Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigates the concept of home versus house among people who have been forcibly evicted from their long-term homes and are living in transitional settings due to the conflict in northeastern Sri Lanka. The discourse is built on two common notions related to liminalities of internally displaced people’s (IDP’s) transitional setting: “nowhereness” and “noknowers.” The study examines the causes and consequences of IDP’s perceived “nowhereness” in an unfamiliar physical setting, which in turn makes them “noknowers” in an unsupportive social setting. Transcripts from in-depth, open-ended interviews with IDPs are interpolated and categorized to distil themes among core meanings attached to the home. Though these IDPs were originally interviewed to ascertain their sense of home in the transitional shelter, many interviewees ended up focusing on nostalgic memories of their lost homes. The transitional shelter is not a home, but rather an indefinite process of making a home from sociocultural residues.

Keywords

“nowhereness”“noknowers”house home transitional setting

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arefi

(1999). Non-place and placelessness as narratives of loss: Rethinking the notion of place. Journal of Urban Design, 4, 179-193.

Augé

(2009). Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. New York, NY: Verso.

Benedikt

Hartmut

(2006). War and the commons: Assessing the changing politics of violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka. Geoforum, 37, 391-403.

Cooper

C. P.

(1992). The Life Cycle Concept and Strategic Planning for Coastal Resorts. Built Environment, 18, 57-66.

Dal Co

. (1990). Figures of architecture and thought; German architecture culture 1880-1920. New York, NY: Rizzoli International.

Festinger

(1972). An Introduction to the Theory of Dissonance. In Hollander

E.P.

Hunt

R.G.

(Eds.), Classic Contributions to Social Psychology. Readings with Commentary. London: Oxford University Press.

Finch

Hayes

(1994). Inheritance, Death and the Concept of the Home, Sociology 28, 417-433.

Fried

(1972). Grieving for lost home. In Gutman

(Ed.), People and buildings (pp. 229-248). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Hill

R. P.

(1991). Homeless Women, Special Possessions, and the Meaning of “Home”: An Ethnographic Case Study. Journal of Consumer Research, 18, 298. doi:10.1086/209261

10.

Hummon

(1992). Community attachment: Local sentiment and sense of place. In Altman

Low

S. M.

(Eds.), Place attachment (pp. 253-278). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

11.

Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. (2010). Sri Lanka: A hidden displacement crisis. Retrieved from http://www.internaldisplacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/%28httpInfoFiles%29/0F7746546306FCB3C1257AA8005845/$file/srilanka-overview-oct2012.pdf

12.

Lalli

S. M.

(1992). Urban related identity: History, measurement and empirical findings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 12, 285-304.

13.

Low

S. M.

(1992). Symbolic ties that bind. In Altman

Low

S. M.

(Eds.), Place attachment (pp. 15-85). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

14.

Marcus

(1995). House as a mirror of self: Exploring the deeper meaning of home (pp. 220-247). Berkeley, CA: Conari Press.

15.

Meinig

D. W.

(1979). Symbolic landscapes: Models of American community. In Meinig

D. W.

(Ed.), The interpretation of ordinary landscapes (pp. 164-192). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

16.

Paxson

(2005). Solovyovo: The story of memory in a Russian village. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

17.

Pratt

(1981). The house as an expression of social worlds. In Duncan

J. S.

(Ed.), Housing and identity: Cross cultural perspectives (pp. 135-180). London, England: Croom Helm.

18.

Rainwater

(1972). Fear and the house as haven in the lower class. In Gutman

(Ed.), People and buildings (pp. 299-313). New York, NY: Basic Books.

19.

Relph

(1976). Place and placelessness. London, England: Pion.

20.

Subasinghe

(1999). Place attachment and homelessness: an analysis environmental deprivation among internally displace people due to North East conflict of Sri Lanka (unpublished master’s thesis). University of Moratuwa, Colombo, Sri Lanka

21.

Subasinghe

(2011). Rebuilding for sustainability: Spatial analysis of Bolivar peninsula after Hurricane Ike (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Texas A&M University, College Station.

22.

Subasinghe

(2012). Shelters of sustainability: Reconfiguring post-tsunami recovery via self-labor practices. International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Construction, 1, 155-162.

23.

Tuan

(1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

24.

Tuan

(1980). Rootedness versus sense of place. Landscape: A Magazine of Human Geography, 4, 3-8.

25.

Wiesenfeld

(1992). Public housing evaluation in Venezuela: A case study. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 12, 213-223.

26.

Wiesenfeld

(1997). Construction of the meaning of a Barrio House: The case of a Caracas Barrio. Environment and Behavior, 29, 34-63.

Is My House My Home? An Analysis of “Nowhereness” Among “Noknowers” in Transitional Settings

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References