Thinking Home: Interdisciplinary Dialogues 9781350062375, 9781350062368, 9781350062344

Citation preview

Thinking Home

Home Series Editors: Victor Buchli and Rosie Cox ISSN: 2398-3191 This exciting new series responds to the growing interest in the home as an area of research and teaching. Highly interdisciplinary, titles feature contributions from across the social sciences, including anthropology, material culture studies, architecture and design, sociology, gender studies, migration studies, and environmental studies. Relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers, the series will consolidate the home as a field of study. Food, Masculinities, and Home: Interdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Michelle Szabo and Shelley Koch Living with Strangers: Bedsits and Boarding Houses in Modern English Life, Literature and Film edited by Chiara Briganti and Kathy Mezei Making Homes by Sarah Pink, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Roxana Morosanu, Val Mitchell and Tracy Bhamra Sexuality and Gender at Home: Experience, Politics, Transgression edited by Brent Pilkey, Rachael M. Scicluna, Ben Campkin and Barbara Penner Queering the Interior edited by Andrew Gorman-Murray and Matt Cook Further titles forthcoming

Thinking Home Interdisciplinary Dialogues

EDITED BY SANJA BAHUN AND BOJANA PETRI Ć

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Sanja Bahun and Bojana Petrić and Contributors 2018 Sanja Bahun and Bojana Petrić have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. x constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by Clare Turner Cover image: ‘A scene from the Prague house’, Project Home, 2010. Courtesy of Dragan Dragin. Dragin’s photographs can be viewed online at: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6237-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6234-4 ePub: 978-1-3500-6235-1 Series: Home Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Figures  vii Acknowledgements  x Notes on Editors  xii Notes on Contributors  xiii Series Preface: Why Home? 

xvi

Homing in on Home  Sanja Bahun and Bojana Petric´ 

PART ONE  Homeness and Home-Making 

1

15

1 Anyone – Any Arthur, Sean Or Stan: Home-Making as Human Capacity and Individual Practice  Nigel Rapport 17 2 Domestic Dislocation – When Home is Not So Sweet  Charlotte Weinberg and Obinna Nwosu 39 3 Home: Paradoxes, Complexities and Vital Dynamism  Renos K. Papadopoulos 53 4 Strained Belonging and Claims to Home: Ancestors and Descendants of the New York African Burial Ground  Susan C. Pearce  71 5 Harvesting Stories: Home and Communities  Lily Hunter Green  91

PART TWO  Home and Dispossession 

97

6 ‘He’s Just a Bum, But Who Ain’t?’: The Mirror of Homelessness  Amy M. E. Morris 99

vi

CONTENTS

 7 Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars: Homelessness, Responsibility and Social Welfare Entitlement  Vivienne Ashley 121  8 Recalling Home: Farewell to the House in Petřínská Street (A Theatre Project)  Biljana Golubovic´́ (Text) and Dragan Dragin (Visuals) 143  9 The Emotional Dimension of Trading on Home in Later Life: Experiences of Shame, Guilt and Pride  Louise Overton, Lorna Fox O’Mahony and Matthew Gibson 153

PART THREE  Languages of Home 

175

10 The Romani Language: A Signpost to Home  Damian Le Bas 177 11 Migration and Belonging in the Home Literacies of Mirpuri Families  Tony Capstick 185 12 Language at Home: A Reclaimed Heritage  Susan Samata 207 Index 

224

List of Figures 1.1 Arthur Harvey at the dominoes table. Courtesy of the author 20 1.2 Arthur Harvey in memoriam. Courtesy of the author 23 1.3 The hospital porter. Courtesy of the author 24 1.4 Stanley Spencer, ‘Self-Portrait’ (55 × 45 cm), 1951 (© Estate of Stanley Spencer/Bridgeman Images) 27 2.1 Photomontage of photographs documenting various parts of the GROUNDation II project, 2015 (© Safe Ground). Courtesy of Safe Ground 46 2.2 Silent applause for a poem that was recited by a prisoner in British Sign Language at GROUNDation II, 4 March 2015; Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Perugia and Safe Ground. (© Safe Ground) 47 2.3 [Group author], Home (2015). Photograph courtesy of Jatinder Kailey and Safe Ground 50 5.1 HARVEST project, the Village Green Festival, Chalkwell Park, Southend, UK, 10–11 July 2015. Courtesy of the author 93 5.2 HARVEST project. Promotional photograph. Courtesy of the author 94 6.1 Martin Dunkerton, ‘Homeless young man, London, 1991’ in From a Sheltered Flame: The Big Issue Book (1993), ed. Martin Dunkerton and Sky, London: Simon & Schuster:

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

109. Courtesy of Martin Dunkerton. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library 102   6.2 Don McCullin, ‘Homeless Irishman, Aldgate, East End, London, 1973’. Courtesy of Don McCullin/Contact Press Images 105   6.3 Nick Hedges, ‘Mr and Mrs M. and their four children lived in a council owned house … Birmingham, January 1969’. Courtesy of Nick Hedges. http://www. nickhedgesphotography.co.uk/ 108   6.4 © Matt Weber, ‘Morning on the Bowery 1988’. Courtesy of Matt Weber. https://weber-street-photography.com/ 110   6.5 Lee Jeffries, [Untitled] (n.d.), in ‘Lost Angels: Homeless’. Courtesy of Lee Jeffries. http://leejeffries.500px.com/ homeless 115   8.1 Dragan Dragin, ‘Performance in the Prague house’, Project Home, 2010. Courtesy of Dragan Dragin 148   8.2 Dragan Dragin, ‘Waiting in the Prague house’, Project Home, 2010. Courtesy of Dragan Dragin 150 11.1 The first page of Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC 195 11.2 Extracts 1 and 2 from Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC 196 11.3 Extract 3 from Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published

LIST OF FIGURES

2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC 202 11.4 Extract 4 from Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC 203

ix

Acknowledgements O

ur greatest debt is to our Contributors, whose scholarly work, artistic and activist practices have been an inspiration, and whose dedication and patience throughout the multiple stages of this project have been encouraging and stimulating. Furthermore, we are indebted to the Editors of Bloomsbury’s Home Series, Rosie Cox and Victor Buchli, Bloomsbury’s Commissioning Editor Miriam Cantwell, and our anonymous peer-reviewers, who were all attentive to the many potentials and specific contexts of this volume. For granting permission to use or reproduce the copyrighted material, the Editors are grateful to the following: Estate of Stanley Spencer and Bridgeman (Stanley Spencer’s painting Self-Portrait [1951]; fig. 1.4); Martin Dunkerton (photograph ‘Homeless young man, London, 1991’; Figure 6.1); Don McCullin and Contact Press (photograph ‘Homeless Irishman, Aldgate, East End, London, 1973’; Figure 6.2); Nick Hedges (photograph ‘Mr and Mrs M. and their four children lived in a council owned house … Birmingham, January 1969’; Figure 6.3); Matt Weber (photograph ‘Morning on the Bowery 1988’; Figure 6.4); Lee Jeffries (photograph [Untitled] in ‘Lost Angels: Homeless’; Figure 6.5); Safe Ground and their photography team (Figures 2.1–2.3) and our contributors Dragan Dragin, Tony Capstick, Lily Hunter Green and Nigel Rapport for allowing us to reproduce their own photographs; Spring Journals for the permission to reprint with rephrasing, some extracts from Renos K. Papadopoulos’s article ‘Failure and Success in Forms of Involuntary Dislocation’, which appeared in Jungian Odyssey 7 (2014); Springer Nature (SCSC) and Palgrave Macmillan for the permission to reproduce diary excerpts (Figures 11.1–11.4) from Tony Capstick’s monograph Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies: Exploring Chain Migration from Pakistan to the UK (2016); and Cambridge University Library and Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex. We have been assisted by two grants in the early stages of this project: the University of Essex Seedcorn Research Grant and the AHRC/CHASE Research Network Development Grant, and Sanja Bahun has benefited from the Leverhulme Trust’s Research Fellowship in the final phase of our work; we are grateful to all these institutions for their support. We are also indebted to numerous friends and colleagues with whom we have discussed these topics, and who have contributed to this project in direct and indirect ways, in particular, Samuel Cannon, Veljko Damjanović, Rosalind Green (Essex Book

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xi

Festival), Nancy Kula, Chris McCully and Monika Schmid. Our private thanks go to Dušan, Jakov and Zoran. Finally, we dedicate this book to all the individuals and groups, named and unnamed, who have participated in and inspired the projects and initiatives conducted by our contributors, and who have struggled or are continuing to struggle to find their ‘home in the world’. They made Thinking Home possible.

Notes on Editors Sanja Bahun is Professor in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, and Fellow of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. In addition to numerous articles and essays, Bahun has authored Modernism and Melancholia (2014) and co-edited The Avant-garde and the Margin (2006), Violence and Gender in the Globalized World (2008, 2015), From Word to Canvas (2009), Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text (2011), Language, Ideology, and the Human (2012), Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious (2013) and Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917–1989 (2014). Bojana Petrić is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research explores multilingual writers’ academic literacy practices and experiences, particularly citation practices, writer voice, and disciplinary identities. She has co-authored Experiencing Master’s Supervision: Perspectives of International Students and their Supervisors (Routledge 2017) and co-edited The Absolute Report (Revolver 2006), a volume featuring the work of the art collective apsolutno, whose member she was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She has recently co-founded the Professional, Academic, and Work-Based Literacies SIG within the British Association for Applied Linguistics.

Notes on Contributors Vivienne Ashley’s experience working within the social welfare sector informs her philosophical research into welfare rights. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Great Expectations: Autonomy, Responsibility and Social Welfare’, was motivated by the urge to examine the phenomenon of sub-optimal decisionmaking, where a person is unable to make effective choices that promote her best interests, as well as her work with Shelter England. Tony Capstick is Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading. He is the author of Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies: Exploring Chain Migration from Pakistan to the UK (2016). He is currently researching the language and education needs of Syrian refugees in the Middle East. Dragan Dragin is an award-winning photographer and film-maker. He explores the interaction between the human body and space, and has collaborated with dance and theatre groups internationally. His work has been presented at numerous group and individual exhibitions and is featured in private and public collections (e.g. Prague National Gallery; Duncan Foundation Prague; Tanz Museum, Cologne, Germany). Lorna Fox O’Mahony is Professor of Law at Essex Law School, University of Essex. She has authored and co-edited numerous books and articles, including Conceptualising Home: Theories, Laws and Policies (2006), Home Equity and Older Owners: Between Risk and Regulation (2012) and Great Debates in Land Law (2016). Matthew Gibson is Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Birmingham and researches how emotions are constructed, influencing what people do and how they do it, specifically focusing on self-conscious emotions. Biljana Golubović is a performance artist and lecturer. She holds a PhD in Directing and Dramaturgy from the University in Prague. Her international theatre and community-based art projects involve artists, mental hospital patients and asylum seekers. Together with Dragin, she co-founded BART,

xiv

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

a centre for performing arts in Montenegro. She was the dramaturge and director of Swish, which won the Czech Dance Platform 2017 award. Lily Hunter Green is a UK-based contemporary composer and visual artist. She has two key focuses in her work: the environment and marginality. Lily has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, from Snap Gallery (Aldeburgh) to 516 ARTS (Albuquerque, US). She is currently Artist-inResidence at Birkbeck, University of London. Information on her work is available online at http://www.lilyhuntergreen.com/. Damian Le Bas is a writer from England. Born into a large Romany-Traveller family, he read Theology at Oxford, graduating first in his year in 2006. Damian’s first book, The Stopping Places, won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award and will be published by Chatto & Windus in 2018. Amy M. E. Morris is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Cambridge, where she teaches a module on Home and Homelessness for the MPhil programme. She is the author of Popular Measures: Poetry and Church Order in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts (2005) and articles on American literature and culture from the colonial to the modern period. Obinna Nwosu, formerly the Communications Officer of Safe Ground (2011–17), is now Development Manager at Into Film. Obinna is an art agitator, resistance advocate and renegade for social change who believes art can be an instigator, a mechanism for transformation and a strategy for making, creating and fighting for freedom. Louise Overton is Lecturer in Social Policy and member of the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM) at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on older people and personal finance, and she has carried out extensive research on the role and relevance of housing wealth for welfare in later life. Prior to joining Birmingham, Louise was a Research Fellow at the Universities of Durham and Essex. Renos K. Papadopoulos is Professor and Director of the Centre for Trauma, Asylum and Refugees at the University of Essex, Honorary Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Family Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and Jungian psychoanalyst and systemic family psychotherapist in private practice. He works with refugees, tortured persons and other survivors of political violence and disasters in many countries. Susan C. Pearce is Associate Professor of Sociology at East Carolina University, North Carolina, United States. She conducts research on the cultural contexts

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xv

of politics, particularly concerning ethnicity, migration, gender and social movements. She is co-author of Immigration and Women: Understanding the American Experience (2011) and co-editor of Istanbul: Living with Difference in a Global City (2018). Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is also Founding Director of the St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. His recent books include: Anyone, the Cosmopolitan Subject of Anthropology (Berghahn 2012) and Distortion and Love: An Anthropological Reading of the Life and Art of Stanley Spencer (Ashgate 2016). Susan Samata got her PhD in Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck, University of London, in 2014. She is the author of The Cultural Memory of Language (Bloomsbury 2015) and she teaches English at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests include migration and inter-generational language attrition, and cross-cultural language perception. Charlotte Weinberg has been Executive Director of Safe Ground since September 2010. Charlotte is a youth and community arts practitioner with a background in therapeutic group work, gender specific programme design and family support. Charlie has an MA in Refugee Care from the University of Essex and is currently studying Group Psychoanalysis with the Institute for Group Analysis in London.

Series Preface: Why Home? Rosie Cox and Victor Buchli

T

he home is where people are made and undone. As life is increasingly seen as precarious, fluid, mobile and globalized, there is a growing interest in the home: what it is, what it means to various groups of people, how it constitutes them and how it relates to other spheres of life both in the present and in the past. Home is both physical and metaphorical, local and national, a place of belonging and exclusion. It is at the heart of the most seemingly mundane spaces and experiences – the site of quotidian activities such as eating, washing, raising children and loving. Yet it is precisely the purportedly banal nature of the home that masks its deep importance for the underlying assumptions that structure social and political life. Home reveals the importance of routine activities, such as consumption, to highly significant and urgent wide-ranging issues and processes such as the maintenance of and challenges to global capitalism and our relationship to the natural environment. Among academic writers home is increasingly problematized, interrogated and reconsidered. Long understood as an axis of gender inequality, home is also seen as a site; a space of negotiation and resistance as well as oppression and a place where such relationships are undone as well as made. As a topic of study, it is the natural analytical unit for a number of disciplines, with relevance to a wide range of cultural and historical settings. The home is probably one of the few truly universal categories upon which an interdisciplinary programme of research can be conducted and which over recent years has resulted in a distinctive analytical category across disciplines, times and cultures. This book series offers a space to foster these debates and to move forward our thinking about the home. The books range across the social and historical sciences, drawing out the cross-cutting themes and interrelationships within writings on home and providing us with new perspectives on this intimate space. While our understanding of ‘home’ is expansive, and open to interrogation, it is not unbounded. In honing our understandings of what ‘home’ is, this series aims to disturb and it goes beyond the domestic including sites and states of dispossession and homelessness and experiences of the ‘unhomely’.

Homing in on Home Sanja Bahun and Bojana Petric´

H

ome is a fulcrum around which our most important mental and material activities revolve. Operating simultaneously as a concept, an experience, a discourse, an emotion and a (real or imagined) physical site, home shapes our personal and social identities, and informs our thinking, willing and judging. We derive our feelings of belonging and emplacement from it and translate them into our material activities in the world – from existentially resonant acts such as birth, death, migration and movement, through symbolic acts of community building like memorialization and remembrance, to everyday activities like house-making and language learning. Home, Paul Oliver correctly observes, is ‘the theatre of our lives’ (2003: 15). The metaphor is apt: it conveys the singularity of home as, at once, a material, psychological and representational site, and highlights its simultaneous operation as a topos, a trope, and the underlying psychological basis for both (Bachelard 1957), but also as a particular form of spectacle, informed, as all our performances of living in the world are, by certain social dispositions, contexts, processes and practices. Home thus straddles a paradoxical territory. It forms who we are, as individuals and collectives, but it also ferments political action and reaction, and has generated, from the very beginnings of organized societies, public policymaking. Anthropologist Mary Douglas has influentially argued that home is ‘not only a space but it also has some structure in time’, and by virtue of these properties, home unfolds into, or builds, a community (1991: 289). In turn, a community produces physical homes and importantly contributes to, or indeed shapes, the generation of an individual and communal sense of home. Couched in these continuities, home and community also operate in analogous fashion: being at once material and produced through the acts of imagination, they are haunted by the paradox of boundaries – that is, the

2

THINKING HOME

propensity to simultaneously assert and relinquish sovereignty (cf. Anderson 1983). The starting premise of Thinking Home thus lies in the belief in close interaction, indeed co-formation, of (the ideas of) home and community, and the derived necessity of an interdisciplinary and multisectoral approach to the subject of home, one that includes multiple communities and modes of inquiry. Addressing this obligation head-on, the volume engages a vast variety of disciplines, media, and even types of utterance, to form a unique, calicolike, tapestry of socially involved perspectives on home. The focal point of this tapestry is the issue of human needs and rights in relation to the (fundamental yet also socially mediated) affects, experiences and processes of home. The major questions Thinking Home poses all concern the experiential and emotional dimensions of the category of home as it interacts with human values and human rights in various communities. What situations and locations, what politics and poetics of home lie behind the notions of residence, nationality and ethnic identity? Is home a place – real or imaginary – from which one departs or at which one arrives? What is the relationship between our concept of home and temporality (remembrance and memorymaking, generational routines and community rites)? How important to the welfare of humans is the belief that individuals (or communities) have a home? What is the relationship between having a home and the identitystandards we build for ourselves? Is ‘homeness’ a fundamental human right? Is ‘homelessness’ a choice? How does property ownership, housing debt and the language in which they are described influence our experiences of home? What relationship does ‘home’ have with our ‘home’ language? Do men and women, or younger and older people, or free and unfree, think differently about home? What can we learn about home from those whose voices are rarely heard in public debates? And what strategies of representation do we have at our disposal to convey the emotion that is ‘home’? These experiential questions form an arc that our contributors approach with strong awareness of their existential, psychological and ontological implications, as well as their material effects and social potentials. Such polyphonic projects, the editors believe, are necessary. Events over the past decade have heightened awareness of the subject of home and its implications for public and private decision-making. The concept of home boasts a particular discursive vitality at present: talk of home and the intrinsically related discourses of migration and identity permeate our daily lives, being emphatically addressed in popular as well as scholarly outlets, and in a variety of media. In response to this discursive presence, there has been a rapid increase in scholarship that engages the dimensions and discourses of home. The meanings, conceptualizations, interpretations and politics of home and (dis)location interest literature scholars, linguists, sociologists, legal scholars, psychologists and philosophers, whereas the  physical parameters

HOMING IN ON HOME

3

of home space and migration patterns have been central to research in architecture, human geography, history and political science.1 This range of activities suggests that the concept of home is multidimensional and, as such, necessitates interdisciplinary conversations, in particular (and significantly for the present volume), dialogues between the humanities and social sciences, and the development of diverse types of engagement and dissemination of results (Mallett 2004). Yet, while there are numerous projects and publications focusing on specific aspects of home such as housing, family/domestic life, home environments, homelessness, home ownership, and the artistic representation of home, and the precious few strategically multidisciplinary conversations on the subject, the publications that bring them together, and supplement them with a cross-sector, multi-media perspective, are still infrequent. As a result of this fragmentation of knowledge, our very conceptualizations of home and the ways we translate them into public fora and policymaking are still restricted. Let us mention here only one visible effect which is of specific relevance for the present volume: even though the affective factors that shape the meanings of home are increasingly addressed in scholarship, the physical and material-value aspects of home and the related association between ownership and a meaningful attachment to home are still overvalued in legislative and policy-led discourses (Fox 2006). The national and international consequences of this imbalance are multiple but two are worth mentioning in this context: first, the emotion that is ‘home’ is not properly theorized and used in public practices (including those that relate to the issues of physical abode, for example refugee aid, housing provision for ex-offenders, support for children without stable homes, and the like); and, second, this misperception and its dissemination in the public discourse reshapes our emotions about what might constitute home for us and for others. While we observe an expansion in our general perception of place and in the varieties in which home-making occurs in the contemporary world (Massey and Jess 2003; Ahmed et al. 2003), we reluctantly engage with the possibilities and repercussions this situation presents us with in our public practices. This situation, the editors of the present volume believe, is due to the failure to include alternative, or more diversified, voices in the debate on home, to develop and make visible multidisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional perspectives on home, and to deepen the interactions between scholars and the public. Thinking Home specifically aims to redress this situation by initiating a dialogue between artists, social workers, activists, therapists, and scholars working across disciplines (anthropology, psychotherapy, philosophy, linguistics, law and literature) – many of whom also work in, or with, the public and charitable organizations. The strong presence of ethnographic material, interviews and case studies, suggests the ambition of the volume to widen this discursive field even further. The editors recognize the inequities

4

THINKING HOME

implicit in the very nature of academic publishing, and therefore see their position as, additionally, providers of the opportunity to capture and present voices that are rarely heard in the debates on home. In this context, the wide interdisciplinary and interactive scope of Thinking Home should serve as an invitation to, or a call for, more such diversified conversations. These can expand vertically to include other types of charitable organizations, scholars in disciplines which have not been represented in this particular volume (e.g. architecture, interior design, otherwise prominent in the Bloomsbury Home series, or other disciplines such as demography, environmental planning, economics, history), policymakers, and policy-users at varied levels and planes; or, in a horizontal spread, they can canvas different perspectives on home in our increasingly circulatory world. As the idea of home is most directly related to identity and culture, the constituent meanings, values and significance of home vary considerably from one global site to another, and from one community to another, and it is crucial that scholarship continues to engage this variety. Awareness of this mandate is already strongly present in Thinking Home. The inclusion of artwork, poetry, ethnographic documentation, academic and non-academic genres in their discipline-specific configurations reflects the editors’ commitment to think home holistically, from within an intercultural ‘contact zone’ (Manathunga 2009), in which different bodies of knowledge, modes of inquiry, and representational formats come into dialogue. It is for this reason that artistic, activist and academic contributions interact freely in this volume rather than being grouped in categories such as those above. In this spirit, the editors have deliberately departed from the convention to refer to the volume contributions as ‘chapters’. Instead, the guiding principle has been to group varied modes of inquiry around the three synergic points of the volume, exploring the affects attendant to and shaping home-making/homeness, home and dispossession, and the relationship between home and language. When epistemological, methodological and representational boundaries are made more permeable in this way, intriguing contrasts and unexpected correspondences are revealed, and from this interconnectedness, new and qualitatively distinct insights can be gained. The ritual of a wake for the dying house in the theatre language of Prague-based artists Golubović and Dragin and the symbolic wake that New York’s African American community held for their newly discovered ancestors, discussed by Pearce, illuminate each other. Papadopoulos’s notion of the ‘mosaic substratum of identity’ and the case study of a Middle Eastern woman who faces her nostalgic disorientation find resonance with Samata’s discussion of the second generation Hispanic migrants’ feeling ‘at home’ when surrounded by their heritage language’s intonation patterns and gestures, despite having only a limited mastery of its grammatical system

HOMING IN ON HOME

5

and vocabulary and often being emotionally challenged on that account. Such continuities, the editors believe, create the possibilities for a new epistemology of home. The editors and the contributors invite the reader to be open to such discoveries and explore the insights arising through thinking home in a dialogic way. Furthermore, while the discussions in this volume tend to engage ‘Western’ conceptualizations of home, they do so precisely through encouraging debate about some of the key components of associated imaginings (e.g. home as ‘bricks-and-mortar’, home as the place of immediate, as opposed to extended, or communal, family, the idea of nation as home, the idea of private home ownership, and so on) and suggesting further spectrums of meaning and action relevant to the opportunities and challenges of living in a globalized and multi-scaled world. Perceiving home-making as both a universal human capacity and a particular human activity (Rapport), our contributors intensely scrutinize the relationship between the habitat, home and community, and their shared or distinct requisites (Ashley, Morris, Papadopoulos). They incorporate in their discussions the insights of various theories of localized and cosmopolitan subjectivity, including the community-based and alternative models of home (Hunter Green, Le Bas) and the postcolonial and (neo) imperial figurations of home and subjectivity (Capstick, Pearce). They are both aware and wary of unitary attributions such as the capacity of home to shelter, orient, comfort and nurture, and they simultaneously emphasize the necessity of a physical shelter for optimal decision-making (Ashley) and challenge the pathologization of those who have suffered or are suffering from the absence of a ‘comforting’ or ‘nurturing’ home (Papadopoulos, Safe Ground). And they offer deep theorizing and comprehensive accounts while insisting on temporal and spatial contextualizations (see Rapport, for both a discussion and an exemplar of this kind of practice). This cautious equilibration, at the level of the volume as a whole and that of the individual chapters, results from the contributors’ and editors’ ethical commitment to take into account and work through the more problematic aspects of home derived from its ‘container’ function. Due to the intimate relationship between the sense of home and the sense of community, the dominant ideas about home tend to enforce socially sanctioned visions of cultural and social hierarchies in a collective and are therefore customarily exploited for the pursuit of varied social agendas (Kaplan 2003). This is so because, being a constitutive dynamic of the psycho-social functioning, home at the same time embodies and communicates the concepts of the self and the family/group and serves as an expressive correlative to existential and ontological needs in a given community. This operation of home is premised on a common, if easily misused, perception of continuity. Traditionally in Western and in some Eastern thought, body is presented as home; more

6

THINKING HOME

often than not, this presentation is linked to a wider organization of meanings regarding the multiplicities of bodies like families, ethnic groups and, finally, larger governed communities. The stages of this process suggest that, even though it functions as a site of desire and open-ended fantasies, home is exclusive by nature: ‘it bounds people’s lives, individual and collective, from family to nation, and in doing so can render everything else other, different, lesser, and even hostile’ (Barrie 2017: xxiii). Such operation allows, at its worst, the state-sponsored, or media-propelled, ‘maiming’ or forceful delimiting of the home-body, with implications that may prevent human beings from, for example, perceiving the world as a home or feeling dignity in their own home. Under the regime of some restrictive understandings of home (e.g. home as property ownership, home as nation, the equalizing of femalebody with the domestic sphere, etc.), the consequences of the misuse of the continuity glossed above may be serious. A good example here is the introjection of home ownership, or being housing debtless, as an identitystandard and the consequential negative self-evaluation after failing to live up to this identity-standard (see Overton, Fox O’Mahony and Gibson’s discussion in this volume). On a wider scale, we witness a discursive resurgence of the political practice of summoning the attributions of home as a nurturing shelter in order to smooth the seams in the fabric of a collective and project a sense of a cohesive national identity. Indicative in this respect are the recent rise of nationalism across the developed world, the emotive recourse to the rhetoric of control, (unshared) shelter, ‘homeland’, ‘home roots’ and security, and the discursive overvaluing of ‘stable houses’ and ‘secure borders’ (Dobel 2010) – a state of the world addressed directly or indirectly in many contributions in this volume. One response to this situation could be to open up the assumed continuities that inform such structures of feeling and trace these dynamics back to the beginning of the trajectory sketched above. Such is precisely the route the contributors to Thinking Home take. The socio-political inscriptions of home articulated as a specific exclusionary body politics inform Ashley’s and Morris’s discussions of the representation of the homeless body, as well as Overton, Fox O’Mahony and Gibson’s engagement with the ageing body and the emotional effects of misrepresentation of home-related debt in later life; and the further challenges and opportunities of body politics in the context of reception histories are examined in Pearce’s discussion of the buried, ancestral body. The interaction of the intimate and the socio-political in the context of pervasiveness of the notion of home as the family homespace, on the other hand, are directly addressed in Capstick’s and Samata’s contributions. All these discussions gesture towards an understanding of how ideas about home create a politics of belonging and inform social policies and procedures, and how, for that very reason, a change in, or expansion of, our

HOMING IN ON HOME

7

view of home may also change on-the-ground legislation and policymaking (Honig 1994). The appearance of (new) ideas about home in a community could be rapid but their development and consolidation most often entail long time spans. The structure in time to which Douglas refers in relation to home and community is built by accretion of events and memory-work. In such circumstances, the preservation of memory in the cultural landscape is vital for the construction of meanings relating to one’s home and to the building of a well-functioning community (Porteous and Smith 2001: ix). The psychological fact that home is also always a product of memory – voluntary, involuntary, publicly endorsed or suppressed – means that the politics of memory could be used to generate healthy as well as negative meanings of home. Pearce’s essay on the discursive negotiations of the discovery of an African American graveyard in New York City contextualizes these issues in terms of collective remembering, collective forgetting, and their social construction. Keeping a community alive, Pearce’s essay suggests, is inextricably linked to the symbolic sites that operate as ‘environments of memory’ or are reconstructed as lieux de mémoire (Nora 1994: 284) to build and sustain the affect of communal home. But this effort does not have to take the form of the preservation of physical artefacts. Indeed, as Hunter Green’s, Le Bas’s, and Pearce’s contributions in this volume suggest, in communities where the material cultural traces are either transient or easy to appropriate, the safeguarding of the very expression of communal memories by its further application takes precedence in establishing one’s sense of home in the world. Such situations highlight the role of cultural and artistic expression in forming, in the words of Romani poet Ilija Jovanović quoted by Le Bas, the sense that, wherever we are, ‘we are what we are’. Home is the product of memory as much as of applied (present-and-futureoriented) imagination. ‘Art’, Mary Douglas has argued in this vein (ventriloquizing philosopher Suzanne Langer), ‘is a communicative effort that makes specialized projections of the common dimensions of experience’; as such, it has a distinct place in representing the most vital and pervasive experience we have – that of home (1991: 291). The intimate link between home and art is not surprising: the affect of home is reliant on a specifically dynamic imagination of space and time, which seeks expression. This need may find an outlet in the development of representations of (the experiences of) home and its lack, and the artistic reflections on both, as Morris’s discussion of photography and literature on homelessness demonstrates; it could eventuate in the depictions of subjectivity as homing or home-making subject, as suggested in Rapport’s discussion of Stanley Spencer’s self-portrait; or it could materialize in the form of a metaphoric, or metonymic object, like the ‘little box’ in a poem by Vasko Popa discussed in Papadopoulos’s chapter. The meanings and

8

THINKING HOME

emotions that these and other artistic representations of home are meant to invoke belong to an ambivalent range: home could be represented as a safe haven, a shelter to which we return from our wanderings – even if only temporarily – (as in Homer’s The Odyssey, and Maya Angelou’s All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes), or as a place of loss and a reminder of displacement (as in Salman Rushdie’s ‘Imaginary Homelands’; see, Rushdie 1992 [esp. 9–13]), and, indeed, as a locus of trauma (as in the poem by one of the participants in Safe Ground’s GROUNDation II project; see, Safe Ground in this volume). Because its depiction is premised on the imagining and constellating of a chronotope (time-space), however, the subject of home has found a particularly fertile ground in visual art. A common motif in contemporary art engagements with the topic of home is the construction of house-like structures, where the objectness, materialness and location of the ‘house’ are placed in a dynamic relationship with meanings associated with home: protection, belonging, memory, emotion.2 More recently, however, artists have increasingly turned their attention to representing the experiential processes of our living in the world, and the processual nature of home as such. Thus the artists whose projects are included in this volume highlight a different aspect of home in their art practice, that of the communal and individual processes and experiences of home – of home-making (Hunter Green) as well as home loss (Golubović and Dragin). While objects are not absent from our contributors’ artwork, they are subservient to the experiences under the spotlight: the ‘house’ is a shell to hold a sound installation showcasing interviews about a community’s home (Hunter Green) or it is a real building in the process of planned demolition turned into a temporary theatre stage (Golubović and Dragin). Like other contributions to the volume, these art projects insist on the experiential basis of home and explore what dwelling in a home means for the audience, the artists themselves and the wider community. The two art projects, furthermore, perform the interdisciplinary nature of the volume by spanning multiple fields of art – theatre/writing/photography (Golubović and Dragin) and sound/community art/installation (Hunter Green) – and by speaking of home in multimodal experiential ways: through images, movement, sound and text. What is noticeable in the variety of articulations of home problematics glossed above is the significance of language for material, affective and conceptual dimensions of home. Indeed, the relationship between language and home, and their joint operation in communities, presents one of the most significant thematic and conceptual undercurrents of Thinking Home. It is this relationship that Papadopoulos refers to when arguing that the concept of home invariably evokes an idealized image in our minds, reminding us that terms such as ‘home-made’ food and ‘homes’ for the elderly rely on the

HOMING IN ON HOME

9

power of the notion of ‘home’ to create strong positive connotations. Similarly, Ashley invokes the intimate connection between language and home when she considers how the legislative discourse of home (e.g. the definition of ‘intentionally homeless’ persons in the UK’s Housing Act of 1996) may have far-reaching consequences for the individuals’ ability to have and keep a home. Along the same lines, Overton, Fox O’Mahony and Gibson examine the link between the UK government’s official discourse promoting home ownership and the feelings of guilt and shame among the elderly when they need to release equity from their homes and take up a financial product that could be a rational solution for this house-rich but income-poor population. The languagehome intersection is also a background thread in Pearce’s discussion of the African American community’s symbolic claims to home via their ancestors’ burial ground, which echoes the power of strategic use of specific speech acts as an activist practice. And Safe Ground describe the transformative potential of engagement with creative aspects of language – poetry writing and performing – in forming grounds for ‘home-ness’ for ‘domestically dislocated populations’, whose experiences of material home are not necessarily positive. In these contexts, key to the relationship between language and home is the notion of identity, both in the sense of identities we forge for ourselves and those imposed on us by others. In the background of these and other references to language and language practices in discussions of home in this volume lies the recognition that language and home are inextricably intertwined and, together, they shape who we are and who we want to be(come), as individuals and communities. Both language and home are complex and multifaceted notions, at once particular and general, pertaining to individuals as well as groups, and having private and public dimensions. Their relationship is, unsurprisingly, equally complex, punctuated by multiple sites of interaction. And while there is no established sub-discipline called ‘linguistics of home’, the language-home nexus can be traced as an implicit theme in various areas of linguistic research. Its public, societal manifestation has been illuminated, in particular, in analyses of the linguistic practices and mechanisms through which an exclusionary politics of home is constructed in public discourse,3 while its private, personal, individual dimension has been explored in studies of, among others, language acquisition and attrition, language and emotion, and multilingual homes.4 The latter body of research shows that language practices evolve through and shape interactions and relationships, which, in turn, constitute the very essence of home: the affects of intimacy, security, nurture, but also, inevitably, conflict, separation and change. The language of familial home is never insulated from wider society, though, just as our private home is never separate from our collective home. Language learning, for example, is directly impacted by educational policies

10

THINKING HOME

and social attitudes to particular languages (see Samata in this volume); and the ideologies of migration, nationality and ethnicity profoundly affect individual language practices (see Capstick’s ethnographic analysis of Usman’s home literacies as he prepares to migrate from Pakistan to the United Kingdom). As Le Bas, a Romany Traveller and a speaker of and writer in Romani, movingly reflects, this impact is even more powerfully felt in a minority community, whose members often live in precarious circumstances and whose language is not recognized in wider society. These discussions highlight that the private and the public in the language-home dynamics outlined above are not a binary opposition but rather two ends of a continuum of possible interactions. Home, then, is a microcosm of language in action. It is where languages are acquired and infused with emotional meaning and personal significance, thus becoming ‘languages of home’, languages that can evoke a deep emotion with a single word. Importantly, it is also the site of language contact, most evidently in multilingual homes, but to some extent in all homes, where sociolects and communicative styles of different generations, genders and individuals, interact. And, just as home is not fixed but is always in flux, the languages of home are in the process of change, most dramatically so in movement from and to home. There is thus a reciprocal relationship between language and home: language constitutes home, and home, in turn, is deeply embedded in language. The experiential and multimodal picture of home drawn above and the diversified engagements of the contributors to Thinking Home suggest, finally, an underpinning politics of the present volume. As a point of convergence – and a sign of continuity – between the exterior and the intimate, the public and the private, the category of home is inescapable in the discussions and practice of one specific field: that of human rights. When we ponder the ways in which the notion of home is emotionally and ideologically inscribed in societies and individuals, we effectively scrutinize human rights and human rights-related issues: the political use and abuse of the discourse of home, homeland, nation and transnationalism; the quandaries of ownership and the right to adequate housing, of autonomous decision-making and of communal help; the rights of involuntarily dislocated people; the mandate to honour variable home-making practices; and, most pervasively, the challenges of creating physically and psychologically safe home spaces (including making the world as a whole one such space).5 Informed by an overarching human rights perspective, Thinking Home situates itself at precisely this crossroads. Responding to a charged series of questions delineated in the opening of this introduction, each of the contributions in Thinking Home reflects on a particular cluster of issues and problems that the discourse and practice of human rights face today. Each also expands on them in a distinct context and through distinct voices, and offers to an attentive reader a specific definition

HOMING IN ON HOME

11

of home, home-making, homing, homefulness and homelessness, forged in relation to what could be broadly described as core human rights. Readers are invited to keep this subterranean binding thread in mind as they move across disciplinary, national and cultural borders to appreciate the insights of the contributors to this volume. And just as the attention to human needs and the practice of human rights are ultimately future-oriented, so is Thinking Home. While all the contributions identify some blemishes, manipulations and constrictions in the social use and private incorporation of the category-experience of home, all of them also see in the notion of home a transformative potential: they view home as historically determined yet quietly uncontainable by sociopolitical and ideological forces. In the opening text in this volume Rapport specifically argues that home-making, precisely because of its operation as a (sometimes strikingly) individual act, necessarily implies a trans-communal, even transnational projection: home-making is an act of opening up as much as that of securing one’s boundaries. Rather than discarding the notion of home as such, then, all contributors to this volume seek to reactivate it for positive transformations in communities. This spirit of socially alert engagement with one of the most pervasive human experiences has informed the very creation of the present book. It is this practice of transformative thinking that, the editors hope, Thinking Home will also stimulate and promote.

Notes 1 The rich scope of discussions of home in the last two decades would be impossible to capture in this limited space. One could only indicate some notable trends: a significant rise in the number of publications concerning the physical environment of the house and the domestic space since the 1990s (pace but including Rapoport 1995: 42; Smyth and Croft 2006: 11–26), a steady increase in publications focusing on home literacies since Heath’s seminal 1982 study, a marked interest in the issues of home and community, and cosmopolitan home, or home on the move, in anthropology (Douglas 1991; Rapport and Dawson 1998), and the renewed attention to home in disciplines such as philosophy (Cassin 2013), cultural geography (Blunt and Dowling 2006) and literature studies. And/or one could direct the reader to the proliferation of bibliographies of scholarship on home or encyclopaedias and compendiums, in particular, in social sciences; see, for example, Perkins et al. 2002 and Smith et al. 2012. 2 Particularly striking examples of such work from around the world include the British artist Rachel Whiteread’s House (1993), a concrete cast of the inside of a Victorian terraced house in East London, scheduled for demolition; the Hungarian-Syrian Róza El-Hasan’s series of adobe eco-architecture inspired by traditional Syrian ‘sukut’ houses; the Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s site-specific

12

THINKING HOME installation Perfect Home (2012), a recreation of his home using delicate, translucent fabrics; and the German artist Hans Kotter’s exhibition Home Sweet Home (2012), featuring a ‘house’ made of glass, mirrors and lights, mounted on wheels.

3 This type of analysis is particularly evident in research within critical discourse analysis, which rests on the premise that language is a form of social practice (Fairclough and Wodak 1997) and that discursive and social structures are mutually constitutive (Fairclough 2003); of particular relevance to the discussion of home in this volume are studies of representations of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in public discourse (e.g. KhosraviNik et al. 2012). 4 Examples of such research include Martin-Jones and Jones (2000) on multilingual home literacies, Piller (2002) on the linguistic practices of bilingual couples and Pavlenko (2005) on language(s) and emotions. There is also a growing interest, both among researchers and the general public, in children acquiring multiple home languages (e.g. Festman et al. 2017). 5 While one such task would be beyond the remit of the present volume, it is worth pointing out that human rights themselves can be newly assessed from the vantage point of the category and discourse of home, as the latter provides one with a unique opportunity to bridge the general and the particular and to relate the sometimes broad orientations of human rights to the specifics of place, body, practice.

References Ahmed, S., C. Castañeda, A-M. Fortier and M. Sheller (eds) (2003), Uprootings/ Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, Oxford: Berg. Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Bachelard, G. (1957), La poétique de l’espace, Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France. Barrie, T. (2017), House and Home: Cultural Contexts, Ontological Roles, London: Routledge. Blunt, A. and R. Dowling (2006), Home, London and New York: Routledge. Cassin, B. (2013), La nostalgie: Quand donc est-on chez soi? Ulysse, Énée, Arendt, Paris: Éditions Autrement. Dobel, J. P. (2010), ‘The Rhetorical Possibilities of “Home” in Homeland Security’, Administration & Society, 42 (5): 479–503. Douglas, M. (1991), ‘The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space’, Social Research, 58 (1): 287–307. Fairclough, N. (2003), Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. and R. Wodak (1997), ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in T. Van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction, 258–84, London: Sage. Festman, J., G. J. Poarch and J-M. Dewaele (2017), Raising Multilingual Children, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

HOMING IN ON HOME

13

Fox, L. (2006), Conceptualising Home: Theories, Laws and Policies, Oxford: Hart Publishing. Heath, S. B. (1982), ‘What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School’, Language in Society, 11 (1): 49–76. Honig, B. (1994), ‘Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home’, Social Research, 61 (3): 563–97. Kaplan, A. (2003), ‘Homeland Insecurities: Reflections on Language and Space’, Radical History Review, 85: 82–93. KhosraviNik, M., R. Wodak and M. Krzyzanowsky (2012), ‘Dynamics of Representation in Discourse: Immigrants in the British Press’, in M. Messer, R. Schroeder and R. Wodak (eds), Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 283–95, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Mallett, S. (2004), ‘Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature’, The Sociological Review, 52 (1): 62–89. Manathunga, C. (2009), ‘Research as an Intercultural “Contact Zone”’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30: 165–77. Martin-Jones, M. and K. Jones (eds) (2000), Multilingual Literacies. Reading and Writing Different Worlds, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Massey, D. and P. Jess (2003), A Place in the World? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nora, P. (1994), ‘La loi de la mémoire’, Le Débat, 78 (1): 178–82. Oliver, P. (2003), Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide, London: Phaidon. Pavlenko, A. (2005), Emotions and Multilingualism, New York: Cambridge University Press. Perkins, H. C., D. C. Thorns, A. Winstanley and B. M. Newton (2002), The Study of “Home” from A Social Scientific Perspective: An Annotated Bibliography, 2nd edition, Canterbury, New Zealand: The University of Canterbury and Lincoln University. Piller, I. (2002), Bilingual Couples Talk: The Discursive Construction of Hybridity, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Porteous, J. D. and S. Smith (2001), Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Rapoport, A. (1995), ‘A Critical Look at the Concept “Home”’, in D. N. Benjamin, D. Stea, and E. Arén (eds), The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings, and Environments, 25–52, Aldershot: Avebury. Rapport, N. and A. Dawson (eds) (1998), Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement, Oxford: Berg. Rushdie, S. (1992), ‘Imaginary Homelands’ [1982], in Imaginary Homelands: Criticism 1981–1991, 9–21, New York: Penguin. Smith, S., M. Elsinga, O. S. Eng, L. Fox O’Mahony and S. Wachter (eds) (2012), International Encyclopaedia of Housing and Home, Oxford: Elsevier. Smyth, G. and J. Croft (2006), Our House: The Representation of Domestic Space in Modern Culture, Amsterdam: Rodopi.

PART ONE

Homeness and Home-Making Introduction The contributions in the first part of Thinking Home highlight the vital significance of home as shaping who we are as individuals, collectives and a species. In the opening text, anthropologist Nigel Rapport provides a cosmopolitan perspective on home, arguing that home-making is at once a universal, species-wide capacity and a particular feature of our individual lives. Charlotte Weinberg and Obinna Nwosu, activists from the arts education organization Safe Ground, describe their projects with people in prison and secure settings, in which music, literature and poetry are used to help participants find ‘home’ even when it is difficult. The centrality of home for identity construction is addressed by psychotherapist Renos K. Papadopoulos, who conceptualizes refugees’ loss of home as a disturbance of their fundamental ‘sense of ontoecological settledness’, resulting in ‘nostalgic disorientation’. Shifting the focus to the notion of collective home, Susan C. Pearce documents and analyses the struggles of the African American community to reclaim their ownership of home through symbolic and discursive acts of emplacement, triggered by the rediscovery of an African burial site in New York City in the 1990s. Collective memory of home, real or imagined, is also a central motif in Lily Hunter Green’s community-based sound installation Harvest (2015), inspired by the Jewish Sukkot, presented in the last section in this part of the volume. In their different yet complementary ways, all contributions thus explore what constitutes homeness and home-making for individuals as well as collectives.

1 Anyone – Any Arthur, Sean Or Stan: Home-Making as Human Capacity and Individual Practice Nigel Rapport

People still consider it proud and haughty and presumptuous to talk about the individual when it is of course really the human attitude, namely, that everyone is an individual. SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1958: 117)

Introduction: Cosmopolitan anthropology ‘Home’ is where I experience a continuity between myself and what I deem to be not myself or beyond myself; ‘at home’ I find myself at my most expansive, open to my environs. Nor is there a necessary limit to where and when and how I might secure this experience: ‘home’ is a physical space, a social situation, a cultural practice; a particular poem, a nickname, a special suit of clothes. The experience may or may not be brought to immediate consciousness, but it is normally comfortable and comforting (I recall Philip Larkin’s image of himself as like a sea-anemone opening out its folded fronds when finding itself within the palming hand of solitude (1988: 56–57)). Who is ‘I’ in the above? In this chapter I make the argument that the ‘I’ is anyone: any human being. An individual (after Kierkegaard) is concrete

18

THINKING HOME

manifestation of the human (cf. Rapport 2012a). I suggest the following analytical formulation for a ‘cosmopolitan anthropology’. The individuals whom I make my research subjects – myself and others – are unique exemplars of a human whole; their uniqueness stems from the way in which their lives substantiate or put into effect a human template. To be human is to possess certain species-wide capacities: to be individual is to deploy and develop and effect those capacities, over a lifetime, in a way that is sui generis. There are human capacities and there is individual substance. Under ‘human capacities’ are to be placed both ‘capabilities’ and ‘liabilities’. It might be said, for instance, to be the capability of any and all human beings to construct world-views for themselves, to make their own sense of the world around them, and to imagine a life-project of meaning and value within this world; it is the liability of any and all human beings that all their facilities, including imagination, diminish with age and cease at death. Or again, it is the capability of any and all human beings to improve their muscular tone and strength through particular programmes of focused exercise; it is the liability of any and all human beings that their fitness will be threatened by insufficient calorific intake and by disease. Imagination, world-view, muscle fitness, love, laughter, reproduction, poiesis, pain, irony, playfulness, nervousness, hunger, rhythm, dementia, lying … What is the sum of these species-wide capacities and what are the optimal conditions for their fulfilment? A cosmopolitan anthropology would chart the nature of the human – including its moral ecology; that is, the best arrangements for its individual expression (Amit and Rapport 2012; Rapport 2007, 2010a, 2012a; Wardle and Rapport 2010). Anthropology, in short, works from the individual outwards to the human whole. This modus operandi follows our empirical practice as a field-working discipline. We work among particular others, and from these individual substantiations of the human, comparisons are to be deduced from which may derive species-wide generalities. The journey is difficult, nevertheless. How from the complexity, fluidity and privateness of individual lives to discern that which is abiding and human? How to write the human in a way that does not seem anaemic and banal, truistic, beside the substance of individual lives? But, then, the individual substantiations also have value in themselves. Not only is each unique, each is also paradigmatic: an absolutely authentic version of what it is to be human. The cosmopolitan anthropologist endeavours to do justice to the preciousness of that unique and finite exemplification of a human life. In this chapter I try to illustrate this methodological programme, drawing on periods of my own participant-observation fieldwork (Rapport 1993, 2008, 2016), now considered under a cosmopolitan dispensation. More particularly, I examine home-making as a species-wide human capacity, to be considered alongside imagination, muscle fitness, love, laughter, and so on.

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

19

Home-making To be ‘at home in the world’ is a condition anthropologists have already seen fit to conceptualize (Al-Mohammad 2012; Cierrad 2006; Jackson 2000), while ‘home’ as a concept has been anthropologically deployed to identify a variety of ‘dwellings’, from house to nation, from memory to laptop computer to story (Miller 2001; Rapport and Dawson 1998; Silverstone and Hirsch 1994; Williksen and Rapport 2010). An essential definition is not the aim here, beyond the recognition that ‘home’ designates a time when human beings experience themselves most unreservedly or expansively: when there is most correspondence between who they are and where they are or what they practise. In revisiting my own research fieldwork – my key relations with particular other human beings at particular times and places – I examine those instances in which I was witness to my informants effecting a home in the world. To do justice to these individual acts means also to be able to offer something that is universally true, that speaks to human nature. Through this practice I hope to discern an individual substantiation of human capacity.

Arthur Only once did I see Arthur Harvey at his home, a draughty old stone farmhouse that he shared with his grown-up daughter, high up on the fells of a dale in north-west England. Arthur was pleased to see me. I had spent the preceding hour or so looking in vain for sheep that Arthur feared were lost in the recent and deep snowfall. I had padded about in the snow and mist more out of a sense of duty than an expectation of success. I did not know this area of the valley well; in particular, I did not know the lie of Arthur’s land or where sheep might hide from a storm here – normally beside a wall, and out of the wind, but then also prone to being covered over by drifting snow. But I had promised Arthur when I had last seen him in the pub that I would drive up to his remote farm and lend a hand to his search. He was a widower, and poor, and a heavy smoker, and seemingly quite frail – tall but stiff-kneed – and he would have no ready helpers to call on to assist in the search since every farmer was in the same situation. So here I was now, reporting back to Arthur in his farmhouse, but reporting my failure to improve the situation. Arthur was very gracious: pleased and somewhat surprised to see me – that I had ventured out on this cold and wet day, and kept my promise. We stood by his coal fire for a while, he went out to make tea, he smiled a lot and joked, we had a slightly stilted, word-shy exchange, and I left when I decently could. Could I have done more, I wondered, made more of a professional job at searching for the sheep? Was I there more because I really liked Arthur or

20

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 1.1  Arthur Harvey at the dominoes table. Courtesy of the author. because I was an anthropologist wanting to ingratiate myself further and see inside another farm and farmhouse in the dale? Or was it because my main work was as the farm-labourer on Arthur’s brother’s farm, further down the dale and more sheltered, and so Arthur felt part of my extended family? In fact, all of these reasons were true, both the more mercenary and the more filial.

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

21

Arthur was one of the first and one of the few to make me feel at all welcome when I arrived in the dale of Wanet, unannounced and unwanted, to begin my fieldwork, a stranger from the city and surprisingly persistent, hanging round the pubs and the shops and the church hall, ostensibly undertaking a project in local history at the local records office. I am in my mid-twenties, Arthur in his mid-fifties. ‘Care for a draw?’ Arthur had asked me one evening in the pub as I leaned against the bar, after having thrown a few darts and again hoping for some contact from the Mitre regulars. Arthur had sauntered up to the bar from the dominoes table to replenish his beer. But it was the dominoes table that was his usual location for the hours he spent, many evenings a week, at the Mitre. And everyone knew ‘Arthur’s seat’: the place where he would regularly be seen drinking, chatting, smoking, laughing, and often involved in rounds and rounds of dominoes with various partners, wiling the evening away (Figure 1.1). The dominoes table stands just inside the main door of the pub and faces the bar. Seated where Arthur is means to command a view of most people and most activities inside the three interconnected rooms. The table itself is large and thin, allowing four people to sit beside each other on each side; it has a lip so that the dominoes do not fall off when they are shuffled, or should they be slammed down in joy or exasperation. Arthur is a skilled player, and his pleasure of an evening is to play with different people, normally in a foursome (of two teams) but also occasionally with just one other person. To the accompaniment of the clicking counters, Arthur chuckles and sucks on his cigarette, and makes droll comments (‘Stupid boy!’ was one of his favourites in my connection – taken from the television soap opera Dad’s Army – and especially if I had had the temerity and the luck to beat him). He chats with his fellow domino players and keeps an eye on whatever else might be transpiring of an evening around him. This seat and this activity and this time at the pub is where I feel Arthur is most at home; the dominoes table is a home space where I find Arthur to be most himself. Occasionally I would meet Arthur on his brother’s farm where I was doing my labouring. He would come to collect a newspaper or groceries; it was also his role to kill and butcher any lambs that were surplus. But my sense of who Arthur was and where he expressed himself most unreservedly is connected absolutely with the dominoes table in the Mitre. My last long conversation with Arthur, like my first but a year later, found us leaning beside one another at the bar, refilling our glasses and taking a break before re-seating ourselves at the dominoes table for more rounds of play. ‘I’ve enjoyed your company, Nigel’, Arthur began: You’re not as daft as you look! I may not be saying this in the right way, but you and I share a philosophy of life, I think. You’ve kept your eyes open.

22

THINKING HOME

Some people come here and see and understand nothing of our way of life. I think you enjoyed life here. My recipe of life has always been to give what I could, to help other people. Because most people are good. I mean you’ll get a few bad buggers but from most people you’ll get something in return, at some time and in some form even if at first you don’t recognize it as such. It’s pleasant in itself: it makes you feel good, whatever else might come of it. Yes, just as you say: it’s sowing a seed. Always sow a seed … Anyway, back to the ‘bones’, lad? Doris and Sid next. These two might be hard to shift! What do you think? That was in the summer of 1981. Summer 2011 found me back in Wanet, briefly, now showing the area to my daughter. In the churchyard I found Arthur’s gravestone and in the Mitre Inn, overlooking the dominoes table (just behind the head of this current occupant), is the mounted photograph of Arthur as I knew him, still at his seat, dominoes in hand and beer glass before him, considering his next play (Figure 1.2).

Sean In summer 2001 I was preparing to draw another fieldwork to a close; this time my participant observation as a hospital porter (Figure 1.3), in a large urban teaching hospital in eastern Scotland. Sean has been telling Alec – both fellow porters of mine, who work in the X-ray Department – that we must have a night out when I finish. Sean wonders what I will write about them in my report. Will I say how this one porter – Sean – liked tea so much? We laugh and Sean asks whether I’ll accompany him for another tea break right now? I say I must go to the locker room for a change of shoes and Sean says he’ll come there too – right after popping into the kitchen in Ward 9 – or somewhere else convenient with a kettle and supply of polystyrene cups – to make his tea. The tea made and carried carefully by Sean as he sips, we traverse the long corridors and stairwells down to the windowless locker room. ‘What do you think of the management of this place?’ Sean asks me, en route. I say how I dislike being ignored by the doctors, as if not worth noticing. Sean considers this and replies: ‘I don’t look down on anyone, on anyone less fortunate than me, like poor or retarded. Maybe it’s ’cos I’m a Christian. I think some people get above themselves and that’s why they do it: they think it’s beneath them to be nice to others’. Reaching the locker room, Sean uses the occasion to unlock his own locker and retrieve a bread roll from it. He tells me he also has another Celtic FC sticker to place on the inside of his locker door that he now retrieves from his bag: his young son gave the sticker to him. Also in his bag from home,

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

FIGURE 1.2  Arthur Harvey in memoriam. Courtesy of the author.

23

24

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 1.3  The hospital porter. Courtesy of the author.

he shows me, he has this morning brought a further supply of sugar: he now adds some to his cup of tea. How about tea bags, I ask? No, his supply of them does not need replenishing at present – and there are always the ward kitchens to ‘borrow’ from. Dave is in the locker room, too, at the end of his shift. Overhearing us, he teases Sean that his locker is more like a chemist’s shop, with all the pills and ointments that Sean seems to stock there – lip gloss, too, because Sean complains his lips go dry in the recycled hospital air. Then Jim arrives from another aisle of lockers and jokes that Sean’s new Celtic sticker was probably something that Sean’s 12-year-old son felt he was too old for and so wisely gave away to his father! (I knew by then that the name of Sean’s son was Paul John because it was tattooed on his left arm. ‘Sean and Carol’ (his wife) was tattooed at the top, then below that was the flag of Scotland, then four playing cards (aces), and then his son’s name. His wife had thought him mad: ‘What if [we] were to break up?’ she had asked him: then, he’d said, he would just have to find another girl called Carol!) Sean and I head back up to our work-stations to get more jobs. Along the way Sean continues being his usual chatty self. He tells me of the good DIY he did at the weekend, stripping and varnishing window frames in his two-bedroomed apartment. Now he wants to find some new pine frames and pictures for the hall; he does not mind what the pictures are of: trees and fields and stuff would be fine. He asks after my family. What does my father do? And mother? He’s not been to Wales. He’s heard it’s nice. He’s been to Ireland lots of times, of course. Back to his roots. His mother’s

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

25

family, that is; his dad’s was from Scotland – Glasgow – but before that Ireland, too. Sean supposes I was pretty good at school. He was slow, he admits, because he was dyslexic. He only learned to read and write at the age of nine. He still cannot write well: his writing looks like a child’s. His son writes better. He sticks to capitals but even then his writing’s not clear. He was born premature, Sean elaborates, weighing three pounds at birth. At first he could not walk and needed to wear callipers because of his tendons. He always had bad heels and rotten ankles, but it’s only been in the past four years that his tendons have given him trouble. Now he wears shoes with built-up heels and braces. And that helps. But he still needs cortisone injections and he has an appointment here in Medical Physics (at Constance Hospital) because they are considering inserting metal plates in his feet. Over the past four years or so his heels have been so sore – with all the walking we do at work – that it can take him two hours to get out of bed. His teacher had said that he would read and write when he wanted to, Sean recalls, because he could do whatever he set his mind to. So there was no need to worry. And he suddenly did learn, at nine. And then by the time they went to High School he had caught up. He had a special learningsupport teacher. That was also why he began boxing: because he was fed up at getting into fights. People would pick on him because they thought he was slow. Then he felt sorry for them when he had hit them and hurt them. Nevertheless he did take boxing very seriously and ended up having eighty amateur fights, all over Scotland, at bantam- and light- and feather-weights, winning some sixty-eight of them. He eventually stopped because he had broken and buckled his wrist (he showed me its odd shape) by falling thirty feet off a ladder. He had been working as a painter by then, and his ladder had slid down a wall before he could jump off. He fell on his face and wrist. When he first got up he thought he was fine – and just needed a cup of tea! His typical reaction to anything, he admits. But then he saw his buckled wrist; and he had also suffered a fractured skull and a broken cheek bone. So he was told not to box again. I leave Sean at the X-ray Department as I walk to my post at the Front Door ‘buckie’ or porters’ lodge. Sean was a ‘dedicated’ X-ray porter, working his daily shift, 9.30 to 17.30 or 18.00, always at that site, ferrying patients from the wards to their X-ray and CAT scan appointments (often in their beds if they were too ill to transfer to chairs). The tasks could be relentless, but Sean had a very cheery disposition. He was usually smiling: a smallish man, in his early forties, with blond hair and an open face. Often to be seen carrying his polystyrene cups of tea in his hand, and seeming to bounce along the corridors with a distinctive, rubbery gait (his heels never touching the ground), I felt at ease with Sean from the start. His openness seemed genuine: an interest in others, patience, desire to know. He would often feign an American

26

THINKING HOME

accent – picked up during his repeated trips to family in Boston – and deploy the accent as a kind of defence, a party piece when the circumstance of banter demanded a ‘bigger’ personality and drawing laughs, or to deflect potential criticism from a personal revelation and to distance his statements from himself. (There were only two people in this world to whom he would kneel down, Sean had told me – in his American accent – his mother and Jesus.) But Sean did not depend on such self-othering. He had a kind of confidence, a self-containment and independence that insulated him from a discourse of teasing, and also pointed to a seriousness with which he felt more at home. There was a kind of acceptance among the porters, too, that Sean did not fit teasing: he did not much enjoy it or appreciate it. More than this, it did not suit him. Sean was both too gullible and literal, and also somehow too brittle and sensitive to make teasing an appropriate discourse. Sean also had that grittiness of the ex-boxer to him. Sean was not a big boozer, either. Two pints of lager shandy would do him, as a rule. And he rarely went drinking downtown; staying near his home and the Social Club was his preferred watering hole. But best of all was tea. Over the course of a day Sean claimed to drink ‘gallons’ – which was why his nickname among the porters was ‘Max’, from the cartoon character in the Tetley Tea advert on TV. He had got the taste for tea, Sean explained, from staying with his grandma as a child (he being the eldest child); she always had visitors and he was always being asked to go and put the kettle on. But his mother said that he really had a taste for tea right from birth – that he liked it more than milk and would cry until he got some. Even English people are surprised at how much tea he drinks, Sean told me. To be sure, my abiding memory of Sean, when we would meet in the locker room or along a corridor or at the X-ray station, is of him with his polystyrene cup of tea in hand and a smile on his face, open to news and open with information about himself. His cups of tea make him at home at work in the hospital. Sean knows who he is with and through his polystyrene cups of tea.

Stanley In 2012 I was involved in a new project concerning the artist Stanley Spencer – one of Britain’s foremost painters of the twentieth century, and certainly its most idiosyncratic. I was particularly interested in the distortions he wrought in some of his representations of the human figure. What did Stanley think he was painting – what were his compositional intentions – I had been asking, and what have been the reactions of a viewing public, both during his life and since? Was Stanley able to communicate his vision of human nature, or did the viewing public ‘distort’ his world-view?

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

27

FIGURE 1.4  Stanley Spencer, ‘Self-Portrait’ (55 × 45 cm), 1951 (© Estate of Stanley Spencer/Bridgeman Images). Born in 1891, Stanley had died in 1959, three years after my own birth. This is his self-portrait from 1951 (Figure 1.4; Stanley was 60, as I am now). Assisting in my anthropological exploration of Stanley’s consciousness of his art, besides the paintings, is Stanley’s standing as a national figure and

28

THINKING HOME

the interest he aroused not only during his life but since, and not only among art critics and historians but also journalists and the wider public: many have written about him before. But Stanley also wrote about himself, obsessively so. At his death he left millions of words, on scraps of paper as well as in scribbled notebooks and letters, handwritten in pencil (usually), on his life and art, on the particular stories that particular paintings narrated, and on his general world-view which amounted to an attempted holistic metaphysics of love. These words are now stored in the Tate Gallery Archive in London, and also in the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Stanley’s native village and the subject and site of much of his work, beside the River Thames to the west of London. In the above self-portrait I am struck by the way Stanley strips down his identity, literally so. Besides his glasses, all he chooses to depict himself wearing is his vest, somewhat grubby or lived-in. Here is his informal self, shorn of pretence. ‘My chief and only occupation is with my own thoughts. An empty room, a fire in the grate, are my chief need’, Stanley wrote at one point (cited in Collis 1962: 15). And the vest received its own eulogy in the following account of Stanley’s being alone with himself: Alone here I felt that I could sort myself out. After sweeping the floor and dusting a bit, I would sit down on one of the two chairs and think and look at the floor. Oh the joy of just that! … I did quite a lot [of writing] and very good, I think. Writing is rejoicing. I took my writing-pad up to the attic or sat on the bath and wrote some. I used sometimes to go to bed after lunch because I wanted to live my inner self. I got behind with getting my meals and making the bed. … When things got very behind I got later and later in the morning; I lay and contemplated the black frying-pan and lay on – the only way I was able to get a good long think, a sense of eternity, endless joy. … For long periods I had a dark cloth halfway up the window. I rolled the carpet up and put it in the coal-room, as it was too tiring to keep brushing it. It is wonderful to be alone in one’s thoughts and actions. … I had on a very thin vest and wore it so long that it sagged and hung on me and felt so comfortable, but it got black from the coal. Often if I was making up the fire I wiped my hands on it. But I loved it so that I wore it till it was just a rag. I wish I had drawn the way the folds went. … I felt there was something wonderful in the life I was living my way into, penetrating into the unknown me …. I only come to life in what, to all other people I have ever met, is filth, so that when I enter anyone’s house they are put to the trouble of keeping me from getting on the bread and seeing the meat is covered up. (cited in Collis 1962: 153–55)

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

29

In these lines Stanley is writing about perhaps the lowest point in his life. In 1938 and 1939 he finds himself divorced and undomiciled. Friends have paid for him to rent a small flat at 188 Adelaide Road in Swiss Cottage, London, and there, alone in his room, he considers his life and situation. It is perhaps something of a breakdown that he suffers. But it does not affect his creativity. Not only does he paint the ten canvases that comprise The Beatitudes of Love series during these two years but also twenty landscapes and stilllives, three portraits and two fantasies, and another series of nine pictures which he calls Christ in the Wilderness. He sketches himself full-size in the nude on more than one occasion and writes copious masturbatory stories concerning the amorous lives of the characters he is inventing in his painted compositions. Sometimes the tone in his diarian writings is depressed: ‘I am like some already discarded implement or utensil whose original home is a rubbish heap …. I am always living other people’s lives. I seem to have the same disability to help myself as a broken pot has’ (cited in Glew 2001: 192). But, more usually, as above, Stanley finds a way to ‘live his inner self’, as he puts it. Indeed, this is the most exciting and rewarding thing he can imagine – a theme his writings often return to: ‘I have always looked forward to seeing what I could fish out of myself. I am a treasure island seeker and the island is myself.’ ‘I am so interested in myself that I would like to give my whole time to it. I don’t want to lose sight of myself for a second.’ ‘There is no-one I more love to meet than myself; no one whose society I more covet than my own.’ ‘The most unexpected thing I ever came across was myself.’ The above quotations are provided by Stanley’s first (and not especially sympathetic) biographer, Maurice Collis (1962: 203), who also ventures the information that, when asked to name the happiest period of his life, Stanley decided that it was his time living alone at Adelaide Road. What I am particularly interested in is what Stanley described as his ‘homing instinct’. He had a predilection for ‘homeliness’, Stanley reckoned; it was something he carried about with him, so that wherever he might be – even on the battlefields of the First World War, even in the Glasgow shipbuilding factories of the Second World War working as a War Artist, and even after a ruinous settlement of his domestic affairs – he was able to say ‘in that direction is happiness’. He was, he explained, always finding for himself interior spaces that he especially liked and that served him as ‘spiritual nesting places’ (cited in Gough 2006: 40): ‘I keep finding places & things that are personal to me. I look for myself (you know what I mean) everywhere & find it everywhere’ (cited in Glew 2001: 198). What it meant to find ‘homeliness’,

30

THINKING HOME

Stanley elaborated, and this accords with his happiness at Adelaide Road, was a domain where he could satisfy his desire to think about himself – or think himself, better: ‘all my special brew of thoughts, when all the Stanleys, this me and that me, can come out like children coming out of school’ (Collis 1962: 231). But significantly, Stanley did not deem this to be a selfish attitude; rather, a human one. What he was describing in himself – being able always to find some kind of home, being driven to find it, no matter the external circumstances – was a ‘privilege of the spirit’: the human spirit was such that it could ‘find what it needs anywhere’ (cited in Patrizio and Little 1994: 9). He elaborated: Men and people generally make a kind of ‘home’ for themselves wherever they are and whatever their work which enables the important human elements to reach into and pervade in the form of mysterious atmospheres of a personal kind the most ordinary procedures of work or place. (cited in Pople 1991: 415) While Stanley was able to make a home for himself even in the noisy, dirty, wet and cold surroundings of a shipyard in Port Glasgow between 1940 and 1946, to find there ‘places and corners’ that ‘moved’ him in the same way as did the ‘rooms of [his] childhood’, it was the case too that he could observe the permanent workers at Lithgow’s Kingston Yard acting similarly: Somehow they do, by their humanness, give to their immediate surroundings of angles, bars, structures, braces, corners and whatnot a homely touch. A ledge on which their teapot stands was never meant for it yet seems more meant for that than for its final purpose. (cited in Patrizio and Little 1994: 15)

Discussion I would like to agree with Stanley. The cases I have cited from my research concerning Arthur and Sean and Stanley, and the case Stanley cites from his own research among the Clyde shipbuilders of the 1940s, do speak to me alike as examples of human home-making. Arthur is at home at his dominoes table in the Mitre Inn; Sean is at home with his polystyrene cups of tea and his locker at Constance Hospital; and Stanley is at home wearing his vest before the coal fire in the empty rooms of Adelaide Road. Here are individual examples, individual instantiations or substantiations, of a human capacity for homeliness. One develops a habit around certain spaces, certain activities,

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

31

certain objects, certain accoutrements – a table, a game, a cup of tea, a vest – and that habit delivers a sense of security, certainty, comfort, pleasure, relaxation, recreation. Stanley’s own word for this was ‘cosy’. He could relate to Lithgow’s shipbuilding yard because it was ‘dark and cosy and full of mysterious places and happening’ in the same way that the blacksmith’s shop interior was back in his Cookham village (Spencer 1991: 184). The paintings he produced aimed at reproducing, in their atmosphere, composition and subject-matter, associations that were cosy. When, in 1959, shortly before his death, he received a knighthood, the ceremony took place at Buckingham Palace, and The Queen Mother laid on the sword and remarked, ‘Mr Spencer, I have been wanting to do this for a very long time’. The occasion was, Stanley recounted, ‘all so cosy, it was just as though she had said, “Stanley, I have got a boiling of marmalade on in the kitchen and I would be very pleased if you would take a jar home with you just for yourself”’ (cited in Rothenstein 1979: 142). This is a very different conception of habitude to a Bourdieuvian habitus, I would stress. Whereas habitus is enunciated as something impersonal and deterministic, ‘the intentionless invention of regulated improvisation’, as Bourdieu describes it in typically tautological terms (1977: 79), habitude here is something that particular individuals put in play in their own way and towards a gratification that is personal and subjective. Stanley’s grimeencrusted vest was not something that I might have chosen to wear for my own sense of homeliness or cosiness or well-being. Sean’s fetishization of his locker and endless polystyrene cups of tea did not pleasure me similarly, and Arthur’s village idyll of pub and beer and dominoes and chit-chat with farming neighbours left me feeling claustrophobic. These were habits they had personally developed: habitualities that spoke to their individualities. They were not mine; and nor were they somehow representative of their communities, of any apparent social grouping that taught or told them how to be at home in the world, and sanctioned their expression. This point calls for elaboration. While it is true that Arthur’s dominoes table involves the apparent collective life-world of village pub and beer-drinking and evening leisure-time, and while Sean’s tea-drinking appears to be consequent upon his grandmother’s parties and his work-space of locker room and ward kitchens and a job that sees him in continual transit between moments of focused hospital practice, and while Stanley’s vest-wearing and coalfirestoking and even painting and sketching and writing are activities that appear of a time and place – masculine, of a divorcee, ‘artistic’ – my sense of Stanley and of Sean and of Arthur in the undertaking of these practices is of individuals finding their own way, determining their own life-worlds, establishing habits that mark them out as their own persons rather than as community members, whether conventional or eccentric. Habitude is a personal work. For Bourdieu,

32

THINKING HOME

members of a community are possessed by their habitus rather than the other way around: something existing within them, the generating and organizing principle of their lives, informing all thought and all action and all thought of action (Bourdieu 1977: 18). As a result of their ‘conditioning’ and their ‘inculcation’ into certain material schemes of living, durable dispositions (habits) come to form in community members – such that, through their embodied actions, social structures of language and economy and so on and customary rules and group memories and collective cultures succeed in reproducing themselves (Bourdieu 1977: 85). By contrast, what are reproduced by way of Arthur’s dominoes and Sean’s tea and Stanley’s vest are world-views and life-projects that are personal and individual. If anything, their habits effect a distancing between these individuals and their collective surroundings. Stanley is deemed unkempt, Sean is teased for his old-womanliness, Arthur is disparaged for the time he spends at the pub. Yet, through their habits and the homeliness it affords them, they continue on regardless. It is not that Stanley, Sean and Arthur are ‘allowed’ to be eccentric or unconventional, I argue; rather, their habit-making is of a different register or nature to their social relations or membership of possible communities. It pertains to their humanity and their individuality. They use what is at hand, yes; they express themselves by virtue of symbolic forms that derive from the cultural environments and social structures in which they find themselves (part of their ‘thrown-ness’ into the world, as existentialism has it), but they use or deploy those forms – the dominoes table and the polystyrene cups and the vest – in ways that are individual to them. They appropriate and animate the common symbolic forms in such a way that the meanings of homeliness that those forms habitually embody, the materialities of home they effect, are dependent on an individual usage and speak, originally, to that usage. At the same time I can recognize what Arthur and Sean and Stanley are doing as instantiations of a human practice. I know they are my fellow human beings; I am able to appreciate that these habitual personal practices make them feel at home, I can see in their individual habits variants of a human theme. I cite these individuals as examples in this chapter because I have felt particularly drawn to them – I like them – but there is nothing that otherwise singles them out: it is our common humanity that is the basis of my being able to develop personal relations with them as research subjects. It is this complex between the individual and the human – the generality of individuality, the universality of particularity, the objectivity of subjectivity – that a cosmopolitan methodology sets out to examine. The legitimating foundation of that examination is the ontological nature of our common humanity. I can appreciate these as being homely human habituations that have a warrant and an existence beyond the contingencies of particular symbolic forms – albeit I do not personally value tea in polystyrene cups – and beyond differences

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

33

of historical epoch – albeit I was not alive in 1939 in London – and beyond community borders – albeit I was not born and bred in a Yorkshire Dale farming tradition – and, most significantly, beyond differences of individual ontogeny – albeit I am not Arthur or Stan or Sean. I do not wish to essentialize here. It is not the English word ‘home’ that is key. To be ‘at home in the world’ describes what I take to be a universal human proclivity and practice; it is a matter of anthropological orientation, of recognizing the individual actor, even though cultural and communitarian rhetoric might insist on a habitus that is depersonalizing (Rapport 1997: 43–63).

Conclusion: Cosmopolitanism, context and culture I have been reading across research projects undertaken in England and Scotland between 1980 and the present, conducted by way of participant observation and of archival retrieval. What is the purpose of making such a narrative, one that juxtaposes Arthur in the Yorkshire Dale of Wanet in 1980 against Sean in Easterneuk’s Constance Hospital in 2001 and against Stanley’s writings from the late 1930s and paintings from the 1930s and 40s and 50s that I view in 2012? My argument is that to read across apparently distinct intellectual and emotional experiences, separated by time and place, distinguished in their supposed phenomenological domain – face-to-face reality as distinct from art and literature – is to recognize commonalities between those experiences: to be apprised of a commonality of human condition and practice among individual differences. There is, in my experience of each person, each individual life, each product of a life, a commensurateness to which I am able to give the name ‘human home-making’. I might paraphrase this commensurate home-making as the construing of a still centre to life – that Arthur made from his dominoes table, and Sean made from his polystyrene cups of tea, and Stanley made from his vest-wearing – an experiential space in which they felt centred: certain of themselves, comfortable, attuned to an environment. I can introspectively attest to the possibility of these individual appropriations being similarly ‘homely’ by feeling them as authentic. Looking inside myself I come upon a common humanity: I arrive at the cosmopolitan proposition that home-making, the production of homeliness, is a human capacity that is evidenced alike in these distinct individual substantiations (Rapport 2007, 2010b). I do not presume to anticipate the myriad ways in which human beings may determine to feel at home – or not to feel at home; to remain alienated, unstill and conflicted – but I do begin to verify the dialectic between the ontologies of individuality and humanity.

34

THINKING HOME

What has happened to ‘context’ in these individual tales, and what has happened to ‘culture’? I appear to have decontextualized my research subjects in juxtaposing them against one another, and I seem to have no eye for what might distinguish the ‘cultural’ (normative and discursive) milieu of an ageing English farmer, a poor Scottish porter, and a famous painter who volunteered for service in the First World War. There are many possible contexts to a life. From a cosmopolitan point of view, however, two are primary, and exert an ontological influence. First, there is the perspective(s) that the individual construes of his or her own life: the life that he or she perceives in determining lines of action. Second is the context of that individual’s species’ nature. It is to these contexts that I endeavour to remain true. I assert that the individual is in himself or herself a paradigmatic instantiation of the human. I ask: Given his human options and human limitations, what does Stanley Spencer (for instance) make of his position at a particular moment? Given this making, how does he proceed, and how does his proceeding then give onto the next position he perceives himself to be in? This is not to say that the world Stanley finds himself in is always a happy one or a desired one. This is not to say that there are not structures, events, factors and forces that would force themselves on his attention: the First World War, his unhappy marriages, a censorious public. Nor is this to say that, in making himself at home in his vest-wearing, dwelling in his cosy, empty London flat, and in writing diarian entries in a scribbled, pencilled hand, in English, he is not using the cultural-symbolic forms made available to him through being socialized into the categories of Victorian, English, lower-middle-class man. But I do say that the way the structures, factors, forces and events impinge on Stanley’s life, the way the cultural-symbolic forms are appropriated and deployed by Stanley, are matters of his individuality and his humanity. Recalling his experience at Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote: ‘It must be remembered that each of us, both objectively and subjectively, lived the Lager [the Nazi death camps] in his own way’ (1996: 56). This is surely the extreme case of how individuals may live exterior contexts and culture in their own way, and must do so since the symbolic world only ever enters into an individual life-world by virtue of interpretations of that symbolic matter that the individual must make for himself or herself (Rapport 2003). It is this personal living, this subjective phenomenology, that I am intent on describing and analysing. To be true to Stanley – or Arthur, or Sean – I must endeavour to do aesthetic justice to the telling of a story from their point of view. This has its own value: giving testimony to a finite, precious life. Further anthropological value then derives from comparing across lives and finding human commonalities: common ways of deploying cultural forms to gratificatory effect – such as common ways of home-making and common ways of dealing with restrictions on

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

35

desired home-making. One builds up both a repository of individual narratives and hence a growing appreciation of what it is to be human. There is a morality that attaches to this practice, furthermore: to emancipate human individuality from the potentially immoral vagaries of merely local conventions and cultural traditions, which is also emancipating humanity per se from nescience (Rapport 2012b). This chapter began with a saying of Kierkegaard’s to the effect that ‘the individual is the human’, and it concludes with similar sentiments from D. H. Lawrence: ‘Each of us is in himself humanity’ (1982: 302). Michael Jackson cites Lawrence’s claim with approval – ‘each of us is humanity’ – in urging anthropology to work to ‘annul the language of cultural essence’: to pursue a critique of the concept of ‘culture’ where the latter is claimed not as an idiom or vehicle of social life – as a discourse or form of rhetoric – but as foundational and causal of consciousness (Jackson 2002: 118–25). It becomes a ‘pathology’ if we reduce our individual informants to cultural forms, and a ‘distortion’ if we bury the experience of individual subjects in the categories of a totalizing and exteriorizing explanation (Jackson 1989: 89). A cosmopolitan method sets out to know a common human nature that manifests itself in a diversity of individual instantiations. If there are universal, species-wide capacities then any human being possesses these by virtue of being human. Life, however, remains individual. How human capacities are manifested in a life will depend on the ontogeny of that individual being: how that individual life makes itself – including making itself ‘at home’ – relative to what is not-itself, during a lifetime.

Envoi: Not home Not everything is home or homely. This chapter has urged that home-making be recognized as individual substantiations of a universal human capacity. But home-making is also thrown into relief by other, (individual) non-home-making practices, and practices of not-making home. I am not always making my home(s) or feeling at home, and I am on occasion making myself not at home. ‘Home is so sad’, Larkin also opined (1988: 119); home is ‘the one place where one does not have feelings’, as Fernando Pessoa phrased his disquiet (2010: 81). Such seemingly dissenting voices show how individuals might conjure with senses of alienation, the unhomely and anti-homely. Does it stretch sense too far to see these, too, as substantiations of home-making: individuals at home in homelessness? It is this human range that is evidenced in a book furnishing interdisciplinary case-studies into what its editors define as the ‘imaginative reality’ underlying ‘home’ as focal experience, concept and discourse. Home

36

THINKING HOME

is at once a space (mental and material) at which one resides, to which one comes, and from which one departs (Bahun and Petrić); ‘home’ is necessarily a polythetic category, encompassing both ‘smoke’ and ‘land’ (Homer): the ideal and the real, the abstract and the specific, the intangible and the tangible, the ascribed and the achieved (Papadopoulos); to encounter individuals ‘at home’ in specific times and places is to behold incommensurabilities (Fox O’Mahony and Overton). Humanity lives as individuality. ‘Anyone’ is the anthropological subject: any Tom, Dick or Harry; any Arthur, Sean or Stan.

References Al-Mohammad, H. (2012), ‘A Kidnapping in Basra: The Struggles and Precariousness of Life in Post-invasion Iraq’, Cultural Anthropology, 27 (4): 597–614. Amit, V. and N. Rapport (2012), Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality, London: Pluto. Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cieraad, I. (ed.) (2006), At Home, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Collis, M. (1962), Stanley Spencer, London: Harvill. Glew, A. (ed.) (2001), Stanley Spencer: Letters and Writing, London: Tate Gallery. Gough, P. (2006), Stanley Spencer: Journey to Burghclere, Bristol: Sansom. Jackson, M. (1989), Paths Toward a Clearing, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jackson, M. (ed.) (2000), At Home in the World, Durham: Duke University Press. Jackson, M. (2002), The Politics of Storytelling, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Kierkegaard, S. (1958), The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834–1854, Glasgow: Fontana. Larkin, P. (1988), Collected Poems, London: Faber. Lawrence, D. H. (1982), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, G. Zytaruk and J. Boulton (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levi, P. (1996), The Drowned and the Saved, London: Abacus. Miller, D. (ed.) (2001), Home Possessions, Oxford: Berg. Patrizio, A. and F. Little (1994), Canvassing the Clyde: Stanley Spencer and the Shipyards, Glasgow: Glasgow Museums. Pessoa, F. (2010), The Book of Disquiet, London: Profile. Pople, K. (1991), Stanley Spencer, London: Collins. Rapport, N. (1993), Diverse World-Views in an English Village, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rapport, N. (1997), Transcendent Individual: Towards a Literary and Liberal Anthropology, London: Routledge. Rapport, N. (2003), I Am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power, London: Routledge. Rapport, N. (2007), ‘An Outline for Cosmopolitan Study, for Reclaiming the Human through Introspection’, Current Anthropology, 48 (2): 257–83.

ANYONE – ANY ARTHUR, SEAN OR STAN

37

Rapport, N. (2008), Of Orderlies and Men: Hospital Porters Achieving Wellness at Work, Durham: Carolina Academic Press. Rapport, N. (2010a), ‘Apprehending Anyone: The Non-Indexical, Post-Cultural and Cosmopolitan Human Actor’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16 (1): 84–101. Rapport, N. (ed.) (2010b), Human Nature as Capacity: Transcending Discourse and Classification, Oxford: Berghahn. Rapport, N. (2012a), Anyone: The Cosmopolitan Subject of Anthropology, Oxford: Berghahn. Rapport, N. (2012b), ‘Emancipatory Cosmopolitanism: A Vision of the Individual Free from Culture, Custom and Community’, in G. Delanty (ed.), Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies, 101–14, London: Routledge. Rapport, N. (2016), Distortion and Love: An Anthropological Reading of the Life and Art of Stanley Spencer, Farnham: Ashgate. Rapport, N. and A. Dawson (eds) (1998), Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement, Oxford: Berg. Rothenstein, J. (ed.) (1979), Stanley Spencer: The Man, Correspondence and Reminiscences, London: Paul Elec. Silverstone, R. and E. Hirsch (eds) (1994), Consuming Technologies, London: Routledge. Spencer, G. ([1961] 1991), Stanley Spencer by His Brother Gilbert, Bristol: Redcliffe. Wardle, H. and N. Rapport (eds) (2010), A Cosmopolitan Anthropology, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (Special Issue of Social Anthropology, 18 (4)). Williksen, S. and N. Rapport (eds) (2010), Reveries of Home: Nostalgia, Authenticity and the Performance of Place, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

2 Domestic Dislocation – When Home is Not So Sweet Charlotte Weinberg and Obinna Nwosu (SAFE GROUND)

Home-making Safe Ground is an arts education organization working with people in prison, secure settings and local communities, using the arts to develop educational access and to strengthen relationships and identities. Safe Ground is also a practice-based organization whose delivery and interventions address some of the issues arising for the people we describe as ‘domestically dislocated populations’. The term ‘domestic dislocation’ refers to people in any given setting who have experienced internal dislocation, that is, become separated from their ‘homes’ for a variety of reasons while still living in the same country and sometimes even the same town. We use arts and participatory approaches to group work to support people to cope with and recuperate from traumatizing events and their impacts, to engage with our own and others’ experiences and to consider our attitudes and their impact in the world. In All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, the fifth book of her sevenvolume autobiography, Maya Angelou writes that ‘the ache for home lives in all of us’. This is so, she reasons, because home is a psychologically constituted ‘safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned’ (Angelou 1991: 196). It is, however, precisely at this point in the book that the character, Angelou herself, leaves Ghana, her projected but temporary home(land). For many people, home is an idea of their origin, but also an aspiration or a long-

40

THINKING HOME

term goal. Home, however, is not always a safe or easy-going place where we can go and not be questioned. Indeed home is sometimes exactly the place where the hardest questions are asked: ‘Where have you been, who with, what are you wearing, where’s my dinner, why are you looking at me like that, have you got any money, where’s my clean shirt, why are you so stupid, what did you just say, where did you get that, do you want some of this …?’ It is a place where, as Renos Papadopoulos suggests in his chapter in this volume, contraries co-exist and are negotiated; a place and experience which, ‘regardless of how dysfunctional families may be, [provides] that deep and fundamental sense of space where all these opposites and contradictions can be contained and held together’ in order for our identity to be shaped. It is as such that home, and the sense of home, are vital and necessary contributors to who we are, and are crucial to be (re)constituted when working with vulnerable people. For some of us, however, home is a place to avoid, to leave, run away from, reject, be afraid of or be afraid in. In one of his songs American recording artist Gil Scott-Heron writes about just such an experience of home: ‘Home is where the hatred is/Home is filled with pain and it/Might not be such a bad idea if I never, never went home again …’ (‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’, LP Pieces of a Man, 1971). This essay seeks to examine, in the first instance, the realities of those of us whose experience of home is not sweet, where the contradictions are unresolved, and where the fundamental notions that underpin our identity that are linked to a real or projected sense of home are less secure and less stable; and those of us who have been expelled from home, who have fled home or have a problematic relationship with home. Secondly, this chapter specifically introduces the work of Safe Ground with such populations and its efforts to create opportunities for the people the organization works with to develop ideas, a sense and a lived experience of a home that can function as what Kurt Borchard calls ‘[a] true home … [that] … provides residents with a sense of personal autonomy and privacy’ (Borchard in Kusenbach and Paulsen 2013: 82). At Safe Ground we refer to people for whom home is not a safe place as ‘domestically dislocated people’. ‘Domestic dislocation’ is a phrase coined by the Executive Director of Safe Ground, Charlotte Weinberg, and it presents a further development of Renos Papadopoulos’s extensive research and practice relating to the issues of involuntary dislocation in the context of the refugee experience. According to Papadopoulos, involuntary dislocation has two faces and two moments as a process: first, it is an experience, or emotion, that a person, a family or a community develop of no longer feeling home as ‘home’, a specific type of dislodgement from the experience of being at

DOMESTIC DISLOCATION – WHEN HOME IS NOT SO SWEET

41

home with one’s home; second, it involves an actual movement away (mainly physical-geographical but also psychological) from the space of home, or the space previously experienced as ‘being home’ (see Papadopoulos in this volume). Based on this research, Safe Ground acknowledges that dislocation can be physical, psychological and emotional and so we understand that one can be a refugee even when one is ostensibly ‘at home’. The term ‘domestic dislocation’ is therefore used by the organization to: (1) describe the insecurity and impermanence of home experienced by many people in secured settings and (2) to capture the liminality of the space in which dislocated people often reside and in which Safe Ground works.

The work of Safe Ground: Home in liminal space At Safe Ground we nurture the idea that the phenomenon of the refugee is not simply that of ‘others’ in ‘poor’, distant or ‘developing’ countries; rather, it is a set of conditions and principles that relate to people for whom home has ceased to be a safe place, to whom the government or other care systems have failed to respond appropriately and for whom exposure to potentially trauma-inducing incidents is common. Our work aims to suggest that the experience of dislocation has a much wider application and that the necessary therapeutic understanding for enabling refugee and asylum-seeking people to flourish can also be usefully applied in all institutions and organizations, including those working with people in secured settings and rehabilitation projects. Such an awareness is important if people are to lead self-directed, critically engaged and collectively minded lives. Domestically dislocated groups include a vast range of people, all of whom have individual stories and histories to tell, just as all refugees and asylum seekers have unique experience of seeking new ‘homes’. According to the Prison Reform Trust Bromley Briefings Summer 2015, looked after children make up 33 per cent of boys and 61 per cent of girls in custody, despite fewer than 1 per cent of all children in England being in care. For many UK citizens, regardless of place of birth, the experience of being taken into local authority care often leads to, or is the result of violence, abandonment, neglect, abuse, displacement, torture, threat, insecurity, bereavement, loss of family or primary carer. It is clear, therefore, that for children and young people whose experiences of ‘home’ are not stable, safe or secure, outcomes and adult potential are significantly negatively affected.

42

THINKING HOME

Our methodology and programming provides measures of certainty that enable individuals and groups, often subjects of trauma, dislocation and alienation, to consider the space for home that yields a positive ‘home-ness’. Our masculinities programme Man-Up, for instance, challenges existing structures in which behavioural ‘norms’ are fostered and absorbed, by supporting men and young men to explore the ways in which the concept of ‘masculinity’ contributes to shaping individual identity, where attitudes and negative outcomes are experienced by men as a result of wanting or needing to fulfil stereotypes and expectations. One can find oneself in a home constructed of heteronormative machismo, violence, domination and misogyny, but be an uncomfortable or unhappy occupant. Man-Up provides a foundation for deconstruction of such situations. Man-Up sits in a suite of programmes that together support men, women, young and older people to become the architects of themselves. A participant in a Man-Up programme described his experience: My upbringing was to be the aggressor, to be the dominant and aggressive one … for me … I believe I need to be … especially in this environment, it can be volatile sometimes … I do feel that I … shouldn’t project any hostility towards people … being able to contain any anger is to be a man … and I believe it takes a stronger man to contain his anger than to physically get into an altercation with someone … Yeah, definitely to be able to contain my anger, and to talk to people and know how to ask for help and when to ask for help … not feel so, what I used to think was that a man had to be independent, not ask for help … do everything alone if you could, but now … I believe I do have to be able to ask for help and not feel lesser of weak for asking for help … Now, I can actually sit down and feel comfortable expressing myself … and not feel weak and less than a man for being able to do that … so I think the course helped me identify that more. SG1 Matthew (Blagden and Perrin 2014) Matthew’s words also remind us of a need for wider interventions. Political ideology and will are symbiotic with statutory practice and the delivery of ‘care’ in institutions and establishments designed to hold, look after, rehabilitate, detain or heal people. It is therefore inevitable that ‘caring’ is a political act and that receiving care is equally political. The making of ‘home’ is, likewise, a political act. Consciously or not, we define ourselves, create and reflect ourselves in our surroundings. If we control where we live and with whom, we must recognize the privilege in that control. Many people are housed by statutory agencies, given one choice only, not allowed

DOMESTIC DISLOCATION – WHEN HOME IS NOT SO SWEET

43

to refuse ‘appropriate accommodation’ regardless of location or in some cases, state of repair or size. At the same time, as Clare Cooper Marcus contends, ‘whether we are conscious of it or not, our home and its contents are very potent statements about who we are’ (Kusenbach and Paulsen 2013: 25). Conversely, a less than adequate home reshapes how we perceive of ourselves. Home looks, smells and feels like us. It’s a place for us to make our own. Crucially, as Vivienne Ashley has argued in her chapter in this volume, having a less than adequate home directly impacts on how well equipped we are to exercise optimal decision-making and make best choices for ourselves. And for some people, home is a sleeping bag on a friend’s settee, a cardboard box in a doorway or a prison cell. All these ‘less than adequate homes’ are directly linked to political and social good will, and policymaking. Over the last five years, Safe Ground has worked with a man called ‘G’. When we met G, he was in prison and had already taken one of our programmes, many years ago in a London jail. G participated in our arts programme, Transitions, working in a group to make a script that became a film in our home borough of Wandsworth. After that, G took part in the Man-Up programme, helping us to refine and validate the early programme design. G was released from prison and spent six months working hard to regain his place in his family, to find a place to live, something to do with his time and to regain a sense of how to live in the world outside the regime. After six months, G went back to prison for a new offence. He was released after a year and began again, with our support, to start from scratch, building the resources, network, capacity and skills to create home for himself. During the course of a difficult year, filled with turbulence, moves from temporary housing, health issues and diagnoses of serious conditions that had gone unrecognized in prison, G was living in a secure tenancy, doing odd jobs and was in regular contact with his family. He had begun to piece together a life for himself that could perhaps include a sense of ‘home’. As we write this chapter, we have had a letter from G explaining that he is back in prison and asking us for our help and support, which of course, we will give him. We cannot condone or comment on G’s crime, to him or to anyone else; but we can understand and appreciate that to find home is often a long, difficult and complicated journey, and it needs to be assisted, in both intangible and tangible ways. If, as for many ‘refugee’ people, the experiences of involuntary domestic dislocation and being ‘cared for’ by the state actually increase and extend the process of dislocation, prolonging and colluding with the inability of people to form relationships, become secure and to attach to a ‘home’, perhaps there are better ways to work with these experiences, the people who bear them and those who bear witness to them. Safe Ground has incorporated

44

THINKING HOME

Papadopoulos’s adversity-activated development theory, a theory holding that the conditions of adversity can create opportunities for personal growth and shaping and stabilizing the sense of home (see Papadopoulos in this volume), into our own Model of Change. Our methodology is participatory, interactive and based on the use of drama and the arts as vehicles for transformational change. We create the opportunity for people to experience others’ perspectives through role play, character creation, fiction and storytelling and we use the group dynamic of working in large numbers to generate reflection, well-held conflict and difference. Our work challenges and provokes people into thinking; often participants in prison say that ‘thinking’ is something they miss as the environment does not demand, encourage or require much thought. Our programmes offer participants the chance to recognize their skills, abilities, potential, achievements and development, and to realize that, as Papadopoulos suggests, it is precisely through the adversity they have experienced that new capabilities have emerged, equipping them with new perspectives and understandings that add value to the life they can construct for themselves. Our programmes attempt to overcome the fact that prison is lacking in ‘safe spaces’ within which the incarcerated individuals can be vulnerable, and teach participants ‘how to construct a safe space in yourself that you can carry round with you and is resilient and robust enough to overcome all the slings and arrows’ (Charlotte Weinberg in Sloan 2016: 11). Home is part of all our work. But we used it as the specific focal point of a very successful creative writing programme that we ran for two seasons (2014/2015), the result of which was an independently published, limited edition handcrafted volume of poetry, which has already received both positive reviews and awards. The following pages will outline the programme and give the reader a flavour of the volume in question.

Performing home The liminal space between temporal reality – the impermanent material surroundings – and aspirational imagination – the idealized, fantasy, future ‘home’ – is where Safe Ground does its work, but it is also the fertile ground of poetry. In this place it is possible to transcend time and space, to adapt cultural architecture (choose our own norms and values) and to inhabit memories of the future: to experience our own creations, create and project, re-imagine all our past, present and future homes. Through the project called GROUNDation II (Figure 2.1), which ran inside HMP Wandsworth and in local Wandsworth communities (May 2014–April

DOMESTIC DISLOCATION – WHEN HOME IS NOT SO SWEET

45

2015), Safe Ground has presented poetry as a locus for the critical analysis of notions and experiences of home, and as material for the safe version of home.1 In introducing poetry to these communities (perhaps for the first time) and in line with Safe Ground’s organizational mission to create stronger, safer communities, the project also aimed to enhance community cohesion in the borough of Wandsworth. The project significantly impacted participants through a series of four 3-hour poetry workshops and separate performance workshops inside HMP Wandsworth and outside in the local Wandsworth community, led by renowned poets/spoken word artists. Participation enhanced literacy, critical thinking and communication skills, and also improved empathy, artistic expression and relationship skills. The project was successful in engaging the diverse communities in Wandsworth, especially young people (18–24 years) and older people (65+) who made up 45 per cent and 12 per cent of participants respectively. GROUNDation II culminated in a performance event ‘Poetry, Power, People’, bringing together all the project participants in the Visitors Hall inside the prison in front of friends, family, local people, policymakers and prison staff. The project also resulted, as mentioned, in the publishing of a book of poetry entitled Home, featuring the work of participants, extending the life of the project and creating a permanent home for the connections made between groups. GROUNDation II has subsequently received a Koestler Gold Award (2015) and been awarded Highly Commended status by the Idox Innovation Award (2015). Participants have seen poetry, at various points during the project, as ‘therapeutic, creative, positive … ’, engendering a sense of ‘ … freedom, understanding, rhythm … ’, and they commented on‘ … lyrics set down to make you think and see things in ways you couldn’t or wouldn’t have thought before’; engagement with poetry writing and performing, one participant observed, is ‘how you can create reality’. These inspiring assessments single out poetry as a not only empowering but also transformative medium, one that helps reposition a person and their relationship with community. This outcome is fully in line with Safe Ground’s ambitions and ethos. Safe Ground approaches those who experience the trauma of domestic dislocation in much the same way as Nimisha Patel writes of ‘caring’ for people experiencing the trauma of rape as a weapon of war: ‘In practice, [such caring] means … repositioning the person not as “damaged” and as a passive victim and a passive recipient of services, but as a potentially active citizen who can participate in social transformation and justice; developing interventions beyond the psyche and the individual, working with groups, communities, institutions and at the level of policy change … ’ (2008: 15). In our GROUNDation II project we have observed how, in finding security and resilience in the ability to make stanzas, building them with metaphor and

46

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 2.1  Photomontage of photographs documenting various parts of the GROUNDation II project, 2014–15. Clockwise from top left: (1) Poet Sara Hirsch at the Katherine Lowe Settlement, Wandsworth, courtesy of Susanna Fernandes; (2) Poetry in formation at poet Kayo Chingonyi’s workshop at South Thames College, courtesy of Claire Lawrie; (3) Students writing what they feel at poet Dean Atta’s workshop at London Southbank University, courtesy of Claire Lawrie; (4–5) Stills from ‘Poetry, Power, People’ at HMP Wandswoth, courtesy of Jonathan Perugia; and (6) Whiteboard instructions at poet Kayo Chingonyi’s workshop at South Thames College. Photomontage, 2015 (© Safe Ground). Courtesy of Safe Ground. simile, a confidence in such reconstruction processes begins to form. The further pursuit of poetry (97 per cent of respondents said they would continue to engage with poetry in the future), the enhancement of critique skills, mutual support skills and literacy skills, are outcomes that are the building blocks of this reconstruction (Figure 2.2). The following is a selection of poems that were created in the project and published in the volume Home (Figure 2.3).

47

DOMESTIC DISLOCATION – WHEN HOME IS NOT SO SWEET

FIGURE 2.2  Silent applause for a poem that was recited by a prisoner in British Sign Language at GROUNDation II, 4 March 2015. Photograph courtesy of Jonathan Perugia and Safe Ground (© Safe Ground). Home Is Home Home is full of ups and downs Home is Home Home is full of family Home is Home Home is where rivers of water flows Home is Home Home is where I fell Home is where I got up Home is where I grew up Home is where I got belted, Betrayed. Angered. Taught. Home is love. Home is peace… Home is home. (Gloire) In Wandsworth In Wandsworth I have Met the good and great,

48

THINKING HOME

Felt as full of energy as the wind along the river Seen the starlings swooping evening flight over Battersea bridge And not finished doing everything I want to do. In Wandsworth I have Tasted love of the best kind, Tasted my first McDonalds lunch, Tasted the green of the grass as the rain falls on top of it Tasted fish and chips Tasted different smells that remind me of home Tasted some of the best beer, some bitter some smooth, Made some rash decisions in a drunken haze Lost my innocence Lost my youth Lost my travel pass Even lost my child for a few minutes. In Wandsworth I have tasted life. In Wandsworth I have felt the warmth of winter Felt welcomed by the smiles of the brave and experimental, Wished for the impossible dream. Seen massive social change. Seen the bustling traffic. Seen my children learning to swim. In Wandsworth I have Felt isolated from my roots. I have seen my childhood in front of me I have Not found love, Not always made the best decisions Not been able to adjust to city life. I have Wished to be back in Camden. I have tasted what it is to live south of the river, Wished for more hours in the day, Made a path to my future But NOT yet seen it all. (Group poem)

DOMESTIC DISLOCATION – WHEN HOME IS NOT SO SWEET

49

Screams I was raised by screams, shouts of kids messing around. I was raised by weed and every day we was smoking it down. I was raised by a demon, my dad was the devil he taught me to hate. I was raised by an angel, my mum was a bright light, she taught me to love. I was raised by a jungle of concrete and steel. I was raised by the music of a broken record continuously spinning playing over and over again. Home for me younger… Home for me was screams, shouts, brothers and sisters messing around. Home for me was a bonged out room stinking of weed because we was smoking it down. Home for me was a devil I called Dad, that taught me to hate from the sky to the ground. Home for me was an angel I called Mum, that shone like a bright light and picked me up when I was down. Home for me was a jungle of concrete and steel, broken streets, broken homes, broken dreams, people fighting to kill. Home for me was a broken record continuously spinning, stuck on repeat making me think is there any hope for me. (Jason)

Home somewhat home Home is a melange of space, time, memory, imagination and geographical locations but, primarily, it is a set of complex relationships with other people. It is people that make places either hostile or hospitable. At Safe Ground we believe that learning to understand relationships is as important as learning to read and write and that connected communities are stronger, safer and more secure places to be. We support people who take refuge in our temporary home to leave our care with greater resilience and sense of agency. As Harriet Ward similarly identifies in her longitudinal study with care leavers (2011), research across countries has highlighted the importance of a sense of belonging and ‘connectedness’ in order for young people to develop secure identities. The individuals’ resulting desistance from crime and self-destructive behaviour is a main positive outcome; underlying it all, and crucially, home, both internally and externally, becomes a place of welcome, safety, security and development, enabling positive-decision-making.

50

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 2.3  [Group author], Home (2015). Photograph courtesy of Jatinder Kailey and Safe Ground.

Safe Ground works with people for whom home has often been difficult, may be distant and perhaps has been the site of much damage by and to them. Our methodology enables us to offer a safe space to people who make us their home for a while, learn to trust and feel safe with us, bolster and repair their own internal space; we offer a model of home that will assist and support them to gradually build their own homes, at first inside themselves and slowly, in the physical world of relationships, interactions and exchanges. The world demands transactions and Safe Ground offers a space in which people can redefine their comfort zones, assess what they are willing to transact and renegotiate what they feel at home with. Welcome Home.

Note 1 The ‘version’ in reggae music is a tradition used by many DJs, sound operators and producers to issue new releases responding to the unique or one-off rhythms being released in Jamaica. The version is either a dub plate (no vocals) or a version including vocals over the same rhythm as another artist. See Barrow and Barker 2012.

DOMESTIC DISLOCATION – WHEN HOME IS NOT SO SWEET

51

References Angelou, M. (1991), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, New York: Vintage. Barrow S. and S. Barker (2012), Reggae Sound System: Original Reggae Album Cover Art – A Visual History of Jamaican Reggae Music from Mento to Dancehall, London: Soul Jazz Records. Blagden, N. and C. Perrin (2014), ‘Evaluating the Man-Up Programme across Three London Prisons: An Interim Report’, available at: http://www. safeground.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Blagden-and-Perrin-Man-UpInterim-Report.pdf. [Group author] (2015), Home, London: Safe Ground. Kusenbach, M. and K. E. Paulsen (eds) (2013), Home: International Perspectives on Culture, Identity, and Belonging, Berlin: Peter Lang. Papadopoulos, R. (ed.) (2002), Therapeutic Care for Refugees: No Place Like Home, London: Karnac. Patel, N. (2008), ‘Rape as Torture’, Clinical Psychology Forum, 192: 12–16. Scott-Heron, G. (1971), ‘Home is Where the Hatred Is’, LP Pieces of a Man, Flying Dutchman Records. Sloan, J. (2016), Masculinities and the Adult Male Prison Experience, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ward, H. (2011), ‘Continuities and Discontinuities: Issues Concerning the Establishment of a Persistent Sense of Self amongst Care Leavers’, Children and Youth Services Review, 33 (12): 2512–18.

3 Home: Paradoxes, Complexities and Vital Dynamism Renos K. Papadopoulos

The magic of home It is remarkable that the word and image of home attracts possibly a greater number of idealized associations than any other word.1 For many years, with many different types of groups (educational, cultural, professional, age, gender, etc.) all over the world, I have been asking people to write down the first words that come to their mind when they hear the word ‘home’. The overwhelming majority produce not only positive associations but idealized ones that typically link home with attributes such as warmth, nurture, protection, safety, security, support and acceptance. Yet, in reality, not a single actual home is ideal and each home includes various degrees of these idealized qualities as well as many combinations of them with their very opposites, e.g. warmth and coldness, protection and persecution, safety and risk, love and conflict, closeness and distance, hopes and disappointments, joys and sorrows. Like every aspect of human life, home is full of complexities that combine desirable and undesirable facets; yet, home seems to be unique in constellating images of perfection – only one pole of the human reality. This is an astonishing paradox which justifies the claim that home is, in a sense, a ‘magic’ image and word, which we often use to activate idealized states of harmonious existence. Yet, this most powerful phenomenon has hardly been studied in systematic ways by any academic discipline or any professional discourse. The subject matter of home, in its complexity and

54

THINKING HOME

elusiveness, started receiving academic attention only relatively recently, when human geography began investigating various forms of intimate space and new fields of study such as place attachment and emotional geography emerged (cf. Moore 2007; Manzo and Devine-Wright 2014), and concepts such as solastalgia and soliphilia developed (Albrecht 2005). This long-term neglect reminds one of the ancient Greek goddess Hestia (the ‘hearth’ in Greek), the protector of homes, domesticity and family. It is characteristic and indicative that Hestia – although she is one of the first Olympians – shuns visibility. She is always in the background, keeping the home fires burning, and, in her unassuming and modest way, she provides the backbone of home. It is the hearth that suggests that the house is lived in, that it is inhabited by people who gather around the fire for its provision of warmth and light, sharing of company, relationships and cooked food. Little wonder that drawings of home, especially children’s drawings, typically show a smoking chimney as an indispensable part – and this motif repeats itself despite the fact that, nowadays, most homes no longer have hearths and much less do they have smoking chimneys. Such images of home are seductive in evoking the idealized qualities of settledness, comfort, safety and nourishment. Among the endless examples around us of the seductive allusion to such idealizations of home is the (ab)use of so-called ‘home-made’ food products prepared with ‘home recipes’ – while we know full well that a fruit jam produced and bottled in a mass-production plant cannot be home-made. Similarly, the image of home is used to soften the impersonal feel of institutional ‘care’ by calling establishments for the care of children or of the elderly ‘homes’. Wherever the image of home is evoked, a powerfully positive idealization is activated, which can be characterized as archetypal fascination. Consequently, the home image is used (and abused) widely because it always seems to have a powerful effect – despite the fact that in many, if not most, contexts the actual connection with the realities of home is tenuous, far-fetched, or often completely false and untrue, as in the factory-made ‘home-made’ products. Another aspect of the magic derives from home’s elusive nature, which can make it so difficult to pin down its intended meaning. When we think or talk about home, we tend to confuse its concrete and specific constitutive dimensions with its abstract and general connotations. All seem to appear in unpredictable combinations. Invariably, when referring to home, we move from the concrete to the abstract, from the ideal to the real, without being aware of these shifts. Thus home harbours a wide and contextual spectrum of meanings that encompass a physical and geographical community, as much as a psychological locus of relatedness and communion. Furthermore, home can operate as the perceived locus of origin as well as the desired destination. Although we tend to comprehend the idea of homecoming, or reaching home,

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

55

in terms of one direction only – the regression, the return to the home of origin (physically, geographically or metaphorically), to the location or cultural milieu or psychological space where we were born or grew up – it is important to keep in mind the inherently dichotomous direction that is engendered in our longing for home: the yearning is not only for a return to the past, the familiar, but also, prospectively, for the achievement of desired goals. When certain goals are achieved, often the exclamations are about, finally, arriving home. Thus the confusing characteristics of home are related to its reference to at least three different ‘homes’ – those of the past, the future and the ideal. This complexity is activated irrespective of whether we have lost our home voluntarily (as in changing home due to new professional opportunities) or involuntarily (as in becoming refugees). For, when involuntarily dislocated refugees talk about home (be it their abandoned home of origin, their present home, or their intended home), it is difficult to discern whether their narratives express idealized or reality-based memories or desired expectations. So, how can we define home? In the absence of any single set and established academic or professional definition, I draw from my reflections on my psychosocial and psychotherapeutic work with involuntarily dislocated persons over a number of years. On this basis, I would propose that home could be understood as the dynamic archetypal system, a systemic hub, a network, a cluster, a container of complex interactions between (a) space, (b) time and (c) relationships. This postulation supposes, then, that the experience of home emerges whenever specific relationships are established over a period of time and within the context of a particular space. This space is not limited to geographical, physical place, or architecture; it also refers to any space that is experienced as being intimate, and it extends to the sense of space understood in various contexts such as cultural, spiritual, historical, psychological, societal, financial, ethnic, political, climatic, etc. The ‘time dimension’ of home is neither defined nor limited by its duration. Even within the context of a relatively brief period of time it is possible for one to feel at home, provided that specific relationships are enabled within a particular intimate space. The duration would suffice as long as it enables us to experience over the course of time some changes, some particular repetitions and some particular patterns. Finally, although the relationships are primarily with persons, the sense of home also emerges in relationships with objects, events, landscapes, climate, narratives, etc. Additional characteristics of home are connected by its multidimensionality. The containing capacity of home is the result of the stability that it provides in terms of continuity within a physical and emotional space where intimate relationships develop (regardless of whether they are positive or negative). The fact that these experiences are held within the context of a home creates a sense of constancy and stability. Home thus serves as a ‘secure

56

THINKING HOME

base’ in John Bowlby’s terms (1988), where the essential continuity of secure bonds between an infant and the parent(s) enables the child to feel secure and to maintain a balance between seeking proximity and venturing into the unknown outside. The emphasis of this concept, as part of Bowlby’s attachment theory, is on the early interpersonal relationships; I add that home could be understood as the primary locus for such relationships.2 The same space could be illuminated as both physical and psychological from the point of view of Donald Winnicott’s ideas on ‘transitional space’ (1971): a psychological space in between the infant and the others which enables the development of intersubjectivity and entrance into the symbolic world. This is a potential space that he referred to as a ‘third area’ existing in between the subject and the object, the inner and the outer, the physical and the psychological, the experiential and symbolic.3 At the personal level, then, home operates as a protective and holding membrane, providing a felt sense of continuity that enables co-existence between many opposites: love and discord, distance and proximity, joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, flexibility and obstinacy, envy and magnanimity, rivalry and collaboration, loyalty and betrayal, enmity and friendship, similarities and differences, to name but a few. As a protospace, home affords a primary experience of constructing and negotiating crucial dichotomies such as external and internal, public and private, social and personal/family, family and individual, me and you, us and them, familiar and unfamiliar. Within the context and relative permanence of home, one can experience the co-existence of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, and this experience creates a special feeling of containment that is not usually consciously appreciated. Regardless of how successfully this negotiation takes place in an individual’s life history and experience, the very sense of the existence of these dichotomies matters a great deal. Home can be understood as the proto-locus where these are first sensed and experienced in the context of human interactions. Consequently, home is constituted as the space which holds these experiences and the positive or negative sense that is derived from them. The continuity itself within a certain felt space contributes to the development of a deep sense of reliability about life. Thus, home is the locus where the physical and metaphorical meanings of containment are closely interlinked to a degree that they become inseparable dimensions of the same entity. This develops a sense of security, regardless of whatever other negative or even traumatic experiences family members may also have as a result of their family interactions.4 This function of home is thus most important in minimizing or even avoiding archaic and fundamental forms of splitting. Understood as one such particular kind of ‘container’ (Wilfred Bion’s term; 1962), home impacts on at least three levels: (a) it can enable the growth

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

57

and development of individuals within the family, (b) it can regulate the network of interrelationships within its members as well as their conflicts and disturbances, and (c) it can mediate between these two levels and the outer world, the society, the culture, and the socio-political and economic realities.5 Thus, we could appreciate home as a key construct which interconnects three overlapping realms – the intrapsychic, the interpersonal and the sociopolitical. It is within the context of the primary sense of home (not necessarily the actual conscious and ongoing experience of one) as a proto-space that these three realms can interrelate in a meaningful way. Home, as the physical and psychological locus of the family, represents the most tangible systemic expression of the family interconnections among its members and the society at large. Home constitutes a primary locus where boundaries and limits are experienced and negotiated. Undoubtedly, the particular way they are experienced will affect the psychological make-up of individual members and it will either facilitate a positive personality development or it will leave a negative effect that will mark the individual, possibly for life. However, the fact that the individual had the sense of them within the context of home will form part of their own sense of self. Understood and defined in this way, home is closely interlinked with a person’s identity. The sense of home, I argue more specifically, forms part of the core ‘mosaic substratum of identity’, often imperceptible but vitally shaping who we are and who we can be. In what follows I shall elaborate on this proposition in the light of my previous and current work, and focus specifically on the situation of refugees as a paradigmatic case of involuntarily activated variations in the shaping and reshaping of identity through the sense of home.

Home and identity Although home is so fundamental to human existence and destiny, it seems to be taken for granted. As we have seen, John Bowlby’s concept of ‘secure base’, Donald Winnicott’s notion of the holding environment, Wilfred Bion’s category of ‘container’, as well as Carl Gustav Jung’s ‘Self’ and Erik Erikson’s ‘psychosocial identity’, all could be related, from various vantage points, to the category of home, yet none of them specifically addresses and captures the actual uniqueness and complexity of the phenomenon. In my own work I have tried to elucidate the relationship between home and identity by proposing a specific model of understanding personal identity. According to my hypothesis, our identity consists of two parts that fit together in a unique way (Papadopoulos 2002: 17–18). The first part inheres in the

58

THINKING HOME

cluster of characteristics that we are mainly aware of; it includes everything that we would each consciously identify as the unique features marking us as individuals. This is the visible part of our identity, with all the tangibles such as gender, age, physical and psychological characteristics, abilities, profession, family status, social and financial status, political and ideological beliefs, religious affiliation, activities and hobbies, culture, nationality, ethnicity, wider belief systems, aspirations, one’s own body, etc. Most of us would have no problem in consciously naming and appropriately addressing changes in this realm. However, this is only the visible and tangible part of our identity, fitting on top of a base, which itself consists of a variety of different elements that are less noticeable, less tangible. The best way to represent these elements, which we tend not to be aware of, would be in the form of a mosaic, i.e. different elements that together form a pattern and unique fit, a set of diverse pieces that together form a specific design. This mosaic substratum of identity is composed of varied groups of elements: sensual input data such as visuals (landscape, nature, architecture, people, artefacts), sounds (natural, human-made, human voices, language, music), smells (natural, human-made), tastes (food, drink, air); touch, feel (textures, clothes); rhythms, habits, rituals, conscious and unconscious; and, significantly for my present discussion, the sense of belonging to a home, to a family, community, culture, to my body, to a country (that exists and I have access to). All these are taken for granted and, ordinarily, are not understood consciously as constituting our identity. These elements get composed and recomposed through the operation of factors such as space, time and relationships. In order to create that highly individualized fit, a pattern that gives us our special sense of being individuals, the tangible elements of our identity and the intangible parts – the mosaic substratum – slot together in a unique way. One’s actual sense of identity is the product of the sum total of these two parts; it is the unique combination of the tangible and intangible parts, and it is this uniquely personal pattern that generates our sense of familiarity, relative stability, and continuity of being. This pattern enables us to ‘read life’, to experience ourselves and our surroundings with a degree of familiarity and predictability. I have argued that this unique fit creates what we could call ‘onto-ecological settledness’. Here the term ‘onto-ecological’ refers to the relationship between the totality of one’s being and the totality of one’s environment, that is, the interactive zone where the individual and his or her environment are co-constitutive. It is important to appreciate that this onto-ecological settledness is not an ideal configuration of a harmonious and fulfilled state of being. Instead, it is a settled arrangement, which, consisting of the unique mixture of positive and negative elements, creates a certain fluency of life, familiarity, stability and predictability – regardless of how satisfactory  or  unsatisfactory

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

59

this state may be. Ordinarily this settledness is not at all static, although it may appear to be so; instead, it is highly dynamic, always changing and adapting according to the changes in the person and the environment. The bearable changes occur within certain margins that enable the sustainment of our sense of continuity and stability. These changes within margins are directly related to the sense of home, to the experience of being at home, of being contained by the interrelationship between one’s being and one’s environment. However, when upheavals occur over and above a particular degree of intensity, our settledness gets disturbed in a noticeable way. The state that is then created I call ‘nostalgic disorientation’. When an adversity destroys, dislocates or reshuffles that particular fit between tangible and intangible elements of our identity, the unmistakable result is a sense of disorientation, discomfort and distress that can best be described on the whole as ‘nostalgic disorientation’ because it is not a known disorientation but one that activates a strong yearning for a return to the predictability of the familiar settledness.

Refugees and nostalgic disorientation Although refugees do not constitute a coherent diagnostic category of psychological or psychopathological characteristics, the fact that they all have lost their homes makes them likely to share, significantly, one experience: that of nostalgic disorientation. As noted above, the uniqueness of the refugee predicament is best described as a disturbance in their ‘ontoecological settledness’. Their nostalgic disorientation is fuelled by the loss that is not only related to a concrete object or an easily identifiable condition but that encapsulates the totality of all the dimensions of home. This ‘totality’ includes three sets of binary dichotomous elements: (a) the two diametrically opposite directions of home which include both prospective and retrospective movements (towards the origins and the goals), (b) the double signification of home in terms of tangible and intangible entities (physical and imaginary), and (c) the two successive moments of the homecoming process (external and internal, physical and psychological, return and reintegration). The struggles, paradoxes, elusiveness, seduction and magic of home yearning are difficult to grasp in logical thought and ordinary language. That is why such subtleties are captured best in poetic language. Homer’s Odyssey is about not just the external adventures of returning home but also about the dilemmas created when being lured by attractive distractions along the way; it is mainly about the intricate complexities involved in the various forms of homecoming, i.e. not just returning to one’s geographical home but reconnecting with the key persons left behind in new contexts and appropriate

60

THINKING HOME

relationships. Constantine Cavafy’s famous 1911 poem ‘Ithaca’  reminds us that what matters most is the experience of the journey and not the arrival itself. It starts by the seemingly paradoxical wish that the ‘road’ back to Ithaca be ‘a long one’, full of ‘adventure’ and ‘discovery’, then it lists, with sensuous relish, the various new experiences encountered along the way, and it ends with the wise counsel not to expect anything from Ithaca itself, because its contribution was merely to provide the ‘marvellous journey’. And Vasko Popa’s poignant poem ‘The Little Box’ sketches the image of a little box that grows and as it grows everything in it and about it also grows and, gradually, it contains in itself ‘the house and the city and the earth/and the world she was in before’. Then, ‘remember[ing] her childhood’ and ‘by a great longing’, it becomes ‘a little box again’, still containing everything that it has acquired while it grew in size. The poem ends with another wise counsel: to look after the little box because now that one ‘can easily put it in a pocket’ one can ‘easily steal it easily lose it’ (Popa [1982] 1987). The poem is written very simply; it reads almost like a nursery rhyme. Yet it is very powerful in conveying the difficult complexities engendered in the transition from innocent and contained childhood to the development of a person, acquiring worldly knowledge and skills, and then relating this new state with the locus of origin, within the context of a delineated space (box). Moreover, this powerful home space, the box, transcends the conventional divisions of inside–outside, personal– collective, fragile and delicate while also solid and robust, oozing vitality and pathos. The situation in which refugees experience the involuntary loss of this multilayered and multifaceted entity wherefrom our very sense of the continuity of being stems, understandably, has fairly complex consequences. Refugees sense the impact of this multidimensional, deep and pervasive loss and they feel disoriented because it is difficult to pinpoint the clear source and precise nature of this loss, especially due to its intricate and dichotomous nature. What is certain is that refugees have lost their homes; this is an undeniable reality. Yet, the problem is which homes, and how aware are they of the bundles of memories, yearnings, aspirations, idealizations with which they infuse and impregnate their ideas of home? On the one hand, their claim for a return to their home or re-establishment of a new and viable home in a new country is clear, legitimate and perfectly understood, as referring to a tangible and precise concept and reality, and yet, on the other hand, everything else becomes quite disorienting. This disorientation is enwrapped in a nostalgic sense of deep ache. While refugees never lose their awareness of the actual loss of home, what creates confusion and bewilderment is the elaborate mixture of the other constitutive dimensions of home that tend to get entangled; and it is all of this that generates the sense of ‘nostalgic disorientation’. There is bewilderment, a feeling of unreality and of an

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

61

inexplicable gap, because people lose something of whose presence and effect they were not fully aware in the first place. In desperate efforts to return to a specific and familiar feeling of being-at-home, and compelled by nostalgic disorientation (which tends to activate yearnings for reified homecomings), involuntarily dislocated people experience compounding confusion that further augments their disorientation. These intertwined complexities – with their elusiveness and incomprehensibility – serve to engender additional pain, irritation, frustration, impatience and anger, and can create diverse forms of reactions (e.g. panic, depression, apathy, suspiciousness, splitting) that can easily be misunderstood and often pathologized not only by the support workers but also by the refugees themselves. It is easy to see why this specific type of disorientation is more painful than the other familiar psychological conditions in these situations because: (a) its causes are not visible although its effects are most felt and debilitating; (b) it triggers a powerful need to identify the causes, a need which often leads to deceptive conclusions, to an over-concretized but specious aetiology that exacerbates the disorientation and the yearning for a solution; and (c) it activates a strong and painful yearning to re-establish the disturbed ontoecological settledness of the lost home. But the problem, always, is – which home? Past, present or future? Geographical, cultural or social? Place of origin or desired goal? Ideal or real? Specific or abstract? Concrete and static or dynamic and changing? One or many? Here it is particularly important to appreciate that the disturbance or reshuffling of the mosaic substratum creates a kind of loss that could be characterized as primary, as opposed to all other secondary losses which are of a tangible nature and of which the person is aware. As the previous discussion suggests, the loss of home is not just about the conscious loss of the family home with all its material, sentimental and psychological values, but it is of a much more fundamental and primary kind, creating nostalgic disorientation, a disturbance closer to what has been referred to as ‘ontological insecurity’, ‘existential anxiety’ (Giddens 1991; Laing 1960), ‘existential angst’ or ‘dread’ (Kierkegaard 1957; Sartre 1948). The shared characteristics of these conditions are a deep sense of a gap, a fissure, a hole, an absence, a lack of confidence in one’s own existence and consequently in ‘reading life’ which leads to a particular kind of ‘frozenness’. In the case of involuntarily dislocated persons, this type of frozenness is often erroneously diagnosed as traumatic dissociation. An example from my practice can illuminate this point. A Middle Eastern woman who came to the UK as a refugee with her husband and two small children was considered as suffering from severe trauma or even a psychotic episode. She was aloof, distant, and although she functioned at a very basic and minimal level, she was bland, as if ‘life had gone out of her’, as her husband complained. After she

62

THINKING HOME

engaged  in  therapeutic work with me, she was able to connect with her substantial disorientation in the new country and the prospect of starting a new life, mostly day dreaming with aching nostalgia about her life back home with her neighbours, small village community, the smells and textures of the life she had left behind, her daily routines, even her pet dislikes. Once she was able to connect, on the basis of her own experiences, with the context of her nostalgic disorientation, she was able to resume life to the full, and with awareness of the losses incurred but also of the opportunities that were available to her and her family in their new country. To reaffirm, the primary loss of home can activate various forms of nostalgic disorientation that constitute some of the most significant parts of the overall syndrome of homelessness; the latter dismantles the security of homeness, the onto-ecological settledness. This complex process creates a great deal of confusion and ambiguities. However, human beings cannot tolerate ambiguity and tend to create certainty regardless of the amount of distortion involved in doing so. Thus, under the painful influence of this kind of loss, refugees, in practice, tend to single out specific complaints as the sole source of their unhappiness. Often, these complaints are legitimate but they seem to acquire extraordinary and excessive significance, and they are evidently overcharged with feeling in a disproportional way. These may be focused on insufficiently attended needs connected with housing, educational facilities for their children, financial and other benefits, but what I have found to be a particularly characteristic complaint in this context in my work with refugees is the one concerning physical medical symptoms. It is as if the absence of home creates a gap in refugees which makes them feel ‘uncontained’, and they then look around to fill the gap, to make up for that loss, to recreate the protective and containing membrane of home. In desperation, they grab anything that appears to be a reasonable ‘cause’ of their discomfort and also has a seemingly concrete ‘solution’. A single man, an African refugee, kept complaining about ‘pressure’ in his head that was rendering him almost an invalid. Repeated medical examinations found no medical basis for his complaints. Through therapeutic work he gradually came to appreciate the enormous gap that the loss of his ‘onto-ecological settledness’ created in him. He was astonished to understand how much he had underestimated the impact of his losses in relation to most elements of his mosaic substratum of identity, which he had developed in his country of origin: the specific persons he missed, the particular style and quality of human interactions, the tastes and smells, the physical landscape, the pace of life, the shared values that he did not have to explain but were taken for granted by everyone back home, etc. The more he was able to grasp the importance of these elements and the consequences of him losing them, the less the pressure in his head was affecting him, to the point that his physical complaints ceased completely.

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

63

Not only is it of paramount importance to appreciate the complexities of nostalgic disorientation outside of the confines of traditional pathologizing approaches, but we furthermore need to acknowledge that the very failures inherent in loss of home and of the onto-ecological settledness can also contain most positive and, indeed, renewing potentials. This claim needs contextualizing. The experience of failure, I argue, far from being purely debilitating and unwelcome, is actually essential for the constitution of the crucible within which one’s very identity is churned and forged: changes, both those which we label ‘negative’ and those that we see as ‘positive’, force us to reconsider our existing positions, our very identity, and to motivate us to take a stand and decide what to do next. The image and reality of home, as an intimate and safe space par excellence provides the best possible framework within which to experience and assess such changes following involuntary dislocation. Regardless of the real external circumstances that bring about the reshuffling of the onto-ecological settledness and that, in turn, activate the nostalgic disorientation, it is always possible for the affected people to put into constructive use all the powerful motivational force provided by both the nostos (going home) and algos (ache, pain), contained in the word ‘nostalgia’. Thus they can embark on a committed search to reorganize the existing status quo, which could involve, for instance, a review and a re-evaluation of their aims and goals, contributing to refreshing stagnant settledness, to dismantling and rejuvenating outdated life and home arrangements, and to developing more flexibility of a rigid, static and sterile identity. This new awareness, in turn, can transform losses and disorientation into fuel for renewal that can activate new meanings, new identities and values, and novel and more appropriate forms of onto-ecological settledness. A typical example of the positive outcomes of such radical dislocations is provided by Szczepaniková who found that, despite the hardships that Chechen refugees encountered in a Czech refugee camp, the very upheavals and resulting disorientation provided ‘opportunities for the increase of women’s power in the family and in men’s involvement in childcare and household duties’ (2005: 281), thus redressing a previous imbalance. It is for this reason that it is imperative that we do not fall into the trap of perceiving exclusively either positive or negative effects of the adversities that involuntarily dislocated persons (refugees) experience, without denying their objective losses and their legitimate demands for appropriate compensation and reparation. Despite or even because of the disorientation that is activated in these situations, opportunities are opened up to reconsider outmoded lifestyles and introduce invigorating innovations. In order to avoid partial, incomplete and compartmentalized understanding of these effects, I have devised an ‘Adversity Grid’ that tabulates the range of responses to adversity, especially in the context of involuntarily dislocated persons (Papadopoulos 2007). The Grid has three columns

64

THINKING HOME

referring to: (a) the negative effects, (b) the unchanged responses and (c) the positive effects. The negative effects are the ones that usually everybody focuses on, as these include the various losses, along with their resulting psychological and even psychiatric consequences and symptoms. The next group comprises the unaltered responses: what should not be forgotten is that, regardless of how badly persons are affected by their involuntary loss of home, they still retain unchanged some characteristics in certain areas of their functioning. For example, certain persons, in addition to their negative responses to their exposure to adversity, can also retain their sense of humour or optimism, particular skills and abilities (e.g. being meticulous in what they do), positive personality characteristics (e.g. being sociable and entertaining) as well as some negative qualities (e.g. being obstinate, easily irritable, etc.). This means that, regardless of the intensity and quality of any negative effects, certain other parts of the person remain unchanged. Finally, in addition to the negative effects and unchanged characteristics, the very exposure to adversity activates in each person certain positive responses. I have called this ‘Adversity-Activated Development’ (2007) and it refers, precisely, to the positive developments that are activated as a result of being exposed to adversity. Given that a person’s ordinary life plans and expected direction are shattered by the adversity, one is left wondering what life is about, what future direction to choose, etc. These are crucial times, life-changing crossroads, when one is forced to engage with radical reassessment of one’s being and serious soul searching. Moreover, at this very juncture, every person not only faces serious existential questions but also examines (consciously or non-consciously) what they learned from their response to that particular calamity and, inevitably, such examination brings about some positive outcomes, in addition to the negative effects and unchanged qualities. There is an endless variety of forms of AdversityActivated Development, e.g. realizing that they had strengths they did not think they possessed, becoming compassionate to the suffering of fellow human beings, developing new priorities in life, abandoning detrimental lifestyles, and others. Finally, these responses to adversity need to be considered in the context of individuals, families, communities, and wider society and culture. The ‘Adversity Grid’ enables one to use a framework that is inclusive of all responses to adversity and not opt for focusing on one while ignoring the others. And, as such, it has been used extensively in many different contexts, from clinical therapeutic work with individuals, families and groups to wider societal responses to adversity by the United Nations agencies in rapid assessments of emergency situations. In the context of involuntarily dislocated persons, the reality of Adversity-Activated Development enables us to understand that the yearning for home can be diverted from the urge to

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

65

return to an obsolete or deformed settledness, to the launching of a pursuit for new homes, for the creation of a more satisfactory and fulfilling existence. For, even the most catastrophic negative changes can fuel our efforts to reposition ourselves within our own onto-ecology. This is precisely one of the important messages of the Homeric odyssey – homecoming is not just about returning home. It is also about recreating a new home within the context of an existing one, and about grasping and negotiating the complexities involved.

Refugee care now The discourse of ‘refugee crisis’ which emerged with force in the Western media around the mid-2010s, is essentially a European characterization, and this fact should not be forgotten. Other parts of the world have experienced more acute refugee crises that did not directly affect Europe and the developed world to any significant degree and, therefore, they were not termed ‘crises’. For example, the collapse of the Somali state following the civil war and final fall of the Barre regime in 1991 forced an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Somalis, flooding their neighbouring countries, especially Kenya. Similar examples can be found in both distant and recent global history and they alert us to the need to be very careful about the Eurocentric perspective that affects most of our commentaries about refugees, even our very perception of what constitutes a ‘refugee crisis’. In the context of the present discussion about home and involuntary dislocation, it is imperative to scrutinize our conceptualizations about designated support, wider social measures, and everyday practices and attitudes. Symptomatically, prominent in the current discourse about ‘refugee crisis’ is the implication that it has ‘hit’ Europe, and therefore that, firstly, it is mostly Europeans who are ‘forced to cope’ with this crisis, and, secondly, that this ‘coping’ is the Western world’s only role in this new demographic reconfiguration. Such understanding masks the responsibility Europeans and Americans have had in contributing directly or indirectly to the very creation of this ‘crisis’ and discursively re-envisions Europe as a targetplace for the immigrants. Both limitations of vision are dangerous and both point to the necessity to broaden our definition of home to encompass not only its regional, cultural, national or other parochial perspectives, but also to appreciate the reality of its wider global connotation; our ultimate home, or the site of onto-ecological settledness, is our whole planet and the plight of involuntarily dislocated people is our plight, too. What these ‘refugee crises’ have been teaching us increasingly is that whenever a group of people lose their homes, our own homes are also affected – but not  ‘endangered’ – by

66

THINKING HOME

that uprootedness. It is precisely in the ability to recognize our home in others’ lost and prospective homes and to treat the world as a home that the healthy relationship towards one’s own home resides. Working intensively in the Greek islands, the UK and the Middle East during this recent ‘refugee crisis’ has revealed to me some new complex facets of the notion of home and the discourses that surround it. First, my on-theground experience highlighted the inappropriateness of the current ‘refugee discourse’, which projects some essentializing images of refugees as either ‘invaders’ (as suggested above) or – more ‘benevolently’ – as proud people forced to endure unimaginable brutalization and hardships to reach Europe, totally dependent on the humanitarian organizations’ precarious and often humiliating charity. I would argue that both images are wrong. These people had the misfortune of having to abandon involuntarily their homes and they ended up entering into a monolithic system that can provide assistance to them only as long as they demonstrate their credentials as being ‘vulnerable’, according to the Western incredibly problematic understanding of this term. In practice, it often means that they need to be paraded as persons suffering from a psychiatric disorder, like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (often erroneously attributed to any distress from being exposed to adversity). It is particularly detrimental to pathologize the complexities of one’s relationship to home and reduce them to psychopathological states. Such positioning feeds into the false system which promises a hope of being granted asylum, provided the asylum seekers screech their painful ‘trauma stories’ to the point that the system finds them convincing. Instead, these people need to be given back their human dignity, which involves a recognition of their right to home and home-making, including the provision of an environment to (re) negotiate their sense of home (on the necessity to have a home environment in which optimal decisions about one’s future can be made, see, also, Ashley in this volume). Significantly, my work on the ground has brought to light the power of the community, culture, spirituality, shared rituals, language, etc., in ‘replacing’ the physical and geographical home. In work with involuntarily dislocated persons, home emerges as both an essentialist as well as a constructivist entity. Home refers both to the actual physical shelter of a house embedded within a certain locality as well as to the cultural construction of a space that belongs to the collective structures of meaning. In effect, based on the premises of this chapter, what this facet reveals is the importance of onto-ecological settledness in recreating the sense of home; and it is precisely this sense that dislocated persons seek to re-establish in a new place, and they are right to expect our assistance in achieving this. They deserve our assistance not because they suffer psychologically but because they are entitled to it, by Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

67

Status of Refugees, and because we are all responsible, directly or indirectly, for their involuntary dislocation. It is not at all utopian to consider a simpler and more appropriate practice, according to which they are assessed before departure from their home countries and matched with European and other receiving countries according to reasonable criteria, and then flown directly to their new homes, thus bypassing a torturous and exploitative ordeal with the traffickers. The ‘refugee issue’ has become so topical that almost everybody is engaged in it in one way or another. The number of people that ‘work with refugees’ has multiplied phenomenally compared to even a couple of decades ago. Politicians have used the centrality of this ‘issue’ to their own advantage, making it into a game of political football. Consequently, the realities of home and of losing one’s home have come to the forefront of most people’s awareness. Unfortunately, this ‘popularization’ of home has resulted in the promotion of oversimplified and polarized formulaic perceptions and it is imperative that the complexities of home are further examined and developed, and from a multidisciplinary perspective, so that no one discipline, or sphere of knowledge, or zone of influence, misappropriates this field.

Instead of conclusion To end, I remember what Isabel Allende wrote in her book My Invented Country: A Memoir, recounting her experiences and reflections when she visited her country of origin, Chile, after living in exile for many years. She writes that people like her (exiles), ‘lack roots or corroboration of who [they] are’ and therefore have ‘to put [their] trust in memory to give continuity to our lives’. However, ‘memory is always cloudy’: what happened in the past ‘has fuzzy outlines, they’re pale’, raising questions as to whether their lives were ‘nothing but a series of illusion, of fleeting images’ leading her to ‘have absolutely no certainty’. Accordingly, she cannot ‘picture Chile as a geographical locale with certain precise characteristics: a real and definable place’. Instead, she sees Chile as ‘a country road might look as night falls, when the long shadows of the poplars trick our vision and the landscape is no more substantial than a dream’ (2003: 79). This beautifully sensitive reflection epitomizes most eloquently the paradoxes and elusiveness of home, but also the ongoing, vital dynamism of one’s sense of it. It foregrounds the need to incorporate these complexities into our thinking, as therapists, as scholars, as refugee care workers, as engaged and ethical citizens and human beings.

68

THINKING HOME

Notes 1 Parts of this essay draw on two of my previously published essays, Papadopoulos 2002 and 2014, and material has been included with permission from the editor (for Papadopoulos 2002) and from Spring Journal Books: www.springjournalandbooks.com (for Papadopoulos 2014). 2 Bowlby referred to concepts very related to home when he argued that ‘there is a marked tendency for humans, like animals of other species, to remain in a particular and familiar locale and in the company of particular and familiar people’ (1973: 176). He also referred to the idea of ‘home range’ in animals, i.e. the animals’ tendency to ‘spend the whole of their lives within an extremely restricted segment’ of ‘earth’s surface’ which is ‘ecologically suitable to them’ (1973: 177). 3 As such, this idea has attracted attention from human geographers who are interested in the cultural and psychological potentialities of space (Aitken and Herman 1997). Indicatively, one of Winnicott’s posthumously published collections of essays is entitled Home Is Where We Start From (1990). 4 The feeling of safety may or may not be added to the primary sense of stability; whether a person experiences home as a safe place or not is different from the primary experience of stability that a home exists. Bowlby made the clear distinction between security and safety: ‘[A] secure base, however much it may lead someone to feel secure, is no guarantee of safety’ (1973: 216). 5 Bion is particularly known for his astute examination of the early matrix upon which human experiences are built. It is important to note that at that very early stage of human development, ‘the proto-mental system [is] one [in] which physical and psychological or mental are undifferentiated’ (1961: 102). It is this proto-fusion that can be usefully applied to the understanding of home as both a physical and psychological entity. For Bion, the group, as an extension of the family and the place where early experiences with mother are contained and repeated, provides the ground and continuity for intense connections (i.e. pairing, dependence, fight–flight). Therefore, it could be argued that the proto-locus of the group (and by extension of all human) experiences is the home. Moreover, Bion’s original contributions about the nature of space, place, position in relation to constancy and their role in the origin of the early sense of mind, thought, thinking and feeling (e.g. Bion 1965) are highly relevant to the idea of home as, what could be called, a proto-space.

References Aitken, S. and T. Herman (1997), ‘Gender, Power, and Crib Geography: Transitional Spaces and Potential Places’, Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 4 (1): 63–88.

HOME: PARADOXES, COMPLEXITIES AND VITAL DYNAMISM

69

Albrecht, G. A. (2005), ‘Solastalgia: A New Concept in Human Health and Identity’, PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, 3: 41–55. Allende, I. (2003), My Invented Country: A Memoir, New York: Harper Perennial. Bion, W. R. (1961), Experiences in Groups, London: Tavistock. Bion, W. R. (1962), Learning from Experience, London: Heinemann. Bion, W. R. (1965), Transformations, London: Heinemann. Bowlby, J. (1973), Attachment and Loss, Volume II: Separation Anxiety and Anger, London: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1988), A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, London: Routledge. Cavafy, C. ([1911] 2008), ‘Ithaca’, in The Selected Poems of Cavafy, trans. A. Sharon, London: Penguin. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self Identity. Oxford: Blackwells. Kierkegaard, S. (1957) The Concept of Dread. Trans. W Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Laing, R.D. (1960). The Divided Self. London: Tavistock. Manzo, L. C. and P. Devine-Wright (eds) (2014), Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and Applications, London: Routledge. Moore, J. (2007), ‘Polarity or Integration: Towards a Fuller Understanding of Home and Homelessness’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 24 (2): 143–59. Papadopoulos, R. (2002), ‘Refugees, Home, and Trauma’, in R. K. Papadopoulos (ed.), Therapeutic Care for Refugees: No Place Like Home, 9–40, London: Karnac. Papadopoulos, R. (2007), ‘Refugees, Trauma and Adversity-Activated Development’, European Journal for Psychotherapy & Counselling, 9 (3): 301–12. Papadopoulos, R. (2014), ‘Failure and Success in Forms of Involuntary Dislocation’, Jungian Odyssey, Special Issue: The Crucible of Failure, 7: 25–49. Popa, V. ([1982] 1987), ‘The Little Box’, in Homage to the Lame Wolf, trans. C. Simic, Oberlin: Oberlin College Press, 1987. Sartre, J-P. (1948) Consciousness of self and knowledge of self. In Readings in Existential Phenomenology edited by N. Lawrence and D. O’Connor. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967, 113–142. Szczepaniková, A. (2005), ‘Gender Relations in a Refugee Camp: A Case of Chechens Seeking Asylum in the Czech Republic’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 18 (3): 281–98. Winnicott, D. W. (1971), Playing and Reality, Middlesex: Penguin. Winnicott, D. W. (1990), Home is Where We Start from: Essays by a Psychoanalyst, Middlesex: Penguin.

4 Strained Belonging and Claims to Home: Ancestors and Descendants of the New York African Burial Ground Susan C. Pearce

I

n 1991, New Yorkers were stunned to learn that beneath the streets and buildings of lower Manhattan, New York City, were burials of some of the city’s earliest denizens, subsequently left voiceless and forgotten: historical populations of African descent, many of whom had been enslaved. Those burials resided in a centuries-old site originally named the Negros Burial Ground, Manhattan’s resting place for people of African descent across much of the eighteenth century. However, not until 1991 did the Burial Ground return to public consciousness, accidentally discovered as bulldozers prepared the ground for the initial construction phase of a large office tower to house US federal agencies. While the revelation that graves lay beneath the city’s concrete would likely interest but not necessarily stun New Yorkers, it was the fact that the cemetery provided evidence of slavery centrally embedded in New York’s history that astounded them – including some historians. The 1991 uncovering of one grave after another as excavations moved forward (to make way for the building’s footprint and to research the remains) stimulated a vigorous grassroots movement to question the process and to protect the historic site. In this chapter, I chronicle the activism on behalf of protecting this recovered place, renamed in the twentieth century ‘The African Burial Ground’. Given that this burial place was long forgotten, the activism relating to it became an exercise in collective memory-recovery both of the

72

THINKING HOME

ground and its original inhabitants. As Maurice Halbwachs ([1941, 1952] 1992) first elaborated, memories have a collective root: even individual memories are created, carried and modified through social relationships, groups and societies. Collectively shared experiences are documented in photo albums and religious texts, recounted and interpreted, and used as markers of group identity. In the case recounted here, a collective memory recovery movement evoked strong emotional claims of community ownership, family and home, as it confronted the ongoing saga of present-day racial injustices. Thus, this chapter underscores the sociocultural dynamics of ‘thinking (of) home’ that are rooted in a particular time, place and population group. My qualitative, inductive research is based on the methods of participant observation, interviews and analysis of existing sources. This research was carried out most intensively between 1991 and 1993 (see Pearce 1997), beginning with the initial recovery of the cemetery. During this time, I attended regular meetings between government decision-makers and community representatives, scholarly presentations, ceremonies, tours and other central events such as Congressional and Landmark Preservation hearings. I served as a volunteer ally to provide assistance at events and other routine activities for the affiliated educational office. Since that time, I was present at key events that secured the grounding of the site in the landscape to represent the descendent community’s interpretive meanings: the museum opening, reburial ceremony and memorial unveiling. Subsequently, I have toured the museum and conducted interviews with key leaders related to the site’s research and memorialization. This site is the largest known cemetery for people of African descent in the United States. Since 1991, the rediscovery has been documented across the fields of anthropology, archaeology, history and the arts (Blakey 2001; Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2009; Cantwell and diZerega Wall 2001; Frohne 2015; Hansen and McGowan 1998; La Roche and Blakey 1997). My contribution to this literature is a sociological analysis, documenting the late twentieth and twenty-first century social activism, conflicts and cultural expressions arising from this rediscovery, informed by theories of social movements, culture and race relations. Stemming from this research, this chapter examines the metaphorical relationship to ‘home’ that arose in this movement, as well as how claims to home were literal and symbolic, individual and collective. I analyse how ‘home’ is both performed and iterated through the uncovering, protection and memorialization of the site and its early inhabitants. While activists occasionally vocalized the word ‘home’ throughout this process, in many instances I will be drawing together the expressed meanings of the site’s protectors using the frame of ‘home’ (its construction, its memory, its loss and its reclaiming) whether or not the term was employed. I do this to explore the emic (insiders’) collective emotive responses to the site and to dialogize

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

73

with the related research in this volume. Through this approach, the chapter illustrates the strained belonging of people of African descent within American political culture, which continues to this day.

Conceptualizing home in emplacement, displacement and memory The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers six definitions of the word ‘home’ (‘Home’: n.d.), four of which are particularly relevant here: 1 one’s place of residence: domicile 2 the social unit formed by a family living together 3 a familiar or usual setting: congenial environment; also: the focus of one’s domestic attention 4 a place of origin … also: one’s own country Each of these commonplace definitions designates physical location or the group inhabiting that setting and communicates rootedness, if not permanence. Further, the word ‘home’ clearly conveys comfort, primary social relationships and emotional attachment. Here, I will parse these meanings as lived and remembered by the African diaspora in New York (and, by extension, the United States) and their application to an ancestral gravesite. Although the first three definitions communicate the private, personal and individual nature of our shared concepts of ‘home’ within a society or nation, the experience of exile by a diasporic community means that the fourth definition is relevant only in the sense of a collective construct of absence. One’s natal or prior home is only imagined because it is elsewhere, both as a physical, literal structure and as the community of people in that place. In some sense, this evokes Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as ‘imagined community’ (1983) because the nation’s full past, present and future members never physically interact. ‘Thinking of home’ in the fourth meaning of the word becomes a substitute for actual physical presence, given that it implies imagining, mourning for or remembering. Forced and unforced diasporas know this estrangement and imagined relationship to home, although for more voluntary immigrants, it is not until the third generation that individuals begin to reclaim their cultural roots (Hansen 1952). Returning to the four definitions, ‘home’ is clearly valorized; as Renos Papadopoulos has also suggested in this volume, positive meanings (or meanings that society deems positive) tend to dominate our discursive practice when thinking about and defining home. As such, even though the

74

THINKING HOME

definitions glossed above purport to convey primarily the sense of location and locatedness, symbolic and emotive power could be easily incorporated into a more expansive definition of this word. We can append these locational attributes of a home with the concept of ‘emplacement’, defined as ‘a process through which an alien or neutral space can be transformed into a personalized social place’ (Tagwirei and de Kock 2016: 484). ‘Emplacement’ conveys the home-like transformation that stamps attachment, emotional intimacy and relationships to a dwelling or other space. This term expands our dictionary conceptions of home to one that conveys human agency, similar to Émile Durkheim’s depictions of animistic religions’ totemization of a profane object to transform it into a sacred one, its meaning stemming from society itself (Durkheim [1912] 2008). Through a Durkheimian lens, therefore, an emplacement activity conveys a positive move: a liberatory sacralization (claiming or reclaiming a space for creation, nurturing, healing, commemoration or worship). Yet, emplacement might connote the near opposite, involving some aspect of destruction (such as when the creation of a new dwelling requires replacement or displacement of buildings or inhabitants, which will be detailed here). As Europeans colonized the world’s continents, such destructive emplacement was the order of the day, even if those Europeans framed their actions as a kind of homesteading, such as ‘settlement’. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular saw European claims to have ‘discovered’ a so-called new home place, which involved forced displacement of native peoples around the globe and of Africans, both groups being forcibly emplaced in spaces alien to them and severely, violently restricted. This interplay between emplacement and displacement surely embodies the practices that became the story of the local burial site I am discussing, but that story was also only one example of global trajectories, given that New York City, in particular, was a key destination within the larger triangular slave trade (the ‘black Atlantic’ (Gilroy 1993)). In fact, many enslaved in New Amsterdam/New York had first been the victims of forced labour in the Caribbean islands, a centre of the sugar trade triangulation. The lower-Manhattan place that is the subject of this research would become, through its rediscovery, a prototypical example of what Pierre Nora calls lieux de mémoire, or sites of memory, places of commemoration in the landscape ‘because there are no longer milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory’ (1994: 284). And as Iwona Irwin-Zarecka states, ‘collective forgetting, just as collective remembering, has its own history … The absence of memory is just as socially constructed as memory itself’ (1994: 116). The more conscious forgetting is labelled by Irwin-Zarecka as a ‘memory void’ (Irwin-Zarecka 1994: 117). Due to this cemetery’s initial presence at the heart of what would eventually become a built (rebuilt, overbuilt) cityscape, the site

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

75

exemplifies the disappearance of an original totemized place of memory and its eventual recovery as a lieu de mémoire. Intertwined with the forgetting of this cemetery are the broader amnesiatic effects of displacement. As Orlando Patterson (1982) has chronicled, the African Americans’ ‘natal alienation’ from all aspects of original cultural heritage(s) ultimately and necessarily resulted from the black Atlantic history: the massive expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and chains of bondage separated the enslaved from their natal homes. Patterson’s concept introduces a specificity to Nora’s milieu de mémoire loss, and implies an intentionality to the wresting of a major population from those environments and their homeland connections. Sociologist W. E. B. DuBois was blunt in blaming this memory loss on blatant intention: he accused conventional interpreters of the American past of manufacturing ‘propaganda’, stating that the United States had yet to fully and honestly confront its guilt for slavery (Blight 1994: 54). In 1991, this block was suddenly transformed into a temporary archaeological dig, accompanied by its requisite equipment and scientific instruments. Simultaneously, the voluntary guardians who viewed the burials as those of ancestors began to re-sacralize the newly uncovered remains that came to the surface within distinguishable coffin outlines, accompanied by their burial items. It is in this context that a near-forgotten cemetery can come to symbolize home on many levels, and how that adoption of the cemetery as one’s history and its denizens as family, can simultaneously be an act of political contention.

The history: Whose home? The earliest European claim staking in the ‘New World’, a contradictory mixture of humanistic ideals with stark and unapologetic economic and power interests manifest through violent seizure of land and resources of Native nations, was at the heart of conquests such as that of the north-eastern port island that is the subject of this chapter. Dutch traders first arrived on the island in 1624, settling in its southern part, and calling it ‘Manhattan’, a variant of ‘Manahatta’, the name that the Native inhabitants, the Lenape, had given the land. This southern tip of the island became, under the Dutch, ‘New Amsterdam’. Two years later, in 1626, settlers brought eleven enslaved men of African descent to help colonize the land by providing manual labour for agricultural and public works projects. And in 1628, several women joined these men. This early establishment of a workforce based on slavery was chronologically on the heels of the first documented arrival of enslaved men in the British colonies, in Jamestown, on the soil of what would become Virginia, in 1619.1

76

THINKING HOME

New Amsterdam witnessed a system of slavery that was central to the core construction, settlement and expansion of Dutch colonization of Manhattan. The embedded dependence on enslaved labour continued and grew under the British rule, beginning in 1644. Inhabiting and renaming the place ‘New York’, the British deepened the severity of treatment of the enslaved population, reversing the few freedoms that the Dutch had granted this growing community of Africans and their descendants. The city went on to become the second largest port in the budding United States for importing Africans into enslavement, second only to Charleston, South Carolina. According to English migrant to New York Alexander Coventry, in the 1780s, ‘[i]n the vicinity of New York, every respectable family had slaves – negroes and négresses who did the drudgery’ (White 1995: 2). In 1790, in fact, 40 per cent of white households across the New York City metropolitan area (encompassing proximate New Jersey, Staten Island and Long Island) used enslaved labour, a larger proportion than that of any Southern state (White 1995: 2). The city did, quite early on, become home to a small but growing community of freed Blacks who established local institutions and forged a cultural community. In 1697, leaders of Trinity Church – a landmark structure that still exists in lower Manhattan – decreed that Blacks were no longer allowed burial in their cemetery. The land that now borders lower Broadway on the east between Duane and Reade Streets, and the five-to-six acres surrounding it, was then set aside for a ‘Negros Burial Ground’ for the enslaved and freed Blacks. North of the city limits at that time (although near the southern tip of Manhattan island today), this swampy plot was deemed undesirable by the colonists. According to records, the Negros Burial Ground was in use from 1712 to 1794, but may have opened earlier (perhaps following the 1697 Trinity Church decree) and/or closed later than 1794 (Howard University and John Milner Associates 1993: 7–12). There is a likelihood that this was the burial place for twenty-one African New Yorkers who were executed after the 1712 revolt by a group of enslaved Africans against white residents. During its use, this Burial Ground was not only a personal and family resting place, but it embodied the era’s social conditions of violent exclusion – physically and symbolically. Records indicate that as an African-descended community practised emplacement on/with this plot, the space evolved into both a site of burial and a social space for the enslaved and expanding free Black population on the island. For example, this segregated and publicly sequestered space offered a relatively safe gathering locale for ceremonies and other meetings away from the restricting eyes of the so-called ‘masters’. After this cemetery was closed, it eventually vanished from the aboveground landscape altogether. As the hills and valleys of lower Manhattan were levelled, this area was raised using landfill, and subsequently paved over as

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

77

a parking lot and used for building construction. Clearly, all of this was acted long before the value of historic preservation had become a cause célèbre in the United States and New York City itself. The cemetery’s disappearance also indicates the starkly unequal levels of power in the colonial era, as neither the dignity of the dead nor the voices of the living descendants carried weight in any decisions. Along with this physical disappearance, reinforced by the inevitable replacement of a city’s population across subsequent generations, a public memory void (Irwin-Zarecka 1994) of this site developed in Manhattan and across the sprawling city of additional boroughs. The original emplacement of the ‘Negros Burial Ground’ carried multiple layers of irony, as its presence and history spanned a number of key historic nation-building events. The American Revolutionary War (the American War of Independence, 1765–83) affected the African-descended population directly, since the British offered freedom to any enslaved man who joined their ranks. Thus, a number of New Yorkers of African descent would have been fighting against their new ‘homeland’. The burial site itself was near the Commons, a public gathering spot where the Declaration of Independence was first read, and where enslaved Africans were lynched. Following independence, the seat of government moved from one city to another, with New York serving as the national capital from 1785 to 1790, just prior to relocation to Washington (‘Washington City’ at the time). This important five-year stint as a governmental centre was a crucible moment in American history, as the first Congress to be established by the new Constitution first met on Wall Street in 1789, in the Burial Ground’s neighbourhood. The related pivotal event was the swearing in of first president George Washington in nearby Federal Hall in 1789. It is also worth mentioning that, after the site’s closure in 1794, slavery continued for decades. In fact, although New York state passed its emancipation law in 1827, this regulation did not free the entire population, since New York allowed the borrowing of enslaved individuals from other states to work there well into the 1840s – only twenty years before the Civil War would commence (Blakey 2001: 223). Almost 150 years later, in the 1990s, any recognition of this juxtaposition of New York slaveholding with the establishment of new national independence and sovereignty was still outside the boundaries of local and national historical narratives, including those in school textbooks.

The rediscovery: Rethinking home By the year 1991, there had been a near two-century memory void of New York (and Northern) slavery – locally, nationally and internationally. This void extended to the loss of knowledge of New York’s early Black inhabitants

78

THINKING HOME

and their central contributions to building the city and the nation (including the many women who cared for its inhabitants and their daily needs). This memory void was challenged abruptly in 1991 with the literal uncovering of this central site of end-of-life emplacement for many thousands, the former Negros Burial Ground. Using large bulldozers, construction workers dug deeply to build the anchoring structure for a tall office tower to house US federal government agencies. The location: a two-block site between the Hudson and East Rivers, adjacent to the city’s municipal government district, bordered by the streets of Broadway, Duane, Elk and Reade. City historians knew of the cemetery’s previous existence, but presumed that all remnants had been lost to subsequent construction on the site. To their surprise, the workers uncovered burials: skeletal remains, laid individually in the outlines of disintegrated coffins, most layered three burials deep. The landfill had evidently preserved these burials. Further, structures built over the cemetery did not require a deep construction footprint, thus unintentionally leaving the burials undisturbed. In 1991, as a descendent community began to forge cultural and familial connections to the ancestral site and remains, political contention quickly began to surface. Several individuals who had regular contact with the developing excavations began to suspect that decision-makers prioritized building construction and budgetary constraints over care for the burials. Once word got out, community members began to act as ‘commemorative agents’ (Schwartz 1991: 301) for the site – and on behalf of the remains as family. As at least one activist put it, ‘We were ready to lay down our bodies in front of those bulldozers’.2 Word began to spread further, making news headlines. The General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency in charge of federal government construction (nationwide, as well as for this site) hired local archaeologists and anthropologists to study the cemetery’s remains and artefacts. Inaccurate media reports, rumours and lack of transparency by the GSA fuelled the budding (and proliferating) grassroots gatherings to begin to ask direct questions. As one activist whom I interviewed reminisced on these gatherings, ‘I think there was an undercurrent of suspicion, not even an undercurrent, a very prominent current … many people felt that if they did not continuously stand in the government’s face, and repeat what it is they’re demanding, that the progress that was made would not have been made’.3 Across public meetings, one frequently heard the proclamation that ‘New York was built on the backs of enslaved Africans’. For New Yorkers of any ancestry, the news that New York had been a major player in the slave trade turned standard founding narratives on their heads. By referencing the ‘backs of enslaved Africans’, the city itself was figuratively on trial, its guilt alleged.

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

79

At the same time, the descendent community discovered a heritage link to the city’s birth. As the site’s significance unfolded in professional and political consciousness, descendants began to interpret the significance of the site for their community, and to explore its meaning beyond that of science. Dr Howard Dodson, for one, observed the uncovered skeletons and reported that his ‘scientist-historian’ side marvelled at the research potential but his ‘roots’ side said ‘You’re not supposed to mess with the dead’ (Pearce 1997: 115). Expressions of individual and communal ownership were visible as the work progressed. Local Yoruba priests, for example, visited to pour libations and bless the site, and kept vigil near the excavated remains when housed at Lehman College in the New York borough of the Bronx. Regular music and dance tributes also proliferated at the burial site. It was through the emotional, personal and spiritual connections that advocacy for the site became contentious. Repeatedly, activists described the site as the ‘Black Plymouth Rock’ and ‘Our Ellis Island’ in local public meetings, giving the city sacralized foundational status for the nation and for the descendent community. For New Yorkers of African descent, the burials represented an unknown connection to their heritage, and to the brutality that their ancestors suffered, ushering in a newly found, if emotionally conflicted, connection to a sense of (local) place. One journalist explained in an interview with me that ‘when I realized that it was a cemetery of African people, it was absolute compassion. I felt this was absolute desecration – that everything that they had lived for and possibly died for was being minimized for the sake of a building’. Claiming these forgotten inhabitants of the cemetery as individual and community ancestors and as forced builders of New Amsterdam, then New York, as well as the United States, a self-named descendent community evoked ‘home’ (whether this was verbalized or implied) on behalf of the ancestors on several fronts and in various manifestations: the African ancestral home, the city of their death and the sacred ground in which they rested. In activist meetings and publications, the descendent community decried how, despite these early New York denizens’ demise on soil where a key American dwelling had been staked, no sacrosanct cemetery with headstones remained. In contrast, such a consecrated space did continue at neighbouring Trinity Church into the present – the very cemetery from which their ancestors had been barred. There was a fortuitous timing to this rediscovery, as New York City had its first African American mayor, David Dinkins, who would serve from 1990 to 1993. Not only was the rediscovery at the doorstep of City Hall, where the mayor worked, but Mayor Dinkins also vocally identified as a member of the descendent community and expressly turned his attention to this new find. Thus, activists found themselves in a situation that social movement scholars call a ‘political opportunity’ (Edwards and Kane 2014; McAdam [1982] 1999):

80

THINKING HOME

a moment when societal conditions are ripe for reception of and action on activists’ claims-making. In the unfolding conversations over protecting the site, wording and semantics became key foci. First, given changes in the appellation of Americans of African descent over the years, a decision was made early on to rename the site ‘African Burial Ground’ rather than the colonists’ imposed ‘Negros Burial Ground’. This renaming bears resemblance to naming ceremonies across cultures, as a family bestows a singular identifier on the young in a rite of passage. Further, the term ‘discovery’ did not sit well with many activists, as this was a site that was once well known. Therefore, community members dubbed this event a ‘rediscovery’. Activists also adamantly insisted that the words ‘enslaved Africans’ be used in discussions and documents, given that the term ‘slave’ could carry an essentialist connotation. Many activists who spoke in public meetings considered the uncovered remains to be ancestors, re-embodying a human or even metaphysical spirit to the deceased – and therefore insisting on the right to decision-making input. A number of allies from outside the descendent community became integrally involved as well, including local government employees, students, archaeologists, historians and others. Community anger largely targeted the federal government – and the General Services Administration (GSA) in particular. As a result, the GSA agreed to hold regular public meetings of the federal steering committee under the leadership of Dr Howard Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The presence of a predominantly white, older male team of GSA representatives in these meetings took on a historically transcendent meaning, given that this same demographic profile embodied the central government that had emerged from European colonists. Women were among the most vocal in these meetings, often in African regalia; as one activist observed, government representatives were ‘not used to older Black women showing up in public meetings, giving them hell’ (Pearce 1997: 129). It must be mentioned that not all activists were aligned, and meetings could erupt into emotional arguments in a variety of directions. By the summer of 1992, a petition was presented to the GSA with 100,000 signatures, including that of the mayor, demanding ‘a halt to construction until the African-American community determines a “fitting memorial”’ and ‘on-site reinternment of the remains’ (Pearce 1996: 76). A second petition added ‘Designation of the site as a National Monument or National Historic Landmark’ and ‘Reparation for the loss of resource’ (remains lost during construction) (Pearce 1996: 76). As public meetings progressed, activists began to push for transfer of the physical anthropological study from the small forensic New York-based company to directorship in a more suitable academic laboratory.

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

81

Frequently, across public meetings and in my interviews, advocates explained their tireless involvement on behalf of this site as ‘This about family’, ‘We are doing this for the ancestors’ and ‘This is for our children’. One local journalist, also a descendent community member, wrote about her experience of looking into a vast archaeological pit: ‘It was a oneness with my great ancestral mothers and ancestral wazee (male elders) – my people. It reached down into a depth of my being that had not been touched before’ (Pearce 1997: 136). Culturally, it should be noted that African American cemeteries have distinct links to family and community bonds; they are sites of pilgrimage during family homecoming celebrations such as annual family reunions. Historians have noted that cemeteries for African Americans symbolized freedom from bondage; given that the enslaved were denied rituals such as marriage, the funeral rehumanized these individuals (Weathers 1993: 16). As Howard Dodson explained, one reason that formerly enslaved people went back to the plantations following emancipation was to return to family: ‘It was in that act of burial that had in fact established some kind of a relationship to the land, and therefore a connection, a relationship with the generations that followed’ (cited in Pearce 1997: 70). Passionate commitment to the site in New York included some activists interpreting the rediscovery as a direct message by the ancestors to present-day strife, including not only racist injustice but also urban violence within majority-Black neighbourhoods, taking the lives of children accidentally in harm’s way. Eventually, this combined commitment to the place that was repeatedly called ‘sacred ground’ and outrage against disrespectful and hasty excavation resulted in a special Congressional session in Washington, DC in October 1992. At that meeting, Gus Savage, the Congressperson who led the subcommittee overseeing the GSA, heard testimony from activists, who informed him of the historical and archaeological significance of the site, and exposed the haste and disrespect of the GSA-led excavation. Incensed by these allegations, and slamming his gavel, he demanded that the GSA halt the excavations immediately, exclaiming, ‘I am not going to be part of your disrespect’ (Harrington 1993). Other results of the advocacy for the site, which the descendent community considered to be partial victories, included cancellation of one smaller annex building project in the excavated area and two designations in 1993: as a New York City and a National Historic Landmark. That same year, the skeletal remains were moved to the Cobb Biological Anthropology Lab at Howard University in Washington, DC. This transfer to a laboratory within a historically Black university that had a long reputation of researching large historic African American populations was a central demand by the community, as the New York team that was originally contracted consisted of forensic anthropologists less experienced in large historic excavations. Archaeologists with the appropriate backgrounds were also hired to study the

82

THINKING HOME

large assortment of site artefacts in a New York facility. Supporting, publicizing and teaching about the site, an Office of Public Education and Information opened under the directorship of urban anthropologist Dr Sherrill Wilson. These were partial victories because the Howard University anthropologists subsequently fought for years for adequate funding for the study, e.g. DNA testing, and because many activists had hoped for a major museum at or near the site. Further, some demanded that no building be erected anywhere on the site, which they continued to verbalize even after decisions were irreversibly finalized.

The displaced ancestors: Who were they? When the excavations were ordered to be halted, an estimated 419 remains had been unearthed. All were relocated to the Howard University laboratory under the directorship of physical anthropologist Michael Blakey. Based upon the denseness of the burials and the size of the Burial Ground on the original map (6.6 acres), anthropologists estimated that 10,000–20,000 individuals had been buried across the years that the site was in use. As one might surmise, long gone were records of those buried (if they had existed), as were grave markers or other means of identifying the individuals. Among the first (visual) realizations was that this site had been far from a pauper’s cemetery. On the contrary, bodies were not randomly or mass-buried: each individual had been carefully laid in a coffin, many adorned with common African decorative items such as cowry shells and beads, and recovered shroud pins indicated a shrouding burial. There had been careful, loving and probably spiritual intentions behind the living’s approach to burial practice. All burials, for instance, were uniformly arranged in the same direction, facing east. What was the meaning of this? Speculations ranged from the possibility that they were facing Mecca, Africa or the direction from which Christ was predicted to appear on his prophesied return to earth; there is also a West African tradition of burying the dead on an east-west plane to avoid being ‘cross-ways’ in the world (Weathers 1993: 17). No records, however, were able to confirm the reason. Each of these interpretations would, for different reasons, constitute ‘thinking of home’. Although it was impossible to learn the individual identity of each burial, Howard University anthropologists could determine the age, sex and sometimes ethnicity, thanks to such markers as teeth carvings. Many, it was determined after the eventual final study, had died violent deaths, indicated by such findings as one individual buried with a musket ball. Many others manifested the strain of extremely hard labour, evident from severely stressed or broken bones and joints. An image that audiences found particularly emotive from researchers’

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

83

presentations was a photo of a woman’s skeleton with her infant’s bones buried with her, nestled in the crook of her arm. In fact, almost 50 per cent of the remains had been children under the age of twelve. Many had suffered from poor nutrition. Anthropologists also determined that most of the individuals had hailed from West or Central Africa, with a few from southern Africa. Approximately one-third had come from Africa directly, and the remaining had arrived via time spent in the Caribbean (Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2009). Among the uncovered artefacts was a design made from iron tacks that must have adorned a now-disintegrated wooden coffin. Forming the shape of a heart, researchers floated the hypothesis that instead of a heart, this was the Ghanaian symbol of the Sankofa, a heart formation with scrolled embellishments. The symbol represents the West African proverb of ‘It is not a taboo to return and fetch it when you forget’, which took on particular significance for the cemetery’s present-day advocates. The Sankofa began to be reproduced in signs and publications about the uncovered site (and proliferated in other venues, such as singer/activist and Harlem native Harry Belafonte’s new non-governmental social justice organization). In subsequent years, some academics disputed the interpretation of the coffin design as a Sankofa, based on scepticism that the enslaved had reproduced many African traditional symbols, or arguments that the Sankofa symbol postdated this history, opening a still-unsettled debate (Chan 2010).4 These observations of the remains, coupled with the decorative artefacts, helped researchers and the larger community to visualize the site’s purpose and meanings for their ancestors, crystallized in such interpretations as the Sankofa proverb. Much of the other archaeological evidence supported the probability that this site was a locale of ceremony and community ritual with African roots. Further, the research personalized each ancestor to the extent that could be determined, drawing out each skeleton’s human individuality as well as her or his group (and ‘family’) origins, such as the region or ethnicity of Africa. This scientific process forwarded the rehumanization that the descendent community sought, furthering the adoption of the ancestors as family, key to the emotional attachment that the term ‘emplacement’ connotes.

Re-emplacement and homecoming As scientists proceeded with this multi-year study, efforts to mark, memorialize and resacralize the site on lower Broadway commenced. These activities exemplified a reversal of natal alienation through a transformation of the space marked with new knowledge and expressions of the site’s symbolic significance. Among the first visible markings were artwork and signage

84

THINKING HOME

within the newly constructed office tower, to ‘memorialize the life, death and contributions of each of the thousands of Africans who helped to build and create the City of New York’ (General Services Administration 1993: 25). These included an artistic installation of a circular design, forty feet in diameter, prominently built into the office tower’s marble lobby floor, entitled ‘The New Ring Shout’. The artist, Houston Conwell, sought inspiration from a Central and West African circular dance ritual that enslaved Africans performed in the American colonies and West Indies, involving singing, clapping and stomping collectively in a clockwise direction. With quotations by historic leaders such as Malcolm X and Mary McCleod Bethune, it features fourteen languages and synthesizes representations from multiple religions and myths. The lobby included the abstract sculpture ‘Africa Rising’ by Barbara Chase-Riboud, featuring a female figure in African attire and a large colourful silkscreen entitled ‘Renewal’ by Tomie Arai, in tribute to the ancestors buried beneath and around the building, incorporating faces and archaeological symbolism. Artist Roger Brown contributed ‘Untitled’, a stained glass representation of those who had died of AIDS. An exterior wall features a relief of a large wing of an eagle by sculptor Clyde Lynds, intended as a reminder of the enslavement of the denizens of the Burial Ground. As the calendar turned to the new millennium, the unexpected unintentionally touched on this project. On 11 September 2001, the African Burial Ground’s close neighbour, the World Trade Center, was suddenly and shockingly obliterated, taking several thousand lives. Housed within one of the buildings that collapsed was the African Burial Ground’s Office of Public Education and Information. Although many of the Office’s records were destroyed, as were artefacts from the nineteenth-century Five Points historical site nearby, no staff lives were lost, and most of the Burial Ground’s artefacts were recovered. Two years later, in October 2003, following the completion of the research on the remains, there was a major six-day ceremony to return the remains back to their original resting place. Entitled ‘The Rites of Ancestral Return’, the ceremony consisted of a ritual procession from Washington, DC, back to New York. Each of the skeletal remains was individually placed in one of 419 coffins that had been hand-carved in Ghana with mahogany wood, featuring symbols from Ghanaian tradition, and identified as male or female, and adult or child. A representative group of four coffins (a man, woman, girl and boy) was transported in the procession from Washington with stops in Baltimore, Maryland; Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Newark, New Jersey, with public gatherings at each stop. Arriving by boat across the Hudson River, the coffins were then transferred onto colonial-era replicas of horse-drawn carriages and slowly transported to the lower-Manhattan site accompanied by processing crowds. Led by African American luminaries,

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

85

the on-site ceremony was one of celebratory speeches, music, poetry, dance, prayer and other performances to honour the ancestors and confront the continued legacy of slavery for the present. It was a ceremony that was not only about ‘thinking home’, but also ‘speaking home’. Acclaimed poet Maya Angelou, a keynote speaker, proclaimed through verse, ‘You may bury me in the bottom of Manhattan. I will rise. My people will get me. I will rise out of the huts of history’s shame’ (‘Remains of 419 … ’2003). After coffins were inserted into individual openings in a vertical wall that would later be lowered into the ground, the ancestors were welcomed back after their tenyear domestic exile, and reunited with the thousands that remained in their surroundings. This ceremonial reclaiming of space was a visceral experience on many levels, with the emotive aspect of emplacement vividly evident. Four years later, on 1 October 2007, a second major ceremony commenced on the site. The occasion was the unveiling of a commissioned monumental structure on the grounds that had remained clear of construction. The work of architect Rodney Leon, this structure clearly belongs to the ‘anti-monument’ mode of late twentieth-century memorials, and significantly, is the first national monument to slavery.5 The ‘anti-monument’ or ‘counter monument’ might take many forms, but it intentionally contrasts with the traditional monument of an elevated individual war hero on a pedestal representing victory, and invites reflection and a participatory interpretation by the visitor. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall (‘the Wall’) in Washington, DC, designed by Maya Ying Lin, typifies the anti-monument, with its simple list of names stretched across a long polished black granite structure; it has become a magnet for pilgrimages of veterans and families and friends of the fallen. In harmony with such designs, the African Burial Ground memorial also invites reflective visitation through structural elements, symbols and words. This site features a walk-through meditative Ancestral Chamber, with a triangular side opening. Engraved into its front facing is a Sankofa symbol, accompanied by the verses ‘For all those who were lost/For all those who were stolen/For all those who were left behind/For all those who were not forgotten’. Adjacent to the chamber is a labyrinth-like wall called a Circle of Diaspora, displaying symbols endowed with meanings hailing from West Africa, which descends to a lower courtyard floor in which are embedded bricks marked with identifying features of several individual burials. For Leon, the monument symbolized a meeting between North America and southern Africa. The site’s opening ceremony featured activist and community leaders, as well as celebrities such as Hollywood actor Sidney Poitier. Again, crowds heard from poet Maya Angelou, who stretched the reclaiming of this localized home to a more comprehensive geography by announcing ‘It is imperative that each of us knows that we own this country because it’s already been paid for’ (Lombardi 2007).

86

THINKING HOME

Three years later, in March 2010, the site’s symbolic infrastructure was completed with the opening of a public interpretive centre in the federal office tower. Under the auspices of the National Park Service, this centre documents the site’s history and meaning, and chronicles the grassroots movement to protect the burials. Through permanent and temporary exhibits, tours, educational presentations, commemorative and performance events and a bookshop, this centre houses the Burial Ground’s discursive history. Despite the perhaps ironic reality that this storytelling is now the work of an arm of the federal government – the original source and perpetuator of enslavement of the site’s denizens, as well as the obstructing force in the rediscovery – the exhibits and presentations are starkly historically honest. This New York City rediscovery has since set a precedent, as other (smaller) sites have been unearthed and preserved in Philadelphia and other cities, as well as in the New York neighbourhood of Harlem, now named the Harlem African Burial Ground. This latter site likely predated the African Burial Ground; it opened in the 1660s and was used for 200 years. As of this writing, 140 remains have been uncovered, and a design approved for a multi-use building in Harlem that incorporates a memorial to the local site, but, like the lowerManhattan memorial, leaves the cemetery ground free of construction. In contrast to the eighteenth-century site, however, a nearby church kept records of the names of the deceased, allowing present-day descendants to be identified (Barron 2017). As of 2015, the United Nations plaza in New York now hosts an (anti-) monument entitled ‘The Ark of Return’, honouring the victims of slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, also the work of the African Burial Ground’s memorial designer, architect Rodney Leon. And similar to the Ancestral Chamber described above, the visitor passes through a triangular opening; the theme of remembrance is prominent, in the name of a reflecting pool: ‘Lest We Forget’. Extending the memorialization beyond the New York ancestors, this monument honours the entire 18 million forcefully removed from Africa (‘Permanent Memorial ...’ n.d.). Continuing and complementing these memorializations of Africans in the Americas is the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, opened in 2016 in a ceremony that included an impassioned speech by the country’s first president of African descent, Barack Obama. As visitors enter the museum’s exhibits, their first impression would be a detailed chronicle of the triangular slave trade, transporting them from fifteenth century Africa through the institution of slavery at the heart of American nation-making until its final abolition in the late nineteenth century. In part, this museum completes a dream and demand expressed by the descendent community in New York nearly twenty-five years earlier.

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

87

(In)Conclusion: Emplacement as a continuing performance This tale of rediscovery and reattachment to ancestry and home engaged a deep collective sentiment as it simultaneously challenged dominant power, cultural myths and past and continued racist transgression. As a collective act of historical recovery, the reclaiming of space in lower Manhattan through sacrament and permanent marking underscores the complex relationship to a ‘home’ that a forced diaspora experiences. When that relationship encompasses loss, absence, forgetting and reclaiming, still from a shared social position of relative disenfranchisement, the meaning of home is multilayered and conflicted. As Irwin-Zarecka would phrase it, ‘the wounds remain open’ (Irwin-Zarecka 1994: 77). With this in mind, we return to our dictionary conceptions of home as: (1) domicile, (2) family unit, (3) familiar environment and (4) place of origin. The physical rootedness and presence of close others implied across each of these understandings seem on the surface to deem the term ‘home’ as irrelevant to present day (adopted and actual) descendants of the African Burial Ground. Most alien to descendants, of course, is the fourth of these meanings. Perhaps precisely due to this, the activism to protect and remember these original New Yorkers was about ‘thinking’ (imagining, recalling) home – nurtured in part through the scientific uncovering of ancestral details that could help enable that imagination. The New York site itself was then reclaimed as a second home, and through the excavation, reburial and memorialization, underwent a re-emplacement to seal this recognition – both for descendants and the broader city and nation. Now engraved in stone and concrete, visible to New Yorkers and visitors and mass-mediated through the internet and social media such as Twitter, the African Burial Ground can be viewed as fully recovered and carrying a cultural and politicized statement that continues to resonate. Nevertheless, such a ‘success’ carries its own risks, and could be interpreted as a cautionary tale. As the scholar Alan Trachtenberg warned about such memorialization, ‘[m]onumentality … destroys what it seeks to preserve by erecting a barrier of official feelings and meanings’ (1994). The African Burial Ground monumentation certainly does reflect more grassroots input than many government-sponsored projects, but such a risk does remain. This risk might be counteracted by the actual performative use of the site, many have felt, making the act of symbolic re-emplacement an ongoing, perhaps perpetually unfinished, project. It is the reason why the concrete and stone spaces at the outdoor monument and in the public spaces in the federal office tower continue to draw ritual gatherings of ceremony and celebration on such occasions

88

THINKING HOME

as Juneteenth (celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation releasing the enslaved), Black History Month, Kwaanza, and in October 2017, the marking of the African Burial Ground monument’s tenth anniversary. Endowing the stationary infrastructure of this place with the agency of these ‘ephemeral’ events and uses of the site, this act of continued re-emplacement carries on both the need to ‘think home’ and to resist.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Sociology Department of the New School for Social Research and the former Center for Diversity and Inequality Research of the ECU Sociology Department for their support of this research. I also greatly appreciate Rachel Lee’s assistance with updates to this study.

Notes 1 The arrival of the earliest enslaved Africans in the Spanish east-coast colonies is dated to 1581, in St. Augustine, Florida. 2 Activist’s public comments at a 1991 public community meeting. 3 This and subsequent quotations and observations are from my own participant observations and interviews. 4 Contentious academic politics, staff dismissals and resignations and critiques of methods and results also reportedly compromised the timely and thorough study of the human remains. Much of this was behind closed doors and has been exposed since my study. 5 The practice and term of ‘anti-monument’, or ‘counter-monument’ (Gegendenkmal), was introduced by the two German artists, Jochen and Esther Gerz, when they designed the ‘Monument against Fascism’ (Hamburg, Germany, 1986). It gained popularity throughout Europe and, in particular, in the United States at the end of the twentieth century. On ‘countermonuments’, see Young 2000.

References Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Barron, J. (2017), ‘Rezoning a Block in Harlem, Respecting an African Burial Ground’, The New York Times, 26 September, available at https://www.

STRAINED BELONGING AND CLAIMS TO HOME

89

nytimes.com/2017/09/26/nyregion/rezoning-a-block-in-harlem-respecting-anafrican-burial-ground.html (accessed 30 October 2017). Blakey, M. L. (2001), ‘The Study of New York’s African Burial Ground: Biocultural and Engaged’, in Sheila S. Walker (ed.), African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, 222–23, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Blakey, M. L. and L. M. Rankin-Hill (2009), The New York African Burial Ground: Unearthing the African Presence in Colonial New York, Volume 1: Skeletal Biology of the New York African Burial Ground, Washington, DC: Howard University Press, available at: https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/regions/ northeast-caribbean-2/about-region-2/the-african-burial-ground/introduction-toafrican-burial-ground-final-reports (accessed 30 October 2017). Blight, D. (1994), ‘W. E. B. DuBois and the Struggle for American Historical Memory’, in Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’Meally (eds), History and Memory in African-American Culture, 45–71, York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cantwell, A. and D. diZerega Wall (2001), Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Chan, S. (2010), ‘Coffin’s Emblem Defies Certainty’, The New York Times, p. C1. 26 January, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/arts/ design/27sankofa.html (accessed 30 October 2017). Durkheim, É. ([1912] 2008), The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. C. Cosman, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edwards, B. and M. Kane (2014), ‘Resource Mobilization Theory and Contemporary Social and Political Movements’, in Hein-Anton Van Der Heijdenk (ed.), Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, 205–32, Camberley: Edward Elgar Publishers. Frohne, A. (2015), The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. General Services Administration (1993), Memorialization of the African Burial Ground, New York: New York Regional General Services Administration. Gilroy, P. (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halbwachs, M. ([1941, 1952] 1992), On Collective Memory, trans. L. A. Coser, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Hansen, M. L. (1952), ‘The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant’, Commentary, 14 (5): 492–500. Hansen, J. and G. McGowan (1998), Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence: The Story of New York’s African Burial Ground, New York: Henry Holt. Harrington, S. P. M. (1993), ‘Bones and Bureaucrats: New York’s Great Cemetery Imbroglio’, Archaeology, 16 (2): 28–38. ‘Home’ (n.d.), Merriam-Webster Dictionary, available at: https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/home (accessed 6 October 2017). Howard University and John Milner Associates (1993), Research Design for Archeological, Historical, and Bioanthropological Investigations of the African Burial Ground and Five Points Area, Washington, DC and West Chester, PA: Howard University and John Milner Associates. Irwin-Zarecka, I. (1994), Frames of Remembrance, New Brunswick, NJ and Oxford: Transaction.

90

THINKING HOME

La Roche, C. J. and M. L. Blakey (1997), ‘Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground’, Historical Archaeology, (31): 84–106. Lombardi, F. (2007), ‘Memorial Dedicated at African Burial Ground’, Daily News, 5 October, available at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/memorial-dedicatedafrican-burial-ground-article-1.228827 (accessed 31 October 2017). McAdam, D. ([1982] 1999), Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970, 2nd edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Patterson, O. (1982), Slavery and Social Death, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Pearce, S. (1997), ‘Africans on this Soil: The Counter-Amnesia of the New York African Burial Ground’, PhD dissertation, The New School for Social Research, Sociology Department, New York. ‘Permanent Memorial to Honour the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade at the United Nations’ (n.d.), United Nations website, available at: http://www.un.org/en/events/slaveryremembranceday/memorial.shtml. Schwartz, B. (1991), ‘Iconography and Collective Memory: Lincoln’s Image in the American Mind’, The Sociological Quarterly, 32 (3): 301–19. Tagwirei, C. and L. de Kock (2016), ‘From “Bush” to “Farm”: Emplacement and Displacement in Contemporary White Zimbabwean Narratives’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 51 (3): 483–98. Trachtenberg, A. (1994). ‘Bullets Tore Holes in the Water’, The New York Times, 6 June. Weathers, N. R. (1993), The African Burial Ground of 1712, New York: Manhattan Borough President’s Office. White, S. (1995), ‘Slavery in New York State in the Early Republic’, Australasian Journal of American Studies, 14 (2): 1–29. Young, J. E. (2000), At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

5 Harvesting Stories: Home and Communities (An Art Project) Lily Hunter Green

H

ARVEST, a community-led installation, was originally commissioned by the Essex Cultural Diversity Project as one of its 2015 Artist Projects.1 I have created this project as an attempt to rethink home through a specific context of experiencing, celebrating and performing home, history and memory in one particular community: Jewish. The primary focus of the work centred on the Jewish ‘festival of ingathering’ of harvest: the Sukkot, which is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths (huts). The Sukkot is an annual seven day festival celebrated by the Jewish community that takes place every September/October. It remembers the forty years spent in exile in the desert by Moses and his followers after their expulsion from Egypt. As part of this celebration families construct their own Sukkah house, a booth-like, structured temporary dwelling (hut), either indoors or in their gardens, as representations or imaginings of the fragility of existence, particularly for an exiled and/or vulnerable community. This temporary home, Sukkah, is also the physical embodiment and enactment of the scriptural law laid down in the Hebrew Bible book of Leviticus: ‘You shall dwell in sukkot seven days … in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God’ (Lev. 23.42). This ‘home’ therefore embodies both a physical shelter and the collective cultural construction of a meaning-giving home space.

92

THINKING HOME

My initial artistic idea was to engage the notion of home in a specific community, of which I knew very little at the outset; it was my way to enact what, in his chapter in this volume, Renos Papadopoulos described as an effort to ‘recognize our home in others’ (lost and prospective) homes and to treat the world as a home’, an effort that yields a healthy relationship towards one’s own home. For this purpose, I decided to reactivate the Jewish Sukkot via the construction of a traditional Sukkah house and through the active engagement of a community whose interacting voices and thoughts on home may be preserved in this way. I worked on the project of gathering or ‘harvesting’ community stories and ideas over a six-month period, gradually building up my knowledge of, and community links with the Jewish communities in Southend-on-Sea and East London. As I knew very little about the Jewish community and its traditions, my cultural pre-conceptions were swiftly challenged by real conversations with real people in real situations. It was a fascinating voyage of discovery; one that resulted in my being invited into synagogues, into homes, and significantly, into other people’s lives. This journey was an enormous privilege, and one that I became determined to share with others. It was to this end that I decided to build my own Sukkot or temporary ‘home’ as a place of refuge and safety; a new space for asking questions and sharing thoughts. I was invited to exhibit my installation/home-structure based on my interpretation of the aesthetic and ritual features of traditional Sukkots as part of the World Village at Essex-based arts organization METAL’s annual Village Green celebration in Southend-on-Sea. I had no idea what to expect or how it would be received by the thousands of people, many of them families, attending the event. Village Green Festival is a communitybased celebration of arts, music and culture based in Southend-on-Sea in Essex. The Global Village, a constituent part of Village Green, is a participatoryled creative ‘hub’ of dance music, performance and visual art, and as such it attracts audiences from a wide range of local communities, including the local Jewish community. I had no intimations as to whether anyone would even recognize home in or identify with this simple yet unusual structure: a large wooden box containing a table and four chairs, set under a canopy of greenery woven through the net roof. The sound component of my project involved the playing of a series of interviews with members of the local Jewish community, which I recorded over a six-month period, through the speakers suspended from the roof of my Sukkah-home. These included conversations with people of all ages and experiences: three Rabbis, an ethnically Jewish boy, a culturally Jewish girl and a religiously Jewish boy. Some of their comments highlighted how the transport of knowledge and home-making are interrelated: ‘We learn from our

HARVESTING STORIES: HOME AND COMMUNITIES (ART PROJECT)

93

FIGURE 5.1  HARVEST project, the Village Green Festival, Chalkwell Park, Southend, UK, 10–11 July 2015. Courtesy of the author.

ancestors, we learn how they act, why they acted. Certain things that they did … ’ (one of the Rabbis). Others have highlighted that one’s sense of home is constituted by regular acts and routines, many of which are inherited. One interviewee commented: ‘We have kept the traditions. We had a Sukkah, a booth, you go out into huts in September/October, a Harvest festival’ (one of the Rabbis). Both comments seem to confirm the centrality of home in passing on the collective memory of a community across time (which Susan C. Pearce also discusses in this volume). ‘I’m extremely blessed to be part of the community’, another Rabbi commented, ‘I feel very privileged that I’m able to give back to the community, that I’m in a position to give back. We give back in different ways’. Interestingly, it was not until the opening day of the exhibition that I finally made sense of my own journey. Hundreds of people entered my Sukkot over the two days, most of them having no idea what they were entering but keen to find out more. Meanwhile, news spread of the Sukkot to members of the local Jewish community who came along, expressing their delight that there was ‘something for their community’ in the World Village: apparently, this is a

94

THINKING HOME

rare event. One mother and daughter from the Jewish community returned to the Sukkot three times. When I asked them what it felt like to be in the Sukkot, they both replied, ‘Safe’. It was then that everything started to fall into place. The very object became meaningful, as the words of one of my interviewees resonated in the Sukkot: ‘Once I realized the depth of it, the beautiful of it, the understanding of it, the connection. The purpose. I got closer towards myself and my path’ (the Rabbi). After months working to build trust and a meaningful relationship with the members of the synagogue in Southend-onSea, I suddenly realized that I had unwittingly constructed and then opened a door into the Jewish community; that I have built the place that we can both call ‘home’. The success of HARVEST, particularly in the context of community engagement, has resulted in my determination to develop this project on a much larger scale. It is my intention to apply the same process and ideas that I gathered from HARVEST to other communities. Such practice seems to be singularly appropriate. As one of the interviewees commented, ‘Everyone’s got very important roles in the world. That’s how we see it. Everyone’s got their roles in the world and everyone has to try and fit into that. The Torah wasn’t given to just the Jewish People. It was given to all humanity’ (the Rabbi). My hope is to build a series of other temporary dwellings or structures that will encourage people to share their stories and traditions, temporary ‘homes’ where others would be invited to imaginatively and physically cross over the border into a community’s worlds. I believe that

FIGURE 5.2  HARVEST project. Promotional photograph. Courtesy of the author.

HARVESTING STORIES: HOME AND COMMUNITIES (ART PROJECT)

95

the artwork based on such interactions may help us realize that our ultimate home, or what Papadopoulos called ‘the site of onto-ecological settledness’, is our whole planet.

Note 1 The HARVEST project web-page is available at http://www.lilyhuntergreen. com/index.php/work/harvest/.

PART TWO

Home and Dispossession Introduction Part Two of Thinking Home is dedicated to the issues relating to emotions, perceptions and representations of home and dispossession, as they coalesce around two particularly charged tropes/conditions: homelessness, or inadequate or transient housing, and property ownership.    In the opening chapter literary and visual arts scholar Amy Morris treats varied representations of homelessness in post-Second World War US and UK culture (William Kennedy’s novel Ironweed, poems by James Dickey and Mina Loy, and photographs by Don McCullin, Nick Hedges, Matt Weber and Lee Jeffries) as expressive of the wider social circulation of the meanings of home, and argues that they bespeak cultural uncertainty about the precise import, purpose and achievability of their apparent opposite, ‘homefulness’. With the conundrum of what constitutes ‘homefulness’ and ‘homelessness’ in mind, philosopher and social worker Vivienne Ashley focuses her attention on, specifically, the policy and social welfare support implications of the UK ‘intentional homelessness test’. Ashley argues that this application of welfare conditionality denies the affected individuals access to a prerequisite for building autonomy-competence – a home – and thereby the opportunity to cultivate optimal decision-making, and that an alternative, autonomy-building approach is needed. The belief in interaction between our vision of home and material environment, one which can help us cultivate the dispositions and skills required for both emotional well-being and prudent self-government,

98

THINKING HOME

also underpins Prague-based artists Biljana Golubović and Dragan Dragin’s poetic reminiscences of their theatre project ‘Farewell to the House’. Using Gaston Bachelard’s approach to the affective semiotics of home to trace the phases of a demolition of a house in Old Prague where they lived and worked, the artists address the issues of materiality of objects, memory and ritualistic performance, as they constitute our vision of a home space – even if that site is transitory, dispersive and we lack legal entitlement to it. The emotional dimension of home and its social inscription are also in the focus of the concluding essay in this part, social policy scholar Louise Overton, law scholar Lorna Fox O’Mahony and psychologist Matthew Gibson’s discussion of the affective negotiation of housing debt among older people. Drawing on their new qualitative research, the authors turn their thoughts to the largely overlooked subject of the emotional effects of equity release transactions as they intersect with an ideal of ‘active citizenship’ that marks out ownership and financial self-provision as indicators of success in life. The picture these chapters paint is one of deep and intimate interaction between, indeed coformation of, social expectations, perceptions, classifications and policies, and one’s own experience of home. The chapters rethink this co-constitution proactively, highlighting the alternative ways in which society may respond to its citizens’ physical and emotional home-needs and the sources each one of us has at their disposal to activate some neglected spectrums of meanings and approaches to home and home-making.

6 ‘He’s Just a Bum, But Who Ain’t?’: The Mirror of Homelessness Amy M. E. Morris

I

n Robert Frost’s ‘The Death of the Hired Man’, a husband and wife puzzle out the meaning of home (1914: 20–21): ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.’ ‘I should have called it Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’

Faced with the dilemma of how to deal with a labourer who has turned up at their farmhouse in need, the husband offers the first definition of home, emphasizing obligation and grudging charity: ‘They have to take you in.’ His wife’s counter-definition, though framed with a negative verb (‘haven’t to deserve’) is open-handed and gestures towards the ineffable. She sees home as a shadow of divine grace, an unearned blessing. Frost puts these views in apposition: the couple do not quite agree, but their lines seem to complete and complement each other, and the discussion moves from the practical to the metaphysical. Art critic John Berger provocatively claimed that the twentieth century was the first in which ‘a beggar [was] a reminder of nothing’ (1990: 23), but British and US writers and artists have in fact found much to contemplate in homeless and indigent figures. Indeed, since ‘homelessness’ is defined by an absence, it makes some sense to read artistic portrayals of it backwards, as expressive of its implied opposite, homefulness, and, as Nigel

100

THINKING HOME

Rapport writes in this volume, of human species-wide capacity for homemaking.1 As the marital disagreement at the heart of Frost’s poem implies, homelessness is a slippery concept, not simply as a sociological term, but also in its moral connotations. The diametrically opposed readings of homelessness can seem possible, even interchangeable: a homeless figure can be portrayed as a reckless villain or a pitiful victim, an urban renegade, or someone’s lost child. It has become a critical commonplace to note how US depictions of the very poor, from the late nineteenth century up to present-day TV journalism, seem to fall into opposing genres of the sentimental and the sensational (‘poverty-pride’ or ‘poverty porn’ in Katherine Boo’s terms) (Allen 2004: 4; Boo 2007: 51–52; Lemke 2010: 101–02). This bifurcation roughly approximates the traditional distinction in English law between the deserving and the undeserving poor, the latter epitomized by the ‘incorrigible rogues’ in the 1824 Vagrancy Act (also the subject of Vivienne Ashley’s essay in this volume). Yet, on close examination, many creative portrayals of homelessness, on both sides of the Atlantic, do not so much reinforce the traditional bifurcation as play upon its contradictory suggestiveness. This essay will analyse depictions that seek to convey the key material indices of homelessness, but also invite further interpretation by presenting homelessness as a kind of prophetic mirror that prompts meditation on the meaning of home. As Frederick Feied noted in his study of the hobo in US literature (1964: 7), ‘bawdy verse and story, celebrating the life of the homeless migrant’ have existed since the Middle Ages. Although in each era the figure is shaped by the politics of the times, it retains the double perspective offered by rootlessness and rooflessness: a freedom to ‘dream and wander’, with the potential to critique or threaten the established order, and yet, at the same time, a stark bodily vulnerability and acute socio-economic disempowerment.2 From Marilynne Robinson’s transcendental but traumatized Sylvie Fisher in Housekeeping (1980), to Jez Butterworth’s Rooster Byron (Jerusalem, 2009) and Jeannette Walls’s parents (The Glass Castle, 2005), transient or vagabond figures make deeply ambiguous heroes, because of the conflicting perspectives elicited by their homelessness. Leaving aside the difficult question of factual accuracy, the double-vision in the portrayal of homeless figures reflects what a culture values, and sometimes fears, in ‘homefulness’. The polarization expresses a cultural conflictedness: is home a right that society should guarantee, or is it the reward of stable hard-working behaviour? It conveys the suspicion that the price of homeful security might be a stultifying conformity, and yet also the belief that social stability is threatened if people don’t have homes. Part of the cultural ambivalence stems from the tradition in Christian teaching, and Romantic thought, that spiritual courage and independence can

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

101

be expressed as a kind of homelessness – an ethical refusal to assimilate to worldly convention, allied to the belief that the immortal soul has no earthly home. Extended into modern times, such ideas informed, for instance, Malcolm Cowley’s description of US ‘lost generation’ writers as ‘homeless citizens of the world’, an affirmation of both their cosmopolitanism and their existential seeking (Cowley 1934: 3–9). In the wake of the Second World War, Theodor Adorno, exiled from Germany but not enamoured of California, considered intellectual homelessness an ethical imperative: ‘Today … it is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home’ (Adorno 1974: 39). A generation later, a group of sociologists led by Peter Berger coined the term ‘the homeless mind’ to describe the youth movements of the 1960s that rejected social and religious institutions. Their analysis was that ‘modern man’ was experiencing a ‘metaphysical loss of “home”’ (Berger et al. 1973: 82) due to increased mobility, technological innovation and pluralism. Drawing on their respective Lutheran and Judaic heritages, Berger and Adorno each developed a concept of spiritual homelessness that implied an initial loss, which led to a new perspective characterized by individual courage and creative non-conformity. It is difficult to square these intellectual forms of ‘homelessness’ with the economic deprivation of people in immediate material need. At the same time as Berger was theorizing, John Bird, the future founder of The Big Issue, was sleeping rough on the streets of Edinburgh. It is a juxtaposition comparable to that captured by Martin Dunkerton in his photograph of a young man sleeping rough in London’s West End (Figure 6.1). Dunkerton’s found-text image positions a theatre advertisement (an intellectual luxury) as a false narrative above a person whose basic needs are unmet, thereby making a political point. Yet the awkward multivalency of homelessness is inherent to its cultural meaning. In the introduction to the anthology that featured Dunkerton’s work, John Bird condemned depictions that extract homeless figures from their ‘context’ and present them as ‘passive or interesting objects of photographic art, to be hung in galleries’.3 But in order to help readers achieve better ‘understanding’, Bird represented homelessness in metaphorical and existential terms (1993: 11): It’s about living on the edge of things. It’s about surviving and making sense of the wobblies thrown at you by circumstance. It’s about creating and making it, whilst living in hell and still seeing purpose in who you are and what you are. It’s about experience. These remarks trace analogies between innovative art and the creativity required to live in an environment that isn’t designed to serve as a home. They accord homelessness an avant-garde precariousness, and implicitly bequeath to homefulness all that is naive, facile and fake. In seeking a means

102

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 6.1  Martin Dunkerton, ‘Homeless young man, London, 1991’ in From a Sheltered Flame: The Big Issue Book (1993), ed. Martin Dunkerton and Sky, London: Simon & Schuster: 109. Courtesy of Martin Dunkerton. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

of valorizing a condition that involved being marginalized and despised, Bird drew on a cultural anxiety about the way home insulates us from raw experience. The idea of homelessness as an edgy exposure to more of reality than most of us can bear is fundamental to William Kennedy’s Ironweed ([1979] 1983). Kennedy’s portrayal of homelessness as an ironic spiritual quest is a good starting point because it combines many of the conflicting connotations of homelessness that can be found in other creative representations from the post-Second World War period. Francis Phelan, the novel’s homeless, alcoholic protagonist, walks among the living and the dead. In the opening, his buried parents watch him arrive in Albany’s cemetery to do a day’s work

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

103

digging graves; it is Halloween and little goblins roam the streets. On his way back into town, Francis talks with a man he killed in a riot, whom he finds sitting ‘across the aisle of the bus’ (25). This surreal world, introduced by the novel’s epigraph from Dante’s Purgatorio, conveys the protagonist’s psychological experience as a hallucinating alcoholic, and his ‘self-damnation’ for having accidentally killed his own infant son (O’Donnell 2004: 59). Yet it also evokes the semantic proximity of homeless and unheimlich, engaging (as Benedict Giamo argues) the ‘affinity’ between physical and social death, between transience and transients. Ironweed presents the possibility that homelessness takes someone deeper into the mysteries of ‘being and nonbeing’ than the predictable confines of home permit (Giamo 1996: 7). According to Giamo, homeless readers have found the novel realistic (1996: xvii), and it is clearly informed by Kennedy’s journalistic training and observation. But it is also designed to connect with homeful readers. Homelessness in Ironweed serves to magnify common psychological or existential problems, such as Francis’s difficulties in facing his past and his falling short of ‘the behavior that was proper to [his] station and [his] unutterable dreams’ (31). As Donald Pizer points out (1993: 191), the novel shows Francis re-enacting his past by killing yet another person and abandoning his family again, while being still able to envisage other possibilities. Francis’s companion, Helen, also lives with crushed hopes, vividly imagined. So at the same time as generating empathy for the homeless characters, the novel uses their homelessness to dramatize familiar experiences. Francis’s unspoken thought about his friend, Rudy, ‘he’s just a bum, but who ain’t?’ (24), invites readers to consider their resemblance to these protagonists, and the extent to which they (assuming that most readers are not homeless) are shielded from the worst effects of their own inadequacies by the cushion and carapace of home. Ironweed also dramatizes the ethical and artistic question underlying Bird’s outrage about images of homeless people in galleries: is contemplating a homeless person as a ‘passive or interesting object’ compatible with respect and understanding? In one scene, Francis and Rudy find an unconscious alcoholic woman lying prone on the street at night. Their dialogue over her motionless body is a parodic habeas corpus judgement, in which Francis attempts to reframe her current abjection by imagining her before things got this bad: ‘Nobody’s a bum all their life. She hada been somethin’ once.’ Rudy responds unhelpfully, ‘She was a whore before she was a bum’, adding, ‘Before that I guess she was just a little kid’. ‘Then that’s somethin’ ‘, Francis replies, ‘A little kid’s somethin’ that ain’t a bum or a whore’, and he carefully replaces her missing shoe and goes to find her some soup (31). By tracing Sandra’s life back to her childhood, Francis gives himself and the reader a reliable means of connecting with her, and a motive for treating her in a caring way, as her drunkenness is reframed as a childlike dependency. Though he cannot

104

THINKING HOME

give Sandra a home, Francis responds by giving her fragments of one, in the form of food, a blanket, and his own and the reader’s sympathetic concern. His response implies that even a passive figure can inspire sympathetic and respectful action (rather than pity, disgust or objectification), if the imagination is touched in the right way. The novel’s portrayal of Sandra highlights the discomfiting way in which an unconscious drunk can resemble both a sleeping child and a corpse – a polarizing double-vision that is also found in poems by Mina Loy and James Dickey. Politically, the woman’s death indicts the mission hostel for refusing to admit her; symbolically, it draws the reader into a meditation on death. At Francis’s request that evening, a charity worker had brought out ‘a stone-gray rag that might once have been a blanket’, which he tucked around Sandra so that ‘one end formed a cowl behind her head, giving her the look of a monastic beggar in sackcloth’ (45–46). The cowl, like the night-shelter, offers her little protection, and the religious imagery satirizes the hypocrisy of the church organization. Like a mendicant friar, or Christ himself, Sandra has nowhere to lay her head (Matt. 8.20). When Francis lifts the cowl later that night she is no longer sleeping, but dead, with a dog’s ‘toothmarks on her nose and cheek and chin’ (60). Besides reinforcing the religious satire and underworld atmosphere, this mauling of her face by an urban hell-hound turns Sandra into a memento mori, reminding readers that we will share a similar fleshly end, however much we secrete its reality indoors, and in a box. Home is precious because it protects our bodies from exposure and humiliation, but, Kennedy reminds us, home can insulate us only from a sharper awareness of mortality, not from mortality itself. A visual analogy for Kennedy’s knowing spiritualization of homelessness can be found in the photograph of a homeless ‘Irishman with blue eyes’, taken by the British photographer Don McCullin in 1973, together with his subsequent reflections on it (Figure 6.2). Although now best known for his war photojournalism, McCullin began his career taking pictures of homeless people in London’s East End. This close-up portrait faces us with a challenging, direct gaze that mirrors and equals our own. When asked if he had altered the image, McCullin replied, making the mirroring explicit, ‘If you slept on the streets for a few weeks, I wouldn’t need to manipulate a photograph of you to show it’ (McCullin 2012). The face we see is that of a man who needs, among other things, a bed, a shower and some recognition – the practical and emotional home comforts that keep us on this side of the looking glass. Yet, blackened by cinders, and bearing a strange religious symbol (from a group on a soup-run), the man’s face conveys contradictory messages: that homelessness involves a set of identifiable material circumstances that mark your body, and that it signifies something deeper – apocalypse, curse, perdition.

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

105

FIGURE 6.2  Don McCullin, ‘Homeless Irishman, Aldgate, East End, London, 1973’. Courtesy of Don McCullin/Contact Press Images.

Although its message is different, McCullin’s image works in a comparable way to Kennedy’s fiction, by giving detailed observation a mythic reach: ‘It’s a picture I call Neptune because he looks like that Roman god under the sea with his spiky hair rising with the undercurrents of the ocean’, McCullin explained, before apologizing for the association: ‘Sometimes I get carried away and romanticize about things because I need to indulge myself in some journey into fantasy because I’ve seen so much ugliness’ (‘Don McCullin at the National’ 2013). By transforming the man’s social submergence into a fantasized empowerment, McCullin’s nickname registered (through irony) the degree to which the man had been cut off from the homeful element that could nourish his agency and strength.4 McCullin’s association of the image with Neptune highlights its curious duality. From the man’s stormy hair, his foam-like silvery beard, the wavy lines on his brow, down to the detail of his fisherman’s rib jumper and prow-shaped collars, his appearance is evocative of the unruly sea that prevented Odysseus (and innumerable sailors since) from returning home. Yet the figure embodies at once the shipwrecked victim and

106

THINKING HOME

the vengeful god. By representing such opposing meanings in one figure, this portrait points to the self-fracturing nature of homeful security: the paradox that the home that offers us our daily protection is haunted by the spectre of its own vulnerability. The multiple and contradictory associations evoked by homeless figures complicate the notion of a passive subject: as an anonymous and symbolic figure, a homeless individual becomes endowed with artistic force, but potentially at the cost of being stripped of their individuality, and having their agency overwritten by an artist’s. Unlike fictional portrayals, photographic and journalistic depictions tell one story by concealing another, and are likely to involve an economic injustice, aptly summed up by Ochame Riley (one of Boo’s interviewees): ‘So you take our stories and put them in a magazine that rich people read, and you get paid and we don’t?’ (Boo 2007: 51). There are many accounts of homeless people being similarly upset at being photographed. Lee Jeffries, for instance, changed his practice after being yelled at by a homeless woman who caught him photographing her through his zoom lens. And yet, as Kennedy’s account of Sandra implies, a moment of photographic passivity is not entirely incompatible with evoking a broader context and eliciting personal concern, through the viewer’s subjective contemplation. The story of Florence Owens Thompson, the woman in Dorothea Lange’s famous photograph ‘Migrant Mother’ is suggestive in this regard. Thompson reportedly felt ashamed and annoyed to have become an emblem of homelessness, to have received no compensation for the photo that was reprinted over a million times, and to have had her family’s situation misdescribed in the published caption, which said that they were selling the tyres from their car, thereby implying they were destitute. Although the photograph provoked the government to send food aid to that particular pea-picking camp, Thompson’s family had moved on and did not benefit. But the story has a twist. In 1982, Thompson was nearing the end of her life. Her family were struggling to pay her medical bills and launched a public appeal. According to newspaper accounts, the outpouring of sympathy in the form of letters and donations caused the family to reverse their opinion about the photo (Dunne 2002; Nici 2015: 201– 13). Thompson’s experience illustrates that, in the late twentieth-century era of mass media, a photograph that turned someone into a representation of an idea was not entirely depersonalizing. Although Lange used sentimental means, in transforming Thompson into a Madonna figure by capturing her face in closeup and excluding her older children, her photograph nonetheless created a connection that could ‘transcend the anonymity of poverty’ (Lemke 2010: 103) and enable viewers to respond to the needs of the real individual depicted. The close-up image that became known as ‘Migrant Mother’ was carefully shaped to mirror the domestic and family values of the US middle class in the

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

107

mid-twentieth century, including motherly affection, limited family size, and commitment to provide a nurturing home in which children could grow up (Curtis 1986). In the image, Thompson holds her children and looks anxiously into the distance beyond the frame of the picture, as if staring into an uncertain future. In Ironweed, although the association between children, home and future is partially inverted, it is present, as Kennedy makes Francis become homeless after the death of his infant, as if the parent’s homefulness depended on the possibility of the son’s future. In ‘Migrant Mother’, more conventionally, the presence of children serves to make the need for a home more pressing. This is due in part to the sentimental emphasis on the vulnerability and innocence of children (and to some degree, women), but it also highlights the way in which homefulness includes an idea of futurity. As Renos Papadopoulos suggests in his chapter in this volume, home has a strong temporal dimension: it means a predictable, intimate space in which to live, and relationships with surrounding people, objects and landscape that get reinforced over time. Depicting children in portrayals of homelessness reminds readers and viewers that homefulness involves not simply fulfilling immediate needs, but also securing the future. Representations of homelessness can emphasize living in the present moment, or ‘on the edge’ (to use Bird’s term), but homeless figures can often appear frozen or stuck, despite their mobility, because of their lack of a place able to nurture the temporal unfolding we call ‘growth’. The idea that home is a place of temporal unfolding is central to the design of the photographs taken by Nick Hedges of people living in sub-standard housing conditions in British cities in the 1960s and 70s. Commissioned by the housing charity Shelter for its inaugural campaign, these photographs were designed to document a problem and (as Hedges explained) ‘to remind us that secure and adequate housing is the basis of a civilised urban society’ (‘Make Life’ [2014–15]). They point to the future by featuring children prominently. Homefulness, Hedges’s photographs argue, is not an individual matter, but the foundation of civic peace. ‘As a fundamental unit of social order’, Giamo has noted, ‘home presupposes a commitment to the broader culture’s guiding ethos’ (1996: 12): the ‘edge’ as portrayed in Hedges’s pictures, is the edge of a social breakdown that would affect the entire nation. His images convey not only what Barbara Ehrenreich describes as the ‘injury to the spirit’ of an individual’s socio-economic suffering ([2001] 2008: 106) but also the threat that appalling housing conditions pose to the security and morality of the national home. The campaign’s title photograph was a long shot of some desolate-looking back-tobacks. In the road, a small child totes a toy gun, and, painted on the wall, an oversized Beechams ad reads ‘Make Life Worth Living’ (Hedges 1970a). Hedges’s challenge was to depict people in housing situations that amounted to less-than-a-home as an urgent political problem, without engendering feelings of ‘otherness’ or disgust that might prevent well-housed viewers

108

THINKING HOME

from sympathizing and identifying with them. To achieve this, he redeployed some of the conflicting connotations of homelessness. He portrayed many of his subjects as resilient, but haunted or penned in – not by ghosts of past sins as in Ironweed – but by material circumstances that suggested a spreading corruption or disorder. Often much more subtly than in the title photograph, Hedges’s images visually suggested the vulnerability of children to moral contamination from their degrading surroundings: a child and an infant almost blur into their shadow on the dirty wallpaper (Hedges 1969b); a boy is dwarfed by looming, paint-peeling walls (Hedges 1970b). Other images show people actively resisting or shrinking away from their environment: a dignified threegeneration family portrait is undercut by the fact that the width of the image is roughly that of the room in which all nine are living (Hedges 1969c). One photograph, like ‘Migrant Mother’, evokes Madonna-like connotations; but Hedges (1969a) included the dingy indoor surroundings, and made the tired-looking woman and her child a bright island in a sea of doom. The Biblical connotations of the figure give ironic force to the pre-modern, cave-like appearance of the room, in a house which, according to Hedges’s note, had ‘no gas, no electricity, no hot water, no bathroom’ (‘Below’ 2014). In another image, a mother and four children are in a bedroom where monstrous-looking damp stains overshadow a mattress-less bed, like a creeping nightmare (Figure 6.3). The edge of a door shows on the right, but the mother is confined

FIGURE 6.3  Nick Hedges, ‘Mr and Mrs M. and their four children lived in a council owned house … Birmingham, January 1969’. Courtesy of Nick Hedges. Hedges’s photographs can be viewed online at http://www.nickhedgesphotography.co.uk/.

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

109

to the opposite corner, with the bars of a cot showing, prison-like, in the front left. One girl seems to be considering moving off the bed. This image, read backwards, conveys that a home should offer not just order but freedom, by functioning as a springboard for the next generation’s social, economic and psychological development, not be a place in which everyone is trapped. Since the seminal work of Jacob Riis (1890) and Lewis Hine (1915), documentary photography has been troubled by the paradox that if bad conditions produce social problems, then the people living in them must be, to quote Hine’s provocative caption, ‘Human Junk’. Of all the photographs Lange took of Thompson, it was the close-up that became famous: an image that eliminated alterity by excluding not only her older children, but also the material signifiers of her poverty that appear in Lange’s longer shots: the small, bare tent, the rudimentary furniture and utensils (Curtis 1986: 5, 9). The close-up narrows the focus onto an existential experience of anxiety about homelessness, and cuts across class boundaries by eliminating even the evidence of an improvised home. For Hedges, however, it was vital to document the surroundings of urban decay, so his pictures tread an uneasy line by suggesting both that children growing up in these places are unlikely to escape moral taint, and that the parents are doing what they can, despite their surroundings, and deserve help. The political argument is powerful, even though it draws together conflicting readings of homelessness. The children in the images help clinch the point by suggesting that a narrow window of opportunity remains for society to provide them with a better environment and a more promising future. A sense of ‘less-than-home’ rather than its entire absence is crucial to Hedges’s images. Family groupings, hearths, kitchens and children playing, form recognizable connections to homefulness that measure what is wanting, and present the inhabitants as creative improvisers deserving of better materials. Kennedy’s novel used a similar technique of bringing in poignant reminders of what Francis had lost. His determination to bring a turkey when he visited his home for the first time in years, for example, was a metonymic reminder of all the providing, participation and Thanksgiving celebrations that he had missed. The novel’s ending is strategically bifurcated, with Francis imagining himself cleaning up and moving back home, while apparently jumping a train out of town, a bottle of whisky in his hand: his homelessness is portrayed as his actual choice, but not quite his hope. This duality functions as a final hinge of empathy, because the protagonist’s rejection of home in the conclusion, though culpable, is incomplete. James Dickey’s poem ‘Bums, On Waking’ (Dickey 1964: 65–67) uses similar hinges of empathy and dual implications to create a strange fantasy of paradisal resurrection out of the unlikely situation of alcoholics sleeping rough. Like Kennedy, Dickey portrayed homelessness as a half-ironic, surreal form of spiritual quest. He also used provocative

110

THINKING HOME

juxtapositions, similar to those found in street or documentary photography, to turn the lack of an earthly home into a means of imagining a mystical one. At the start of Dickey’s poem, which was first published in The New Yorker (7 September 1963), the unconscious men are compared to ‘children sleeping toward Christmas’. This image evokes the domestic life from which these men are excluded, and implies that their failure to assume adult civic responsibilities leaves them with unrealistic, childish hopes. But allowing oneself to be watched while sleeping, and falling asleep on the floor, are childlike acts that (as in Sandra’s case) invite the viewer to assume a protective, parental role. In addition to encouraging feelings of compassion towards the homeless, representing a sleeper permits a certain shared reverie. The poem’s opening, for instance, gives a verbal presence to absent comforts: ‘the pillow of the curbstone/Turning hard as sleep drains from it’. This effect creates a duality of perspective comparable to that found in Matt Weber’s photograph, ‘Morning on the Bowery 1988’ (Figure 6.4). Weber’s image offers the viewer a means of identifying with the homeless man through the ritual of morning coffee, but the similarity sharpens the contrast. His marginalized social position is conveyed by his surroundings: underfoot and ignored by passers-by; though it is possible to imagine the same figure, transported to a scenic wilderness, with an expensive tent instead of a dumpster behind him. The man’s expression, as he squints away from the sun and the camera, is inscrutable, a narrow space of privacy, on this public street.

FIGURE 6.4  © Matt Weber, ‘Morning on the Bowery 1988’. Courtesy of Matt Weber. Weber’s photographs can be viewed online at https://weber-street-photography.com/.

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

111

The parallels in Dickey’s poem similarly invite the reader into the experience of the ‘bums’ through familiar things: pillows, sleeping, waking, hoping, even drunkenness; but, unlike Weber, Dickey leaves his characters no inscrutability: they become dreamlike avatars of the reader, harbouring the wish to awaken to the surprise of having all our hopes realized, but secretly knowing that we will instead return to our disappointing realities. Dickey aimed in his poems for the ‘razor’s edge between sublimity and absurdity’, acknowledging that ‘sometimes both sides are ludicrous’ (Dickey 1970: 65). This poem first covers some familiar ground, but subsequently presses the analogy between homelessness and spiritual seeking to a surreal extreme. Initially, Dickey’s protagonists are unimpressed by what they see ‘Through the glass in the rich part of town’, following the convention that the homeless recognize the false promises of consumerism that are embodied in ‘arrested’ ‘forms of humanized wax’. Like readers of The New Yorker, looking for a poetic revelation, these protagonists ‘expect and hope for/Something totally other’, a desire for change that is reinforced by mid-sentence stanza breaks between the alternating sestets and couplets that structure the poem. But this heightened desire generates surreal envisionings: first the ‘bums’ hope to awaken ‘in a trampled rose garden,/Pillowed on a bulldog’s side’, and then ‘on the steps’ of an altar: Where candles are opening their eyes With all-seeing light And the green stained glass of the windows Falls on them like sanctified leaves. In arguing for the possibility of these hypothetical awakenings, Dickey portrays alcoholic blackouts (to which he was likely no stranger) as a kind of epistemological open-mindedness, a ‘Commitment to not being sure/What he shall behold’, and as Christlike: ‘Who else has died and thus risen?’ Dickey’s imaginings redeem homelessness not with domesticity, but with an implausible but deeper vision of spiritual or ecological belonging, which he communicates in terms borrowed from the language of US Southern Evangelicalism. His transcendent ‘bums’ ‘might just as well have walked/On water’, or ‘Through slums where their stony pillows/Refused to harden, because of/Their hope for this morning’s first light’. The poem’s final images circle back to the opening, implying that the homeless men are spiritually exemplary to the homeful in their desperate hope; that they are inspired innocents or babes in the wood; and that, in their difficult lives, they experience daily the miracle of resurrection. Yet, like McCullin, Dickey holds his fantasy at a half-distance: the language of the poem superimposes a hypothetical narrative over a parallel, non-numinous story of men trapped in a cycle of failure and degradation, from which sleep alone offers relief. Dickey

112

THINKING HOME

foregrounds his awareness that his poem is using ‘bums’ to figure forth images of an alternate, imagined homefulness that better fulfils his desires for spiritual belonging and poetic creativity. This fantasy emphasizes communion with nature, and the possibility of eye-opening epiphanies, in contrast to the indoor living and comfortable predictability usually associated with home. Published thirteen years before ‘Bums, On Waking,’ Mina Loy’s ‘Hot Cross Bum’ also contemplates homeless alcoholics for poetic and spiritual purposes.5 The people that she observed living on the Bowery in the 1940s were the precursors of Kennedy’s and Dickey’s figures, since, after the Great Depression ended and the able-bodied found employment in the war effort, most of New York’s homeless were either alcoholic or mentally ill. Loy saw in such people, who were unable to enter mainstream life by working and maintaining a home, a poignant embodiment of the mixture of angelic élan and debilitating weakness that characterized humanity, and that was magnified through the prism of homelessness. Like Kennedy and Dickey, Loy perceived homelessness as revelatory of qualities that home obscured. But, trained as an avant-garde Modernist, Loy concentrated on surfaces and arrangement, with the goal of de-familiarizing the scene, rather than generating a straightforward sympathy for the people depicted. Loy wanted to stimulate her readers out of complacency by being transgressive and provocative: she did not want readers to feel at home in her poems. In ‘Hot Cross Bum’ (Loy 1996:133–44), the ethical discomfort created by the title’s flippant pun is reinforced by the poet’s laconic portrayal of the homeless as if they were precious sculptures or drawings arranged for viewing in a gallery, or a fresco of heaven and hell (134): faces of Inferno peering from shock-absorbent torsos alternate with raffish saints’ eleemosynary innocence Blowsy angels lief to leer upon crystal horizons Such imagery highlights (with more flamboyance and irony than Weber’s photograph) the lack of privacy that urban homelessness entails. It also queries social marginalization by framing the homeless as sacred art. Here and elsewhere in the poem, Loy rebels against the narrowness of conventional notions of beauty. Later she describes, for instance, a man’s wounds as ‘opal bruises/of belaboured bone’ (136). ‘OPEN your arms to the dilapidated’, Loy had once commanded fellow avant-garde poets (1996: 149). By embracing homeless figures in her writing, she expressed her rejection of a comfortable, homeful poetics.

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

113

The ‘crystal horizons’ at which Loy’s angelic homeless figures ‘leer’ are the shelves of a liquor shop window offering the promise of a ‘rainbow in your brain’ (135). Like Dickey and Kennedy, Loy portrayed alcoholism as a distorted reflection of religious experience, in that it, like homelessness, enabled a certain liberation of behaviour and perception. The limited liberation offered by an addictive substance proves, however, a suitable match for the limited freedom offered by homelessness in Loy’s semi-satirical poem. But the poem is not entirely ironic. The alcoholics ‘clutching at wobbly banisters/ to Elysium’ (135) are misguided and yet symbolic of human spiritual seeking. By describing their addiction using luminous images (‘rainbow’, ‘crystal’), Loy communicates an artistic sympathy for the pursuit of a kind of bedazzlement, which contrasts with her depiction of the church workers, whose ‘cadence/of illenience’ (141) she critiques, as they distribute food with hell-fire sermons, thereby ‘branding/indirigible bums/with the hot-cross/of ovenly buns’ (142). If, according to Christian teaching, the human soul is journeying towards its true and supremely attractive home in heaven, then Loy’s homeless addicts seem to represent the schema better than the missionaries, despite becoming devotees of the wrong object. Instead of pursuing one of the two perspectives that Boo and others noted (sensational or sentimental), Loy twisted the binary poles of degradation and exaltation together, so that her homeless figures express a mystical conjunction of lower and higher values. It is a conjunction that Loy conveyed in other poems and in visual works, including the painting reproduced for the cover of the 1997 Carcanet edition of Lost Lunar Baedeker, in which a snail-like creature stretches its human face up towards the sky. In ‘Hot Cross Bum’ Loy calls the homeless figures an ‘unlikely spill/of God’s mysteriously/variously/ retarded children’, blending disparagement with maternal tenderness. Her work combined the Modernist impulse to make reading (and reading one’s environment) less comfortable, with the tradition of Christic reversals, epitomized in ‘Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18.4). In Loy’s three-dimensional artwork, ‘Communal Cot’, which dates to the same period as ‘Hot Cross Bum’ and draws its title from a line of the poem, the association between homelessness and childlikeness is central (see Loy, c. 1949). Using recycled materials, rags and papier mâché, Loy created a tableau of homeless figures, as viewed from above, sleeping on the street. Their miniature size and foetal curl recall infancy. Some seem to gesture with pleading or praying hands, others have limp or contorted limbs that convey either the passive abandon of sleep, or a deeper brokenness. The creased rags out of which they are shaped hint at a thin and worn body beneath, and resemble (like Sandra’s blanket) mendicants’ robes, shrouds, or grey urban debris decomposing to dust. Influenced by the view down onto the street from

114

THINKING HOME

her upstairs room, and possibly also by Germaine Krull’s 1928 photograph of a sleeping tramp taken from above, Loy’s artwork gives a heaven’s eye view of these orphaned figures. The change of visual dimension, as the horizontal pavement becomes a vertical space, makes the sleepers float, unmoored, like strange clouds in what the poem calls their ‘inverted sky’. Although in Krull’s photograph, the suggestion is circus-like and whimsical, in Loy’s, the floating figures are sombre, and evoke impossible dreams, the flight or fate of souls after death, the sad mystery of human suffering, loneliness. Read backwards, Loy’s poem and artworks suggest that, in her view, homefulness was an unfulfilled longing, a reverie, possibly a delusion. Yet the childlikeness of her figures conveys maternal concern, and a deep belief in a shared human need for belonging, which she responded to by welcoming such figures into her work. Without idealizing homelessness, Loy, like Kennedy and Dickey, used it to provoke spiritual reflection, and sought to find wisdom or at least an alternative perspective through contemplating the situation of people whose life involved visible exposure to suffering, loss and worldly failure, the inverse of homefulness. The expressive convergence of bodily degradation with angelic exaltation in Loy’s poetry has a twenty-first-century parallel in the photography of Lee Jeffries. Despite belonging to the contemporary genre of the digital image, Jeffries’ pictures of homeless people hearken back in time, beyond Modernism, to the beggars of Caravaggio and Rembrandt, and to the metaphysical expression of Dürer’s etchings. At the same time, Jeffries’ portrayals share in the mood of the recent ‘New Sincerity’ movement, by being reverential, emotive and devoid of the deflating irony with which Kennedy and Dickey laced their mythologizing for the readers of a more self-consciously secularizing and cynical age.6 Jeffries’ online gallery, Lost Angels, is comprised of mostly black and white portraits, with a focus on faces and hands, and a dramatic use of chiaroscuro. The work has been described by Jack Conran as ‘spiritual iconography’and its Christian overtones are occasionally explicit (Jeffries and Slater 2012). The resemblance of one man’s scrawny body and abundant facial hair to a picture of Christ crucified is highlighted, in one photograph, by an architectural background that gives the figure angelic wings. In ‘Latoria’, ceiling ridges radiate from behind the figure’s head like a halo. Sharing Hedges’s goal of social reform, Jeffries has donated profits and given homeless charities free use of his images. But he also regards these images as individualized expressions of love, acts of artistic reverence that bring out the beauty of a soul from a visibly damaged body. Jeffries technique creates faces etched with experience that illustrate Bird’s view that homelessness involves a more edgy and raw encounter with life. They corroborate the suspicion that the flipside of home’s protection is that it can blind us to the suffering of others, and to the struggle being fought on open streets, largely unseen, within the minds and bodies of homeless

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

115

individuals. Like Kennedy’s and Dickey’s portrayals, Jeffries’ imply that homelessness exaggerates common experiences, such as ageing or getting dirty, which homes can palliate or conceal. Through the use of extreme closeup, low exposure and the digital technique of dodge and burn, Jeffries creates faces that seem to have (to rephrase Dickey) ‘candles’ in their eyes but that are struggling to emerge out of dark surroundings into light and hope. By digitally heightening the contrast, Jeffries emphasizes wrinkles, dirt and blemishes from substance abuse, and intensifies emotional expressions, thereby giving certain images a grotesque quality and suggesting a battle between light and dark forces. But his method also leaves his subjects’ skin looking carved and silvered over (Figure 6.5) and their expression timeless, sometimes mask-like. He transforms them into living sculpture: images for contemplation.

FIGURE 6.5  Lee Jeffries, [Untitled] (n.d.), in ‘Lost Angels: Homeless’. Courtesy of Lee Jeffries. Jeffries’ photographs can be viewed online at http://leejeffries.500px. com/homeless.

116

THINKING HOME

Although, in one sense, this processing objectifies an individual, it involves intimate work that, for Jeffries, meaningfully repositions the homeless person at the centre of the artist’s and the viewers’ attention (Bignell 2011): ‘I want to be up close, taking portraits and not telling the story of the environment they’re in, but telling the story of them.’ As a portraitist, he gets to know his subjects, and they often assist with the picture by holding his reflector as he positions his camera, inches from their face (Taylor 2016). Consequently, their faces look alert to being viewed but surprisingly unselfconscious. Digital formats create distance, but they also facilitate a kind of shareable intimacy which Jeffries exploits, making the faces of socially neglected people vividly present, and unselfconsciously at ease; inside homes, on computer screens, everywhere. In their intimacy, Jeffries’ portraits implicate the viewer: by drawing us into an unaccustomed closeness to the subject, they imply that the homeful viewer’s willingness to engage with the homeless is an extension of the cosmic struggle depicted in the portrait. His images thereby confer opposing roles on his homeless subjects, making them both suffering victims and empowered angelic  messengers to the sheltered homeful. To give homeless figures symbolic overtones may seem to detract from the material detail of their circumstances, but, as this essay has shown, depictions can work on multiple levels, combining observational detail with subjective contemplation and mythic reach. For this reason, they offer useful insight into the varied and conflicted meanings of homefulness. As many critics have warned, there is a danger in misusing representations of the poor that do not so much convey the experience of those depicted, as reflect the values, concerns and prejudices of those who make them. Keith Gandal has argued (2007: 5–6), for instance, that stereotypical portrayals of the urban poor in ‘classploitation’ movies, as either carefree, streetwise or violent, have even skewed US government policy. But, as Gavin Jones has observed (2008: 19), to read representations of poverty as merely acts of ‘internal “colonization” or as a repressive, bourgeois appropriation’ is to overlook their aesthetic complexity. Although the portrayals of homeless people considered in this essay may be incomplete or distorted in their presentation of sociological fact, they all situate material details within a meditative tradition that encourages subjective reflection, and often, identification (‘he’s a bum, but who ain’t?’). Read backwards, therefore, these portrayals elucidate the ambiguities that are central to the transatlantic, post-Second World War ideal of home. Rather than falling into clear-cut categories of romanticization or sentimentality, the portrayals we have considered engage conflicting facets of homelessness. Homefulness encodes the safe, predictable, comfortable, nurturing environment that humans need to grow and thrive, and that it

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

117

is the goal of civil society to make accessible. Yet its opposite remains conceptually vital: homelessness as metaphor haunts these images, without diminishing the hardship or suffering of those depicted. Symbolically, homelessness challenges complacency, reflects spiritual longings, and gives leverage to the imagination to resist conformity and confinement. The texts and images considered in this essay show that lacking a good home can be associated with: isolation or exclusion; life’s unpredictability; exposure; suffering; vulnerability; primitive or uncivilized life; contamination; self-destructiveness; spiritual wisdom; irresponsibility; experience; menace; childlikeness; longing; lacking a future; being almost dead. Home, then, means the reverse of, or protection from, all these conditions; or possibly, the pleasant illusion of their banishment, a temporary stay against the forces of degeneration and mutability.

Notes 1 This backwards reading is inspired by DePastino’s history of the influence of homelessness on US culture, policy and ideals since the 1890s. Like DePastino (2003: xxii, xxiv), I retain the broad term ‘homelessness’ for its heuristic usefulness, while acknowledging that its precise meaning shifts over time, and that it foregrounds one aspect of experience in order to categorize an otherwise heterogeneous set of people. 2 That ‘a tramp dreams and wanders’ is part of a definition of hobos, tramps and bums, attributed to Ben Reitman (Andersen 1923: 87). 3 Scholars have made similar objections to the politics and aesthetics of turning the poor into art (Lemke 2010: 111). 4 The widely adopted term, ‘submerged tenth’ was coined in 1890 by William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. 5 ‘Hot Cross Bum’ was written in about 1948 and first published in New Directions 12 (1950): 311–20. 6 Although ‘New Sincerity’ was defined by David Foster Wallace in 1993 as a reaction against mass media, its values quickly spread into digital culture (Rutten 2017: 162–68).

References Adorno, T. ([1951 in German] 1974), Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott, London: New Left Books. Allen, J. (2004), Homelessness in American Literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Testimony, London: Routledge.

118

THINKING HOME

Andersen, N. (1923), The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ‘Below the Poverty Line: Slum Britain in the 1960s – in Pictures’ (2014), Guardian, 1 October, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/ oct/01/below-the-poverty-line-slum-britain-in-the-1960s-in-pictures (accessed 7 April 2017). Berger, J. (1990), ‘Keeping a Rendez-Vous’, Guardian, 22 March: 23, 25. Berger, P., B. Berger and H. Kellner (1973), The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness, New York: Random House. Bignell, P. (2011), ‘What Made an Accountant Dedicate His Life to Documenting the Plight of the Homeless?’, Independent, 8 October, available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/whatmade-an-accountant-dedicate-his-life-to-documenting-the-plight-of-thehomeless-2365968.html (accessed 10 April 2017). Bird, J. (1993), Introduction to The Big Issue Book: From a Sheltered Flame, ed. Martin Dunkerton and Sky, London: Simon & Schuster. Boo, K. (2007), ‘Staring Down Stereotypes: Writing about Poverty in America’, Berlin Journal, 14: 50–55. Cowley, M. (1934), Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s, rev. ed., New York: Viking Press. Curtis, J. C. (1986), ‘Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression’, Winterthur Portfolio, 21 (1): 1–20. DePastino, T. (2003), Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dickey, J. (1964), Helmets, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Dickey, J. (1970), Self-Interviews, ed. B. and J. Reiss, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ‘Don McCullin at the National Gallery’ (2013), Globe and Mail, 30 January, slide 4, available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/don-mccullin-atthe-national-gallery/article7978619/ (accessed 7 April 2017). Dunkerton, M. (1993), ‘Homeless Young Man, London, 1991’, in Martin Dunkerton and Sky (eds), From a Sheltered Flame: The Big Issue Book, 109, London: Simon & Schuster. Dunne, G. (2002), ‘Photographic Licence’, New Times, San Luis Obispo, CA, available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20020602103656/http://www. newtimes-slo.com/archives/cov_stories_2002/cov_01172002.html#top (accessed 7 April 2017). Ehrenreich, B. ([2001] 2008), Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, New York: Henry Holt. Feied, F. (1964), No Pie in the Sky: The Hobo as American Cultural Hero in the Works of Jack London, John Dos Passos, and Jack Kerouac, New York: The Citadel Press. Frost, R. (1914), North of Boston, London: D. Nutt. Gandal, K. (2007) Class Representation in Modern Fiction and Film, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Giamo, B. (1996), The Homeless of Ironweed: Blossoms on the Crag, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Hedges, N. (n.d.), ‘Nick Hedges Photography’ [online photogallery], available at: http://www.nickhedgesphotography.co.uk/ (accessed 7 April 2017).

‘HE’S JUST A BUM, BUT WHO AIN’T?’

119

Hedges, N. (1969a), ‘Mrs T. and Her Family … Sheffield, May 1969’ [photograph], available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/oct/01/ below-the-poverty-line-slum-britain-in-the-1960s-in-pictures (accessed 7 April 2017). Hedges, N. (1969b), ‘Children Living in Substandard Property, Birmingham Balsall Heath, June 1969’ [photograph], available at: http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/photography/11128331/Make-Life-Worth-Living-Nick-Hedgesphotographs-for-Shelter.html?frame=3047191 (accessed 7 April 2017). Hedges, N. (1969c), ‘An Irish Family Living in a Single Basement Room – Tenants of a Multi-let House. Toxteth, Liverpool, November 1969ʹ [photograph], available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/11128331/MakeLife-Worth-Living-Nick-Hedges-photographs-for-Shelter.html?frame=3050105 (accessed 7 April 2017). Hedges, N. (1970a), ‘Terrace of Back-to-back Houses, Leeds, West Yorkshire, July 1970’ [photograph], available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ photography/11128331/Make-Life-Worth-Living-Nick-Hedges-photographs-forShelter.html?frame=3047193 (accessed 7 April 2017). Hedges, N. (1970b), ‘Kitchen of Slum House, Birmingham Duddleston, August 1970’ [photograph], available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ photography/11128331/Make-Life-Worth-Living-Nick-Hedges-photographs-forShelter.html?frame=3047197 (accessed 7 April 2017). Hine, L. (1915), ‘Making Human Junk’, Child Labor Bulletin, 3 (4): 35. Jeffries, L. (n.d.), Lost Angels [online photo gallery], available at: http:// leejeffries.500px.com (accessed 7 April 2017). Jeffries, L. and D. Slater (2012), ‘Portrait of a Photographer: Lee Jeffries’, 500px iso, available at: https://iso.500px.com/portrait-of-a-photographer-lee-jeffries/ (accessed 7 April 2017). Jones, G. (2008), American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in US Literature 1840–1945, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kennedy, W. ([1979] 1983), Ironweed, New York: Penguin. Krull, G. (1928), ‘Tramp (Under the Bridges) 1928’ [photograph], reproduced in C. Scott (2007), Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson, 109, London: I B Tauris. Lemke, S. (2010), ‘Facing Poverty: Towards a Theory of Articulation’, Amerikastudien/American Studies, 55 (1): 95–122. Loy, M. (c. 1949), ‘Communal Cot’ [artwork], reproduced in R. Dini (2016), Consumerism, Waste and Re-Use in Twentieth-Century Fiction: Legacies of the Avant-Garde, 57, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, available at: http://www. artnet.com/artists/mina-loy/communal-cot-a-CYFw-DYHzk_k03ck-_aAag2 (accessed 10 April 2017). Loy, M. (1996), Lost Lunar Baedeker, ed. R. L. Conover, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ‘Make Life Worth Living: Nick Hedges’ Photographs for Shelter’ ([2014– 15]), Telegraph, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ photography/11128331/Make-Life-Worth-Living-Nick-Hedges-photographs-forShelter.html?frame=3047197 (accessed 7 April 2017). McCullin, D. (2012), ‘Don McCullin: The Art of Seeing’, Guardian, 15 November, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/15/donmccullin (accessed 7 April 2017).

120

THINKING HOME

Nici, J. (2015), Famous Works of Art – And How They Got That Way, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. O’Donnell, B. (2004), ‘Francis Phelan in Purgatory: William Kennedy’s Catholic Imagination in Ironweed’, Christianity and Literature, 54 (1): 51–71. Pizer, D. (1993), Theory and Practice of American Literary Nationalism: Selected Essays and Reviews, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Riis, J. (1890), How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Rutten, E. (2017), Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Taylor, C. (2016), ‘Crash Taylor Interviews Photographer Lee Jeffries’, available at: http://www.interviewsbycrashtaylor.com/2016/01/25/crash-taylor-interviewsphotographer-lee-jeffries/ (accessed 10 April 2017).

7 Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars: Homelessness, Responsibility and Social Welfare Entitlement Vivienne Ashley

Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me. (Ellison [1952] 2001: 3)

Introduction All of us have made imprudent decisions and wished we hadn’t.1 All of us have been (and will continue to be) hasty or reckless from time to time, or perhaps regularly in certain aspects of our life. But some of us, I suggest, routinely make decisions that tend to make their lives go badly, to the extent that they can become trapped in deprivation and a revolving door of state intervention. In this chapter, I will focus on those who are deemed by the state to have forfeited their legal right to housing as a result of their perceived irresponsibility. I will argue that disqualifying such people from public assistance, in effect, can deny their access to a home and, thus, a

122

THINKING HOME

prerequisite for autonomy-competence; that is, the ability to make and enact choices that secure one’s best interests. This is because a home provides an environment and opportunity to acquire and cultivate the dispositions and skills necessary for prudent self-government. Consequently, people who are regarded as ‘intentionally homeless’ as a result of their perceived failure to act prudently risk becoming even less able to choose pathways that track their best interests, becoming and thus remaining ‘invisible’, just like the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s novel cited above. Homelessness law in the UK disqualifies people from re-housing and labels them ‘intentionally homeless’ if the cause of their homelessness is deemed causally linked to some deliberate act or omission on their part (Housing Act 1996: s.191).2 For example, a tenant who consistently fails to take the necessary steps to ensure that her rent is paid and who is consequently evicted due to rent arrears. In such cases homeless individuals and families can become hidden from sight while resorting to statutorily unfit or overcrowded accommodation let by unscrupulous landlords, or to so-called ‘sofa surfing’, moving regularly between short stays with family and friends who do not have the room or will to accommodate them for stable periods of time. The less fortunate will be more visible sleeping on the streets, vulnerable to a myriad of harms (Reeve 2011) and the demeaning attitude of those who fail to see their humanity and the causes – not just effects – of their plight. Blamed for their own misery and misfortune, much of society considers the street homeless population as little more than an annoyance and source of discomfiture. I have worked for over twenty years on the frontline of social welfare, providing welfare rights advice and representation to homeless people. Many of the people I have worked with lived chaotic and troubled lives. They tended to be mentally ill, emotionally damaged and/or in poor physical health, and all too commonly their lives had been marred by neglect and abuse in childhood, or derailed by misfortune and tragedy – or, if they were particularly unlucky, both. They are the ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ of Elizabethan times (An Act for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars 1597: 39 Elizabeth I, ch. 4) who are now referred to as ‘scroungers’, ‘skivers’ and ‘shirkers’, and by other pejorative terms that, regrettably, poison contemporary debates concerning the future of state welfare. Instead of the physical violence meted out under Elizabethan law, the means of subsistence are withheld from them in accordance with the principle of welfare conditionality, which links entitlement to prescribed standards of behaviour. Without this threat of disqualification, it is claimed that access to publicly funded social goods would be exploited by those content to rely on hardworking taxpayers to service the costs of meeting their needs. However, through my frontline work I came to understand that, by and large, recklessness and irresponsibility were rarely behaviours borne out of a

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

123

sense of entitlement or a thoughtless reliance on the safety-net of the welfare state. Generally, my clients were not people who believed they had a right to get ‘something for nothing’, as politicians claim, nor, as philosophers imagine, were they surfers who thoughtlessly enslaved others while they spent an enjoyable day catching waves. Rather, they were people who seemed illequipped for life in some vital sense; they were ignorant or careless of their own interests, or misguided in terms of what they needed to do to promote them, or too ill, apathetic or distracted to act as they ought to. Their perplexing, and often frustrating, failure to do what was expected of them therefore needed another explanation. But, living on the edge of society, they had no voice – not one that many people cared to listen to, at any rate. It is my hope that in this essay the voice of this increasingly demonized underclass will be heard and that we can come to better understand: firstly, why some people seem to routinely make decisions that make their lives go badly; secondly, how we can make sense of such self-defeating agency; and, thirdly, how society might better respond to it. Before I outline how I will proceed in these matters, let me first make a few clarificatory points. First, while the concept of personal autonomy (selfdetermination) plays an important role in my argumentation, it is not possible for me to address here the rich literature that attends it, nor the contrasting models of personal autonomy that have emerged from it.3 Elsewhere, I have developed a conception of personal autonomy which is directly linked to a range of interests of key importance to human flourishing as delineated by Martha Nussbaum (Ashley 2014; Nussbaum 2011: 33–34), including life, bodily health, bodily integrity and control over one’s environment. Here, I rely on this conception of autonomy-competence, according to which an autonomous agent is one who has the skills and dispositions (evaluative skills, executive skills, and dispositions that underpin them such as self-esteem and empathy) to make and enact decisions that promote their best interests – interests that are critical to human health and flourishing, including, importantly, having a home. Secondly, since I claim that having a ‘home’ is a prerequisite for autonomy-competence and, thus, prudent self-government, I should clarify what I mean by the term ‘home’ as distinct from ‘housing’. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘housing’ is a term used to denote ‘houses and flats considered collectively’, while ‘home’ is a term used to denote a ‘place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household’ (Oxford English Dictionary Online n.d.). Accordingly, a house is understood as a construction appropriate for living in and a home is understood as a place which is lived in in a settled manner. But I would argue that a home is not simply a place built for human habitation in which we live with some degree of stability; there are other, essential, qualities that transform bricks and mortar into a locale in which human beings can acquire, cultivate and exercise the

124

THINKING HOME

skills and dispositions for prudent self-government. It must provide a space within which we can plan, live and review our lives; a place of intimacy where we can develop relationships and bring up our children; a venue for celebrations and a sanctuary in which we overcome our pain. Understood in this way, a home is rightly described by King (2003: 97) as a ‘private entity’, without which one cannot adequately function nor integrate into social life. With these preliminaries out of the way, I will now move on to address the three questions posed above. In section two, I will address the question: why do some people routinely make choices, or act in ways, that make their lives go badly? I will present a range of case studies that illustrate this phenomenon and highlight a range of background circumstances in which it appears to be manifest. I will elucidate this dysfunctional agency as sub-optimal decisionmaking, a term I use to denote decision-making which is not favourable to the decision-maker’s best interests, where this is attributable to underdeveloped or diminished decision-making skills and dispositions. I will argue that such deficiencies can be understood in terms of impaired autonomy-competence. I then move on to the second question: how should a just social welfare policy respond to imprudent decision-making borne of impaired autonomycompetence, specifically when it leads to the decision-maker’s homelessness? I will deal with this in two parts. In section three, I will set out how the state currently responds to impaired autonomy-competence by explaining the test for intentional homelessness under UK law which, as demonstrated in the case studies, denies housing to those who are deemed to have caused their own homelessness. I will argue that far from achieving its stated aim to promote personal responsibility, the test for intentional homelessness only denies vulnerable people access to a locale in which they can develop and improve their autonomy-competence and, thus, their capacity for prudent selfgovernment. In section four, I will hint at an alternative approach for engaging and empowering individuals living troubled, chaotic lives, which accounts for the phenomenon of sub-optimal decision-making, and thereby can provide autonomy-enhancing interventions that promise to substantially improve the lives of some of society’s most disadvantaged people.

Sub-optimal decision-making In this section, I will explore why some people routinely make choices or act in ways that make their lives go badly, and how we can make sense of such self-defeating agency. I will start by presenting a range of case studies which I believe illuminate the phenomenon of sub-optimal decisionmaking attributable to underdeveloped or impaired decision-making skills.

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

125

Underdeveloped skills, I suggest, are often ascribable to factors that damage a person’s emotional, intellectual and social development as a child, for example lack of stability, poor nurturing and abuse. However, even for those of us lucky enough to have enjoyed ‘good-enough parenting’,4 our developed skills are still vulnerable to impairment as a result of ill health and destabilizing personal crises. The following case studies suggest deficiencies in evaluative skills and executive dispositions, which go some way to help explain why the individuals in question chose or acted as they did. These cases are real and exemplify a range of scenarios familiar to those who work on the frontline of social welfare and health care services. In respect of homeless applications (specifically the application of the test for intentional homelessness), self-defeating agency is generally assessed within a binary framework: either in terms of mental incapacity or moral failure. By the phrase ‘moral failure’ I mean to capture the sense in which an agent is blamed appropriately for some wrongful and/or harmful act or omission. For example: if I intentionally trample on your flower bed out of envy it would be reasonable for you to blame me and hold me accountable for the damage I cause; but if I trip over on an uneven path and flatten your petunias by accident, blaming me for the event would not be reasonable, despite your likely annoyance. In contrast to this relatively vague assessment framework, the term ‘mental incapacity’ has a very specific legal definition, as set out in the Mental Capacity Act 2005, in England and Wales. According to this Act, a person lacks mental capacity if she is unable to make a particular decision for herself at the time it needs to be made because the functioning of her mind or brain is impaired to the extent that she is unable to understand, retain or ‘use and weigh’5 information relevant to the decision to be made, or to communicate the decision reached (Mental Capacity Act 2005: §2). Those who suffer from dementia and psychotic illness or who are severely learning disabled, for example, can lack mental capacity. While mental incapacity absolves an applicant from responsibility for the events leading to their homelessness, moral failure does not. There is a gap between these two explanatory poles; an intermediate terrain which can be understood in terms of impaired autonomy-competence, populated by individuals who have mental capacity but who are ill-equipped to make and enact choices that promote their best interests. In my view, the following case studies illustrate this gap.6

The case of MC MC is a 24-year-old woman who was raped by her boyfriend when she was fifteen, a traumatic event that was compounded around a year later when she was brutally raped by a so-called family friend in her parents’ home.7 On the

126

THINKING HOME

latter occasion a complaint was made to the police but MC was too unwell to give evidence due to depression. She attempted suicide and subsequently received a short period of psychiatric care. These events led to a deterioration of her relationship with her parents and she moved into a bedsit granted by the local housing authority (LHA). Rent arrears built up during the first year of that tenancy because MC failed to claim housing benefit to cover her rent liability during regular periods of unemployment. She was also unable to pay her household bills and incurred catalogue debts. The LHA warned her that it would take steps to evict her if she did not deal with her rent arrears but she took no action. Meanwhile, MC began a relationship, but when she became pregnant her boyfriend left her and she became very distressed. During this period the LHA tried to resolve the rent arrears problem but MC failed to attend meetings and to comply with arrangements to pay her rent and reduce her arrears. Eventually the LHA took legal proceedings to evict her, and a suspended order for possession was made. She failed to take steps to ensure the necessary rent and arrears payments were made. An eviction date was set, but given the birth of her son eviction was postponed to give her a last opportunity to make necessary benefit claims. She did not and was evicted. Initially she stayed with family but was then granted temporary accommodation at a hostel with a mother and baby unit where she thrived. Meanwhile the LHA were required to made inquiries into MC’s homelessness application to enable them to satisfy themselves whether she was entitled to rehousing. Nearly a year after her eviction the LHA concluded that she had become homeless intentionally because she deliberately failed to take the necessary steps to prevent her eviction. MC’s doctor submitted the following opinion that she was not able to manage her affairs and therefore her failure to act should not be deemed intentional: This young woman, though not mentally ill in the clinical or formal sense has in my opinion quite significant personality problems in that she is unusually anxious and to some extent unstable. … It seems fair to say that the [two rapes] have cast a dark shadow over her … It is my opinion that this led to her leading a disjointed and chaotic lifestyle during which she drank to excess and because of which was unable to think straight and to keep her affairs in order. However, the authority maintained its view that there was a lack of evidence of prolonged impact of these traumas. The LHA statement reads: [T]here is no evidence that you were depressed or being treated for this and there is no evidence to suggest that your overdose was a suicide attempt. … [Y]ou did not seek any treatment for your drinking problem [of which

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

127

there is no evidence] and you stated that this is where your money was being spent. You also stated that you were raped, while I appreciate this traumatic assault on you must have been devastating, all of this took place when you were 16 years old … well before your being given a tenancy, and at the time of the rape you were referred for counselling and to the Child Guidance Unit of which you never kept to the appointment [sic]. It is clear that MC did not take advantage of multiple opportunities to save her tenancy, but it is not clear whether she was able to do so. The presumption was that she was careless of the repeated warnings of eviction, but in the context of the trauma she suffered, and her associated depression and problem-drinking, her inaction could be interpreted as dispiritedness – a lack of motivation verging on executive paralysis. Given the evidence concerning MC’s long history of failing to manage her affairs appropriately and her GP’s view that she was not mentally ill, MC is, in my view, a strong case of sub-optimal decision-making. Some might question whether her chaotic life should be attributed to moral failure: could it be that she was just lazy and irresponsible? However, I believe that the information regarding her background circumstances paints a picture of dysfunction, not negligence. The position adopted by the LHA is also instructive, since it outlines challenges faced by vulnerable individuals who must provide evidence to satisfy an LHA that the failures that led to their homelessness were not deliberate, but rather symptoms of deeper problems which prevented them from adequately managing their affairs. In MC’s case, medical evidence that at the material times she was unable to manage her affairs was not available and the effects of the trauma she suffered earlier in her life and subsequent depression were dismissed by the LHA as historic and not directly relevant. But even if materially relevant medical evidence was available, the LHA was nevertheless entitled to judge that it was not sufficiently weighty to draw a direct causal link between the relevant acts and omissions and MC’s state of mind.

The case of M M is seventeen years old.8 She is ‘the youngest of her mother’s five children by different fathers’. The family spent many years in unsettled and temporary accommodation. On her own account, the mother (who had spent her own childhood in care) has had tremendous difficulty controlling her children. M was excluded from school at fourteen and never returned. Her mother has been ill for many years with a stomach complaint which was eventually diagnosed as an inoperable malignant tumour, and M was expected to look after her mother and at the same time left to herself without supervision. She

128

THINKING HOME

became involved with the criminal justice system, her relationship with her mother broke down and she was told to leave the family home. In a letter to the council, M’s mother stated that M ‘is no longer able to stay in my home as she has broken every rule laid down to her’. M’s mother refused to engage in mediation, with a view to M’s returning home, and so the LHA placed her in a hostel for young people. However, she was subsequently evicted because she broke hostel rules. She was found intentionally homeless and the LHA refused to provide further accommodation. At the age of seventeen M is at risk of rough-sleeping. As a carer for her mother, and then following eviction from the family home, M has had to look after herself from a very early age. But it does not necessarily mean that her independent living skills are well honed. Rather, the absence of a stable and nurturing home environment seems to have resulted in obvious problems following rules, controlling her impulses and responding to people in authority. The absence of ‘good-enough parenting’, one might argue, has placed M on a gloomy trajectory of social exclusion, in which her recklessness threatens to disqualify her from the kind of supported housing environment she needs to make her life-course different. In the absence of evidence suggesting mental incapacity, one might argue, her recklessness should be interpreted as moral failure. However, while I agree that immaturity should not necessarily exempt someone from responsibility for their behaviour, it is reasonable to suppose that young people like M – who lack a nurturing and supportive family and have gone through a care system which cannot hope to replace this – will face a greater challenge than an average young person in terms of managing their behaviour.9 Accordingly, what little we know about M should at least give us reason to pause before we dismiss her case as moral failure.

The case of Mr Gibbons Mr Gibbons is a single man and the sole carer of his daughter.10 Following the death of both his parents within a year, his life fell apart. In the interval between those bereavements, Mr Gibbons cared for his father and started drinking heavily. By the time of his father’s death he had lost his job and fallen into mortgage arrears. Mr Gibbons did not apply for benefit to cover his mortgage interest, and instead sold his property to clear his debt, leaving him with a net sum of £23,395. He and his daughter then moved into rented property costing £495 per month. Due to his failure to claim benefit while out of work, his only income during this period was child benefit. He was also spending heavily on alcohol. His capital was steadily used up and he eventually fell into rent arrears, following which he was given notice to leave. He moved out into a caravan before he was legally required to do so, and on

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

129

applying to the LHA for housing, he was found intentionally homeless due to his failure to pay his rent. Mr Gibbons suffered a double bereavement and was unable to cope with its emotional impact. Perhaps, for some reason, he was less resilient than another individual might have been in coping with these events. He ‘selfmedicated’ with alcohol and mismanaged his affairs to the point of destitution. But prior to these losses, he managed to bring up his daughter alone, hold down a job, get a mortgage, buy a house and maintain mortgage payments. Mr Gibbons’s proven ability to manage his affairs, it would seem, was impaired by a damaging series of life events. I think this is a strong case of sub-optimal decision-making. Where a previously competent and responsible agent starts to mismanage their affairs to this degree it speaks against simple moral failure – particularly where such background factors attend. While alcohol intoxication can cause mental incapacity, such incapacity would be temporary and fluctuate, i.e. when sober Mr Gibbons would not lack capacity, and when intoxicated he would, but only if it impaired his decision-making to the requisite degree. The legal test sets an appropriately high bar for a finding of mental incapacity since it strips individuals of the right to make many important decisions for themselves. Accordingly, in practice, a discovery of mental incapacity seems unlikely – as suggested by this case.

The case of Stuart Shorter Stuart Shorter was a gentle, conscientious child, but after being molested by a family friend he demanded to be put into a children’s home, where he became a pupil of a paedophile (who was subsequently jailed for eighteen years).11 Violence flavoured most of Shorter’s life. As a boy, he would beat his head against tables and walls at every public opportunity ‘just to make them think I was mad, so they’d leave me alone and stop bullying me about my muscular dystrophy’. His adult life was spent almost entirely in detention centres and prisons, where he prided himself on being both unstoppable and unbothered by punishment. ‘Physical pain is like a release. It takes away what’s going on up in my head,’ he said. Following a five-year jail sentence for robbery Shorter’s life reached its lowest ebb. He belonged to the so-called ‘chaotic’ homeless – those whose worlds make no sense. Repeatedly arrested and banned from hostels, he became known as ‘Knife Man Dan’, living at the lowest subterranean floor of the city centre multi-storey car park. It was here that two outreach workers discovered him, and ‘brought him back to sanity’. Off the streets, in a flat, and regarded by local agencies as a great success story, he took enormous efforts to organize the confusion of his days; he became a leading figure in a prominent local campaign and brought common sense, street wisdom and straight talking to a hitherto largely middle-class,

130

THINKING HOME

‘academic’ protest movement. Shorter was thirty-three when he was hit by a train and died. Shorter’s adult life was characterized by chaos, violence, self-destructiveness and criminality, and it is reasonable to see underlying causation in the abuse he suffered in childhood. However, Shorter – once he was supported and housed – managed to achieve a degree of stability that allowed him to become an effective and respected political activist. Still, periodically, he became overwhelmed by memories and rage, and intentionally sabotaged his life, including, on one occasion, setting fire to the flat that was so critical to his stability: ‘I don’t know … sometimes it gets so bad you can’t think of nothing better to do than make it worse’ (Masters 2006: 39). People who struggle with life in this way are commonly deemed responsible for the consequences of such self-destructive impulses, and this situation renders them vulnerable to the punitive force of the criminal law and disqualification from certain welfare rights, including access to housing. However, given Stuart’s background, I think his problematic behaviour should generally be understood as sub-optimal decision-making. Three matters counter an assumption of mental incapacity despite evidence of mental illness. First, mental illness does not necessarily cause mental incapacity. In fact, the law recognizes that individuals subject to compulsory treatment under mental health law may nevertheless have mental capacity in respect of particular decisions (Department of Constitutional Affairs 2007: 227, s.13.2). Second, the criminal justice system tried and imprisoned Stuart for his crimes. If he lacked mental capacity at the relevant times one would have expected him not to be charged or tried, or to have been hospitalized rather than imprisoned. Third, his activist career provides evidence that for substantial periods of time he enjoyed mental capacity, such that he was able to make decisions, irrespective of any underlying mental illness. I would reject any contention that Stuart’s agency could be attributed to moral failure on the grounds that it would fail to acknowledge the enormity of the damage he suffered as a child and that it runs counter to the reasonable assumption that this damage would in all probability impair his agency. If, as I maintain, these case studies are probably instances of sub-optimal decision-making – where a person is in some sense ill-equipped to make choices that promote their best interests – then they give us an idea of the range of different background circumstances from which it can emerge: trauma, personal crises (e.g. bereavement) and ill health. We can also see how sub-optimal decision-making can impact a person’s ability to secure and sustain a home, and the deleterious effects of homelessness on well-being. Emerging from the case studies are also a range of apparent ‘deficiencies’ which help to explain why these persons chose or acted as they did. Those affected by problem-drinking and various forms of mental distress seem to have trouble making prudent decisions due to impaired evaluative capacity,

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

131

particularly the  ability to adequately appreciate the implications of their decisions. Some seem prone to intense emotional states, and lack the ability to manage them. Others lack motivation, or confidence, to deal with significant aspects of their life. Underlying these apparent deficiencies in deliberative and executive function are traces of low self-esteem and confidence, or at least reason to believe that these are contributing factors. And within the texture of their stories we can begin to discern a causal link between these deficiencies and the effects of inadequate parenting and nurture, sexual abuse, and destabilizing life events. The critical point that I would like to emphasize here is that all of the persons described in the above case studies were deemed to have the requisite mental capacity to make and enact the relevant ‘choice’ and to be held responsible for it. Accordingly, relevant acts and omissions were treated as if they had been actively selected, and it was assumed that an alternative path was available; that the agent could have acted so as to advance their best interest, but he or she didn’t. However, I argue that it is a mistake to assume that if someone satisfies the legal test of mental capacity then their imprudence or carelessness must be attributable to moral failure. In this section, I have sought to identify a gap between moral failure and mental incapacity, where someone possesses legally construed mental capacity but lacks autonomy-competence and thus is prone to sub-optimal decision-making. But does welfare conditionality, specifically the test for intentional homelessness, recognize this gap and adequately respond to the needs of the sub-optimal decision-makers that inhabit it? In the following section, I will argue that it does not, certainly as it is practised in relation to the test for intentional homelessness.

Welfare conditionality For as long as there have been laws that seek to alleviate the distress of needy citizens, so there have also been laws to distinguish between those deserving of alms and those deserving of punishment (or, at least, of disqualification from welfare services and goods). The maxim of distinguishing between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor can be traced back to the reign of Henry VIII (An Act Concerning Punishment of Beggars and Vagabonds 1531: ch. 12) and remains to this day a cornerstone of the modern welfare state. Known now as the principle of welfare conditionality, it holds that eligibility for certain basic publicly provided welfare goods should be dependent on an individual not being culpable for the events that led to the welfare need arising in the first place, and meeting any prescribed duties or standards of

132

THINKING HOME

behaviour for ongoing entitlement. It is most apparent in welfare safety-nets like unemployment benefits and, as we have seen, under homelessness law. However, the term ‘welfare conditionality’ can be misleading since all social welfare provision is conditional on something, not least need. Rather, what is at issue is how policies promote personal responsibility, and, as we have seen, traditional safety-net policies encourage the internalization of personal responsibility by merely stipulating the conditions of entitlement, while other forms of intervention do so by enabling individuals to acquire and develop the skills for personal responsibility. Let’s call these approaches, respectively, ‘hands-off’ and ‘hands-on’. With this distinction in mind, let me now return to the hands-off policies that deny (full) entitlement to people who are deemed to be responsible for their welfare needs. Defenders of such policies claim that they fulfil two important functions. Firstly, they promote socially desirable behaviours, particularly personal responsibility, and disincentivize welfare dependency, thereby enhancing the claimant’s well-being and productivity, and cutting public expenditure. Secondly, they help to eke out scarce resources by means of prioritizing ‘the deserving’ and disqualifying ‘the undeserving’.12 The following examination of the intentional homelessness test illustrates how its hands-off policies will disqualify vulnerable people like the sub-optimal decision-makers described in the above case studies. In the UK, the Housing Act 1996 places local housing authorities under a duty to alleviate a household’s homelessness only where a number of gateway tests are satisfied.13 The first of these relates to eligibility: a person is ineligible for any assistance at all if she is not habitually resident in the country or does not have the required immigration status. The second gateway test assesses homelessness: a person is not homeless if they have access to accommodation adequate for her household’s needs which, taking into account prevailing housing conditions, it is reasonable for them to occupy. The third test is priority need: a person is only entitled to accommodation if she has dependent children or if she or a member of her household has a prescribed priority need; for example, s/he is vulnerable in a housing context due to pregnancy, ill health, disability, immaturity, discharge from institutionalized care or some other special reason. The fourth gateway test is the intentional homelessness test. If these four tests are passed, the full housing duty is owed to the homeless person and then a fifth test may be applied to determine which LHA should discharge that duty, i.e. the local connection test. The LHA should make relevant inquiries on these matters, and the benefit of any doubt should be given to the homeless applicant when reaching a decision. Statute provides that a person becomes homeless intentionally if she deliberately does or fails to do something in consequence of which she

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

133

ceases to occupy accommodation which is both available for her occupation and would have been reasonable for her to continue to occupy. Furthermore, it states that an act or omission in good faith, where a person is unaware of a relevant fact, is not to be regarded as deliberate. Thus, in applying this test, a housing authority must identify the cause of the homelessness and, broadly, whether it is attributable to the voluntary, competent agency of the homeless person, or good faith ignorance of a relevant fact, or other factors that indicate that the act or omission should not be treated as deliberate. Issued to assist LHAs in their decision-making, the Homelessness Code of Guidance states that the intentional homelessness provision reflects ‘a general expectation that, wherever possible, people should take responsibility for their own accommodation needs and ensure that they do not behave in a way which might lead to the loss of their accommodation’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006).14 The Code illustrates the notion of intentional homelessness so construed with reference to applicants who lose their home because of their wilful and persistent refusal to pay rent or mortgage payments or who are evicted due to their anti-social behaviour (ibid., s.11.20). However, the Code also requires LHA decision-makers to have regard to the circumstances in which a particular act or omission should not, generally, be considered deliberate (thereby not satisfying the test for intentional homelessness). For example, where there is reason to believe that the applicant is incapable of managing her affairs, for example, by reason of age, mental illness or disability or where the relevant act or omission was the result of limited mental capacity or a temporary aberration or aberrations caused by mental illness, frailty, or an assessed substance abuse problem (ibid., s.11.17). In theory, at least, this guidance chimes with the everyday intuitions that underpin our practice of holding people responsible, specifically those intuitions that tell us when it is not legitimate to hold someone responsible. It also tells us that mental capacity plays a role in distinguishing between homelessness-causing acts and omissions that are deliberate and those that are not. In the absence of guidance to the contrary, one assumes the legal standard of mental capacity applies (Mental Capacity Act 2005). The Code also states that a lack of foresight and imprudence on the part of a mentally capacitous agent can lead to acts and omissions that should be regarded as non-deliberate. Insofar as it can excuse conduct potentially attributable to suboptimal decision-making, it could be seen to undermine my contention that welfare conditionality does not acknowledge a gap between moral failure and mental incapacity. However, there is a huge difference between the test for intentional homelessness as it is practised, and the test as it is sketched out in theory, since the law allows LHAs a high level of discretion in assessing each application. A decision cannot be overruled by the courts unless there is

134

THINKING HOME

some procedural irregularity.15 Consequently, resource-constrained LHAs with an interest in rationing housing will tend to apply a high evidential threshold in respect of the test in order that they can limit the number of households they are obliged to rehouse. The case of MC demonstrates that this evidential threshold can amount to ‘compelling’ medical evidence of mental incapacity at the relevant time. Although LHAs must have regard to the Code in respect of which acts or omissions should not generally be regarded as deliberate, this requirement could be met merely by recording that such guidance has been taken into account. All of this suggests that each authority has substantial leeway in interpreting law and guidance and choosing how generously they wish to apply it, and that this discretion can be used to ration scarce resources (Hilditch 2010). It is noteworthy – although not conclusive – that in a ten-year period, during which affordable housing resources have become increasingly scarce, the rate of intentional homelessness findings has doubled. Therefore, what occurs in practice is a better point of reference than theory when measuring the extent to which homelessness law acknowledges sub-optimal decision-making and the gap between moral failure and mental incapacity. The above case studies demonstrate that, in practice, decision-making and executive deficits short of legally construed mental incapacity, are rarely, if ever, enough to dissuade a resource-limited LHA from making an intentional homelessness decision. Lack of foresight, imprudence, poor judgement, executive failures and lack of control feature prominently in these cases, but all relevant acts and omissions were deemed to be deliberate. As it is routinely practised through the test for intentional homelessness, welfare conditionality is counter-productive and punitive insofar as it fails to secure the conditions within which sub-optimal decision-makers can develop the skills and dispositions required for prudent self-government, including a home and intensive support. An alternative, autonomy-enhancing approach is required and below I suggest one.

Autonomy-enhancing interventions In this section, I reflect on an existing UK public policy that exemplifies the kind of autonomy-enhancing intervention I wish to advocate: Family Intervention Projects (FIPs).16 FIPs work with very disadvantaged families beleaguered by multiple and complex problems, many of whom are facing high-level sanctions – e.g. eviction – as a result of their problem behaviours. By addressing the root causes of such behaviours, rather than simply dealing with their effects, FIPs have proved to be an effective means of reducing them (Department for

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

135

Education 2011). In contrast with policies that use only sanctions to enforce pro-social and responsible standards of conduct, FIPs provide a balance of support and enforcement (‘sanction-backed support’) aimed at tackling the underlying causation of anti-social and irresponsible behaviours. The FIP approach was modelled on the pioneering Dundee Families Project, a homelessness prevention scheme, established in 1996 by local housing and social work authorities, to assist families who were homeless or threatened with such as a result of their anti-social behaviour in Dundee (White et al. 2008: 9). It has since been adopted widely – locally and nationally – varying in foci (e.g. poverty, parenting, criminality/anti-social behaviour, etc.). The FIP model of intervention is exemplified by the replication of the following ‘family intervention factors’: (1) a dedicated worker; (2) practical support; (3) common purpose and agreed action; (4) considering the family as a whole; and (5) a persistent, assertive and challenging approach, staying involved as long as necessary (Department for Communities and Local Government 2012b: 6).17 Essentially, families referred to an FIP are given a choice: face the sanctions that your behaviour has triggered, or avoid them by engaging with a support plan designed to address them. Let’s call this ‘the FIP proposal’. The supportive but assertive style of work modelled by FIPs has proved to be a highly successful means of engaging ‘hard-to-reach’ families,18 thereby reducing the problems which triggered their referral for intervention and improving children’s future ‘outcomes’ (Nixon et al. 2006).19 To appreciate how this form of intervention can nurture the decision-making skills and dispositions required for personal autonomy and responsibility, I asked FIP key workers to explain how they work to help their clients to manage their lives better and keep their homes, and have identified four key areas of input.20 The first area concerns parenting: many parents who are struggling to parent adequately have not themselves benefited from adequate parenting, and as a result are ill-equipped to provide their children with the kind of nurturing environment required for their emotional, intellectual and social development. Key workers therefore adopt a parenting role – which they described as ‘parenting the parents’ – thereby providing them with a secure base from which to develop their own parenting skills and from which they can begin to think differently about themselves and their lives. This approach chimes with the idea raised earlier that in the absence of ‘good-enough parenting’ (and, worse, the presence of abuse) autonomy-competence can be underdeveloped, particularly as a result of associated levels of poor self-esteem and selfcontrol. The second area of impact relates to aspiration: many parents referred to FIPs do not have plans for the future and consequently tend not to think beyond today. This kind of planning myopia is not amenable to policies that try to regulate behaviour with the threat of sanctions, since such policies work

136

THINKING HOME

on the basis that people can see far enough ahead to predict outcomes and what they will mean for them. Key workers therefore help parents to reflect on their futures, the options available, and the desirability, or otherwise, of their likely consequences. The third area is that of trust: the parents in question have frequently been let down, particularly by their own parents, but also by statutory services, many of which demand change but cannot (or do not) adequately support it. As a consequence, statutory welfare services can come to be viewed as the enemy and not as a potential ally for families who need them. Developing trust, therefore, is key to helping parents accept the support they need to change their lives. Finally, the impact is strongly felt in the area of self-esteem and empathy: many parents do not value themselves and do not feel valued by others, and this directly impacts on their decisionmaking and their attitude to others. Key workers therefore work with parents to help them make choices that promote their best interests and to show them how their decision-making can impact others. In my view, self-esteem and empathy are dispositions that are most critical to the development and exercise of autonomy-competence; they enable us to both select courses of action that track our best interests and to enact them. Given these potential gains, the FIP model sounds like a promising approach to dealing with the sub-optimal decision-making of people whose autonomy-competence is underdeveloped or has been damaged by life-crises – particularly insofar as it ensures that people are adequately housed, often within their existing homes. Nevertheless, the FIP approach is not a silver bullet, or an easy, quick solution to a complex problem. Here are two prominent areas of concern. First, the question arises whether this approach represents value for taxpayers’ money. Increasingly, this question is judged according to a cost–benefit analysis, which contrasts the increased cost of preventative intervention against expected long-term savings in ongoing, multi-agency involvement when problem behaviours are resolved. Recently, an unpublished Whitehall report on the government’s Troubled Families Programme (TFP) – which uses an FIP-style approach – suggested it had had no discernible impact on its aim to ‘turn around’ the lives of 120,000 of the country’s most troubled households21 (O’Carroll 2016). These preliminary findings contrast with a more favourable evaluation of a range of FIP services during the period 2007–11 (Department for Education 2011). One explanation for this disparity could be that the TFP is funded within a payment-by-results framework. Encouraging ‘throughput’ – by withholding payments critical to the financial viability of thirdsector providers – may, in effect, prioritize quantity over quality at the expense of long-term positive outcomes. Furthermore, genuine outcomes are difficult to adequately monitor and evaluate over time, thus cost/benefit judgements cannot be assumed to accurately represent the benefits enjoyed by either the taxpayer or the families in question.

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

137

A second, deeper, anxiety concerns the assertive, sanction-backed support deployed by FIPs: can this approach, in effect, amount to a form of punitive authoritarianism, where key workers fulfil the role of monitors rather than supporters (Flint 2009)? In particular, the worry is that the recipients are coerced into signing up to freedom-limiting contracts set by statutory agencies who threaten severe sanctions if they do not accept their support. While engagement is said to be voluntary – families can in principle decline – refusal may not be a palatable option. Eviction from one’s home and one’s children being received into care are powerful threats, and consequently critics have objected that the voluntariness of the agreement is illusory. I suggest here and have argued more extensively elsewhere (Ashley 2014) that the FIP proposal offers: the opportunity to avoid sanctions which will otherwise be executed, including eviction; the support people need to develop the skills and dispositions required for personal autonomy and responsibility; and, thereby, the chance to escape social exclusion and to live as full members of society. As such, it is (overall) freedom-enhancing and not (unjustly) coercive. But the terms of the proposal, and the intent behind them, are critical to this judgement. If the family is better off than if the offer had not been made, and the intent of the offer is to secure better opportunities for living happier, healthy and safer lives and for achieving full potential, the FIP proposal does not change the moral status of the recipient or their family, nor infringe their rights. Rather, it provides recipients with good reasons to accept help aimed at equipping them to discharge their concomitant obligations (most importantly to parent their children adequately).

Conclusion Social welfare policies have the potential to enhance people’s ability to make choices that safeguard their best interests. However, more often than not, they seem to diminish it – ironically, in the cause of promoting personal responsibility. I have shown that the test of intentional homelessness is precariously founded on a mistaken assumption that individuals who have mental capacity are necessarily autonomy-competent, and, as such, equipped with the skills and dispositions required for effective decision-making that promotes their best interests. As a consequence, vulnerable people, illequipped for prudent self-government are denied the right to housing. Welfare conditionality is, thus, punitive insofar as it sanctions people for acts and omissions for which they should not be deemed blameworthy, and counter-productive insofar as it withholds from them a base conducive to the development and exercise of autonomy-competence – a home.

138

THINKING HOME

I have gestured towards an alternative, hands-on approach akin to the FIP model, which secures access to support and a home within which troubled people can acquire and develop the skills and dispositions required for autonomy-competence and thereby responsible agency. However, such a paradigm shift is controversial, particularly at a time of austerity, when many will ask why we should bail irresponsible people out, and if we can afford to do so. I believe we should ask if we can afford not to adopt this approach, since unless we can empower and motivate people like those exemplified in the above case studies to exercise more responsible agency, I fear we will constantly be ‘bailing them out’, and their children, and their children’s children. Aside from the financial implications of failing to deal with the root causes of problematic behaviours and allowing them to become entrenched, there is a deeper justification. Many people who have been found intentionally homeless have been damaged by abuse, neglect and deprivation in childhood and disadvantaged by ill health and disability, and their lives have to a great extent been fashioned by these unlucky returns from life’s lottery. As a matter of justice, any reckoning of blame, deservingness and entitlement should account for this. This approach does not imply that people with ‘bad backgrounds’ should simply be excused for their self-defeating behaviours, but that we need to appreciate the causes of their sub-optimal agency and to design policies that can hold them accountable for the costs of their past choices, without at the same time (further) undermining their ability to make more prudent choices in the future.

Notes 1

I would like to thank Fabian Freyenhagen for his encouragement and assistance with my PhD thesis, upon which my essay relies.

2

In Wales, local authorities have the discretion not to apply the test for intentional homelessness in relation to prescribed priority need categories (Housing (Wales) Act 2014), although most have decided not to do so.

3

For a survey, see Ashley 2012 at http://autonomy.essex.ac.uk/philosophicalmodels-of-autonomy.

4

Drawn from Donald Winnicott’s concept of the ‘good-enough mother’, which amounted to the ‘ordinary devoted mother … an example of the way in which the foundations of health are laid down by the ordinary mother in her ordinary loving care of her own baby’ (Winnicott [1964] 1978: 17, 44).

5

To ‘use and weigh’ a piece of information means to appreciate the significance of relevant information and understand how it applies to the consequences of available options.

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

139

  6 Others might argue they are explicable with reference to one of the explanatory poles (and therefore they do not illustrate the gap). Or that it is impossible to judge without further information. However, in reallife contexts, particularly on the frontline of public policy, judgements regarding intention, motivation and causation are often hampered by finite information and uncertainty. The need to fill in an incomplete picture is, therefore, frequently unavoidable, and the use of reasoned and reasonable assumptions is, in my view, defensible provided that any benefit of the doubt is given to the individual in question.   7 This case study is a summary of R (On The Application of C) v Lewisham LBC [2003]. Direct quotes are extracted from the transcript.   8 Case study adapted from R (On The Application of M) (Fc) v LB of Hammersmith and Fulham [2008]. Direct quotes are taken from this transcript.   9 Mike Stein’s review of a body of research spanning twenty years concludes young care leavers are more likely to be socially excluded than other young people, and many experience periods of difficulties securing and sustaining employment and accommodation. The success of their transition to adulthood depends on a number of factors, particularly how vulnerable and emotionally damaged they are and their ability to respond to and benefit from support (Stein 2006). 10 This case study is a summary of Gibbons v Bury MBC [2010]. 11 This case study is an abridged version of Shorter’s obituary, written by Alexander Masters, and published in The Independent, and the information from Masters’s subsequent biography of Shorter (Masters 2006). 12 This categorization may also play a legitimating role insofar as perceived fairness is necessary for public support of the welfare state. 13 The argumentation in this essay is founded on an analysis of social welfare that currently operates in the UK. However, insofar as these provisions are broadly similar to those operating in other jurisdictions (Griggs and Evans 2010), what follows is relevant beyond the UK. 14 Local housing authorities are required ‘to have regard to’ the Code of Guidance in exercising their functions under homelessness law (Housing Act 1996: s.182(1)). 15 For example, relevant inquiries were not made, or given sufficient attention in the decision-making process or that the decision reached is so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could reach it. 16 A note on nomenclature. Since their inception, Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) have evolved and some are now known under different names, e.g. Intensive Family Intervention Projects. For my purposes, I will continue to use the term ‘Family Intervention Project’ or ‘FIP’ to refer to services that accord with the ‘family intervention factors’ enumerated below. 17 White et al. (2008) list eight core factors, but they tend to boil down to the five enumerated above. 18 By ‘hard-to-reach’ I refer particularly to groups that slip through the net because they are overlooked or ‘invisible’, e.g. people with mental health problems and people who resist engagement.

140

THINKING HOME

19 Those outcomes are defined as ‘being healthy’, ‘staying safe’, ‘enjoying and achieving’, ‘making a positive contribution’ and ‘economic well-being’ (Department for Education and Skills 2003: 7). 20 Here, I gratefully acknowledge the helpful role played by Ormiston Families and Children Trust’s FIP. For a fuller report on this research, see Ashley 2014. 21 These households are characterized by there being no adult in the family working, children not being in school and family members being involved in crime and anti-social behaviour (Department for Communities and Local Government 2012a: 1).

References An Act Concerning Punishment of Beggars and Vagabonds (1531), 22 Henry VIII. An Act for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars (1597), 39 Elizabeth I. Ashley, V. (2012), Philosophical Models of Autonomy: Essex Autonomy Project Green Paper Report, Wivenhoe: University of Essex. Ashley, V. (2014), ‘Great Expectations: Autonomy, Responsibility and Social Welfare’, PhD thesis, University of Essex. Department for Communities and Local Government (2006), Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities, London: DCLG. Department for Communities and Local Government (2012a), Working with Troubled Families, London: DCLG. Department for Communities and Local Government (2012b), The Troubled Families Programme, London: DCLG. Department of Constitutional Affairs (2007), Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice (2007 Final Edition), London: DCA. Department for Education (2011), Monitoring and Evaluation of Family Intervention Services and Projects between February 2007 and March 2011, London: DfE. Department for Education and Skills (2003), Every Child Matters: Summary, London: DfES. Ellison, R. ([1952] 2001), Invisible Man, London: Penguin. Flint, J. (2009), ‘Governing Marginalised Populations: The Role of Coercion, Support and Agency’, European Journal of Homelessness, 3: 247–60. Gibbons v Bury MBC [2010] EWCA Civ 327. Griggs, J. and M. Evans (2010), Sanctions within Conditional Benefit Systems: A Review of Evidence, York: Joseph Roundtree Fund. Hilditch, M. (2010), ‘What Are the Odds?’, Inside Housing, available at: https:// www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/what-are-the-odds-22946 (accessed 25 September 2017). Housing Act (1996), available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/52/ contents. Housing (Wales) Act (2014), available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ anaw/2014/7/contents/enacted. King, P. (2003), A Social Philosophy of Housing, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.

ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

141

Masters, A. (2006), Stuart: A Life Backwards, London: Hammersmith Perennial. Mental Capacity Act (2005), available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/2005/9/contents. Nixon, J., S. Parr and D. Sanderson (2006), Anti-Social Behaviour Intensive Family Support Projects: An Evaluation of Six Pioneering Projects, London: ODPM. Nussbaum, M. (2011), Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard. O’Carroll, L. (2016), ‘£1.3bn Troubled Families Scheme Has Had No Discernable Impact’, The Guardian, 8 August, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2016/aug/08/13bn-troubled-families-scheme-has-had-no-discernibleimpact (accessed 12 September 2017). Oxford English Dictionary Online (n.d.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. R (On The Application of C) v Lewisham London Borough Council [2003], EWCA Civ 927. R (On The Application of M) (Fc) v London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham [2008], UKHL14. Reeve, K. (2011), The Hidden Truth About Homelessness, London: Crisis. Stein, M. (2006), ‘Research Review: Young People Leaving Care’, Child and Family Social Work, 11 (3): 273–79. White, C., M. Warrener, A. Reeves and I. La Valle (2008), ‘Family Intervention Projects: An Evaluation of Their Design, Set-up and Early Outcomes’, available at: http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/8578/1/acf44f.pdf (accessed 12 September 2017). Winnicott, D. ([1964] 1978), The Child, the Family, and the Outside World, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

8 Recalling Home: Farewell to the House in Petřínská Street (A Theatre Project) Biljana Golubovic´ (Text) Dragan Dragin (Visuals)

H

ow many stories could we tell of the doors we’ve opened and those we’ve closed, ponders Bachelard (1957: 222–44). His thoughts on the poetics of space and material image were an important source of inspiration in testing the strength of theatre language in a real-life story of an Art Nouveau house in Malá Strana (Little Side), an old part of Prague. In the autumn of 2008, in reaction to the news that the house where we were living had been sold and condemned to destruction in its original form in order to be converted into a hotel, we developed a theatre project on the subject of home, lasting for 607 days, and including varied types of performance and installation. The project aimed to reflect on the threatened nature, the impermanence of home, in the context of the politics of urban growth. It was based on the conviction that a creative act should deal not only with the ‘subject’ but also with the dramatic nature of the environment where it takes place. The transformation of the house, as well as the change in us, the people who lived in it at the time of its downfall, thus became an integral part of the project. We recorded the detailed process of physical and emotional changes occurring in and around us, as well as our remembrances and hopes. We extended our stay and pursued the project as our mode of housing existence changed from residents to squatters, eventually to find ourselves alone in a half-demolished house. The following pages relay these experiences and their outcomes.

144

THINKING HOME

***

I

t was an autumn evening in 1992. We put on our best clothes and went to meet the owner of a house in Petřínská street in Prague. Mrs Wichterle opened her door and we smiled at her. Our Czech was still poor. She looked us over and just nodded at our guide. This nod meant that she would let to us a non-residential space on the last, fifth floor of the house … We quietly climbed the spiral staircase all the way up. On the wooden door, someone had written in pencil: Laundry Room. The door was half-opened, leading to an empty space. It was freezing and each time we exhaled, we saw our breath. From time to time, a small piece of plaster fell from the wall. The ceiling was vaulted in seven waves with two skylights. The whole space looked like the inside of a strange ship.1

The house used to belong to the Wichterle family. Its oldest inhabitant was born right there eighty-seven years ago. During the Velvet Revolution of 1989, members of the student movement used to live and meet in what later became our apartment. And we had lived and worked there ever since we came to the Czech Republic in the early 1990s. The room we rented inspired us, asking to be transformed. ‘Interventions’ became the means through which we communicated. The space was like a third member of our family, one that required special care. Several times a year it changed its appearance, like a new stage. Over time, we made it homey with abandoned furniture we found on the street. Both the space and the furniture formed a world of new, unexpected relations. After years of dynamic cohabitation, the space gave up its reclusive aloofness, and the room allowed us to make it lived-in, to make a home.

P

etřínská 20, Fall 2008. For some time, we hadn’t received any letters. There is a saying that two pieces of news arriving together bring happiness. On that day, the mailbox held two white envelopes vying for our attention. The first was from the Foreign Office, telling us that even after fifteen years of living in the Czech Republic, I was not entitled to permanent residence. The other letter was from the real estate office ‘Pohoda’ (‘Contentment’), which informed us that the house we had been living in for fifteen years was sold and that we had to move out within six months.

RECALLING HOME

145

The following month, a wooden chair appeared in the street in front of the house. A sign ‘We’re moving’ was fixed to its backrest. Thrust out into the road, with a rope tied to the dustbins, lying upside down, the chair was publicly announcing that what was inside was on its way out. Since that day, it was no longer the house we used to know. The scene in front of the house was changing daily. Overfilled lorries taking away our neighbours’ packed households reminded us of images of refugees from the daily news. What until then had the impression of a firm space of existence was suddenly transformed into a non-space, a borderline between the inhabited and the deserted. The house was almost evacuated: of its twenty apartments, only three still retained their tenants. We decided to accept the uncertainty: we stayed ‘at home’, based on a monthly lease, extended until the start of the reconstruction.

A

dream: The rising sun paints by light a picture of a morning in the corner of a large room. I’m lying under a duvet. A pigeon lands on my pillow. I’m waving a hand, trying to chase it away while it is walking on my duvet. It is cooing and fleeing to the window. There, on the other side of the room, grew a fruit tree. It grew all the way to the ceiling and it has the trunk of an olive tree and in the crown all sorts of fruits.

During the period when I had this dream, I was thinking about a creative way of saying goodbye to the house. That morning I wrote a script for the performance Temporarily in Order: Dedicated to a House, to our Prague home. In my vision, the house looked like a human body, and a tree that grows, blossoms, and dies in order to be reborn, as a metaphor, a doppelgänger of the dying house. The spirit of a place includes both material and incorporeal things such as shape, light, smell, colour, sound, and one’s private objects and their arrangements. As a private place/home, our house was ‘dying’ when its layers of privacy – and the layers of actual wall covering – were peeled away to make it a public place, a hotel. The performance was envisioned as a way of saying the last goodbye to the house, and in this respect, it was to resemble the ritual of a wake, its very duration providing an extended liminal phase in our material transformation as home-making human beings (Turner 1964; cf. Rapport in this volume). A community often learns most about the deceased in the days around his or her death, when everyone reminisces and tells stories, pieces of a shared life that is only now fully concluded. In traditional cultures, the understanding of death is based on a natural cycle and each stage of life has

146

THINKING HOME

its own ‘harvest’, which becomes more tangibly human in transition rituals. Leave-taking includes separation and coming together. The death of one causes the birth of another. It is a way of measuring time but above all a way of understanding life and our place within it. The theatre ritual was created in a particular place and time which was not of our choosing, just like we do not choose where and when we die. Our home had always been a living space, a creative place, where friends and colleagues gathered together. For this special occasion we invited them to participate with us in the farewell ritual. We wanted to collaborate with people who shared our artistic convictions, and who were willing to participate free of charge, in a social regime different from the prevailing one. The performers were mostly students at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague but also established professionals who were attracted to the project’s idea.

16

November 2008. The corridors and all empty spaces are freezing. In our room, the heating isn’t coping either but the place is full of people, who are making tea, cocoa, coffee. Warm steam of our breath fills the emptiness and warms the cold walls of the house. A miracle took place: a group was born.

The now empty house was again inhabited, this time by an international group of performers based on purely voluntary creative work. Our professional engagement did not suffer from the pressure to deliver results – its reward was the experience one gained, and the prolongation of the liminal stage in our ritual. We entered the house with our own likes and dislikes, worries, loneliness and intimacy; the house accepted or rejected them, and in this way its possible stories came into existence. It was a different story each time, depending on the day, the actor and his or her co-actors, the audience which, towards the end of that particular day, from their space and time, entered the house and its spatio-temporal reality. From the intermingling of the outside (the daily life) and the inner world (the empty house), a new house, a possible home of our creation, came into being. During the rehearsals in the house, each actor found his or her own home in it, a place of certainty within the surrounding uncertainty. Someone found the strength of survival in a dark corner of the cellar; to another, a crumpled shirt evoked a memory of his mother ironing; someone faced with closed doors was confronted with his stigma; someone in an empty room came to understand her sense of permanently waiting; and someone whose chosen space was invaded by another person felt the strength of alienation. The

RECALLING HOME

147

12

February 2009. Today we’re getting acquainted with the house by touch. With our eyes closed, we absorb in our bodies further layers of the memory of the house. We are inside its mighty body. We touch it and it touches us. On Anka’s cheek is the impression of a blue wall, she walks as if her arms were full of something. David’s long fingers are covered in soil. Karolína carries a spider web. Tomáš is lying on a marble slab by the window, trying to reach something outside. With their fingertips, Ula and Ewa cross over the beams of light which enter the loft through little cracks. Anička is grey from plaster falling from the walls, happily rocking on a banister.

main protagonist of our action, however, was the house. Inside its body, a human drama – life – was taking place. The actor’s body served as a temporary infusion of life into the dying home. From the basic meaning of house as the tree of life, from its vertical axis in the form of a spiral staircase, human stories branched out through the interaction between memories, bodies and space. The staircase linked separate spaces from the deepest point in the cellar up to the top in the attic. Passage through the house was a metaphor for the flow of life. The recurrent motif of steps evoked a procession and was an important element in the ritual of taking leave.

I

have been cooking for three hours. In the meantime, I kept going from one room to another, from floor to floor commenting on individual stories. Bread is done, moussaka is in the oven and on the stove bubbles a pot with cauliflower and orange lentils. Hana baked a strudel, and Tomáš made a lamb soup. Mathie is angry: Ewa’s salad is in a bowl which he needs on the table for his kitchen. Jacques doesn’t know where his shaving foam is, Ewa and Anička have put the kettle on to heat water for the tin tubs in the laundry room. Jan is looking for a rag to wipe the floor, José’s shirt is wrinkled and needs ironing, Anna is trying to find some new blue chalk. Girls are whispering to me that there are some dead pigeons in the loft. Markéta is teaching Sára a rhyme for hopscotch. Karolína’s flower has wilted and the oil in David’s lamp refuses to burn. We have banned open fire to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, so that no one would call the fire department on us. Suddenly we realize that the electricity has been turned off. Dragan is trying to get candles.  … Robert calls that visitors are in front of the house … We have cooked a family dinner for fifty-three people. The gate of the house slowly opens. Dry leaves rustle under our feet. Together with our visitors we are coming back to home.

148

THINKING HOME

The spectators were invited as guests, each performance ending with a feast (Figure 8.1). When the actors and the audience sat together at a table, they were reminded that theatre is in its origin a gift (Mauss 1925). Since the earliest days of humanity, sharing food is a sacred and festive occasion. It is a time when the biological and cultural level fuse; it is a daily ritual which reinforces family ties and the structure of the day (Elias 1939). When the so-called reconstruction started in the house, it took the form of deconstruction. In the still-continuing theatre project, we called this period The Metamorphosis. A performance took place every day, and its protagonists were

17 February 2010.

‘W

hat has happened to me?’ he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. … What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. (Kafka [1915] 1972: 1) Did I oversleep or am I dreaming? I am roused from my dream by a powerful, dull noise. Someone is hammering into the wall, there are sounds of things falling apart, being demolished, falling down: is the house falling? In my pyjamas I walk one floor down and on the wall by Bárta’s apartment, a sign in a red pen says: ‘Demolish’.

FIGURE 8.1  Dragan Dragin, ‘Performance in the Prague house’, Project Home, 2010. Courtesy of Dragan Dragin.

RECALLING HOME

149

the workmen and the house. The space was being gradually knocked down; the former bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms were disappearing hour by hour. When we started being afraid in the house, we knew that home began leaving us, like a dying person. When home is no longer a safe place, it ceases to be a home.

12

March 2010. All day today, I’ve been running into workmen on the staircase. They’re carrying doors on their backs. One of them calls me and with a smile says that they’ll need ours as well … Within three days, all of the apartments’ doors are gone. Our neighbours’ privacy was pried open. Even after a year of absence, one can smell from each apartment the scent of its life.

18

July 2010. We are the last tenants in the house. It’s the summer holidays and we didn’t budge from the attic. We returned the keys in the morning, which means that from today, we’re here illegally. We live in a derelict room. The architect is on vacation and the Ukrainian workers keep postponing the demolition of our place at least for a while, until the architect returns …

Every day, at a set time, the house welcomed a visitor in the form of light. The light always entered dancing to a particular rhythm into the half-demolished room and, as if soothing its wounds, eliminated the unfinished destruction. The empty, gutted house, helpless like the naked body of a dead person, was getting dressed in light for its last journey and, with us for company, it went through the ritual of last leave-taking (Figure 8.2).

21

July 2010. Today, I painted the floor for the last time. I always used to do it at this time of the year. In the summer, the paint dries quickly and one can do three layers in one afternoon. The floor was green, after that grey, then red, and today, I’ll make it white. White walls are well matched by a white floor. We walk over the fresh paint, leaving footprints.

150

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 8.2  Dragan Dragin, ‘Waiting in the Prague house’, Project Home, 2010. Courtesy of Dragan Dragin.

23

July 2010. We’re waiting. Since the morning we hear echoes from the depths of the house. Workers are throwing away pieces of wall through a wooden pipe set in the middle of the building, between the stairs. It looks like a trapdoor devouring the remains of the house’s life. I feel as if a hole opened in my belly as well. Everything below us is already demolished  … We’ve been waiting for three weeks now. When we don’t know what to do, we play naval battles on a piece of paper. Tomorrow starts the last stage of the demolition – at our home.

*** Home is our first universe, our corner in the world, our big cradle. Thanks to a home, most of our memories also have a house where they dwell, and just like a house has its lofts, dark corners, pantries, cupboards and cellars, so too a memory can become a safe haven. It is thus not surprising that ‘lost homes’ invite us to breathe life into them, to (re)create them, to memorize them. It is this sense of nostalgic disorientation that, paradoxically, galvanizes intimate development and public creation (cf. Papadopoulos in this volume). Theatre takes place between private and public space. Creating starts in the private, intimate sphere, in our inner home, and through action, sharing with the audience, it enters the public world. It reminds us of our first home, the womb, a place of birth and origin. A contemporary theatre-maker adopts the ‘subject’ of his or her event and transmits it as a narrator, through testimony and personal confession, that is, using means which mingle the authentic elements of experience and one’s own perception of the world including its

RECALLING HOME

151

social context. The theatre project in the house had this unifying potential: the crisis within it transcended from the private sphere into public life. Our open doors opened many other doors: to personal and collective memories, untold stories, and cultural expectations of society. Our home expanded as it was demolished, peeling away the layers of a house and of our identity.

Note 1 Excerpts in text boxes are taken from Golubović’s diary The House, included in Golubović-Dragin (2011).

References Bachelard, G. (1957), La poétique de l’espace, Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France. Elias, N. (1939), Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, vols. 1-2, Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken. Golubović-Dragin, B. (2011), ‘Theatre as a Home, Identity-Memory-Space’, PhD thesis, Faculty of Theatre, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, Czech Republic. Kafka, F. ([1915/16] 1972), The Metamorphosis, trans. Stanley Corngold, New York: Bantam Classics. [Die Verwandlung, Der jüngste Tag 22/23, Leipzig: Kurt Wollf Verlag]. Mauss, M. (1925), ‘Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques’ L’Année Sociologique, nouvelle série, I (1923–24): 30–186. Turner, V. (1964), ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in The Proceedings of the 1964 Annual Spring Meeting of American Ethnological Society (Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion), 4–20, Seattle: University of Washington Press.

9 The Emotional Dimension of Trading on Home in Later Life: Experiences of Shame, Guilt and Pride Louise Overton, Lorna Fox O’Mahony and Matthew Gibson

Introduction Financial services, including home finance products which borrow against the value of the owned home, are increasingly positioned as a key feature in older people’s lives (FCA 2017). As our population ages, welfare reform policies that have retrenched public provision of income security, housing maintenance and social care, require individuals to take greater responsibility (and bear greater risk) for their financial needs in retirement. The Office for National Statistics has projected that in England in 2030, as compared to 2010, there will be 51 per cent more people aged sixty-five and over, and 101 per cent more people aged eighty-five and over (ONS 2013). A key consequence of increased life expectancy is that current and future cohorts of retirees will have to manage their retirement income and assets over a longer period than past generations. Yet, research suggests that people frequently underestimate how long they will live and find it difficult to plan ahead (Finney and Hayes 2015). The difficulties facing older people who are ‘income-poor’ have been compounded by the impact of the global financial crisis and subsequent recession, which have

154

THINKING HOME

constrained access to credit while increasing the cost of living. Research for Age UK has indicated that low returns from savings, decreasing annuity rates and rising prices for energy and other basic costs are adding to the financial pressures on older people, with more than three million people over the age of fifty reporting that they are ‘very worried’ about the cost of living (TNS 2015). At the same time, levels of home ownership and housing wealth remain relatively high among older cohorts. In 2011, 76 per cent of households (England and Wales) with the head of household aged 65 to 74, and 73 per cent aged seventy-five or over, were owner-occupiers (PPI 2014). Furthermore, and, signalling the potential role that housing equity could perform in bridging some of the shortfall between income and needs in later life, the House of Lords Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change estimated that people over state pension age in 2009 owned roughly £250bn in housing wealth that was ‘available’ to be released (House of Lords 2013). There are a number of mechanisms for accessing the wealth tied up in owner-occupied property, including trading down, selling up and renting, and ‘in situ’ equity release. However, and despite the perceived advantages of ‘staying put’ in later life, to date there has not been widespread take-up of housing wealth decumulation vehicles. For example, notwithstanding a recent increase in sales, the UK market for equity release products stands at just 2 per cent of the mainstream mortgage market (Overton and Fox O’Mahony 2015). So, why do so many older people remain reluctant to take advantage of what appears to offer a rational solution to a significant conundrum: being (relatively) house-rich but income-poor? Previous research has typically explained this reluctance in terms of low levels of understanding about how the products work, perceptions of poor value for money and concerns relating to risk and security (Rowlingson 2006; Toussaint and Elsinga 2009), or bequest motives and aversion to debt, particularly in later life (Naumanen and Ruonavaara 2016). Less attention has been paid to the affective factors that underpin phenomena like debt aversion in later life, namely, to the exploration of how older owners feel about the prospect of carrying housing debt in retirement, especially those who may have imagined that they would be outright owners at that stage of their lives, and what impact their affective responses may have on their financial decision-making. This chapter draws on findings from a qualitative study of seventy equity release consumers to explore the emotional dimension of trading on the owned home in later life. Previous research has indicated that emotions play a powerful role in general consumer decision-making (Peters et al. 2006), while studies focused on exploring the effects of ageing on decision-making (Kovalchik et al. 2005) have suggested that there are significant age-related changes in deliberation, affect and emotion. These changes have been found to occur even when healthy, well-educated older people do not experience a

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

155

decline in economic decision-making resulting from ageing per se (Kennedy and Mather 2007; Peters et al. 2007). Furthermore, Peters, Hess, Västfjäll and Auman argued that, while some older people may experience age-related declines in deliberative decision-making ability, this can be compensated for with increased capacity for affective decision-making, or exacerbated, depending on the affective context. ‘[A]ge-related adaptive processes, including motivated selectivity in the use of deliberative capacity, an increased focus on emotional goals, and greater experience’, they suggest, ‘predict better or worse decisions for older adults depending on the situation’ (2007: 7). Against this backdrop, and in a policy context which increasingly looks towards market transactions as a solution to some of the social and economic consequences of our ageing society, it is surprising to note that the role of emotions in older people’s financial decision-making remains under-researched and undertheorized. Our study is the first to explore the emotional experiences associated with equity release decision-making. Previous research exploring the meanings of home for older owners has suggested that the symbolic meanings of home reflect: its status as a physical representation of the life-course and its achievements and events – through the home itself and accumulated possessions within it (Heywood 2005); its function as a stable base for the preservation of identity for the ageing self (Sherman and Dacher 2005); and its role as a space for the expression of identity and for living (Croucher 2008). Furthermore, and alongside the practical and symbolic importance of housing as home, it has been suggested that, as owners reach later life, the house is seen as ‘a financial investment that is finally starting to pay off’ (Després and Lord 2005: 331). Després and Lord went on to note that, for the participants in their study, the importance of this achievement stemmed from ‘an early desire for most respondents to have a house free of mortgage for their old age’ (330). Alongside the desire to ‘stay put’, or ‘age in place’, the importance that these older owners attached to hanging onto their homes was explicitly linked to the sense of security that they associated with financially unencumbered home ownership: ‘[n]ot only their status as homeowner, but also the fact that their mortgage is entirely paid-off, makes people feel secure about their financial future’ (Després and Lord 2005: 328). The meanings of home for the current cohorts of older owners in the UK were forged in the crucible of an official discourse geared around the putative benefits of ownership as the vehicle par excellence to achieving a meaningful connection with home. Throughout the twentieth century, the UK’s official rhetoric of home ownership emphasized the cognitive and affective meanings that flow from owning your own home, alongside the opportunity to accumulate savings. For example, in a 1971 White Paper, the UK government described home ownership as:

156

THINKING HOME

the most rewarding form of housing tenure. It satisfies a deep natural desire on the part of the householder to have independent control of the home that shelters him and his family. It gives him the greatest possible security against the loss of his home; and particularly against the price changes that may threaten his ability to keep it. If the householder buys his house on mortgage he builds up by steady saving a capital asset for himself and his dependents. (DOE 1971: 4) This rhetoric of independence, control, shelter, security, steady saving and capital asset accumulation set out to imbue ownership with positive home meanings, as a valued territory in which occupiers enjoy security, autonomy, privacy, continuity and control. The implication was that owning your own home was likely to sustain positive psychological feelings and that owners were ‘more likely to identify their house as home’ (Saunders 1990: 272), compared to renters (cf. Kemeny 1981). While the proposition that positive attachments to home are inherently tenure-dependent has been widely criticized (Gurney 1990), policy-led associations between ownership and a meaningful attachment to home generated powerful ‘discourses of normalisation’ (Gurney 1999), with the result that, whether or not ownership was intrinsically more likely to foster positive attachments to home, UK citizens were encouraged to feel that it did, and to feel proud of the achievement of home ownership. This chapter offers new insights into the emotional landscape against which the home meanings have been embedded through the ownership society discourse – specifically, through the rhetoric of security associated with discharging the mortgage and owning outright – and the reasons why older people feel reluctant to re-burden themselves with debt through equity decumulation. Our analysis explores the important role that self-conscious emotions play in equity release decision-making, including, particularly, the powerful effects of shame, guilt and pride in shaping how older owners feel about trading on their home. The next section outlines the conceptual framework through which we analyse our findings. We then set out our research methodology, and continue to discuss our findings, their implications for equity release decision-making and, more broadly, for the government’s strategies to promote housing-asset-based welfare.

Shame, guilt and pride The human need for acceptance and belonging drives us to seek inclusion in our social world by attempting to make good impressions in the minds of others (Cooley 1902; Mead 1934). Through our interactions with others, we

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

157

come to understand who we are, where we belong, what we should do, how we should do it, and how good or bad we are at different tasks (Dewey 1929; James 1890; Mead 1934). Indeed, we categorize ourselves as we learn about ourselves in relation to others. Within identity theory, such selfcategorization is considered to create an ‘identity’ (Stryker 1980), which we associate meanings to, creating an ‘identity-standard’ (Burke and Stets 2009; in particular, on the vital role of sense of home in constructing identity, see Papadopoulos in this volume). Given the complex nature of social life, we may develop identities that define what kind of a person we are (person identity), what role relationships we participate in (role identities), and what groups we belong to (social identities) (Burke and Stets 2009). A person, for example, may develop an identity as a moral person (person identity), a mother (role identity) and a homeowner (social identity). From this perspective, the meanings associated to our identities guide our thoughts, actions and feelings. Violation of the identity-standards we have developed for ourselves can lead us to look at ourselves differently, and to pass judgement on who we are and what we do. This, in turn, can leave us feeling flawed, inadequate or incompetent (Lewis 1971; Tangney and Dearing 2002). While the terms shame and guilt are often used interchangeably to describe such emotionally painful experiences, previous research has identified an important distinction between the two emotions. In 1971, the psychotherapist and research psychologist Helen Lewis analysed 170 transcripts of therapy sessions, and identified shame and embarrassment as more frequently experienced by her clients than all other emotions put together. In seeking to understand both the prominence and the distinctive underpinnings of these particular emotions, Lewis described shame as an emotion evoked because an individual perceived themselves to be defective in some way, i.e. I am bad, while guilt typically stemmed from a focus on a specific behaviour, i.e. I did a bad thing. Subsequent research focusing on shame (for a review, see Tangney and Dearing 2002) has confirmed and developed Lewis’s original conception of shame as an emotion that results from a negative self-evaluation after failing to live up to an identity-standard, for which the person feels responsible (Ferguson et al. 2007; Goffman 1956; Lynd 1958; Tangney and Dearing 2002; Tracy and Robins 2004). In contrast, experiences of pride relate to a positive self-evaluation, as a result of verifying an identity, for which the identity-holder feels personally responsible (Cooley 1902; Tracy and Robins 2004). Since we come to understand what is considered shameful and praiseworthy through social interactions, it is our need for approval and acceptance within our social groups that creates our sense of shame and our self-regulation to avoid being shamed (Scheff 2000). Furthermore, since it is our cultural context that provides the norms and values by which we are judged as deserving of praise or punishment, the conditions for being shamed are also culturally

158

THINKING HOME

specific (Scheff 2000), so that what is shaming in one culture or social group is not necessarily shaming in another. Indeed, our knowledge of shame can also be considered context-specific, as our understanding of the conditions for being shamed may involve certain situations, ways of being, or specific people. Ultimately, we learn to fear shame and seek to avoid being shamed because this is a painful emotional experience; Scheff (2000) has argued that the fear of the judgement that we are inferior or inadequate, whether real or imagined, can be so great that it influences every social act. Experiences of guilt, on the other hand, are not considered to involve threats to one’s identity, but are associated with transgressing a moral boundary, which is considered to disadvantage the self or another person (Ferguson et al. 2007). One may ‘be’ guilty in the eyes of another’s subjective evaluation, yet not ‘feel’ guilty if one does not accept one’s actions as responsible for disadvantaging oneself or another (Ortony 1987; Sabini and Silver 1997). In this respect, guilt relates to a subjective evaluation of one’s socio-moral status in which the development of the emotional experience of guilt depends upon acceptance of personal responsibility. While the link between emotional experiences and a person’s subsequent action has not been clearly established, shame typically leads to a motivation to deny, hide or escape the shame-inducing situation (Tangney and Dearing 2002; for counter evidence see Gausel and Leach 2011), while guilt is more often considered to lead to feelings of tension, remorse, regret and a desire to confess, apologize or repair (Gilbert et al. 1994; for counter evidence see Baumeister et al. 1994). These distinctions, and their effects in determining how older owners felt about equity release – and, in turn, how these feelings shaped their housing equity decumulation behaviours – are discussed in our findings, below.

Methodology In 2013 we carried out a qualitative study exploring the experiences, circumstances and decision-making processes of equity release consumers. Our study set out to explore the factors that shape transactional decisionmaking for consumers in different financial circumstances – from economic rationality and professional advice to individual context and psychological preferences. Our aim was to better understand the influence of these factors in shaping decision-making, to enable us to reflect on the appropriateness of the legal, regulatory and policy frameworks that govern this part of the financial services industry, and the assumptions and inferences on which they are based. The recruitment of participants to the study was facilitated by earlier equity release research carried out by Overton in 2009–10 (Overton

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

159

2010). The 2009–10 study combined a quantitative self-completion postal survey with follow-up semi-structured interviews. At the time of the original survey, participants were asked if they were willing to take part in future equity release research, and the agreements obtained on that occasion provided the opportunity to contact 251 consumers at the beginning of 2013. Of these, seventy agreed, and proceeded, to take part. Given the wealth inequality among older owners in the UK (and, indeed, among equity release consumers), we were keen to recruit participants from economically diverse

Table 9.1  Sample sub-groups. Study of equity release consumers, 2013, Louise Overton, Lorna Fox O’Mahony, and Matthew Gibson Number Plan type Mortgage

42

Reversion

28

Financial well-being Lower

34

Higher

36

Household type Couples

30

Single female

22

Single male

18

Age 66–70

5

71–75

16

76–80

20

81–85

24

85+

5

Children Yes

47

No

23

House value on entering into equity release Under £100,000

6

£100,000–£149,999

10

£150,000–£199,999

21

£200,000–£299,999

21

£300,000 or more

12

160

THINKING HOME

backgrounds so that comparisons could be drawn between better-off and poorer consumers. Table 9.1 summarizes the sample characteristics. Using participants’ self-reported financial situation before taking out equity release (captured in the 2009 survey), the sample was divided into higher and lower financial well-being categories. Those placed in the lower category had stated that before taking out their equity release plan they were ‘finding it very difficult to get by’, ‘finding it quite difficult’ or ‘just about getting by’; while those deemed to have higher levels of financial well-being had reported that they were either ‘doing alright’ or ‘living comfortably’. In 2013, the majority of participants had held their equity release plans for a minimum of five years, but in the main, eight years or more. This situation enabled us to capture the medium to long-term experiences of consumers, noting that equity release products are a ‘credence good’, namely, that their suitability and pricing for the individual consumer depend on unknowable future events (future house value, longevity of the owner, future health and mobility needs, future financial needs). Consumers may feel very differently about the impact of releasing equity on their owner-identity, and/or the level of debt that is owed some eight to ten years after the transaction. At the same time, the fact that our participants had lived with the products for some years enabled us to explore how they felt about the transaction at the moment of sale, and having lived with the decision for a significant period of time. As the interviewees were geographically dispersed (from Scotland to the South Coast), the majority of interviews were conducted over the telephone rather than face to face. There were a small number of occasions where this method was not appropriate, largely due to hearing impairments, so face-toface interviews were carried out in these cases. With prior permission, all interviews were recorded and subsequently transcribed. To ensure anonymity, participants have been given pseudonyms. Our analysis interrogated patterns within a series of key themes, including the factors that influenced the decision to use equity release (why and how they made the decision), and how participants felt about the transaction over time (including the impact the equity release transaction had on the consumer’s ‘owner identity’). Our data management and analysis process followed the framework method (Ritchie et al. 2003): by constructing an overarching thematic chart, we were able to unpack the nature and content of our broad themes, with each row in the matrix representing an interviewee while each column contained data from their transcript relating to that particular theme/sub-theme. Organizing the data in this way enabled us to explore the range of responses and the differences and similarities across cases. In the course of our analysis a significant theme emerged relating to issues of shame and guilt. The next section sets out our key findings, and reflects on their implications for the role that equity release (or other forms

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

161

of housing-asset-based welfare) might play in addressing financial need in an ageing society.

Findings In an earlier analysis (Fox O’Mahony and Overton 2015) we set out key findings relating to the impact of equity release on the meanings of the owned home. In this analysis we explored whether, and how, older owners, in different socio-economic situations, could negotiate the tensions between their emotional attachments to the owned home and the economic function of their housing equity in the context of asset-based welfare. Our findings have revealed that the negative feelings triggered by equity release – financial insecurity, dislike of debt, and the social status or stigma cost of equity release on ‘owner identities’ – have important implications for older owners’ willingness to participate in practices of asset-based welfare. In this section, we delve deeper into the source of these negative feelings, to examine how the feelings reported by our participants can be understood in terms of the emotions of shame, guilt and pride, and to reflect on how assessing the emotions associated with equity release through these lenses can help inform our wider understandings of the nature and influence of affective reasoning for equity release decision-making.

Shame When participants talked about the ‘social stigma’ of equity release, one feature that was often emphasized was the difference between ‘acceptable’ debt, for example, mortgage acquisition debt, and ‘unacceptable’ debt – the debt accumulated under equity release, which was a source of shame. Our participants drew a clear distinction between conventional mortgage debt and the debt that accumulates under equity release. For example, Peggy told us that ‘[she] wasn’t brought up to have debt’, and described a mortgage as different from ‘debt’, but did not see equity release in the same terms. While conventional acquisition mortgage debt – which is widely regarded within the cultural norms of the ownership society as a signal of adulthood and social responsibility (Gurney 1999) – was experienced as a ‘comfortable’ form of debt, Peggy found equity release difficult to live with. Reflecting on these findings through the lens of shame, it is interesting to note the relationship between those who experienced shame because the transaction had threatened their owner-identity, and their articulation of dominant cultural perspectives. Martha explained:

162

THINKING HOME

I had paid the mortgage off. I didn’t have a mortgage when I took out equity release. So I suppose in some ways I feel a bit ashamed because I’ve got another one again when I’m getting on in life. My aim was always not to have a mortgage when I retired. (age 74, higher financial well-being, living alone, no children) Martha had internalized the social expectation that one should not have a mortgage at retirement, creating an identity-standard to evaluate herself and her behaviour. For Martha, failing to live up to this social expectation was also a personal failure; the feelings of shame and guilt collided. The powerful impact of social expectations was highlighted in Gladys’s comments on the differences between mortgage debt (which is widely recognized as a normal way in which people acquire their owned homes) and equity release debt (which felt to her more exceptional): I think because almost everybody has a mortgage, regardless of your age bracket … because it’s so general, mortgages are acceptable conversation … But somehow, with equity release, it’s, ‘Oh, you poor thing. You know, you had to do this because you can’t manage, you’re so poor,’ you know. And so there’s a very slight stigma about it, unless you can make it abundantly clear it’s purely because you intended going on a world cruise, then that’s acceptable. But to actually go in for it because you won’t otherwise be able to manage, that’s rather looked down upon. (age 81, lower financial wellbeing, children) Gladys was in a position to draw down on her store of housing wealth to meet later life needs as a direct result of successful accumulation during her working life. Yet, for her, releasing equity from her owned home reversed this taken-for-granted standard, and so she experienced this as a shameful activity. Gladys was particularly sensitive to how other people would look at her if they knew that she needed the money to meet her financial needs now that she was older. This emotional driver reflects deeply embedded cultural meanings attached to poverty and wealth in a cultural context which accords lower social status to people who are financially less well-off (e.g. Chase and Walker 2013; Gupta 2013; Pemberton et al. 2015). Although the owner-occupier sector in Britain is diverse, and includes a significant proportion of people who are living in poverty (Burrows 2003), the ‘badge’ of ownership remains a powerful emblem of respectability, success, adulthood and ‘normality’ within ‘ownership societies’ (Gurney 1999). Having achieved this social identity, the impact of being exposed as someone who released equity because she needed the money – because she ‘couldn’t manage’ – was a source

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

163

of shame for Gladys. The social unacceptability of debt in later life was also echoed by another participant, Eleanor, who referred to social norms against borrowing money in her explanation of the silence and secrecy surrounding equity release: ‘I don’t like borrowing money, we were brought up really not to borrow money … ’ In our previous research, we highlighted a distinction between betteroff participants, who associate the anxiety of later life indebtedness with an unwanted owner identity, and less-well-off participants, who were more likely to experience debt anxiety following equity release because it had compromised their financial security (Fox O’Mahony and Overton 2015). Other recent research has also highlighted the role of debt aversion as a barrier to equity release (Naumanen and Ruonvaara 2016). Our analysis revealed that, for some participants, particularly those who were less well-off, this debt aversion was linked to experiences of shame as a consequence of failing to live up to internalized social standards, and resulted in a feeling that nonmortgage borrowing was personally uncomfortable. For example, Peggy said: sometimes when I look back I think, you must have been an idiot to do it in the first place … [because] I wasn’t brought up to have debt … although my parents actually did have a mortgage on a house but that was different, they always said yes, but that’s different. And I suppose that’s partly how I felt as well. (age 81, lower financial well-being, living alone, foster children) This was echoed by Evelyn, who said: I felt terribly badly about having to get money out, I really did feel badly about it … because I’ve never had to borrow anything in all my life. (age 84, lower financial well-being, widowed, children) The sense that needing to borrow money through equity release was ‘abnormal’ (in contrast to the normalcy of mortgage debt) led to these participants feeling that the transaction had threatened their identity as a responsible and respectable homeowner. As outlined above, previous research on shame has indicated that it typically leads to a motivation to deny, hide or escape the shame-inducing situation (Tangney and Dearing 2002). This was reflected in our findings, with many participants describing the secrecy that surrounds equity release. For some, this secrecy was linked to a general taboo against talking about money, which extended to equity release. For example, Eleanor said: we don’t discuss finances when we’re having tea parties or drinks parties or something. I wouldn’t be surprised but I don’t honestly know that I can

164

THINKING HOME

think of anyone in my immediate circle who has ever told me that they have [equity release] … I think we were brought up not to talk about money. (age 90, well-off participant, widowed, no children) It is perhaps unsurprising that the participants whose responses signalled shame did not generally talk to others about their experiences of releasing equity: the vast majority of participants stated they did not know of anyone else with an equity release plan, nor would they wish to divulge their decision to others. Some people wanted to avoid revealing that they had financial difficulties and that they had needed to release equity to overcome these. Evelyn – who needed the money in order to meet her everyday living expenses – had not told anyone about her financial situation. She said: ‘I am very personal, no one knows my problems or anything so I just keep it to myself.’ Speculating on why people generally do not talk about taking out equity release products, Don said: ‘ … possibly they’re ashamed. I don’t know. I have never met anyone [who revealed they had released equity]’ (age 74, lower financial well-being, divorced, children), while Ray said: ‘I mean, to this day, we don’t talk about it either’ (age 76, higher financial well-being, married, children). The secrecy associated with equity release transactions has important implications for the feeling of ‘abnormalcy’, which feeds the vicious cycle of shame. Edward (age 73, lower financial well-being, married, no children) explicitly linked the phenomenon of silence to the shame of personal failure: ‘ … a lot of people aren’t prepared to talk about it as if sort of they have failed all round’. Because equity release was perceived to signal financial problems, and because they felt that it was ‘abnormal’, the participants’ sense that they would be shamed for admitting to such ‘abnormality’ meant that they did not want to reveal that they had done this. Yet, by internalizing this feeling and so maintaining the veil of secrecy, there was no opportunity for normalization. This is critical, especially in a context in which it has been widely recognized that it is not unusual for older people to carry debt into retirement, or to need to borrow in retirement (Overton and Fox O’Mahony 2015). David explained: It’s just not the kind of conversation that comes up in the circles that we move in. It’s as simple as that, you know. The total result is, there may well be half the people down this street with it, for all I know. They don’t know I’ve got it, and I haven’t got the slightest idea who else might have it. (age 76, higher financial well-being, married, children) This was echoed by Pat, who said: ‘ … we never talk about it. We don’t tell anybody and so therefore we don’t know anybody else. It’s just none of their business’ (age 77, lower financial well-being, married, children).

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

165

The silence and stigma that surrounds equity release has a number of important implications. Firstly, it limits the opportunity for ‘peer-to-peer learning’ as a route to increased financial capability for older people with respect to equity release transactions. This is particularly acute for those who are less experienced in financial transactions, and/or for those who are less well-off. The likelihood that most older people will only have one opportunity to select an equity release product to cash-in their housing equity means that there is little opportunity for individuals to learn from their own experiences; this is compounded if there is little peer-to-peer learning from the experiences of others, such that those who may be considering taking out equity release products are not well placed to draw upon the help and support of others who have been through the process and who understand the practical, personal and emotional difficulties that arise in making such financial decisions. The importance of this kind of social and cultural capital in supporting good financial decision-making for older owners is highlighted when considered through the lens of financial capability. In an era of asset-based welfare, older owners are expected to make prudent, self-responsible, strategic decisions in choosing financial products. Yet, in 2006, when the Financial Services Authority (FSA) commissioned a baseline study of levels of financial capability among the UK population, the said study indicated that the over-70s were much less capable than the general population when it came to choosing financial products that met their needs (FSA 2006a) – the most essential element of financial capability for housing equity transactions. For some, it meant that they took on financial risks without realizing the level of risk they were undertaking, because they over or under-estimated the risks, or that they took on inappropriate risks as a result of poor choices, lack of awareness or failure to shop around for a good deal (FSA 2006a: 5). Follow-up research for the FSA suggested that a key distinction between more and less-financially capable decision-making could be attributed to whether the consumers had access to family and friends who were experienced in using financial products, and who could offer advice (FSA 2006b: 6.9.3). Similarly, previously published findings from our equity release research highlighted the role that discussions with family and friends can have in enabling older owners to prepare for, and so gain benefit from receiving, professional financial advice (Fox O’Mahony and Overton 2014). The silence and secrecy that flows from feelings of shame potentially close off this important opportunity for older owners to enhance their financial capability to choose equity release products through discussions with others. A second implication is the potential impact of silence and stigma in inhibiting the wider take-up of equity release, with adverse implications for older owners for whom it might present an appropriate financial solution, for market growth in this sector, and for the realization of government policy objectives that are premised on the ability – and appetite – of older owners

166

THINKING HOME

to unlock the value of their home in order to finance later life while ‘ageing in place’ (Heywood 2005). It is ironic that the cycle of shame and secrecy that characterizes equity release transactions for many of our participants, and which prevents them from feeling comfortable – feeling ‘at home’ – either with the experience of borrowing against the home in retirement, or a challenge to their owner identity, may play a role in inhibiting take-up of products which are designed to enable older owners to continue living ‘at home’. Of course, and noting the powerful impact of social norms in setting the frame for experiences of shame, it is possible that future generations of retirees will have a different set of attitudes, which will enable them to feel ‘at home’ with housing equity consumption and secured debt in retirement (Smith 2008). Our findings indicate that this would be an important turningpoint for equity release consumption. In this context, it is also important to note that some participants did not internalize these dominant cultural perspectives on debt accumulation. For example, while Ruth was aware of the general social norms which imply a stigma on trading on one’s home in later life, she did not accept this standard as her own: it’s not something that you talk about, I don’t think … it’s not that I’m ashamed of it because this is something I asked myself, you know, I’m not ashamed of having done this because at the end of the day the money that you have to buy your first home is money that you earned by hard work actually … (age 80, lower financial well-being, living alone, children) Ruth’s comments reveal the steps by which she reframed later life debt in her mind, and which enabled her to protect herself from feeling that she had failed to live up to certain social standards when she used equity release. In describing how she asked herself if she was ashamed, Ruth was clearly aware that her actions, or her situation, could be considered shameful by others. Yet, by constructing an alternative interpretive framework that did not threaten her identity, she was able to avoid feeling ashamed. Ruth’s deliberate rejection of shame and stigma can be contrasted with Charles’s comments which, while recognizing a cultural taboo, indicated that he did not relate to this himself. Charles (age 80, higher financial well-being, married, no children) said: ‘… people don’t talk about it; I don’t know why. It’s like that word cancer, people don’t talk about it, equity release is the same, I don’t know why it should be like that.’ From Charles’s perspective, there was no difference between mortgage borrowing (accumulation phase) and equity release (decumulation). He explained:

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

167

I mean all you’re doing is borrowing money off a building society … it’s like people having a mortgage. If we’re buying a house, there’s no difference to me and yet nobody talks about it. It is interesting to note that the absence of shame for Charles was directly linked to his view that equity release was a socially acceptable form of debt, just like a conventional acquisition mortgage. As such, his comments provide a glimpse of an alternative reality, in which the social acceptability of borrowing in retirement could normalize equity release, in a way that breaks the cycle of secrecy and shame.

Guilt When Charles, who, as we have noted, did not recognize the social norms that drive shame, was pressed on why he thought people did not talk about equity release, he replied: ‘I don’t know, I think they’re frightened of their relatives saying you’re using our money … ’ This theme was also suggested in Dorothy’s description of how she felt after the transaction. Dorothy described herself as feeling guilty, because releasing equity felt, to her, like trading on her children’s inheritance. For Dorothy, this was her reason for not talking about equity release: I don’t tell people because I feel quite guilty about the fact that I’ve had to do this so I definitely don’t talk about it to anybody else other than the family. (age 80, lower financial well-being, married, children) Dorothy painted a bleak portrait of the progressive impact of accumulating interest and dwindling equity: Every year I see the children’s inheritance fading away, and that worries me but it’s something we can’t change … they say, don’t be ridiculous, you know we’ve all got houses and we’re all happy, and we don’t want the [money], but I would like to have left them something, if I ever won any money, that would be the first thing I’d do, would be to repay it, buy my house back. Dorothy’s regret at her decision to release equity was framed by her own ongoing sense of responsibility to provide an inheritance for her children, even though they had explicitly absolved her from this. It is notable that Dorothy expressed her adverse emotional reaction in terms of guilt, not shame – in light of the particular focus of her regret on others, rather than as a threat to her identity as a homeowner. This reframing might be understood in the

168

THINKING HOME

context of changing social attitudes towards inheritance, as a generation of adult offspring are more likely than their parents to become homeowners through purchase rather than inheritance; and through the children’s growing perception of transactions that spend housing wealth as ‘normal’ – for themselves across the life-course as well as for their parents in retirement (Smith 2008). Yet, while trading the ability to leave an inheritance for her children was not experienced by Dorothy as a source of shame, perhaps reflecting these changing social norms, Dorothy did still carry a sense of personal responsibility, manifest in her feeling of guilt. Alternatively, Dorothy’s feelings of guilt but not shame (or guilt overriding shame) may signal that – for her – her ‘role relationship identity’ as a mother, and the impact of equity release in triggering emotions of responsibility-guilt, was more significant than the owner-social-identity-shame reaction that other participants experienced. This also raises a question for future research, about whether, and how, negative emotions relating to equity release transactions can potentially be assuaged, through a better understanding of their underpinning causes. While the experiences of Dorothy and our other participants differed in focus, participants who felt either shame or guilt described a personal emotional struggle, which was intimately connected with their financial decision-making. Doris thought that not having children simplified the decision-making process, since those without children were not burdened by a sense of responsibility to leave an inheritance: I know one couple who, again, through no fault of their own, you know … are in some financial … well, not difficulty, exactly, but worry … they need a new roof, which is beyond their means, and I recommended Company X to them … So I would advise people who are … I mean, these people have no children, so really there is no problem. (age 82, higher financial well-being, living alone, children) It is interesting to note that Doris was prepared to talk to someone else about equity release – someone who she could see was under financial pressure, in part because she believed that, since they did not have children, they could avoid the difficult emotional challenges described by many of our participants. Crucially, Doris did not view the couple she described as people who should feel ashamed of themselves because they were in financial difficulty. She explicitly indicated that it was ‘through no fault of their own’ that they needed to unlock some housing equity. This also offers a potentially valuable insight into the gap between the perceived social norms relating to financial resilience in later life, and a much more sympathetic reality. If Doris’s frame of understanding could gain traction to counter the dominant norms that signal financial need as a trigger for shame, it is likely that those people who

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

169

use equity release may be able to reduce or avoid the experience of difficult emotions, while benefiting from increased financial capability. Furthermore, social norms that enable older owners to feel ‘at home’ with equity release might open up this type of transaction to a wider population of owners in need of a solution to their income needs while retaining the roof overhead (housing) and remaining in place (home).

Pride We noted above that most of our participants drew a material distinction between the socially acceptable nature of accumulation debt (the acquisition mortgage) and decumulation debt (equity release). In describing the difference between these, and the contrast between the secrecy surrounding equity release and the openness with which people talked about their mortgages, Gladys described how people talked about paying off the mortgage in terms of pride, and as a moment for celebration, shared with friends: There’s great rejoicing when the older people clear off their mortgage, and then they will say, ‘Oh, let’s have a drink, you know, we cleared the mortgage last week,’ and that’s a laugh and, you know, that’s fine. When it came to equity release, only a very small number of our participants had successfully constructed an interpretive framework that enabled them to avoid feeling shame and/or guilt, but rather to feel a sense of pride in their decision. Irene was explicit in rejecting the frame of secrecy and shame, saying: I’m very open. I don’t think that I’ve got anything to hide. I’m not ashamed of doing it. I’m quite proud of having done it, actually. It gave me a little bit of extra cash. It gave my kids a bit of extra cash. Why should they have to wait till I’m in the ground, and by which time they’re much older and probably won’t need it anyhow? So, help them now. (age 86, higher financial wellbeing, divorced, children) For Irene – who was one of our better-off participants, and so perhaps less susceptible to negative social norms relating to poverty in later life – the ability to feel pride was associated with her use of the money to help others. This perception may signal that, for Irene, her role relationship identity (as a mother) was stronger than her social identity (as an owner). Providing

170

THINKING HOME

an early transfer to her children in lieu of inheritance enabled Irene to verify her identity as a good mother. While there was little evidence among our participants to indicate that many equity release consumers had been able to substitute a positive sense of pride for the negative emotional cycle of secrecy and shame, Irene’s response opens up an alternative frame through which to position these transactions. In many cases, the money that is released provides an effective vehicle to bridge the shortfall between needs and income in later life, while enabling the older owner to remain in occupation of their home, sustaining their sense of place, their connectedness to a familiar locale, and their sense of belonging or ‘at-homeness’. Our previously published findings have revealed that, even where security of tenure and material financial security are assured, a subjective feeling of debt insecurity can linger. The new findings set out in this chapter reveal the important role that perceived social norms play in creating this barrier to housing equity decumulation, with adverse consequences for both those who experience emotional struggle linked to the transaction, and for those who eschew equity release to avoid these emotional struggles. Finally, however, we note the critical potential that might be offered through an alternative construction that repositions the ability and opportunity to release equity as a source of pride: pride that the older person has successfully executed the ‘active citizenship’ of accumulation, and so reached a position where this is an option available to them; and in their ability to meet financial needs, or to maintain a good quality of life in retirement.

Conclusions The relatively high levels of housing wealth among older generations are increasingly positioned as a partial solution to the fiscal pressures associated with ageing populations. But despite the various mechanisms available to tap the asset value of owner-occupied housing, including targeted financial products that facilitate the ‘in situ’ release of equity, older owners remain reluctant to decumulate. This chapter has revealed the powerful emotional effects of trading on the home in later life, offering new insights into the factors inhibiting wider up-take of equity release products and broader housing asset-based welfare strategies, and opening up a new frame within which the decision to release housing equity might be critically re-imagined. This has important implications for policy discourse promoting (housing) asset-based welfare. The success of the social policy goals encompassed in the ‘assetbased welfare’ project is premised on the ability – and appetite – of older owners to unlock the value of their home to meet welfare needs. This will

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

171

require policymakers to pay attention not only to the ‘rational’ dimension of financial decision-making – including efforts to improve financial capability, raise awareness and provide information on equity release options – but also to the emotional dimension. The positive status attached to home ownership and, in particular, outright ownership in later life, coupled with a cultural context in the UK which accords lower social status to people who are financially less well-off, has led (some) older owners to construct, and internalize, an identity standard that is threatened by housing debt. Our findings suggest that one consequence of this is that those who trade on the home in later life are more likely to feel a sense of shame and/or guilt, rather than pride in their decision. This emotional posture is compounded by the veil of secrecy that surrounds equity release, perpetuating a (false) belief that later life debt is ‘abnormal’, and preventing many of our participants from feeling comfortable with housing equity decumulation. The realities of our ageing, indebted, housingasset-based welfare society underline the pressing need for policymakers and practitioners to understand the sources of these feelings of shame, guilt and pride, and to create and nurture an alternative interpretive framework that enables more people to feel pride in the ability to trade on home in later life. In this frame, successful completion of the accumulation–decumulation cycle could be re-cast as a source of pride, as verification of the older owner’s citizen-identity as a responsible citizen, aligned with – rather than running counter to – the image of a self-responsible, respectable adult in the new world of welfare. In conjunction with more rational economic strategies focused on appropriate promotion and presentation of equity release products, alongside raising awareness, this emotional dimension has a critical contribution to make in achieving the long-anticipated growth in the equity release market, and better affective outcomes for those who participate in this market.

References Baumeister, R. F., A. M. Stillwell and T. F. Heatherton (1994), ‘Guilt: An Interpersonal Approach’, Psychological Bulletin, 115 (2): 243–67. Burke, P. J. and J. E. Stets (2009), Identity Theory, Oxford: Oxford University. Burrows, R. (2003), Poverty and Home Ownership in Contemporary Britain, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Chase, E. and R. Walker (2013), ‘The Co-construction of Shame in the Context of Poverty: Beyond a Threat to the Social Bond’, Sociology, 47: 739–54. Cooley, C. H. (1902), Human Nature and the Social Order, New York: Scribner’s Sons.

172

THINKING HOME

Croucher, K. (2008), Housing Choices and Aspirations of Older People: Research from the New Horizons Programme, London: Department of Communities and Local Government. Després, C. and S. Lord (2005), ‘Growing Older in Post-War Suburbs: The Meanings and Experiences of Home’, in Rowles and Chaudhury (eds), Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives, 317–40, New York: Springer. Dewey, J. (1929), Experience and Nature, London: George Allan & Unwin. DOE (Department of the Environment) (1971), Fair Deal for Housing, Cmnd 6851, London: HMSO. FCA (2017), Occasional Paper 31 – Ageing and Financial Services, London: FCA. Ferguson, T. J., D. Brugman, J. White and H. L. Eyre (2007), ‘Shame and Guilt As Morally Warranted Experiences’, in J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins and J. P. Tangney (eds), The Self-Conscious Emotions, 330–48, New York: Guilford. Finney, A. and D. Hayes (2015), ‘Financial Capability in Great Britain, 2010–2012’, available at: www.ons.gov.uk (accessed 7 November 2017). Fox O’Mahony, L. and L. Overton (2014), ‘Financial Advice, Differentiated Consumers and the Regulation of Equity Release Transactions’, Journal of Law and Society, 41 (3): 446–69. Fox O’Mahony, L. and L. Overton (2015), ‘Asset-based Welfare, Equity Release and the Meaning of the Owned Home’, Housing Studies, 30 (3): 392–412. FSA (Financial Services Authority) (2006a), Financial Capability in the UK: Establishing a Baseline, London: FSA. FSA (2006b), Levels of Financial Capability in the UK: Results of a Baseline Survey, Consumer Research Report No 47, London: FSA. Gausel, N. and C. W. Leach (2011), ‘Concern for Self-image and Social Image in the Management of Moral Failure: Rethinking Shame’, European Journal of Social Psychology, 41: 468–78. Gilbert, P., J. Pehl and S. Allan (1994), ‘The Phenomenology of Shame and Guilt: An Empirical Investigation’, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 67: 23–36. Goffman, E. (1956), ‘Embarrassment and Social Organization’, American Journal of Sociology, 62: 264–71. Gupta, A. (2013), ‘Voices from the Frontline’, Critical and Radical Social Work, 3 (1): 131–39. Gurney, C. (1990), The Meaning of Home in the Decade of Owner Occupation: Towards an Experiential Perspective, Bristol: School of Advanced Urban Studies, University of Bristol. Gurney, C. (1999), ‘Pride and Prejudice: Discourses of Normalisation in Public and Private Accounts of Homeownership’, Housing Studies, 14 (2): 163–83. Heywood, F. (2005), ‘Adaptation: Altering the House To Restore the Home’, Housing Studies, 20 (4): 531–47. House of Lords Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change (2013), Ready for Ageing? London: The Stationery Office. James, W. (1890), The Principles of Psychology, New York: Henry Holt and Co. Kemeny, J. (1981), The Myth of Home Ownership: Private versus Public Choices in Housing Tenure, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF TRADING ON HOME

173

Kennedy, Q. and M. Mather (2007), ‘Aging, Affect and Decision Making’, in K. D. Vohs, R. F. Baumeister and G. Lowenstein (eds), Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? 245–65, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kovalchik, S., C. F. Camerer, D. M. Grether, C. R. Plott and J. M. Allman (2005), ‘Aging and Decision Making: A Comparison between Neurologically Healthy Elderly and Young Individuals’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 58 (1): 79–94. Lewis, H. B. (1971), Shame and Guilt in Neurosis, New York: International Universities. Lynd, H. (1958), On Shame and the Search for Identity, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Mead, G. H. (1934), Mind, Self, and Society, Chicago: University of Chicago. Naumanen, P. and Ruonavaara, H. (2016), ‘Why Not Cash Out Home Equity? Reflections on the Finnish Case’, Housing, Theory and Society, 33 (2): 1–16. ONS (Office for National Statstics) (2013), ‘Population Estimates Total Persons for England and Wales and Regions – Mid-1971 to Mid-2012’, available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk– england-and-wales–scotland-and-northern-ireland/mid-2001-to-mid-2010revised/rft–mid-2001-to-mid-2010-population-estimates-analysis-tool.zip (accessed 7 November 2017). Ortony, A. (1987), ‘Is Guilt an Emotion?’, Cognition & Emotion, 1: 283–98. Overton, L. (2010), Housing and Finance in Later life: A Study of UK Equity Release Customers, London: Age UK. Overton, L. and L. Fox O’Mahony (2015), Consumer Demand for Retirement Borrowing, London: Council for Mortgage Lenders. Pemberton, S., E. Fahmy, E. Sutton and K. Bell (2015), ‘Navigating the Stigmatised Identities of Poverty in Austere Times: Resisting and Responding to Narratives of Personal Failure’, Critical Social Policy, 36 (1): 21–37. Peters, E., D. Västfjäll, T. Gärling and P. Slovic (2006), ‘Affect and Decision Making: A “Hot” Topic’, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19: 79–85. Peters, E., T. M. Hess, D. Västfjäll, and C. Auman (2007), ‘Adult age differences in dual information processes and their influence on judgments and decisions: A review’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2: 1–23. PPI (Pensions Policy Institute) (2014), ‘How Complex are Decisions That Pension Savers Need To Make at Retirement? A Research Report by D. Silcock, J. Adams, and M. Duffield’, available at: http://www.pensionspolicyinstitute. org.uk/publications/reports/transitions-to-retirement–’how-complex-arethe-decisions-that-pension-savers-need-to-make-at-retirement (accessed 7 November 2017). Ritchie, J., L. Spencer and W. O’Connor (2003), ‘Carrying Out Qualitative Analysis’, in J. Ritchie and J. Lewis (eds), Qualitative Research Practice, 219–62, London: Sage. Rowlingson, K. (2006), ‘Living Poor to Die Rich or Spending the Kids’ Inheritance? Attitudes to Assets and Inheritance in Later Life’, Journal of Social Policy, 35 (2): 175–92.

174

THINKING HOME

Sabini, J. and M. Silver (1997), ‘In Defense of Shame: Shame in the Context of Guilt and Embarrassment’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 27 (1): 1–15. Saunders, P. (1990), Nation of Home Owners, London: Routledge. Scheff, T. J. (2000), ‘Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory’, Sociological Theory, 18: 84–99. Sherman, E. and J. Dacher (2005), ‘Cherished Objects and the Home: Their Meaning and Roles in Later Life’, in G. D. Rowles and H. Chaudhury (eds), Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives, 63–80, New York: Springer. Smith, S. J. (2008), ‘Owner-occupation: At Home with a Hybrid of Money and Materials’, Environment and Planning A, 40 (3): 520–35. Stryker, S. (1980), Symbolic Interactionism, Caldwell: Blackburn. Tangney, J. P. and R. Dearing (2002), Shame and Guilt, New York: Guilford. TNS Tracker Survey for Age UK, February 2015, of adults aged 50+ in Great Britain. Toussaint, J. and M. Elsinga (2009), ‘Exploring “Housing Asset-based Welfare”: Can the UK Be Held Up as an Example for Europe?’, Housing Studies, 24 (5): 669–92. Tracy, J. L. and R. W. Robins (2004), ‘Putting the Self into Self-conscious Emotions: A Theoretical Model’, Psychological Inquiry, 15 (2): 103–25.

PART THREE

Languages of Home Introduction The final part of the volume focuses on the role of language in the constitution of home and in home-making as a grounding identity experience. The three essays in this part, each in their own way, challenge the established discourse and offer innovative perspectives on the complex relationship between language and home. The section opens with a reflection on the  Romani  language by Damian Le Bas, a writer, film-maker and journalist from a Romany-Traveller family, and a lobbyist for the recognition of the Romani language in the United Kingdom. Contesting some of the mainstream academic narratives about Romani, Le Bas foregrounds a different way of looking at the language, one based on his personal experience of Romani. The text highlights the strong connection between our sense of home and the language we use and share with others. The relationship between language and home in Tony Capstick’s study is approached in the context of the chain migration between Mirpur (Pakistan) and Lancashire (UK). Drawing on ethnographic data, Capstick presents a case study focusing on the home literacy practices of Usman, a young man in the process of migration from Pakistan to the UK, whose diary-writing in Urdu and English reveal his multiple identities and allegiances, relating to his different homes and belongings. The final chapter, by Susan Samata, explores the complex relationship heritage speakers have with the language of their ‘home’, i.e., the language of their parents/grandparents, and discusses the seemingly paradoxical situation that a language in which heritage

176

THINKING HOME

speakers often cannot fully participate is nevertheless capable of evoking a sense of home. In line with the theme of this section, the contributors speak in different yet complementary tongues and discursive modes: from a poetic account of personal experience (Le Bas), through an empirical report on linguistic ethnographic fieldwork (Capstick), to theoretical reflection (Samata). All three contributions, however, show that language forms an integral part of its user’s sense of home, providing them with a sense of personal significance, rootedness, and emotional attachment.

10 The Romani Language: A Signpost to Home Damian Le Bas

I am at home. I say it because it is true. I say it because home is important to me. It is probably as important to me as it is to anyone else. This does not mean that what I mean by ‘home’ is entirely obvious. The home I am sitting in is on wheels. It is a caravan, about thirty feet long, perhaps ten feet wide. It is the kind of caravan most people would only use for a summer holiday. The home before this one was another caravan, shorter, a little less wide. And in between times I was living in the back of a van, researching – as well as eating, sleeping and living in – some of the traditional Romany ‘stopping places’ that exist in an invisible network across the British mainland. As these facts would suggest, wheels are important to my idea of home. I can’t imagine home without them. A home without wheels sounds, to me, more like prison than home; and yet not all of my homes have been on wheels. My image of home has not always matched the reality. I have lived in many houses: owned, rented, or loaned by the state. I have lived in boarding school dorms, in university halls. Most of the time I had access to wheels: four at first, later two, then four once again. When I didn’t have access to wheels I felt shut up, constrained. Wheels make everything feel freer. They make a home feel more like home. I assume this applies to most people. I reckon their idea of home is built on the fact they can leave. If you can’t leave, it’s not home. It’s jail. No matter how safe, no matter how loving or beautiful, it is a cage. I felt caged in childhood. I had the most loving of parents. I had most of the things that I asked for. I had great freedoms. I had the free rein of the countryside. I had the run of wide

178

THINKING HOME

beaches and forests and hills. But I was not quite free, as no child really is. The world is an adult’s world. Children are guests. Sometimes welcome, and many times not. And they know it. But beyond wheels and freedom and love and all that, there is something else. Something I always rely on to tell me I’m home. This thing makes me different from many – but not all – people. It is a language of the home. I suppose any language could play this role. But it must be a language that’s spoken at home, and it must be a language that’s not understood by most people outside of the home. It is a minority language. In my case, this language is Romani. It must be said at this point that the word Romani lacks any linguistic connection to the word Romania. It just so happens, in part due to 400 years of slavery practised by Wallachian and Moldavian aristocrats, that Romania has one of the largest Romani populations in the world (as does Hungary; as does Brazil; as nowadays does Britain). But whereas the name of Romania derives from that of Rome, and the Roman soldiers and citizens who settled in the area during the height of the Empire, the word Romani comes from the old Indian word ‘Rom’, meaning ‘man’, ‘one of us’, ‘husband’, or something a bit like all three of those words. ‘Romani’ is the adjective formed out of ‘Rom’. The assertion that the term is etymologically unconnected to Romania usually falls on deaf ears, and the idea of an ethnic connection between Romania and the Romani language is firmly engrained in many people’s minds. ‘Romani’ is not a simple word. Its meaning is no easier to define than the meaning of the word ‘English’. We can say that Romani is a language of Indian origin. We can say that it is historically the language of the Romani people (otherwise known as Gypsies, Gitans, Ţigani, and a host of other names). But the actual remit of the word runs far and wide. Linguists have usually tried to restrict the word’s meaning (see, for example, Matras 2013). For them, ‘Romani’ refers to the inflected and ‘fully fledged’ language of the Roma of Eastern Europe, and their diaspora communities across the Western world and somewhat beyond. It also refers to the historical community language of the Romani communities of Western Europe, such as the Gitanos of Spain, the Manouche of France and the Romanichals of Great Britain. These latter groups, so the scholarly narrative goes, lost their language at various points in the past. This was due to a number of factors: intermarriage with non-Romani speakers; deliberate integration with the surrounding populace; forced assimilation, and others. What remains are mere lexica, cack-handedly grafted onto Romance and Germanic grammars. Hence we have the Caló dialect of the Gitanos of Spain, and the Poggady Jib (broken tongue) of the Gypsies of England. These are impure speech forms that might be called mixed languages, creoles, jargons, or, as is currently fashionable, ‘para-Romani dialects’. But one

THE ROMANI LANGUAGE: A SIGNPOST TO HOME

179

thing is certain: they do not deserve the stately label of Romani. At least, so say the scholars. But I do not live among scholars, I live among Travellers. ‘Travellers’ is the self-appellation of several groups in the British Isles: different as they may be from each other, they all share a nomadic past. Alongside those of Romany heritage like myself, they comprise the predominantly Celtic nomads of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, the Pavee and the Nawken. They have also come to include, in recent decades, the New Age Travellers, or simply ‘New Travellers’. Initially emerging from the ‘Peace Convoy’, a peripatetic movement that protested against nuclear weapons, and expanded by the ‘Free Festival’ scene – a subculture that held unsanctioned raves in the countryside long before the explosion of the lucrative British summer festival circuit – the New Travellers’ numbers are periodically swelled by new arrivals from the contemporary protest movements, and others in search of a home  on the road, whatever their reasons may be. But the group I was born and raised among are the Romany Travellers of England, who to this day use the word ‘Travellers’ to refer to themselves and themselves alone. Self-absorbed as this may seem, it is understandable in the British historical context. For perhaps 300 years leading up to the mid-twentieth century, when someone in England made mention of Gypsies or Travellers, what they meant was usually the Romany people. And among the Romanies, the sense of having exclusive moral rights to the word ‘Traveller’ is engrained. If it ever dies, it will die hard. I am not sure it ever will. Among the Romany Travellers, the word ‘Romani’ refers to their language, no matter what state it is in.1 Three years ago, when a seventy-year-old Traveller man from Brighton asked me if I spoke the Romani language, and I said yes, we both knew what we meant by ‘the Romani language’. What we meant was not a language with a perfectly preserved Indian grammar. When he followed up his question with the same question in that language, ‘You rokker Romanus, chavi?’ and I answered ‘Aua, mandi can rokker’, this was the speech we were talking about.2 And, generally speaking, we don’t call this speech ‘Poggady Jib’ or ‘the broken tongue’ or Anglo-Romani or Romany-English or the British creole para-Romani variant. We just call it Romani, or the Romani language, though other ways of referring to it exist: ‘the old tongue’; ‘the lingo’; ‘the Travellers’ language’; ‘Romany talk’; ‘our talk’. I have always loved the term Mame-loshn, the Yiddish term for the Yiddish language. Mame-loshn means ‘mother tongue’, but it has the feeling of something more intimate: ‘mama tongue’, perhaps, or ‘mummy tongue’. This appellation distinguishes it from Loshn-koydesh, or ‘holy tongue’, the Yiddish term for the older and loftier Biblical Hebrew language. While the former was the language of the home, the latter was primarily the speech of the synagogue; a dweller in ceremonies and sacred scrolls. Romani culture is

180

THINKING HOME

traditionally more patriarchal than Jewish culture, so we rarely refer to Romani as our mother tongue. But, although my father and mother both taught me the language, my main teacher was my great-grandmother, Nan. This, and the fact that – like Yiddish – our dialect is formed from the blending and swirling and stippling of Eastern words against a backdrop of Germanic grammar, makes me think that Mame-loshn describes very well what the Romani tongue is to me. And so I come back home; or at least, back to one of my homes. It was in Nan’s kitchen that I learned many of my Romani words. Many of them described food. ‘Bitta mora, ker this yori out … Droppa tood in your piyameski … ’3 and others. These were the basic ingredients of comfort and warmth: the stuff of the hearth; the means by which home and its safety are conveyed to the belly. What is more, and although she grew up sleeping only in wagons and tents, Nan has lived in a bungalow all of my life. So the Romani words she used put me in mind of her place: a fixed place, a warm place, a shelter to return to, boomerang-like, from my wanderings. And, of course, any language of home cannot be simply a language of comforts and joys. From time to time, Romani was also the language of discipline: ‘Gaan! Jel out you brazen chavis!’4 And later: ‘Kakker dinlo, mandi’s rokkerin’ to the geeri’.5 If it lacked the power to put across phrases like these, how could Romani claim to be a genuine speech of the home? So Romani has this dual power of a language of home: the power both to comfort and scold. And this dual power means it can cast a feint veil of home over places far distant from anywhere that I have ‘lived’ in a permanent sense. Over the past seven years I have spent much of my time on the road, visiting people all over Britain. They are people united by disparate webs of blood ties, way of life, intermarriage. Sometimes they’re connected by nothing more than the fact the authorities band them together for ease of reference (what may count as ease to the council is usually felt as disease by those referenced). And being both linked and dissimilar, they call themselves various names: Travellers, Romany Gypsies, the Pavee, half-breeds, Gypsy people, Romungre, the Tinkers … One wears with great pride the same name that another despises as a racist slur. And this is the lie of the land among Gypsies and Travellers in all of their clans and their creeds. An outsider can never be sure what to say, until they’ve put one foot half-wrong and the tension is clear. ‘Communities’, if and when they exist, can still only be dealt with one face at a time. Other ways are crass, cack-handed; always awkward, likely doomed. I cannot say how many times the old Romani tongue has saved me from what otherwise might have been an awkward encounter. The warmth that the language brings with it can melt through the ice of most frosty exchanges. But Travellers are suspicious, whatever our breed. We are trained to be perspicacious, to look through people’s words. We are taught to test those

THE ROMANI LANGUAGE: A SIGNPOST TO HOME

181

who claim Traveller blood, to check whether they’re genuine; to sharpen our eyes for the signs of a lie, and widen our ears for slip-ups in their patterns of speech: tell-tale oddities that might mean they’ve learned our language from books, as opposed to by ear, from their family. It’s not foolproof. Regional wobblings in accent and word choice might make someone sound like a ‘wannabe’ – someone who’s trying to pass as a Traveller, when in reality they simply hail from somewhere else. Nomads, permanent or occasional, are as absorbent of the local as is anyone else. At the same time, though, the Romani language expands what I mean by ‘the local’. The manner of Romani speech my great-grandmother taught me is broadly the same everywhere west of Hampshire as far as Penzance; the word-use changes little north-westward as far as the border with Wales, the fruit vales of Evesham, the isolated cattle town of Hereford. Most Romany people south-west of a wiggly line stretching roughly from Portsmouth to Brecon in mid-Wales sound enough like my Nan to make me feel at home in an instant. It’s a contour of home – a line that means nothing to most people, bearing absolutely no relevance to their world. But it does mean something to the Gypsies, for whom the country was traditionally divided not into counties, but rather into several regions of varying size that marked the circuits of the local travelling clan. Among them were Kent, Hampshire, London, the South West, the Welsh Borders, South Wales, North Wales, the North, the Lowlands, the Highlands, maybe others besides. In England, the traditional divide was ‘North Country’ and ‘South Country’. The matter of exactly where the line between North and South falls is contentious (I would opt for bisecting England somewhere between Northampton and Leicester, westwards from The Wash). But south of it you’d get southern accents and basically one form of Romani speech; north of it, northern accents and some different items of vocabulary. The one oft-quoted difference is in the pronunciation of the word meaning ‘break’ or ‘hit hard’, which is pogger where I grew up, and pagger up north. But one thing I’ve observed, as have others I know, is that a Brummie accent is incredibly rare among Travellers. To be a ‘Midlander’ isn’t really an option. You’re a Southerner, Northerner, Scottish or Welsh, or Irish, but you’re never a Midlander. Maybe a Traveller will read this, proud of their Brummie or Black Country Romany brogue, and become furious at my broad strokes and daft statements. I hope I will meet them one day and expand my horizons. Then there are the Roma from Eastern Europe, who have mostly arrived in the UK since the turn of the millennium, and in greater numbers since Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and latterly Bulgaria and Romania acceded to the European Union. Most of them speak the Romani language the scholars fall hardest for – the highly inflected, conservative, Indian tongue that the early twentieth-century linguist John Sampson referred to as a ‘stately and beautiful language’ which later became debased in the Britain where he lived ([1926]

182

THINKING HOME

1968: vii). With its complex declensions and nominal case endings, the Romani of these newcomers – though itself split into dialects – inspires description as whole and original, closer by far to the Sanskrit-like speech of the first Roma people who knocked at the gates of Byzantium on their way west. So the scholars, mostly, are in love with this meaning of ‘Romani’. I share their love, and have spent years attempting to learn it, reading its poetry; especially that of the great poet Ilija Jovanović, who wrote in the Gurbet Romani language of Serbia: wherever we are, ‘we are what we are’ (‘amen sam godova so sam’; 2011: 44).6 Despite years of private study, my ‘inflected Romani’ is far from fluent. I have got used to the narrowing of eyes and the squirming of mouths at my efforts to speak it with grace. There is a rich irony there, when a Romani person pulls faces that say something isn’t quite right with my speech. The more suspicious their expression, the more they remind me of my family, and of the suspicion they trained me to show to outsiders. For, close as these other Romani dialects are to my heart, they are far from the tongue of my home. With its earthy English grammar, as far from the canon as anything, and its old lexicon of Romani words brought mostly from India, but also with bits from the old tongues of Persia and Byzantine Greece and continental Europe, this is my language. This is the language that sums up my place in the world, wherever that place is, in whichever moment. It seems consonant with the mishmash of things that Travellers are; with the way that a secretive Indian gene hides behind my blue eyes and pale skin. I’m at home in this language. And being at home is as important to me as it is to anybody else. This is why we must remind ourselves that nobody owns a language entirely, not even a language as traditionally secret as Romani. Its words crop up all over the place, in print, in non-Romani mouths. They are there in the slapstick nostalgic London slang of EastEnders and Only Fools and Horses7; plastered on the Underground in the adverts of Wonga.com8; and – in spite of the attempts to invent alternative etymologies – in the sneering antiworking class term ‘chav’.9 In yet another irony, the BBC Trust has recently defended its employees’ use of the term ‘pikey’ – a traditionally anti-Gypsy slur derived from the term ‘turnpike-dwellers’ – on the basis that nowadays the word has a broader remit: it doesn’t just refer to Travellers, but can also mean ‘chavvy’ or ‘low rent’. Thus the Editorial Standards Committee of the Corporation, in attempting to prove the term did not primarily refer to ethnic Gypsies, unwittingly used a Romani-derived word in such a way as to perfectly counteract its own argument.10 So in whatever form I encounter my language – in my own dialect, or another, in poetry, or in the name of a payday-loan website – it acts as a signpost to home. ‘Gypsyland’, if it can be said to exist, is surely a borderless country: spread across every continent, it has no physical road-signs of its

THE ROMANI LANGUAGE: A SIGNPOST TO HOME

183

own; such signs as there are belong to everyone, or at least they should. Nor do many Gypsies throw the patrin11 in their wake these days: an arrangement of sticks or ripped-up turf designed to be seen by one who walked at a horse’s pace is easily missed from the cab of a van at sixty miles an hour. But we have our languages, while they last, pointing, in both senses, to where we came from: to our origins, and to home. At least, unlike much of the nonsense that swirls round the topic of ‘Gypsies’, our words are real. We do not steal children, or kill using curses, or have a free rein to break laws; but we do have a language. And wheels or no wheels, where it lives, that is where I’m at home.

Notes   1 Until recently, Romani was always spelled ‘Romany’ in the Anglophone world. In this essay I follow the modern convention of spelling it with an ‘-i’ at the end, which reflects its adjectival status in the Romani language.   2 The word ‘Romanus’, which is actually an adverb meaning ‘like a Romani’ or ‘in the Romani way’, is usually spelled ‘Romanes’ with an implied grave accent over the e. But where I grew up it was pronounced ‘Romanus’ (roughly, ‘Roamer-nus’, with the ‘u’ here standing for something between a ‘u’ and šwa). As this piece is about the language and home, that is how I have chosen to spell it here.   3 ‘Piece of bread, get this egg out … Drop of milk in your tea’.   4 ‘Don’t! Go out, you naughty children!’   5 ‘Quiet, you fool, I’m talking to the man.’   6 My translation. A selection of Jovanović’s poetry is available in English in Jovanović 2010.   7 In Only Fools and Horses the character of Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter, played by Sir David Jason, famously appropriated the Romani word kushti (roughly meaning ‘good’) as a stand-alone catchphrase, and his latter-day spiritual heir Mick Carter – the EastEnders landlord played by Danny Dyer – has been known to use Romani words.   8 This payday loan company derives its name from the Romani word vonga, which originally meant ‘coal’ and latterly ‘money’.   9 The actor and rapper Plan B, for instance, while acknowledging that ‘chav’ is derived from the Romani word chavi meaning ‘child’ or ‘mate’, has also flirted with its oft-quoted but wholly inauthentic folk etymology, ‘council housed and violent’ in his official statement concerning its use in the titular song of his iLL Manors album (Mooro 2012). 10 Made in response to the complaints made about the repeated use of the word ‘pikey’ to describe Richard Hammond, the Top Gear television programme presenter in 2014–15. For a newspaper account of the debate, see Sweeney 2015.

184

THINKING HOME

11 The patrin – Romani for ‘leaf’, ‘sign’ or ‘marker’ – was a way-marker made from organic matter, usually twigs or a clod of earth, which was left in the road to indicate to followers when a party of Gypsies ahead of them had turned off the road.

References Jovanović, I. (2010), News from the Other World, trans. M. Depner, London: Francis Boutle Publishing. Jovanović, I. (2011), Mein Nest in deinem Haar/Moro kujbo ande ćire bal [My Nest in Your Hair], German/Romani bilingual edition, Vienna: Drava Verlag. Matras, Y. (2013), Romani in Britain: The Afterlife of a Language, Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Mooro, A. (2012), ‘Plan B Opens Up about the Deeper Meaning behind iLL Manors’, MTV Wrap-up Blog (13 March 2012), available at: http://www.mtv. co.uk/the-wrap-up/blog/plan-b-opens-up-about-the-deeper-meaning-behind-illmanors. Plan B [Drew, B.] (2012), iLL Manors, Warner Bros. Sampson, J. ([1926] 1968), The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales: Being the Older Form of British Romani Preserved in the Speech of the Clan of Abram Wood, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweeney, M. (2015), ‘Top Gear Cleared by BBC Trust over Use of the Word “Pikey”’, The Guardian (17 March 2015), available at: https://www.theguardian. com/media/2015/mar/17/top-gear-bbc-trust-pikey-jeremy-clarkson.

11 Migration and Belonging in the Home Literacies of Mirpuri Families Tony Capstick

Introduction In this chapter, the home is the central domain from which I explore the writing of one Mirpuri migrant family from Pakistan. Mirpur town, in the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan, is bound to the north-west of England through three phases of chain migration, which have developed over the past fifty years. In the first phase (from the 1950s to the 1960s), male labour migrants left Azad Kashmir for the textile mills of Lancashire, and were quickly reunited with their wives and children in the family reunion phase (1960s to 1970s). With increasing curbs on immigration by successive UK governments, marriage migration became the means by which Mirpuris demonstrated their kinship responsibilities by marrying British Mirpuris, often in Mirpur, but then moving to the UK to live. It is during this contemporary phase of marriage migration that Usman (from Mirpur), whose home literacy practices are explored in this chapter, and Nadia (from Lancashire) came to be married. All three phases are explored in detail in a separate study (Capstick 2016a), which identifies the role of literacy in the chain migration. In addition to the dominant literacies of visa applications, in the larger study I found that the vernacular literacies of migration which emerged in Mirpuri migrants’ writing on social media from the UK had originated within the borderlands of school and home in Pakistan. The current chapter takes up the notion of vernacular literacies of migration in order to explore the opportunities migrants have for reading and writing in the home and the extent to which

186

THINKING HOME

these literacy practices relate to different homes, and different belongings in both countries. To do this, I take a longer historical perspective on these literacies which converged in the home in order to examine the social, cultural and political forces that shape contemporary practices. Home literacies are therefore understood within the context of the institutional sponsorship of literacy, that is, those institutions which either prevent or promote literacy (Brandt 2001), in North West Pakistan prior to Partition in 1947. This is followed by an analysis of how this sponsorship shaped the availability of literacy in individuals’ lives. The availability of literacy in Usman’s life is explored by paying close attention to the home literacies, chiefly a diary of thoughts and quotations which he kept prior to his migration, including his own perspective on these practices which he gave during interviews about his home literacies. Combining the analysis of these literacy practices with an analysis of the construction of belonging in the diary extracts provides a vivid account of how Usman, who was nineteen years old when I met him, negotiates multiple individual and collective belongings prior to his arrival in the UK. It is Usman’s home-based literacies that enable him to construct his sense of home in Azad Kashmir while beginning to forge a sense of belonging to his new home in Lancashire, UK.

Methodology This study was carried out at a time when migrants’ proficiency in the dominant language of the country they wished to settle in was increasingly being linked to their ability to integrate into the nation states of the West. At the same time that Usman was writing the diary entries discussed in this chapter and completing the visa application forms that would enable him to join his wife in the UK, the UK was introducing English language testing legislation for non-EEA nationals which compelled them to pass a test in English prior to applying for a visa. I first met Usman while carrying out ethnographic research in English language schools in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. I interviewed students about their prospective migrations and recorded their use of literacy, looking at both the dominant literacies of visa applications as well as their vernacular practices on social media. Although visa literacies are central to transnational families’ ability to maintain the kinship ties that have joined Azad Kashmir with the north-west of England since the first male labour migrants began moving to the UK in the 1950s, I have found that there are also vernacular literacies of migration with which individuals engage. These are not related to the bureaucratic literacies of institutions, and they convincingly illustrate migrants’ translanguaging as well as their transnationalism (Capstick 2016b).

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

187

In order to find out to what extent families draw on the availability of literacy in Mirpur in their migrations, the study reported in the current chapter sought to identify how the availability of literacy provides opportunities to shape the identities at home. Gal and Woolard (1995) have suggested that ideologies which appear to be about language are often about political systems. I therefore explore the political decisions about language and literacy made in the region around Mirpur by tracing migrants’ access to dominant languages such as Urdu and English at school. These literacies are then taken up at home when family members come together to share their literacy resources and generate new identities, and maintain or relinquish old ones in their literacy practices. This analysis rests on the notion that identities at a given moment in history are subject to change, like the ideologies that legitimize and value particular identities more than others (Blackledge and Pavlenko 2001). I draw on data collected with a key respondent in Mirpur prior to the acceptance of his visa application by the UK Border Agency in order to explore how he uses the social and linguistic resources in his home literacies to both take up as well as resist identities. I do this by turning to the users of language, that is, the family members, to understand the relationship between views about language and its usage. I look specifically at what Usman told me about writing at home and school and what he felt about this writing, as I am interested in the interrelationship between what people believe about their practices and the way that they access and make use of their linguistic resources. In the interviews we conducted together we discussed the language and literacy choices of his family in the collection of writings he made leading up to his migration, which I will call ‘the diary’. The linguistic resources he draws on include Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, which is the official medium of instruction in state schools, as well as English, which is the official language of the country and is used increasingly in private as well as state sector schools. This type of research raises significant issues around the ethics of working with migrant families at times in their lives that anonymity was particularly important to them. By providing interview information sheets on University letter-headed paper which explained the research project I was involved with and asking the interpreters to translate these orally if participants were unable to read them, I was able to comply with the University’s ethics procedures and with the ethics procedures of my discipline, Applied Linguistics. Ethics are also central to the ethnographer’s ability to make valid claims about the social world. Methodologically, data were collected with a rigour that enabled me to draw conclusions and make claims about the migrations I was investigating. In the wider study I have related this rigour to trust when carrying out interviews, as I was working in the homes of participants and thus the trust of the research participants had to be ensured. Again, I see it as central to the way in which ethnographers think about reflexivity when addressing the conditions of their

188

THINKING HOME

research participants’ lived experiences and how this affects knowledge production both in the field and in the writing up of others’ lives. In this sense, the methodological approach in this study connects with the anthropological approach of Rapport’s chapter in this volume. His interest in the capabilities of human beings ‘to construct world-views for themselves, to make their own sense of the world around them, and to imagine a life-project of meaning and value within this world’, is also very much the concern of the literacy ethnographer whose goal is to provide insights into the role of literacy in individuals’ meaning-making by exploring the dialectical relationship between language and culture. However, it is with specific reference to the manner in which Rapport deploys understandings of home which connect ‘house to nation’ that the current study has most in common with his anthropological approach. Such an approach to home necessarily informs my exploration of the role of literacy in connecting migrants to multiple ‘national’ identities.

Literacy practices, identity and belonging Research in the New Literacy Studies tradition argues that literacy can only be understood in relation to its context. As a result, researchers from the 1980s onwards working in this tradition orient to the socially contingent nature of literacy. This has meant focusing on the ways that literacy conveys the values and attitudes of the individuals and groups of users of texts, and the processes involved in text production (Barton and Papen 2010). For Barton and Hamilton, the literacy practices of these users are seen as ‘the general cultural ways of utilizing written language which people draw upon in their lives … However, practices are not observable units of behaviour since they also involve values, attitudes, feelings and social relationships’ (2000: 7). Taking this social practices approach to literacy demonstrates how literacy can be seen as a shared resource, shared across the communities which come together to use it. This approach also connects with work elsewhere in this volume which draws on Wilfred Bion’s term of home as a ‘container’ (Papadopoulos, this volume). If we accept that the home impacts on three levels – the individual/family, the regulation of networks of interrelationships, and as a mediator between these two levels and the outer world of society, culture and socio-political realities – then the role of literacy as a shared resource in a textually mediated world enables the ethnographer of literacy to trace the connections between these different levels. If the home is a key construct in these overlapping realms (Papadopoulos, this volume), then the means by which migrants take up opportunities for literacy to enable their migrations and maintain their belonging to home in a range of transnational settings enables anthropologists and ethnographers a lens through which to explore the role of literacy in the home as well as the role of home in literacy.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

189

At this point it would be helpful to elaborate on how different settings and goals require different literacy practices for different communities of practice. When characterizing these new approaches to understanding and defining literacy, Street draws a distinction between an ‘autonomous’ model and an ‘ideological’ model of literacy (Street 1984). The former works from the assumption that literacy in itself will have effects on other cognitive practices while disguising the cultural assumptions that underpin it, presenting them at a later date as though they are neutral and universal. The ideological model posits that literacy is not simply a technical and neutral skill but that the ways we conceive of reading and writing are themselves rooted in concepts of knowledge, identity and being (Street 1984). For Barton and Hamilton this means that there are different literacies associated with different domains of life, but that the home is the core domain to which other domains relate: ‘it is a place where different aspects of life are negotiated and fitted in with each other. In this process new, hybrid practices are sometimes produced’ (1998: 189). The role of the home as the ‘core domain to which other domains relate’ will be investigated in this chapter. In the first part of the analysis I explore how home literacies are shaped by institutional decisions which have been made outside the home by the sponsors of literacy who sanction the use of different language varieties through education and language policy. As Gee (2011) suggests, we need to look at where everyday language begins, and where it is primary in people’s literacy lives and therefore central to people’s developing sense of social identity. In the second part of the analysis I continue to trace these historical, social and cultural forces by bringing the analysis of Usman’s diary extracts together with work on ‘belonging’ in order to identify the shifts in identity that Usman constructs as he prepares to leave his home in Mirpur and join his wife’s new home in Lancashire, UK. ‘Identity’ to Gee (2011) refers to the different ways of being in the world and is significant in this study as it is not a static notion of ‘being’ but one which changes at different times and in different places. Usman and his families’ social identities are represented through their literacy practices and negotiated in ways which allow them to belong, or choose not to belong, to the social processes which connect people to multiple homes in Pakistan and the UK. This analysis will be developed through the notion of ‘belonging’ as part of what Krzyzanowski and Jones refer to as the ‘sustained critique of the concept of identity’ (2008: 8). In their attempt to overcome the problem of allowing an analysis of identity to hide more than it reveals, the authors call for a ‘conceptual unpacking’ of identity to aid the multiple and complex processes associated with identity construction. Krzyzanowski and Jones employ a framework which looks at how patterns of belonging are constructed dynamically thereby helping situate an individual’s position in relation to the collectivities of the community that the migrant has left as well as the community into which they have migrated. The focus in the second part of this chapter will be on Usman’s belongings as he

190

THINKING HOME

began to imagine his life in the UK by tracing his attachment to various belongings with different groups and, following Krzyzanowski and Jones, what this tells us about the relationship between a personalized identity and a collective one: belonging can be considered a process whereby an individual in some way feels some sense of association with a group, and as such represents a way to explain the relationship between a personalized identity and a collective one. In a purely conceptual way belonging is about the relationship between personal identity and a collective identity – there is something about one’s personal belonging that is comparable to one’s perception of the aims, constitution or values of a given collective. (2008: 44) To explore the construction of these individual and group identities, I turn to the text world of Usman’s diary as it is by connecting the personalized identity to the collective one that the notion of belonging enables us to explore the role of literacy in migrants’ developing sense of home. According to Barton and Hamilton (1998), the text world refers to the literacy practices and expressions of identity related to an individual’s writing in one sphere of activity. In Usman’s case this was the text world of the diary which he completed as he waited to hear the decision about his visa application. In their analyses of the text world in their study of community life in Lancaster, UK, Barton and Hamilton focused on how people are presented by the author, what these people are doing, and what activities are ascribed to them. It is within this focus on people and their attributes that I embed work by Krzyzanowski and Jones (2008), who believe that, drawing on Probyn (1996: 19), the process of belonging captures the desire for attachment to people, places or modes of being. By exploring these attachments within the analysis of the text world, Usman’s belongings emerge as part of his home literacies. As these were literacies which Usman engaged in immediately prior to his departure to England, they can be seen as what Fortier has called ‘narratives of identity’ which form part of the ‘longing to belong’ rather than surfacing from an already constituted identity (2000: 2). In this way, Usman’s perceptions of belonging at a crucial point in his migration, which, Krzyzanowski and Jones suggest, display the ‘process of becoming someone, rather than already being someone’ (2008: 101), tell us about his attachments to the different collectives in his life at that point.

The access and availability of literacy in Mirpur Understanding literacy as social practice, Judith Kalman (2005) argues, means looking at how text users learn to respond to the specific requirements of participating in literacy activities. This she characterizes as access to literacy.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

191

Deborah Brandt’s (2001) concerns are similar to those of Kalman’s, though she suggests that it is the sponsors of literacy that both provide and prevent access to literacy. Both access/availability and sponsorship help us to understand how institutions shape what happens in the home as it is the sponsorship of literacy by schools in Pakistan and their use of dominant, formal and standardized literacy in Urdu and English which shape Usman’s access to literacy at home. Understanding literacy in its broadest terms in this way means taking account of ‘any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach and model, as well as recruit, regulate, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way’ (Brandt 2001: 27). As such, Brandt argues in her study of literacy in the US that print penetrates all areas of existence and thus only the most powerful countervailing forces are able to prevent access to it. In this section I explore how powerful countervailing forces have prevented access to literacy in Punjabi for speakers of the language in Pakistan while providing access to literacy in Urdu and English. Usman’s family, like most Mirpuris, speak a variety of Punjabi which is known as Mirpuri Punjabi. It is part of the Punjabi dialect chain and is spoken widely in Azad Kashmir as well as being spoken widely by Mirpuris in the UK (Lothers and Lothers 2007). However, Punjabi is not written by the vast majority of its speakers as it is Urdu which is the symbol of Muslim identity and which confers the prestige in Pakistan that Punjabi lacks (Rahman 1997, 2005; Rassool 2007). Given that Brandt (2001) has argued that literacy is part of larger material systems which help develop reading and writing while at the same time conferring their value, it is useful to understand how the devaluing of Punjabi in institutional spheres has led to Punjabis use of other literacies at home, that is, until users of social media began using Romanized scripts in their transliterations of Punjabi online (see Capstick 2016b). Until these new self-sponsored vernacular literacies emerged, only a small number of Punjabis who learned how to read and write Punjabi at university were able to access literacy in their first language. Tariq Rahman (1997, 2005) has written extensively about this situation where most children in Pakistan are not taught through their mother tongues but through Urdu. He recognizes that, particularly in the early years, children’s mother tongues are in fact used informally in classrooms to explain the lessons, code-switching to Urdu and English, the latter being the official language of the country and very much the language of power within the elite that runs the country.

Usman’s family’s home literacies Usman’s family is not part of this elite, yet he likes to use English as often as possible in his everyday life. He was born in Pakistan, close to the boundary with Azad Kashmir, though his two brothers and one sister were born in

192

THINKING HOME

different towns across the country as their father, a soldier, was relocated to different garrisons. Usman recalled that the army schools he attended promoted literacy in Urdu by rote learning but many of the teachers spoke English, whereas the English medium schools he attended were less consistent: many of the teachers promoted literacy in Urdu and English while using spoken Urdu with code-switching to English in the classroom. Punjabi, he told me, was only used by those teachers who did not know the words in English or Urdu, though the code mixing in this diglossic context is far more complex than this description allows. Usman recalled several grammar books that he kept and used at home with his brothers, as he found grammar books particularly useful for developing both his spoken and written English. By visiting Usman’s home I learned that the family kept a variety of written texts, most of which were related to the family’s religious practices, schoolwork and English language learning. In Usman’s home I saw ample evidence of Usman’s desire to learn about English. He almost always made a point of telling me who had recommended the family’s books. These were normally people who Usman knew from around Mirpur but had not been teachers of his. The father of one of Usman’s closest friends had not only recommended books but had also given Usman informal instruction in English at his home. Usman explained that he shared these books with his brothers. He felt a responsibility to help them both with their English language development. He did not see a need for his sister to learn English, though she too was learning at school. As part of the help Usman gave his brothers the young men would often sit down together to look through these books. Usman felt this was very important as he explained that schools did not always teach English properly. Here, literacy in English practised at home is related to the accessibility of literacy at school. When schools promote the availability of literacy in English through curricula, exams and written material in English, but simultaneously withhold access to literacy in English due to the lack of proficient teachers who know how to use either written or spoken English, family members find alternative ways to help each other. Kalman’s (2005) view is that family members of different generations take up new opportunities to participate in reading and writing events and to learn new literacy practices. These she calls literacy-scaffolding situations. Usman’s family scaffold each other’s literacy when doing homework together, an after-school activity. This provides Usman with opportunities to practise his English while at the same time giving his brothers opportunities to use their spoken and written English. As discussed earlier, Barton and Hamilton (2000) suggest that individuals move in and out of different domains and occupy the borderlands between them while changing their lives. They find the home is the core domain to which other domains relate, which makes the home central to the manner in which different aspects of life are brought together.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

193

This hybridity was extended by Usman’s use of English with Nadia in England. Using a mixture of English and Mirpuri Punjabi with her when they chatted by Skype while completing the visa application forms together meant that the borderland was further blurred as the variety of English which Usman learned from Nadia was the local variety spoken in Lancashire, which has its own conventions, as well as the very different written variety of British Standard English which they were required to use when filling in the application forms for Usman’s visa. Thus, access routes to literacy in English transformed the meaning of reading and writing from individual rote learning at school into a social activity accomplished through interaction at home. Home here is Usman’s current family home in Mirpur as well as his new home with Nadia in Lancashire in the UK. Moving ‘between’ homes in this way is captured in this volume by Papadopoulos who suggests that home can be understood as ‘a container of complex inter relationships between (a) space, (b) time, and (c) relationships’ which are established over a period of time but which are not tied to geography. Furthermore, the time aspect for Usman is not tied to a specific duration as he already identifies with his new home in the UK long before leaving Pakistan. This is because, as Papadopoulos points out, home refers to any space that can be experienced as intimate.

Belonging in Usman’s home literacies Usman’s diary included a variety of extracts copied from the Qur’an and the Hadith as well as his thoughts and feelings about his prospective migration interspersed with poetry, military slogans, dictionary definitions and quotations from songs. The extracts are rich descriptions of his recent marriage and his existing family relations. Usman told me that the reason he had written these entries was to help him ‘think about things’. In this way, the diary is a written record of how Usman uses literacy in Urdu and English to make meaning of his life. During the twelve months that Usman and I met to discuss his literacy practices, one week was spent talking about the diary. During that week we would sit together with the diary in front of us and he would first translate the extract. These interviews were audio recorded and I would also write down the translations on a separate copy of the diary. Once he translated any Urdu extracts I would ask him questions about what the extract meant to him and why he had chosen a particular language or languages. This way we worked through all forty-three pages of the diary page by page. During these interviews I was particularly interested in how Usman positions himself and others in the extracts as well as the reasons for his choice of language and the

194

THINKING HOME

identity issues which these choices were related to. Many of the people who populate the diary are not known to Usman. Some are famous singers, others are military heroes, while many are Usman’s family members.

Caste, cousins and Kashmir: Belonging to the family and its ancestral villages Usman’s family is presented prominently on the first page of the diary (see Figure 11.1). Usman’s caste, Raja, is printed boldly at the top of the page, though in fact Usman told me that this had been written by his sister. He also told me that Raja is a very important caste in Pakistan and India and that he would not have been marrying Nadia if she had not been from a similar caste. Raja is written in English twice and in Urdu once. The significance of Usman’s caste to his family relations and home in Azad Kashmir is made explicit from the start as there is a link between caste and the family members that he lists on the page. These relations are established by a collective identity which Usman constructs by listing his cousins. However, the collective identity of his friendship group is also foregrounded in the quote ‘Band of Brothers’, which he explained was the name given to his group of university friends who played sports together. These words and the words ‘Welcome’, ‘give respect and get respect’ as well as his own name are all written in English. Towards the bottom of the page, Usman dedicates the diary to his family. In English he describes them as ‘the great and loving people’, which orients Usman to a collective belonging with the wider family relations beyond Mirpur town. By mentioning three villages of his mother and father’s families, Usman foregrounds this collective as primary in his home literacies. In the interviews where we spoke about these relations Usman explained that his cousins ‘influenced me with everything you know from the cousin in [name of village] I kind of built myself into an educated person ’cause they all are educated well dressed and well-spoken so when I saw them that style they all do namaz and roza and [indistinct] and all that when I saw them they gave me inspiration you know to be a good person’. Here Usman links the attributes of being a good person to education, dress, speech and prayer (namaz and roza). These are attributes that, in Usman’s own words, inspire him. From the beginning of the diary it is clear that Usman orients to discourses about being a good Muslim. Moments later in the interview Usman tells me that these cousins, from Azad Kashmir, now live in Luton, UK. He also mentions that the cousins speak English well and that they all support their family ‘at home in Azad Kashmir by sending money from England’. Home to Usman at this point in the diary is Azad Kashmir yet migration is already a significant part of his home literacies as the migrations of the cousins are part of the reason that he dedicates the diary to them.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

FIGURE 11.1  The first page of Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC.

195

196

THINKING HOME

The military, nationhood and religion: Belonging in Pakistan Usman told me that the greatest disappointment in his life up to that point had been his rejection from the army. Having grown up in a family which had strong ties to the military (his father and many relatives had served in the army), in a disputed territory which often experiences conflicts with its neighbour India, Usman’s great desire had been to join the army. He told me that he had not been given a reason for his application to be declined but after two years meeting with Usman in AK and the UK, it seemed to me that his migration was in some way an alternative to the life in the military that had been denied him. It is with Usman’s passion for the military in mind that his diary entries related to military texts must be considered. The majority of the extracts in the text world that Usman creates are related to the military. They are often direct copies of army slogans written in English or Urdu or both as the army sponsors literacy in both languages in Pakistan. Rassool (2007) suggests that English has retained its high status within the domains of power, including the military, since colonial times, due to its integration into Pakistani cultural, political and economic institutions. This can be seen in Extract 1 (see Figure 11.2), where Usman has taken the text from a poster he saw at the army offices when he visited to take his entrance test:

FIGURE 11.2  Extracts 1 and 2 from Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

197

Such was Usman’s passion for the military that he kept a copy of this poster in his home. The theme here of the sacrifices made by soldiers for their country can be seen in the extract where ‘we’ is the Pakistan military and ‘their’ is the Pakistan nation. Usman told me that it was extremely important that the Pakistani military fought to keep Pakistan Muslim, and part of this fight was to keep Azad Kashmir in Pakistan. Usman orients to the military’s dominant discourse of protecting the Pakistan state from the Hindu aggressor India. This is one of many similar quotations where Usman foregrounds the positive view of the deadly conflicts with India and signals his allegiance to the state of Pakistan. Other quotations are often translated from the original text in Urdu into English or were originally in English. An example of this can be seen in Extract 2 (Figure 11.2), where Usman inserts his own transliteration ‘Sher dil’ followed by the original Urdu script which is then followed by the English translation ‘LION HEART’. He told me that this refers to the Pakistan Air Force, signalling an interdiscursive relationship between religion and nation. The discourse about religion is invoked in a discourse about fighting for Pakistani nationhood. Belonging to the nation of Pakistan is embedded within Usman’s belonging to a Muslim collective. These bilingual entries are also used by Usman to signal his belonging to the wider collective that is the state of Pakistan. In one entry he has copied the words ‘Help is from God, victory is near’, which he saw in Mirpur town, to which he has added underneath the ethnolinguistic identities of the different provinces of Pakistan. The inclusion of Kashmiri here signals Usman’s orientation to the dominant discourse which ascribes the Kashmiri identity to Pakistan, even though ethnically and linguistically Mirpuris have more in common with Punjabis across the Jhelum River. In these home literacies, Usman creates his own intertextual links between the unity of the nation (Sindhi, Balochi, Punjabi, Pthan, Kashmiri), the military (Pak Army), and sacrifice (lion hearts). Close to these entries, Usman has inserted a transliteration of Urdu in Roman script: ‘Pak Fauj Kay Jawan’. Usman told me that this slogan is intended to inspire young people to join the army. Rassool (2007) has suggested that the hegemony of Urdu during colonization by the British was extended when it was selected as the national language of Pakistan thus confirming its centrality to the nationalist ideology of the country and what it means to be a Pakistani. Urdu came to represent what it meant to be a citizen of Pakistan, and as Pakistan was created as a home for the Muslims of postpartition India, thus Urdu became a key defining principle of being a Muslim in Pakistan. In other words, Urdu was central to the state’s view of Pakistani nationhood.

198

THINKING HOME

These Islamic principles can be seen in many of Usman’s extracts from the Qur’an and Hadith, which Usman combines with his own fatalistic view of the world at this point in his life as several of his selected texts relate to Judgement Day. In one extract, the text is written in Urdu, under which Usman has written ‘End of time’ in English. The religious texts which Usman quotes can be understood in terms of the belongings he constructs to the collective of Muslims of which he is part. This collective identity is foregrounded in quotations which mark out Muslims as different from non-Muslims, again suggesting that Usman aggregates positive information on the object of his belonging ‘excluding and deleting negative information and experiences which would undermine or distort this positive image’ (Krzyzanowski and Jones 2008: 27). One example of this aggregation was Usman’s comment to me about a quotation which suggests that the non-Muslim looks into the sky whereas for the Muslim the sky looks into him, Usman explaining: ‘it means that you know er non-Muslims is more interested into the into the this world’. Usman went on to explain that Muslims are less concerned with worldly or material goods than non-Muslims. These comments and quotations can be seen as a desire on Usman’s part to foreground his belonging to the worldwide collective of Muslims. Belonging to a state which promotes the military and martyrdom, but which is fundamentally Muslim, is therefore signalled in both Urdu and English in Usman’s translations, where both languages signal his identification with Islam as well as the military. Given the significance of a Kashmiri ethno-linguistic identity in these postings, the following section explores the historical traces of Usman’s language and literacy practices in order to establish how two languages, which are not native to Pakistan, are so inextricably bound up with his local and national belonging.

Colonial sponsors of literacy in Urdu at the expense of Punjabi English, the ex-colonial language, is well entrenched in contemporary Pakistan because it has been the language of the domains of power in South Asia since British times and is still used in these domains (Rahman 2005). This is a result of the language policy in colonial north-west India, Diamond (2012) argues, which focused on the status and use, as well as misconceptions about that use, of languages available in the region. The ‘official’ policy at the time Britain was establishing itself as the colonial power referred to the use of language for administrative, and later educational, purposes, though for early colonial officials, decisions about language policy were an important aspect of colonial

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

199

administrators’ wider concern about administering the region. For Diamond, the sponsorship of literacy in languages decided by the administration was a top-down affair which had considerable ramifications for the social and cultural developments in the region of north-west pre-partition India. This is because, Diamond argues, the majority of Punjabis used multiple languages for different purposes. Diamond seems to understand literacy use in relation to its purpose and domain: The most common usage of language was within the household and the bazaar. These various uses of languages provided a fluid boundary between those that were spoken, written, read, and understood in the region. (Diamond 2012: 285) Though noting the fluidity of spoken language in the home and at the market, Diamond’s account here neglects the impact this had on the literacies Punjabis had access to at home. He notes that, although there were several written languages in Punjab, Persian was the most significant textual language in the region, though his analysis does not extend to what ordinary Punjabis were doing at home with the literacies that were available to them. Thus, we know that the administrative language of Punjab immediately prior to 1849 was a continuation of practices established during Mughal rule followed by decisions taken by the Sikh rulers of pre-colonial Punjab who also used Persian for written documents, but we are unable to grasp to what extent, if at all, these literacies were taken up at home. Diamond tells us that the Punjab was a literacy-aware society where the commercial classes and religious leaders had access to various local varieties of language, though he confines his description of the use of ‘textual languages’ to the fact that: few people understood or used Sanskrit or Arabic beyond recitation with the exception of religious leaders who maintained control over this knowledge. Still, Arabic terms and phrases were incorporated into Persian, Urdu, and Punjabi, and it was common for Muslims to introduce aiyas (verses) of the Qur’an into everyday speech. (Diamond 2012: 285) From the analysis of Usman’s home literacies, it becomes clear that this process of introducing verses from the Qur’an into everyday speech also occurred when Muslims introduced verses into their everyday written practices. Usman’s family keeps several books related to Islam at home, including copies of the Qur’an in Arabic, religious texts such as the Hadith in Urdu, as well as photocopies of material from other religious texts given to the family by friends and other family members. As the eldest son, it is Usman’s responsibility, particularly during religious festivals, to

200

THINKING HOME

organize readings from these texts at home. During these events, Usman and his father lead the male members of the family in prayer, which involves reading from written texts in Urdu as well as reciting passages from the Qur’an in Arabic which they have committed to memory. There are similarities between Usman’s family’s Islamic religious practices and the Christian religious practices of the participants in one of the families in Kalman’s studies. Kalman, along with Prinsloo and Breier (1996), has argued that putting written texts in the hands of religious leaders implies that some individuals have direct access to the sacred through those religious literacies, while others learn about them through oral interpretations. These power relations were also illustrated in Diamond’s study of colonial language practices where the dominant languages of Arabic and Sanskrit were partially accessible to Muslim men and women through reading the Qur’an in Arabic by committing the text to memory both at home and at school. We see an example of what Diamond calls a peaceful ‘co-existence between the oral and textual word in this time period for Punjab’ in Usman’s contemporary home literacies when he and his family gather together to read and recite religious texts given that ‘Muslim religious knowledge has been widely accessible in oral societies, and the Qur’an has had a long history of oral usage’ (2012: 287). However, the lack of written Punjabi in Usman’s household can also be traced back through Diamond’s analysis of colonial language policy, where literacy is central. He suggests that British attitudes towards Punjabi were connected to the colonial power’s notions of literacy. Diamond’s view is that ‘the significance and practicability of a language was based upon views of the oral (or “illiterate”) and written (or literate) word. Colonial officials believed that Punjabi predominantly was an oral language, and this belief appeared to be confirmed by “scientific” studies such as the Census’ (2012: 315). This view of a ‘great divide’ between written and spoken language is a central concern of New Literacy Studies. A social practices approach to literacy posits that within communities of practice, various modes of orality and literacy exist in combination and, as a result, understandings of literacy must include the spoken interaction that goes on around the production and use of texts (Barton and Hamilton 1998). Furthermore, the belief that Punjabi was seen as a dialect of Urdu and not a distinct language in its own right was also prevalent. Indeed, this perspective is common in contemporary Pakistan. In our research looking at the language and education context in Pakistan, the misconception that Punjabi was a dialect of Urdu was often given as a reason for not using Punjabi in classrooms (Coleman and Capstick 2012). Thus, Rahman (2005) finds that the majority of Pakistanis want to teach Urdu to children in the early years of schooling rather than the local language because it is Urdu, not the local language (if other than Urdu),

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

201

which provides access to employment and education. However, Urdu is also used as a lingua franca across multilingual Pakistan. Given its role as the medium of instruction, it is more widespread than English, though, as with English, it is the language of education, employment, trade and the media (Rahman 2005).

Resisting imposed identities and ‘longing to belong’ in Britain A further theme which can be seen in the diaries is the conflict between positive and negative identities related to what Usman terms ‘the West’. Conversations with Usman about the US drone attacks on Pakistan prompted Usman to show me a section of the diary which he had translated into English from Urdu (see Extract 3, Figure 11.3). He told me that he had written the list of identities beginning with the phrase ‘I am … ’ which he had taken from Dr Zakar Naik, a well-known television presenter who spoke about religion and, among other things Usman told me, the war on terror. Usman had translated Naik’s words as he felt that these identities were ‘put on us by the West’. In this sense he is highlighting the negative imposed identities as a means to counter their legitimacy; as he told me, ‘they are all lies’. However, towards the end of the diary Usman makes fewer entries about religion and nationhood, and grows increasingly preoccupied with the relationships he is developing as a family man, but to a family that lives in another country. Having still not heard whether his second visa application would be successful, Usman’s recent marriage to Nadia had resulted in her falling pregnant and the due date of the baby was getting closer. This featured prominently in the final entries in the diary (see Figure 11.4). Alongside a poem which Nadia had written in the diary in English, Usman had also written in English ‘Love for Nadia, her beloved husband Usman’. Several short statements such as this reveal Usman asserting his new identity as a husband while at the same time using written English to show his identity as a migrant preparing to live in England. In his home literacies, Usman participates in different relationships with people and asserts different identities. In Extract 4 (see Figure 11.4), Usman records his new responsibilities and relationships. The two words that have been redacted are the names of Nadia’s children from her first marriage. The extract shows how Usman uses his literacy in English to construct identities as a stepfather and husband in Lancashire, but also a son in Mirpur. Usman uses the non-standard varieties of English used in Lancashire: ‘them 3 weeks’ and ‘happiest bloke’ which

202

THINKING HOME

FIGURE 11.3  Extract 3 from Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC.

he has spelled ‘blok’ as perhaps he has only ever heard the word spoken. I interpreted this shift to a variety of English used in his future home as a means to invoke his ‘longing to belong’ and to construct his belongings, prior to departure, with Nadia and her/his family.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

203

FIGURE 11.4  Extract 4 from Usman’s diary. Tony Capstick, Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies, published 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of SCSC.

Conclusion In this chapter I have explored the relationship between literacy and home in the literacy practices of Usman while situating Usman’s migration within the wider historical context of Mirpuri migration. Beginning with a conceptualization of ‘home literacies’ as those literacy practices which converge in the home and are shared among family members and across homes, the study presented here has traced the blurring of boundaries between home and school as well as the blurring of boundaries between homes in Pakistan and homes in the UK. This investigation was enabled by focusing on an approach to literacy which sees literacy as social practice, shaped by the specific cultural, social and political influences on the contexts of use. A narrower focus on the text world of Usman’s diaries was brought together with an investigation of the manner in which he uses his diary entries to construct multiple belongings to a range of individuals and communities. Some of the groups to which Usman belongs are constructed by drawing on dominant discourses that connect state, nationhood and language use, such as the importance of Urdu as a unifying force in defining what it means to be a Pakistani. In this sense Pakistan is

204

THINKING HOME

the home to which Usman belongs, while also belonging to Mirpur and Azad Kashmir. However, Usman wrote his diary entries while he was preparing to join his new wife in the UK. Thus, his diaries reveal the emergence of new belongings to family in Lancashire, England, while still maintaining a sense of belonging to his Mirpuri relatives. Thus, Usman creates multiple belongings to multiple homes and does this by drawing on the languages and literacies that have been made available to him throughout his life. The text world is for Usman a place to connect the different attachments to people and places and reveal a ‘longing to belong’ to different homes. Home is therefore central to Usman’s literacy practices not only because it is the space in which these practices converge but also because it functions as ‘the perceived locus of origin as well as the desired destination, the goal, the end’ (Papadopoulos 1987: 8). By tracing home literacies in this way, similar findings to those elsewhere in this volume emerge. Firstly, that reaching home is never one directional but rather the longing for home encompasses multiple meanings generated by geographical communities as well as psychological states (Papadopoulos, this volume). Secondly, Rapport’s suggestion that individuals may summon a sense of alienation when constructing home, or home in homelessness as he calls it (Rapport, this volume), is also helpful when understanding Usman’s home literacies. The disputed nature of Kashmir, the low status of domestic Mirpuri Punjabi, the high status of imported Urdu, and the negative identities related to terrorism are connected in the text world of the diary to Usman’s forthcoming migration to England when he both challenges and appropriates different discourses in his home literacies. Thus language and literacy converge in the home, while home literacies become central to the construction of belonging for migrants prior to their departure.

References Barton, D. and M. Hamilton (1998), Local Literacies, London: Routledge. Barton, D. and M. Hamilton (2000), ‘Literacy Practices’, in D. Barton, M. Hamilton and R. Ivanič (eds), Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context, 7–15, London: Routledge. Barton, D. and U. Papen (2010), ‘What is the Anthropology of Writing?’, in D. Barton and U. Papen (eds), The Anthropology of Writing: Understanding Textually-Mediated Social Worlds, 3–31, London: Continuum. Blackledge, A. and A. Pavlenko (2001), ‘Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts’, International Journal of Bilingualism, 5 (3): 243–59. Brandt, D. (2001), Literacy in American Lives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Capstick, T. (2016a), Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies: Exploring Chain Migration from Pakistan to the UK, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

MIGRATION AND BELONGING

205

Capstick, T. (2016b), ‘Literacy Mediation in Marriage Migration from Pakistan to the UK: Challenging Bureaucratic Discourses to Get a Visa’, Discourse and Society, 27 (5): 481–99. Coleman, H. and Capstick, T. (2012), Language in Education in Pakistan: Policy Recommendations, Islamabad: British Council Pakistan, available online: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/Language%20In%20 Education%20in%20Pakistan.pdf (accessed 8 May 2015). Diamond, J. M. (2012), ‘A “Vernacular” for a “New Generation”? Historical Perspectives about Urdu and Punjabi, and the Formation of Language Policy in Colonial Northwest India’, in H. Schiffman (ed.), Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and its Neighbors: The Changing Politics of Language Choice, 282–318, Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV. Fortier, A. M. (2000), Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space and Identity, Oxford: Berg. Gal, S. and Woolard, K. A. (1995), ‘Constructing Languages and Publics: Authority and Representation’, Pragmatics, 5 (2): 129–38. Gee, J. P. (2011), An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, London: Routledge. Kalman, J. (2005), Discovering Literacy: Access Routes to Written Culture for a Group of Women in Mexico, Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Education. Krzyzanowski, M. and P. Jones (2008), ‘Identity, Belonging and Migration: Beyond Constructing Others’, in G. Delanty, R. Wodak and P. Jones (eds), Identity, Belonging and Migration, 329, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Lothers, L. and M. D. Lothers (2007), Pahari and Pothwari: A Sociolinguistic Survey (FLI Language and Culture Series, 2), Peshawar: Frontier Language Institute. Papadopoulos, R. (1987), Adolescents and Homecoming, London: Guild of Pastoral Psychology. Prinsloo, M. and M. Breier (eds) (1996), The Social Uses of Literacy, South Africa: John Benjamins. Probyn, E. (1996), Outside Belongings, New York: Routledge. Rahman, T. (1997), ‘The Medium of Instruction Controversy in Pakistan’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18 (2): 145–54. Rahman, T. (2005), ‘Linguistics in Pakistan: A Survey of the Contemporary Situation’, in D. Inayatullah, R. Saygol and P. Tahir (eds), Social Sciences in Pakistan: A Profile, 9–30, Islamabad: Pisces Enterprises. Rassool, N. (2007), Global Issues in Language, Education and Development: Perspectives from Postcolonial Countries, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Street, B. (1984), Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 Language at Home: A Reclaimed Heritage Susan Samata

Introduction All human beings, under normal circumstances, acquire language, and in ordinary day-to-day experience, language is taken for granted almost as much as the air with which we give voice to our utterances. However, when the language we use faces challenge, the enormous complexity of the phenomenon and of our understanding of it begins to emerge. One such challenge arises in connection with migration across language communities. Pragmatic considerations of the practical necessity for the first generation migrant to rapidly acquire at least a working knowledge of the host community language, which they will use mainly outside the home, are paramount in the first instance. A more complex situation arises for the second and subsequent immigrant generation(s). In a fairly common scenario, the child of immigrant parents moving into the majority community language environment of school leaves off usage of the home language. As a result, the home language undergoes a process of partial or complete attrition, often with surprising rapidity. The parent finds that their child is essentially monolingual in a language that is likely to remain, from the parent’s point of view, foreign. The positive aspects of facility in the host community language, in terms of education and assimilation into the majority community, are, of course, considerable; however, a sense of something lost may become a lasting grievance. The foreign language traverses communication, and a dimension of home life, and of the culture

208

THINKING HOME

that informed it, becomes almost inexplicably inaccessible. The experience is described by Richard Rodriguez as follows: I continued to understand spoken Spanish. But for many years I could not pronounce it. A powerful guilt blocked my spoken words; an essential glue was missing whenever I’d try to connect words to form sentences. I would be unable to break a barrier of sound, to speak freely … Everything I said seemed to me horribly anglicised. (Rodriguez 1983: 18) His parents, who had been earnestly attempting to promote the child’s use of English, now have the opposite problem: visiting relatives are critical, saying ‘what a disgrace it was that I couldn’t speak Spanish, “su propria idioma”’ (Rodriguez 1983: 9). Nevertheless, a sense of connection with the home language frequently remains and informs the second and subsequent generation’s image of ‘home’ and of their place within it. The term ‘heritage language’ seeks to capture this sense of lasting connection with a language that holds personal significance, regardless of actual ability to speak it with any degree of fluency. The folk term ‘mother tongue’ also conveys something of this felt connection, with its connotation of primacy. The first generation immigrant mother is indeed a pivotal figure; her status can index that of her language, and the likelihood of bilingualism being maintained in subsequent generations. The rapidity with which a young child can lose their facility in a home language and move to almost exclusive use of a majority community language would seem to set up a paradox: how is it possible for the closest of human relationships to be maintained in the absence of a shared first language? It is undeniable that relations between first generation immigrant parents and their children come under significant strain,1 but equally that families continue to function and the parent–child bond to retain an emotional integrity. The fact that family bonds are maintained, communication takes place, and also that second and subsequent migrant generations report feelings of connection with a parent’s first language, suggests the need for a subtle and nuanced view of the scope of language. Ecolinguistic perspectives on language, which include linguistic phenomena in a comprehensive cognitive system, encompassing a language environment, or ecology, that includes such ambient factors as gesture, posture and facial expression, have explanatory force here. These will be discussed at greater length below. Language instruction in a ‘second’ or ‘foreign’ language is widely offered at primary and secondary school level. Rationales put forward for learning, or maintaining knowledge of, a given language frequently stop at utilitarian values; languages are taught in schools in order to improve job prospects or the enjoyment of overseas travel. Achievement is often measured by

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

209

performance on written language tasks, the results of which can be analysed and graded; such grading is highly valued in contemporary society. The person who feels a ‘heritage’ connection with a language may be unable to pass such tests, and thus unable to validate the relationship. Another measure of ability is based on readiness to use the language with no hesitation over a wide range of contexts. The heritage affiliation will typically ‘fail’ either of these definitions. Small wonder if the second generation immigrant who cannot fully participate in a parent’s first language feels themselves lacking and disadvantaged, unable to fully participate in a cultural background which may otherwise support identity. A more nuanced description of language may enable a more positive perspective, based not on vague, nostalgic or romantic conceptions of heritage, but on real connections with a personally significant language. Heritage: the term can conjure ideas of stability, entitlement, perhaps inalienability. An inheritance implies the support of the past, something given and received. In another, more cynical context, heritage is a commodity of the tourism industry, purveyed by the ‘heritage monger’ in museums and living history re-enactments: a manufactured lifestyle commodity. Thus aspects of both entitlement and lifestyle choice can be present in the idea of a heritage language. Kelleher defines ‘heritage language’ (in the United States) for the Center for Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Davis, website as, ‘any language other than English for speakers [not otherwise defined] of that language’ (Kelleher 2010). It is proposed in preference to the terms ‘foreign language’ or ‘minority language’ and alongside the terms ‘community language’ and ‘home language’ (Kelleher 2010). The definition seeks to establish a positive orientation for ‘heritage’ language, without contesting the status of English, and so also provides some insight into the inherently political dimensions of language and language policy. Historically, in the United States, but not only there, the assumption has been that immigrants whose first language is not English will learn the language as rapidly as possible with the aim of achieving assimilation into the majority community. This assumption flies in the face of reality in areas where Spanish is the first language of a majority of the inhabitants; the argument over the status of Spanish and the value of bilingual education has raged in the US since at least the 1970s. French is in a roughly analogous situation in Canada, but there the Frenchspeaking population has retained more political and economic power and thus the language has a more secure legal status. In the UK, the response to increased immigration has featured language policies very prominently, with the rapid acquisition of English construed as a measure of commitment to the laws and customs of the host country. The language test is now a necessary component of the UK leave to remain and/ or citizenship procedures. Such an attitude reflects a historic expectation of

210

THINKING HOME

monolingualism, aligned with an insular suspicion of the foreign. An exclusive concentration on promotion of an official or majority language would seem, however, to contradict the recognition of possible benefits of bilingualism and second language acquisition, which are otherwise promoted. This chapter will not go into political questions in any depth; however, it should be borne in mind that, due to its deep implication in human psychology, for language, the political is particularly personal.2 At the level of family life, at home, where first languages are acquired, parents may find little guidance or support for raising their children bilingually. Parents may even shift to the majority community language at home, in the belief that their own first language will be a disadvantage for their children.3 On the other hand, another layer of confusion and complexity can be added by a ‘politically correct’ assumption by the majority community that any person who, through appearance or name, may be identified as a member of a minority community, is a speaker of that community’s language. This conjuncture can be condescending and disempowering for the second, or subsequent, generation immigrant who does not in fact speak it (Block 2008). It can thus be seen that the term ‘heritage language’ is fraught with unsupported assumptions and possibility for misinterpretation. For all that, it does capture a sense of lasting connection with a language (LX) that holds a significance that a person may feel regardless of actual ability to speak it with any degree of fluency. But, why might someone ‘claim’ a heritage language when they do not actually speak it? A glib and cynical answer may suggest that this is simply nostalgia or part of a fashionable multicultural lifestyle, on a par with ‘ethnic’ cooking or clothing. A more thoughtful explanation may include a search for personal identity or expression of solidarity against discrimination. These factors may form complex combinations; the non-speaker of LX may have to deal with rejection, or the withholding of full acceptance, from both an LX-speaking and a majority language community. Another possible answer is that the claim to LX may be based on an intuition of connection, rooted in aspects of authentic participation. What might give rise to this intuitive response to a heritage language? A few words or phrases may be recognized and possibly used in ‘safe’ contexts, such as exchanging greetings or expressing thanks, but beyond words, the heritage language claimant who has spent any time with an older generation will be aware of their characteristic mannerisms, such as co-speech gesture.4 They may be able to ‘read’ other aspects of the LX: tone of voice, intonation patterns and rhythms. The generation who learned the majority language in adulthood, as a foreign language, will almost universally retain a ‘foreign’ accent in this second language. They are likely to make errors in a characteristic pattern, influenced by their first language, and may carry some of the co-speech factors mentioned above over into their use of their second

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

211

language. This bundle of related phenomena, together with cultural norms and expectations retained in family life, form a particular affective environment (cf. the intangible part of the ‘mosaic substratum of identity’, discussed by Papadopoulos, this volume). The non-speaker of LX may readily be able to interpret this affective environment, possibly on a subconscious level, even when actual words remain opaque. These broader connections will form the main topic of discussion for this chapter. Some newer perspectives on the nature of language are briefly presented, then we will go on to consider the role of mothers in ‘mother tongue’, and the lived experience of not becoming fluent in LX. Finally, the nature of more remote connections with a heritage language are briefly considered and related to the theme of constructing a sense of home.

Defining ‘language’ To explore questions about the nature of possible connections with a heritage language and their significance in the construction of an idea of ‘home’, it is necessary to explain, briefly, the expanded view of language used here, and as it emerges within ecolinguistics, a methodological framework which I find particularly suitable for this discussion. Gilles Fauconnier referred to language as ‘the tip of a spectacular cognitive iceberg’ (Fauconnier 1999: 95) and pointed out overlaps with ‘non-linguistic’ areas of psychology, sociology, literature and philosophy; more recent work has continued to explore this iceberg. While ecolinguistics is not a discrete and uncontested branch of linguistics, this term is especially useful in that it captures the widening of disciplinary boundaries ongoing in many areas of linguistics, and in related social sciences. Attempts to define ecolinguistics are ongoing; the quotation below sets out a particularly broad scope. Ecolinguistics is (1) the study of the processes and activities through which human beings-at individual, group, population and species levels-exploit their environment in order to create an extended sense-saturated ecology that supports their existential trajectories, as well as (2) the study of the organismic, societal and ecosystemic limits of such processes and activities, i.e. the carrying capacities for upholding a sound and healthy existence for both human and non-human life on all levels. (Steffensen and Fill 2014: 21) Steffensen and Fill further describe an environment for language as including four strands: symbolic, or language in the context of other languages; natural, or the context of the speakers’ material world; sociocultural, referring to the

212

THINKING HOME

context of social interaction; and cognitive, or the psychology of the perceiveractor. None of these strands is independent of the others. Whereas there are epistemic difficulties in this complex definition, it is introduced here to illustrate ways in which such conceptions of language as part of a ‘sense saturated ecology’ move away from the idea that communication is pursued only through words and grammars, ignorance of which definitively excludes the non-speaker of LX. Thus the notion of a heritage connection with a language is furnished with a field for action: the complete LX environment as encountered in the home or among familiar interlocutors. One more facet of these developments that is of interest to the current discussion is the inclusion of a dimension of time, of temporal dynamics, by which language may carry a social and personal history into the moment of interaction. Steffensen and Pedersen (2013) introduce temporal dynamics with an anecdote. Four women at an informal gathering in an American university are discussing the recent election of Joseph Ratzinger as pope. They are a German, who is enthusiastic about this development, a Russian and two Japanese. The controversy that arose over Ratzinger’s wartime associations is hesitantly mentioned. The German says that ‘there was a problem … because … he was … ah … ’ One of the Japanese women steps in, unaware of its full implication, with the word ‘Nazi’ (80). This cues considerable social embarrassment that probably began with the utterance of the first syllable of the word; thus a timescale of milliseconds implicates one of decades. Steffensen and Pedersen argue for a nested hierarchy of timescales in human interaction, ranging from individual awareness, through dialogical activity to wider sociocultural context and beyond. This notion of temporal dynamics provides a systematic link between past and present experience that can serve to validate feelings of connection with a word, phrase, perhaps merely a cadence or gesture associated with LX, which would otherwise seem vague and fleeting. While ecolinguistic concepts are gaining the attention of specialists, notions among the general public of what constitutes a language, and what it means to be a speaker of a language, remain informed by narrower definitions. Over the half century since Chomsky proposed his theory of universal grammar (Chomsky 1965), and in reaction to it, linguistics has drawn on ever wider perspectives to characterize and to understand language. From Goffman’s functionalism (Goffman 1974) and Levinson’s pragmatics (Levinson 1983), to the insights of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) on language and thought, a trend towards consideration of language as imbricate in all contexts of human behaviour is evident. Leo van Lier characterizes this openness when he declares that ‘[l]anguage is … tied up with all our sensory systems, and all our memories, and all the stories construct to create and nurture our identity’ (van Lier 2004: 1).

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

213

In contrast, popular or lay notions of language, particularly in the context of second language learning, have more in common with the formalist approach which describes grammatical systems as autonomous constructs, ‘not artifacts of a system that encompasses … other human facilities or abilities’ (Newmayer 1983 in Schiffrin 1994: 22). Structuralist or formalist theory underpins what has been described as the code model of language (Kravchenko 2007; Love 2004), in which the brain encodes meaning in language then used to communicate thought between people, much in the way computer languages function. Such models for language and cognition not only lack explanatory value for the experience of heritage connections, they necessarily define the nonspeaker of LX in negative terms and set up barriers to the recognition of connections, not least in the minds of the individuals most closely involved. It is somewhat problematic to describe people loosely termed ‘heritage speakers’ of a given language in ways that avoid negative terminology; the use of ‘non-speaker of LX’ in the preceding sentence is one example. Samata’s (2014) interview subjects, middle-aged professionals who spoke either English or French as first5 language, were selected based on their self-definition as people who are unable to speak their parents’ first languages, even though actual ability in LX varied. ‘Loss’, ‘lack’, ‘failure to acquire’, ‘inability to speak’, the accumulated negative terms undermine the sense of self and also mask those wider aspects of communication to which the (non-)speaker does in fact have access.

The mother in mother tongue The folk term ‘mother tongue’ conveys something of the intuitive power of a felt connection with a heritage language, with its connotation of closeness and primacy. There is, of course, also the close physical association of the organs of speech with those of eating and breathing, identical with intimate connections to the maternal. The newborn, even prenatal, infant is surrounded by the sounds of human speech, in particular that of the principal care-giver: mother. Numerous studies, while disagreeing on detail, have pushed the age at which the infant responds, in some manner, to speech, to earlier and earlier stages of infant development. Journals with article titles such as ‘TwoDay-Olds Prefer their Native Language’ (Moon et al. 1993) or ‘Newborns’ Cry Melody is Shaped by their Native Language’ (Mampe et al. 2009) have captured popular as well as scientific attention. In normal circumstances, the auditory environment is part of a complete cultural and physical ecology of affect and movement, and culturally conditioned expectations. There is evidence to suggest that orientation towards the language of infancy and early

214

THINKING HOME

childhood can be remarkably persistent. In functional MRI studies of FrenchCanadian adoptees between nine and seventeen years of age who had been adopted from China at approximately one year old, and not exposed to Chinese in the interim, Pierce et al. (2014) observed brain responses to hearing spoken Chinese that exactly matched those of a normal Chinese native speaker. This suggests that connections made through exposure to a language at some early, critical period of development effect some apparently permanent neurological changes. There seems to be a curious paradox in that language development can be both enduring and fragile. As noted above, it is a far from uncommon experience for second generation immigrant children to lose touch with their parents’ first languages, as they begin to move into the world away from home. The first generation immigrant mother is a pivotal figure; her status can index that of her language, and the likelihood of bilingualism being maintained in subsequent generations. Mothers from societies in which women have traditionally subordinate status, who typically are not employed outside the home, and/or whose first language is not a major world language, face particular barriers when they immigrate with their families. School-aged children who rapidly acquire the new language may associate mother’s lack in this respect with being frankly a bit stupid. A Thai mother described to the author a scene in which her young child found her reading aloud some prayers from a Thai book: ‘You can read?’ was the disbelieving reaction. Okita (2002) surveyed families of Japanese women married to British men and bringing up children in England. She found that many who had begun with the intention of fostering bilingual ability became discouraged. When the children started school, mothers worried not only that insisting on speaking Japanese would somehow retard progress, but also that doing so was selfish or egotistical on their part. There is a hint in this of the isolation a parent can suffer when the first language link with a child breaks down. In a melancholy, poetic meditation on Lithuanian women in international marriages, Daria Staponkutė declares that: [a] migrant mother’s every step is marked by sacrifice and loss. Moreover, by allowing a foreign language to exist between her and her child, she is doomed to a stony silence … all hopes of suckling the child on its mother tongue come to nothing … it is the place-cannibal that, in the end, decides the child’s language. (Staponkutė 2009) Such bleak outcomes are, of course, by no means inevitable. However, maintaining (some degree of) bilingualism within the migrant or international family requires commitment, a little specialist advice, and, perhaps more than anything else, encouragement. There is a lot of misinformation on

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

215

possible effects of bilingualism and anecdotal evidence suggests that schools in England are still telling multilingual parents to speak English at home. Nevertheless, even where a family mixes language use at home, a parent is most likely to use their own first language in critical situations, and the child will recognize the criticality, even if the words are unfamiliar. As linguist and mother Aneta Pavlenko observes, ‘what my English-dominant son responds to is not necessarily the meaning of the Russian expressions, but the fact that I have switched into my L1, which signifies that I “mean it”’ (Pavlenko 2004: 179). As mentioned above, advice for parents wishing to bring up their children as bilinguals may not be readily available (and one has the impression that this is particularly true for advice published in other than major European languages), a factor the more significant in the face of strong official mandates to acquire the majority community language. A quick review of online advice on maintaining a bilingual home environment reveals a landscape that seems to push parents into a competition to raise the most impressive child. One example, from the website Raising a Trilingual Child, begins, ‘you have a list of languages you want your child to speak’, while a piece entitled ‘Raising Bilingual Children: The First Five Steps to Success’, seems to be promoting the bilingual child as lifestyle accessory: When I was growing up, the only way to raise a truly international child was via an exorbitantly priced Swiss boarding school [this is now available to anyone] … And, hey, remember you’re not alone. Madonna, Andre Agassi and Antonio Banderas are among those raising bilingual children. (Bosemark n.d.) One well-regarded advice manual, The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents (Harding-Esch and Riley 2003) finds it necessary to begin a section called ‘golden rules’ with the dictum ‘the child’s happiness comes first’ (87). (Emphasis in original.) Of course, parents who make a conscious decision to create and maintain a bilingual environment for their children, by simply continuing to use LX at home and/or with the support of more formal instruction, do so from a range of interconnected motives: educational, practical and emotional. In a study of Italian families in London, Fortier suggests that ‘[supplementary Italian] classes are presented as having an important symbolic function for the parents themselves … by offering a substitute to the fading dream of returning’ (Fortier 2000: 84). In other words, the parents are attempting to recreate the home they lost by maintaining LX with their children. From a historical perspective, it is interesting to note the role that maintaining a language within the family has played in the preservation of languages that have come under active

216

THINKING HOME

suppression. The russification campaigns in the Soviet Baltic republics during the 1930s, when all official business and higher education had to be carried out in Russian only, are one example (Pavlenko 2008). In an era of hyper-mobility, where globalization has brought about more international marriages, and families may be required by employers to change their country of residence relatively frequently, it seems sensible and reasonable to make bilingualism part of a ‘movable feast’ of family life. As Harding-Esch and Riley say, ‘it is … something they [the families] share with the majority of the world’s population and therefore neither a cause for concern nor anything to shout about’ (Harding-Esch and Riley 2003: 88). Such relaxed acceptance of multilingual life is, however, by no means the universal experience, particularly in culturally monolingual countries, and among people in the lower economic strata.

The lived experience of unintended monolingualism As pointed out above, the immigrant, or international, family can find that their growing children have lost contact with the parents’ first language(s) almost unawares. In an earlier study (Samata 2014), ethnographic interviews with people in their mid-thirties to sixties, from various language backgrounds, who described themselves as unable to speak their parents’ first languages, revealed a range of responses to the experience of having not grown up bilingual, in circumstances where this might have been possible. Typically, over the course of the interview, a participant would begin by stating that their lack of the transpose: ‘. parent’s language was not a problem on a day-to-day practical level. Informants were all fluent in at least one major European language. Asked to recall instances when their lack of proficiency in LX had caused problems, participants reported occasions when they had felt excluded or inauthentic due to their inability to fully participate in social exchanges. In cases where appearance or family name identified a person as a member of a particular ethnic/language group, public expectations of language ability could cause frustration or embarrassment. For example, a MexicanAmerican informant reported an incident at work when a phone call from a Spanish speaker was diverted to him on the basis of his Spanish-sounding name. He recalled with dismay that he did not even know how to say, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t speak Spanish’. This might seem a trivial incident; however, its impact on the informant was made evident through the emotion with which he recounted the story many years later. A hijab-wearing woman of North Indian descent, but whose mother had lived all her life in East Africa and who had been

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

217

brought up from an early age in England, reported the frustration of failing to match up to the expectations of various immigrant communities: H: erm (pause) the Asian people expect you to speak an Asian language and they expect you to speak their language, whether it be Punjabi, Urdu or Gujarati, erm (pause) Yeah, there is that expectation. And they, if you don’t speak their language, they say, oh you’re, you’re English, you are, you’re English (slightly pejorative) they always say that, ‘You’re English, you are.’ (Samata 2014: 127) A certain bewilderment was often evident when informants speculated on how it had transpired that they had not developed, or maintained, bilingual ability. Some blamed themselves for shunning the home language, others pointed out that their parents had decided not to use the language with them. In one case, a domineering grandmother had forbidden an informant’s mother to speak to the child in her [mother’s] own language, fearing negative effects on education and social exclusion. The informant reported with bitterness: M: Yeah … I feel um, maybe I have strong word but I feel that this has been like stolen from me, in a way, something that, maybe, I was entitled to have. Somebody forbade it to happen and took it away, obviously my French grandmother, er (slight laugh) Yes, I have this feeling and I sometimes have this feel of anger, um:: yeah, yeah. (Samata 2014: 134) However, after dwelling for some time on negative outcomes, the informants typically turned to happier recollections of instances when they had felt able to fully participate in the family language and culture. One person felt a deep satisfaction in singing together with family members at a party. In singing there are set words, the tune and rhythm support pronunciation and the shared physical resonance of the voices creates a unity felt as authentic. Another informant took pride in having mastered sufficient Gujarati to greet her new in-laws in a culturally acceptable manner. Slender evidence, perhaps, but the fact that such minimal participation was recalled in detail and reported with satisfaction attests to the far-reaching power of language to resonate the entire ecological ‘package’ of family and home, both over time and into psychological depth. An experience which does not seem to depend primarily on language, but that was reported as having originated in cultural conventions learned in LX, involved a perception of oneself as the possessor of these conventions. An informant with Spanish as a heritage language reported that the parents of his Anglo classmates encouraged him to play at their houses due to the good example his polite manners provided their own children. This was also striking

218

THINKING HOME

due to the fact that, in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods at that time, people of Hispanic appearance were only commonly encountered as domestic staff. The informant attributed his good manners to the standards of politeness required of him when addressing older family members in Spanish, even though the majority of the exchange was, perforce, carried out in English. Furthermore, the perception as superior of what he knew to be Spanish standards, boosted the child’s self-esteem. It is telling that this and the incidents, both negative and positive, described above were recalled as significant, some twenty to thirty years after they occurred.

Wider connections The discussion of new developments in ecolinguistics above suggests its basis in phenomenology and close attention to the observable. The reported experiences of research participants and the feelings these continue to give rise to move away from the empirically observable. People who have, in early life, had experience of LX in the mother–infant relationship or as a member of a family who frequently used the language at home have more, and more direct, exposure to the language than those who had an intermittent exposure; for example use of the language with visiting relatives or on special occasions. As immigrant generations become more assimilated into a majority community culture and language, direct connections are diminished, or attenuated. Nevertheless, LX retains its special status for people who feel a personal affinity with it, regardless of apparent illogicality; some notable scholars have addressed these notions. Jacques Derrida testifies to such connections in a late work, Monolingualism of the Other or The Prosthesis of Origin (1998). This title suggests themes addressed in much of his major work, but here, Derrida takes a very personal perspective. A French-North African, Derrida was separated from Arabic by at least three generations, but reports that, although French monolingualism was, for him, ‘an absolute habitat’ (1), he could not feel that French was a language he could truly claim as his mother tongue. Towards Arabic he felt, ‘a strange and confused proximity’ (40) and liked ‘to hear the sound in chanting and prayers, outside of all “communication”’ (41). Derrida reports a rather unfocused sense of grievance in his inability to construct for himself a sufficiently personal position with regard to Arabic: How does one orient the inscription of self in proximity to this forbidden language … like a complaint lodged next to it … Such an inscription could

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

219

not be oriented, in my case, from the space and time of a spoken mother tongue, because I had none, precisely, none other than French. I had no language for the grievance … In a grievance like this one takes on lastingly [à demeure] a mourning for what one never had. (33) [Italics in original.] The title suggests a role for language in understanding origins. It may be considered that to trace a personal origin is to make a claim to authentic identity that could assuage the grievance described by Derrida and suggested in the negative experiences reported by Samata’s informants. Monolingualism of the Other or The Prosthesis of Origin echoes metaphysical themes in an earlier work, Des Tours de Babel (Derrida [1980] 2002), which addresses relationships between languages from a less personal perspective. Almost twenty years apart, both works reference themes articulated by Walter Benjamin in his writing on language, particularly ‘The Task of the Translator’ (‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, [1920] 1996). Philosophical, poetic, and certainly opaque, the three works all consider what is essential in the relationship between words and meanings, and speculate on a possible underlying reality, or ‘preoriginary’ – before Babel – language. A detailed discussion is outside the scope of this essay, but these quotations are introduced to point to a more rarefied conception of language than that permitted to Applied Linguistics, one which may assist in the assertion of a connection of some type with a language claimed as ‘heritage’. Derrida is in no doubt, although, ‘By definition I no longer know how, and have never been able, to say that it is a good or a bad thing. It just happened that way. Lastingly [à demeure]’ (64). The English translator always gives the French à demeure in parentheses where Derrida uses the word. A dictionary gives various meanings: live, dwell, endure forever and remain – as of a loved one who has died being said to remain in one’s heart. The archaic ‘dwell’ suggests also ‘abide’, with its connotations of quiet patience. These philosophical meditations provide a space in which to examine feelings of connection with LX that, for empirically observable purposes, that is, if we discount enigmatic flashes on an fMRI read-out, do not exist. We can have a little patience with the idea. Benjamin offers this metaphor for underlying identity of meaning as a basis for correspondence between languages: Unlike a work of literature, translation finds itself not in the center of the language forest but on the outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation of the work in the alien one.’ (258–59) The (non-)speaker and the heritage language might be seen as analogous to the translation and the original, the reverberation as the felt connection: a

220

THINKING HOME

‘strange and confused proximity’. Echo is notoriously a tricky medium, but an echoed call does reflect back something of the speaker. When Samata’s (2014) informants describe occasions when they feel a sense of authentic connection with LX, the experience is not gradable. One cannot feel a little authentic. Authenticity is either there or not, although the duration of the feeling may be fleeting. This, of course, suggests Proust’s famous mémoire involontaire, something suddenly apparent. Benjamin, a German translator of Proust, dubs such episodes ‘ornaments of forgetting’ (Benjamin [1934] 2005), a positive, even celebratory, image. According to Benjamin, such mémoire involontaire ‘flashes up’ when the mind is, as it were, at rest or in a state of ‘forgetting’; it can be serendipitously prompted, but not consciously brought about. This practice might be contrasted with the type of social practice that is deliberately designed to promote remembrance. Paul Connerton points out that commemorative ceremonies ‘explicitly represented as re-enactments of prior, prototypical actions’ (Connerton 1989: 61) incorporate formality and performativity. In language, or speech, some utterances are said to have performative, or illocutionary, power (Austin 1962; Butler 1997). These utterances cause an effect by being pronounced, examples being a promise such as a wedding vow, the pronouncement of sentence by a judge, or an instance of ‘hate speech’. Claire Kramsch notes that remembered words or phrases in LX may retain ‘symbolic value through childhood experience words which, like the spells in fairy tales … have performative power’ (Kramsch 2009: 13). Reports of feelings of authentic connection with LX seem to share aspects of both deliberate and involuntary situations. In the case of phatic utterances, such as greetings, delivered in LX, we see a minor act of formality, deliberately performed in LX, which sets up a momentary feeling of authentic participation. In the essay cited above, Benjamin declares that, ‘[a]n experienced event is finite … a remembered event is infinite, because it is merely the key to everything that happened before and after it’ (Benjamin [1934] 2005: 238). If Steffensen and Pedersen’s theory of temporal dynamics is accepted, the Benjaminian moment of correspondence, the ornament of forgetting, connects the speaker with not only an autobiographical past, but also a phylogenetic past implied or entrained in the language. This discussion is, of course, speculative; however, it is suggestive of possible directions for interdisciplinary exploration of phenomena surrounding the idea of heritage language.

Conclusion It has been suggested that, for a second immigrant generation, becoming monolingual in the majority community language is often unintentional and can

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

221

come about surprisingly quickly in the young child. Parents may be persuaded that persisting in using their own first language at home will be in some way detrimental, and advice on maintaining a bilingual environment for their child may not be readily available. It was also noted that language use is often a matter for government policy and thus the political can intrude directly into family life. Descriptions of the lived experience of such a shift in language tend to feature negative consequences, such as challenges to identity from both minority and majority language communities, and feelings of being excluded and found wanting. Narrow definitions of the scope of language and what it means to be a speaker exacerbate these negatives. However, when a wider perspective is drawn to include a complete ecology of communication, it is possible to argue that the second generation non-speaker of LX does in fact participate in many of its aspects. This argument is supported by reports of occasions of authentic participation in this ecology. The popular, if poorly defined, category ‘heritage language’ also attests the persistent feeling that LX is not ‘foreign’. In a hyper-mobile world, where ‘home’ is not necessarily identical with a place, it can be difficult to hold on to some collection of ideas, customs, even material objects, that might be said to constitute a home culture. So many connections with places and their associations are repeatedly interrupted; new experiences displace and distance the old, which become a musealized notion of heritage. Adorno observed that, ‘Once tradition is no longer animated by a comprehensive substantial force but has to be conjured up … because “It’s important to have tradition”, then whatever happens to be left of it is dissolved into a means to an end’ (Adorno 1983: 173). Similarly, languages are very much animated by their use and, once this has ceased, at group or individual level, can be difficult to ‘conjure up’ again. As touched upon above, language may be taken to index identity or loyalty, or as a means to preserve these ends. This chapter argues that authentic participation in a language has an extensive scope, beyond the categories of speaker and non-speaker, and that this is due to the nature of human communication. Therefore, it is possible to feel legitimately ‘at home’ in aspects of a language one cannot, conventionally, claim to speak, animated by real connections within the wider ecology of language and not by vague or romantic claims. Recognition of these phenomena can combat feelings of exclusion experienced by the unintentionally monolingual and is therefore entirely positive. The connection is not breached, but transmuted.

Notes 1 For detailed evidence on this point, see Portes, A. and L. Hao (1998), ‘E Pluribus Unum: Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation’, Sociology of Education, 71 (4): 269–94; Portes, A. and L. Hao (2002), ‘The

222

THINKING HOME

Price of Uniformity: Language, Family and Personality Adjustment in the Immigrant Second Generation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 25: 889–912. Also, Rumbaut, R. G. (1994), ‘The Crucible Within: Ethnic Identity, Self-esteem, and Segmented Assimilation among Children of Immigrants’, The International Migration Review, 28: 748–94. These report on large-scale longditudinal studies in the US. 2 It should not be forgotten that racism can be a factor in attitudes to language use: an anecdote illustrates a particularly insidious aspect. At a public seminar on bringing up children to be bilingual, a European mother related that teachers at her child’s school frequently said how marvellous it was that the child spoke more than one language; she retorted, ‘They don’t tell the Pakistani mothers that!’ (Personal observation). 3 The notion that bilingualism is actually detrimental to the developing child’s brain still enjoys currency among non-specialists. For serious investigation see Folke, T. et al. (2016), ‘A Bilingual Disadvantage in Metacognitive Processing’, Cognition, 150: 119–32. This research was also reported by The Daily Mail: Ouzia, J. and T. Folke (2016), ‘Being Bilingual can be Bad for your Brain’, Daily Mail, 27 April. This was illustrated with a photograph of British road signs in both English and Scots Gaelic. 4 Co-speech gesture is here taken to include any bodily movement, gaze and/or affect. 5 ‘First’ in the sense of primarily or solely used.

References Adorno, T. (1983), Prisms, trans. S. Weber, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Austin, J. L. (1962), How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benjamin, W. ([1920] 1996), ‘The Task of the Translator’, in M. Bullock and M. Jennings (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, trans. H. Zohn, Vol. 1, 253–63, Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. ([1934] 2005), ‘On the Image of Proust’, in M. W. Jennings, H. Eiland and G. Smith (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, trans. H. Zohn, Vol. 2 part 1, 237–47, Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press. Block, D. (2008), ‘On the Appropriateness of the Metaphor of LOSS’, in P. K. Rubdy (ed.), Languages as Commodity: Global Structures, Local Marketplaces, 187–203, London: Continuum. Bosemark, C. (n.d.), Raising a Bilingual Child: The First Five Steps to Success, available at: http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids1.htm (accessed 12 December 2016). Butler, J. (1997), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York: Routledge. Chomsky, N. (1965), Aspects of a Theory of Grammar, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Connerton, P. (1989), How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

LANGUAGE AT HOME: A RECLAIMED HERITAGE

223

Derrida, J. (1998), Monolingualism of the Other or The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. P. Mensah, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Derrida, J. ([1980] 2002), ‘Des Tours de Babel’, in G. Anidjar (ed.), Acts of Religion, trans. J. F. Graham, 104–36, New York: Routledge. Fauconnier, G. (1999), ‘Methods and Generalizations’, in T. Janssen and G. Redekker (eds), Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope and Methodology, 95–128, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Fortier, A.-M. (2000), Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity, New York: Berg. Goffman, E. (1974), Frame Analysis, New York: Harper and Row. Harding-Esch, E. and P. Riley (2003), The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kelleher, A. (2010), Heritage Briefs, available at: www.cal.org/heritage/research/ briefs.html (accessed 27 July 2016). Kramsch, C. (2009), The Multilingual Subject, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kravchenko, A. V. (2007), ‘Essential Properties of Language, or Why Language Is Not a Code’, Language Sciences, 29: 650–71. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live by, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levinson, S. C. (1983), Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Love, N. (2004), ‘Cognition and the Language Myth’, Language Sciences, 26: 525–44. Mampe, B., A. D. Frederici, A. Christophe and K. Wermke (2009), ‘Newborns’ Cry Melody is Shaped by their Native Language’, Current Biology, 19 (23): 1994–97. Moon, C., R. P. Cooper and W. P. Fifer (1993), ‘Two-Day-Olds Prefer their Native Language’, Infant Behaviour and Development, 16 (4): 495–500. Okita, T. (2002), Invisible Work: Bilingualism, Language Choice and Childrearing in Intermarried Families, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pavlenko, A. (2004), ‘“Stop Doing That-Ia Komu Skazala!”: Language Choice and Emotions In Parent-Child Communication’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25 (2): 179–203. Pavlenko, A. (2008), ‘Introduction’, in A. Pavlenko (ed.), Multilingualism in PostSoviet Countries, 1–40, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pierce, L. J., D. Klein, J.-K. Chen, A. Delcenserie, and F. Genesee (2014), ‘Mapping the Unconscious Maintenance of a First Language’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111: 17314–19. Rodriguez, R. (1983), Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, New York: Bantam. Samata, S. (2014), The Cultural Memory of Language, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Schiffrin, D. (1994), Approaches to Discourse, Oxford: Blackwell. Staponkutė, D. (2009), ‘The Silence of the Mothers’, Excerpta Cypriana, 7 (3), available at: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/91st/vol6-num3/the-silence-of-the-mothers (accessed 27 October 2017). Steffensen, S. V. and A. Fill (2014), ‘Ecolinguistics: The State of the Art and Future Horizons’, Language Sciences, 41: 6–25. Steffensen, S. V. and S. B. Pedersen (2013), ‘Temporal Dynamics in Human Interaction’, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 21: 80–97. van Lier, L. (2004), The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective, Dordrecht: Springer.

Index Adorno, Theodor, 101, 221 Adversity Grid, 63, 64 adversity-activated development, 44, 64–5 Allende, Isabel, 67 Andersen, Benedict, 73 Angelou, Maya, 9, 39, 85 autonomy, 123, 134, 137, 156 autonomy-competence, 97, 122–5, 131, 136, 137 Bachelar, Gaston, 98, 143 Barton, David, and Hamilton, Mary, 188–90, 192 Benjamin, Walter, 219–20 Berger, John, 99, 101 Bion, Wilfred, 56–7, 188 Bird, John, 101, 103, 107, 114–15 Boo, Katherine, 100, 106, 113 Borchard, Kurt, 40 Bourdieu, Pierre, 31–2 Bowlby, John, 56 Brandt, Deborah, 191 Butterworth, Jez, 100 Cavafy, Constantine, 60 Chomsky, Noam, 212 Collis, Maurice, 29 community, 1–2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 31–3, 45, 54–5, 72, 73, 78–80, 83, 92, 145, 189, 210 Connerton, Paul, 220 Conran, Jack, 114 cosmopolitanism, 17–18, 33–5, 101 Dante, Alighieri, 103 Derrida, Jacques, 218–19 Després, Carole, and Lord, Sébastien, 155 Diamond, Jeffrey, M., 198–200

Dickey, James, 104, 109–15 dislocation, 40–1, 63–5 domestic, 39, 40–1, 45 involuntary, 40, 43, 63, 65, 67 displacement, 8, 41, 73–5 Douglas, Mary, 1, 7 DuBois, W.E.B., 75 Dunkerton, Martin, 101 Durkheim, Émile, 74 ecolinguistics, 208, 211–12, 218 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 107 Ellison, Ralph, 121–2 emotion/emotional, 1–3, 8, 9–10, 40, 54, 72, 73, 74, 79–80, 83, 104, 115, 125, 129, 131, 143, 153–5, 170–1, 208, 215, 216–17 guilt, 9, 75, 78–9, 156, 157–8, 160, 161, 167–70 pride, 100, 156, 157, 169–70, 180, 217 shame, 9, 85, 106–7, 156, 157–8, 161–7, 168, 169, 171 emplacement, 1, 15, 73–4, 76–7, 83, 85, 87–8 Erikson, Erik, 57 Family Intervention Projects, 134, 135–7, 138 Fauconnier, Gilles, 211 Feied, Frederick, 100 Fortier, Anne-Marie, 190, 215 Frost, Robert, 99 Gal, Susan, and Woolard, Kathryn, A., 187 Gandal, Keith, 116 Gee, James Paul, 189 Giamo, Benedict, 103 Goffman, Erving, 212

INDEX Halbwachs, Maurice, 72 Harding-Esch, Edith, and Riley, Philip, 216 Hedges, Nick, 107–10, 114 heritage language, 208–11, 213–14, 219–20, 221 Hine, Lewis, 109 homelessness, 2, 3, 7, 11, 35, 62, 99–117, 121–38, 204 Homelessness Code of Guidance, 133–4 homeliness, 29, 30–2, 33 intentional homelessness test, 9, 122, 124–5, 131, 132–4 home-making, 3–4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 35, 66, 92 as a human capacity, 5, 18–30, 33, 39, 145 Homer, 9, 60, 65 housing, 2, 3, 10, 43, 62, 107–8, 121, 123, 124, 126, 130–5, 137, 143, 153–6. See also homelessness and debt, 2, 6, 128, 154, 161–2, 163, 164, 166, 170–1 (see also equity release) and equity release, 9, 153–71 Housing Act (UK) 1996, 9, 122, 132 identity, 2, 4, 9, 28, 40, 42, 57–65, 72, 151, 155–6, 158, 160–1, 168, 169–70, 187–90, 194, 197, 198, 201, 209–10, 212, 219, 221 collective, 6, 7, 71–88, 91–4, 194–8 identity-standard, 2, 6, 157, 162, 171 mosaic substratum of, 4, 57–8, 61, 62, 211 owner-identity, 144, 154–7, 160, 161–2, 163, 166–8 Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona, 74, 87 Jackson, Michael, 35 Jeffries, Lee, 106, 114–16 Jones, Gavin, 116 Jovanović, Ilija, 7, 182 Jung, Karl Gustav, 57 Kalman, Judith, 190, 192 Kelleher, Ann, 209

225

Kennedy, William, 102–4, 106–7, 109, 112–15 Kierkegaard, Søren, 17, 35 King, Peter, 124 Kramsch, Claire, 220 Krzyzanowski, Michal, and Jones, Paul, 189–90 Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark, 212 Lange, Dorothea, 106, 109 Larkin, Philip, 17, 35 Lawrence, D.H., 35 Levi, Primo, 34 Levinson, Stephen, C., 212 Lewis, Helen, 157 literacy, 45, 46, 187–91, 203–4 home literacy, 175, 185–6, 191–203 Loy, Mina, 104, 112–14 McCullin, Don, 104, 105 Marcus, Cooper, 43 memory, 2, 7, 19, 26, 44, 49, 55, 67, 130, 146–7, 150–1, 212 collective, 7, 15, 32, 71–2, 73–5, 77–8, 91–2, 200 Mental Capacity Act, 125, 133 migration, 2, 3, 10, 185–90, 194, 196, 203 Nora, Pierre, 74–5 nostalgic disorientation, 4, 15, 59–65, 150 Nussbaum, Martha, 123 Okita, Toshie, 214 Oliver, Paul, 1 onto-ecological settledness, 58, 62–3, 65, 66, 95 Patel, Nimisha, 45 Patterson, Orlando, 75 Pavlenko, Aneta, 215 Pessoa, Fernando, 35 Peters, Ellen; Hess, Thomas, M.; Västfjäll, Danielle, and Auman, Corinne, 155 Pierce, Lara J.; Klein, Denise; Chen, Jen-Kai; Delcenserie, Audrey, and Genesee, Fred, 214

226

INDEX

Pizer, Donald, 103 Popa, Vasko, 7, 60 Prinsloo, Mastin, and Breier, Mignonne, 200 Probyn, Elspeth, 190 Proust, Marcel, 220

Steffensen, Sune Vok, and Fill, Alwin, 211 Steffensen, Sune Vok, and Pedersen, Sarah Bro, 212, 220 Street, Brian, 189 Szczepaniková, Alice, 64

Rahman, Tariq, 191, 200 Rassool, Naz, 196–7 refugee(s), 3, 15, 40–1, 55, 57, 59–65, 145 refugee care, 65–7 Riis, Jacob, 109 Robinson, Marylynne, 100 Rodriguez, Richard, 208 Romani language, 7, 10, 178–9 Rushdie, Salman, 9

Trachtenberg, Alan, 87 Troubled Families Programme, 136

Sampson, John, 181–2 Scheff, Thomas J., 157–8 Scott-Heron, Gilbert, ‘Gil’, 40 Spencer, Stanley, 7, 26–34 Staponkutė, Daria, 214

van Lier, Leo, 212 Walls, Jeannette, 100 Ward, Harriet, 49 Weber, Matt, 110–11 welfare, 2, 153 asset-based, 156, 161, 165, 170–1 conditionality, 122, 131–4 social welfare policies, 122–3, 124–38 (see also conditionality) Winnicott, Donald, 56–7