ABSTRACT
Bodies do not exist in isolation. The things they possess are not had alone. There is a social context – an immediate external environment which underpins their continuities. Within the most local and familiar version of such space we find our regular places of shelter – the ‘home’ (in whatever form that takes) – which serves to preserve the body against the environment and to protect it from threats. It is here that we conduct the activities that provide for its sustenance – working to generate food and other commodities or to acquire them through trade. And it is here that we conduct the key relationships of our life with family, friends or neighbours. Such environments have most often been spoken of in terms of the idea of ‘community’ (Poplin, 1979; Bauman, 2001), though the term is a heavily contested one. What does seem plausible however is that the social geometries of community have important continuities with spatial location – close proximities turn social actors into familiar faces, distant proximities into strangers.
