Political Anthropology , and the organisers of the various IPA conferences
and workshops I have attended, which have been a regular source of ideas and
intellectual stimulation; to my colleagues in the Cleaner Production Promotion
Unit (CPPU), especially Christine Gaffney and Breffni Lennon, for their friendship
over the past few years; and to Niall Dunphy, Director of the CPPU, for facilitating
me in taking the time needed to complete this book.
I would also like to thank the Education Committee of the Society of St. Vincent
De Paul, Cork, for their generous fi nancial support at a time during my PhD studies
when I had nowhere else to turn.
T o my wife, Áine, my deepest gratitude is owed, and the dedication of this work
can only repay a little of my debt. Her practical contribution to a project which has
consumed my life for the past seven years has included reading and discussing the
various drafts since the beginning, enduring regular lectures on topics from bound-
aries to rites of passage, and responding not with the impatience which would
sometimes have been justifi ed but with constant encouragement. Even more
Acknowledgements ix
essential has been her emotional support through a period which saw multiple
house moves, constant fi nancial insecurity and the birth of our two children. It is
her love, companionship and emotional intelligence which have seen our family
through.
Finally, I would like to thank my children, Tadhg and Meadhbh. Without you,
this book would have been completed earlier, but my understanding of home
would be immeasurably poorer.