ABSTRACT
These speculations have looked at the personal use of housing, and what our housing means to us. What I have tried to do is consider the manner in which we relate to our housing, not as a commodity with a price attached, and not as a collective entity, but as something we use. We may need to look at housing in these terms, and many do, but I have focused here on the subjective sense of housing. Housing has an objective quality to it. It can be touched and measured, but this is not all that is important. What I have tried to build up is a picture that encloses both the palpable, quantifiable objects and the meanings we attach to them. The result may be somewhat less straightforward and clear than other perspectives on housing, but this, I would suggest, merely points to the very nature of dwelling as a practice that is both rather diffuse and at the same time particular to each and every one of us. I have frequently used this word ‘dwelling’ in place of housing, and hopefully the reasons for this are clear. Indeed an understanding of the distinction between housing and dwelling is at the core of my speculations: the physical entities called houses are just a part of what is involved in what we have and do when we dwell, when we live in enclosed spaces with others. Dwelling helps to explain why we do this, as well as just detailing what it is we are doing. The answers I have given may be vague, but this is precisely because I am trying to discuss a universal condition – something we all do, but do differently. There is thus a rather unsteady mix of universalism and relativism within this concept of dwelling. 1
