Paolo Boccagni will give a seminar at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, next 3 July at 11 local time, on As if it were home: On the promise of home as a metaphor of and into social reality. See the title and abstract below!

As if it were home: On the promise of home as a metaphor of and in social reality

Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento – paolo.boccagni@unitn.it)

This presentation looks at home as a metaphor to approach and negotiate social reality. So far, the bulk of research on home has addressed it primarily as a special place or as a set of emotions, relationships and routines associated with its (re)production. There is, however, another conceptual dimension that involves its circulation as a category of practice with its own emotional, moral and political subtexts. The metaphorical aspects, in this optic, are as revealing as the literal aspects. All that home does as a word – the claims it is instrumental to, in interpersonal and group relations – is hardly less significant than what home is as a place or a social relationship. Home operates as a catchword for all that people see, feel or think as “theirs” in relation to different temporalities – their origins, dwelling and living circumstances – and in conditions of security, familiarity and control of the future. There is potential in unveiling how people approach fragments of their life experience as if it were home, based on a resonance with “what” – dear ones, special places or events – felt like home in the past or could be(come) home in the future. Researching home in this optic is critical to its heuristic potential for examining phenomenological experience, both in applied domains (e.g. housing and social welfare) and in representational fields such as humanities and in the arts. Based also on fieldwork in migration and refugee studies, I outline a conceptual and research agenda on the meanings, functions and implications of home as a metaphor in and of social life. 

IMG SOURCE: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/projects/heritage-making_among_recent_migrants_in_parramatta