ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines specific aspects of domesticity, few cross-disciplinary conversations have taken place on the ways in which social institutions such as homes and families were and continue to be refashioned from the late nineteenth century to the present. It explores the emerging expression of refugee architectural identity in Dekaokto, a refugee neighborhood built by the Greek government in Kavalla, a northern Aegean port. The book explains the convergence of economic and cultural forces in the creation of a new urban landscape in Vancouver, British Columbia. Notions of the domestic have been integral to academic discourse in several disciplines: architecture and design, anthropology, sociology, economics, philosophy, and most crucially, literary and cultural criticism. The domestic, perhaps more than other modern institutions, has been recycled and reinvented.
