Nature in the home

The idea that home is a human place that excludes nature is foundational to Western conceptualisations of home and underpins a sense of home as a safe, comfortable, and secure space. This separation has been subject to research attention across diverse disciplines including archaeology (Hodder, 1990), anthropology (Ingold, 2000), and geography (Kaika, 2004). This literature exam­ ines the historical, practical, and symbolic processes through which home is created as a place that excludes nature; highlights ruptures to home as a bounded and exclusionary space; and demonstrates that home is a hybrid space of cohabitation with nature. Home as a place that excludes nature is also implicit in a much wider range of research that focuses exclusively on the role of the human agent in homemaking. In absenting nature and nonhumans this literature reinforces the assumed dominance of humans in understandings of home. The culture–nature binary that informs Western relations with nature is a critical framework for compre­hending home–nature relations.