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- Convenors:
-
Esther Anderson
(Queensland Tourism Industry Council)
Kellie Brandenburg (University of Southern Queensland)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 26 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
Dwellings that differ from normative conceptions of housing are increasingly understood as intentional, rather than reluctant, lifestyle choices. Decoupling status and ownership from assumptions about housing, this panel tours caravans, tiny homes, and shacks to ask, 'what makes a house a home?'
Long Abstract:
Alternative modes of dwelling which differ from normative conceptions of 'ideal' housing are increasingly understood as representative of a more intentional lifestyle choice, rather than reluctant adaptations. While the much-maligned American trailer park (Formanack 2018) or permanent caravan park residency in Australia (Newton 2015), as examples, have long functioned as responses to widespread inequality and limited access to more desirable housing, there is a richness to these dwellings that is obscured by stigmatisation.
Recently, public attention has shifted towards equally small, but seemingly more palatable homes. The #vanlife or #tinyhome movements, as examples, symbolise minimalistic privilege, offer greater freedom of mobility, and contribute to the development of new forms of domestic cosmopolitanism. These dwellings decouple non-traditional housing from stigma and offer different choices for tourists, temporary migrants, people of low-socioeconomic status, people seeking a greater connection with natural environments, and grey nomads (along with their American 'sunbird' and 'snowbird' counterparts).
Scholars across many disciplines are focusing their attentions on taken-for-granted ideas about status embedded in these shifting notions of housing, and by extension, ownership. This panel is particularly interested in the way the home, regardless of location or materiality, can be "our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word" (Bachelard 1964, p. 4). We invite papers relating to all modalities of alternative dwelling - such as caravans or trailers, tiny homes, shacks, and huts - asking the question 'what makes a house a home?'
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 26 November, 2021, -Kellie Brandenburg (University of Southern Queensland)
Paper short abstract:
Grey nomads are older Australians travelling full-time or part-time in caravans, motorhomes or other mobile homes. In shedding place-based responsibilities, grey nomads are enacting an Antipodean cosmopolitanism incorporating elements of hedonism and rejecting norms about ageing in place.
Paper long abstract:
This paper describes an Antipodean form of cosmopolitanism in the context of grey nomads, older Australians who travel full-time or part-time in mobile homes. It draws on interviews I conducted in 2008 across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland’s caravan parks and camping areas. Beyond understanding mobile homes as socio-technical apparatus, I identified themes which led me to posit that grey nomads represent a new form of Antipodean cosmopolitanism.
Scholars of global mobilities have drawn on theories of cosmopolitanism which describe the transnational movement of people, ideas, and culture. This scholarship is physically and culturally rooted in European understandings of mobility, where transnational movement signifies movement across relatively small geographic distances albeit representing significant cultural and social distinctions.
While some scholars have attempted to apply these theories in the context of the global south, it is unclear how cosmopolitanism arising from mobilities might be understood in a geographically vast context like Australia. How can we apply a scholarly concept built around the idea of transnational mobility in the context of an Antipodean mobility which does not trespass national boundaries?
I argue that grey nomads, through the technology of mobile homes, are rejecting ageing in place, resisting pressure to sublimate themselves to the needs of their children and grandchildren, investing resources of money and time in themselves, participating in novel cultural and social exchange across a vast geographic area, and travelling purposefully as part of a shared experience with like-minded compatriots, thus enacting a new form of Antipodean cosmopolitanism.
Therese Hall (Western Sydney University)
Paper short abstract:
Small dwellings, such as caravans, can be a viable, though not often desirable, option for single older women living on the edge of homelessness. By imbuing such unsuitable spaces with a sense of belonging, these women may sustain a home while averting the stigma of an ‘almost homeless’ identity.
Paper long abstract:
Not all of those opting for ‘minimalist’ housing are making an intentional lifestyle choice. Single older women who have been squeezed out of conventional housing find themselves cornered into small-scale living. In 2019, I interviewed 30 women in northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland while undertaking research on the experiences of inadequately housed single older women. Among my findings was the ability of many of these women to make their place of shelter, however inadequate, feel somewhat homely. In addressing ‘what makes a house a home’ these women illustrate how “placemaking tactics” (Ruddick 1996) can be used to transform precarious forms of shelter into homely places.
In this paper I share the experiences of several single older women who have made a home out of a caravan or a bus after finding themselves on the edge of homelessness. One of their placemaking tactics is to tie their home to their sense of self, often by imbuing it with memories of the past. Another is to tap into the #vanlife or #tinyhome movements to reimagine their straitened circumstances as the life of a minimalist. Yet another is to remain outside the public gaze by concealing their ‘almost homeless’ identity.
These placemaking tactics serve to avert the stigmatisation that single older women experience when living in unsuitable housing. The women’s housing narratives that I present illustrate how alternative modes of dwelling – even those that are sub-standard – can be rendered more liveable by redefining what makes a house a home.
Esther Anderson (Queensland Tourism Industry Council)
Paper short abstract:
What does it mean to make a home out of a temporary dwelling? This paper presents an autoethnographic account of a year spent renovating and living in a 1970s caravan, reflecting on liveliness, decay, and tensions between permanency and contingency.
Paper long abstract:
I met Lilith in June 2020. She had recently turned 47. For the previous five years, the mustard 1973 15” Viscount Ambassador caravan had sat rotting in a coastal Queensland front yard, with an increasingly leaky roof and buckling laminate internal walls. At some point, a lizard had crawled into the wardrobe and died. I thought Lilith was perfect, so she returned home with me to be transformed into something more habitable.
Temporary dwellings like this rundown caravan can be a way forward to the foreseeable, intended to offer control during upended life circumstances, or circumvent unaffordable housing markets and rental crises. Lilith was a chance at personal autonomy and privacy, while capitalising on the financial convenience and connectedness of staying with family during a turbulent time.
This paper presents an auto-ethnographic account of a year spent renovating and living in a caravan. Considering notions of decay and repair, I reflect on living permanently in a dynamic setting that is typically envisioned as being mobile or temporary. Accounting for the sociality of objects and tensions between permanency and contingency, I ask what it means to make a home of dwelling that is seemingly alive, dripping and sparking of its own accord, refusing to keep still. At the same time, what does it mean to live in a dwelling that is equally marked by its own mortality, where aging materials and potential exposure to the elements are more noticeable in a smaller space?