ABSTRACT
Drawing on debates within health geography and environmental gerontology, this chapter examines some of the paradoxes that surround notions of home and care. Engaging with ideas around the public and private, belonging and isolation, identity and alienation, both it explores and challenges prevailing orthodoxies around the meaning of home and its conceptualization as a site of safety and security, power and identity, privacy and control. The literature on care, home and older people also highlights its importance as a site of historical memory and identity. Health and social geographers have illustrated how the home is a deeply nuanced and complex site of social relations; a site of paradox, ambiguity and contradiction, where attributes are conditional, contextual and not necessarily positive. One dichotomy around home and care focuses around the family and how to balance the right of the older person to age in place versus the cost to the family carer.
