Sizing Home, Doing Family in Sydney, Australia

Robyn Dowling and Emma Power

Housing Studies, 2012, vol. 27, issue 5, 605-619

Abstract: Large housing is an issue of growing concern across popular culture, academic and policy domains, yet little is known about how and why people live in large houses. This paper addresses this gap, investigating the cultural underpinnings and social practices of large housing through a qualitative study carried out in Sydney, Australia. In these suburban, detached dwellings, large housing is valued for the affordances it provides for enacting visions of home and family. Specifically, it is a strategy for managing the aural and material excesses of family life; it mediates familial relations and supports the production of middle-class identities. These findings demonstrate the myriad connections between familial practices and housing dynamics and adds to a growing confirmation of the cultural inflections of (un)sustainable practice.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2012.697552 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:27:y:2012:i:5:p:605-619

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/chos20

DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2012.697552

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Studies is currently edited by Chris Leishman, Moira Munro, Ray Forrest, Alex Schwartz, Hal Pawson and John Flint

More articles in Housing Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().