ABSTRACT
The condition of homelessness, and the desire for homecoming – for founding and inhabiting a home in its broadest definitions – has enjoyed significant attention, especially in the West. This chapter describes homelessness as a modern condition of alienation, it appears in other Western philosophic, religious, and literary traditions. It suggests, in its most potent renditions or aspirations home, and the house, essentially served as the locus for people's corporal lives, while providing the settings to transcend them. Cultural contexts are predominant values and beliefs, and social and behavioral structures that, however varied and different, have shaped the forms, uses, and meanings of the house. The chapter illustrates the examples of traditional house building cultures, beginning with the houses of the Navaho peoples of the American Southwest. It discusses how house and home have expressed cultural beliefs and performed ontological roles.
