The York Research Database

This article explores the topic of home in terms of the art of dwelling. We set out to show that what people keep affects their experience of dwelling. Keeping, in this analysis, grants relational extension (Latimer 2009a, 2009b; Munro, 1996; Strathern, 1991; Latimer and Munro 2006), creating and reproducing worlds that bind. As we illustrate, the meaning of home for Euro-Americans can be understood as gravitating from feelings of belonging being anchored within specific locales to matters of identity being entangled in locutions that address the figure of self. In taking up Heidegger's (1978) argument that dwelling is thinking as much as it is building we go on to trouble how reflection, when conducted in the mode of comparison rather than contemplation, conflates keeping with issues of choice.