Home, with Michaela Benson

Episode Transcript
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Rosie Hancock (00:06):
Hi there, and welcome to Uncommon Sense, the
podcast that sees thetaken-for-granted afresh,
through the eyes ofsociologists. I'm Rosie Hancock
in Sydney, Australia.

Alexis Hieu Truong (00:17):
And I'm Alexis Hieu Tuong in Ottawa,
Canada.

And were part of the team at The Sociological
Review, a place for criticalthinking, for questioning
simplistic ideas about society,and imagining better alternative
futures as well.

Yeah. And we believe sociology should be for
everyone, not hidden away in theuniversities, buried in jargon
or trapped behind paywalls. Andit's for all of us, because it's
about all of us. So, UncommonSense gets away from the college
campus and looks at stuff thataffects us all.

So, today, we're talking about Home. It's a word
that promises so much andconjures up heaps of images,
from those annoying DIY ads withimplausible couples and
dungarees – you know the onesI'm talking about – to huge
migration patterns that shapedglobal history. And it's at the
heart of so much of our popculture: films like "The Wizard

(01:15):
of Oz" and, well, "Home Alone";novels like Yaa Gyasi's
"Homegoing"; TV shows on tinyhouses and finding "A Place in
the Sun" ... It's behind everynews bulletin, in tales of
inequality, borders, and more.
In fact, the word "home" bringswith it ideas of security and
insecurity, inclusion andexclusion, the private, the

(01:35):
public, taste, design, and somuch more. Alexis, I guess to
me, home makes me think of two

places (01:43):
New Zealand, where I was born and where I grew up, and
Australia, where I live now. Butis it kind of cheating? Or do
you think it's kind of common tohave more than one home, Alexis?
What does it, what does it meanto you?

No, I definitely identify with what
you're saying. Like as a, as aperson born in Canada from a
Quebec mother and a Vietnamesefather, but never having been in
Vietnam, home is kind of justlike the smells of getting back
into the house, and smellingVietnamese soup and Quebec
pudding type of thing.

Yeah. I mean, something that we both have in
common, Alexis, is that we'reboth based in places where we're
living and working on uncededindigenous land. So I'm on the
land of the Gadigal people ofthe Eora Nation. And Alexis,
you're on Algonquin land, whereyou are in the Ottawa region
right now.

Yeah, that's correct. So, on Algonquin
unceded land, and actually,that's something you can read
more about in the Episode Notesfor this show. Today, we're
talking to someone whose workspeaks to pretty much all of
those themes we mentionedearlier. She's Michaela Benson,
Professor of Public Sociology atLancaster in the UK. So

(03:00):
Michaela, it's really nice tohave you with us.

Michaela Benson (03:02):
Hi, Alexis. Hi, Rosie. It's great to be here
with you today.

Home is at the heart of so much of your
work, whether it's in yourresearch on the London skyline,
or on people building their ownhomes, or moving across borders.
Why does the concept grab you?

Yeah, just listening to you in that opening
... yeah, it was just likementally ticking things off in
my head. Because, all of thosethemes around migration, around
those kind of lifestyle showsthat you were talking about,
around our own feelings of wherewe feel at home are really
central to my work, but also tomy experience as well. So, I
don't think it's thatsurprising. But I have focused

(03:40):
on home quite extensivelythroughout my research: whether
it's looking at how Britishcitizens who live in the EU
experience home in the contextof Brexit and the changing of
their rights, whether it's thework I did earlier on in the
2010s with people who werebuilding their own homes,

(04:00):
whether it's the research I didvery, very early on in my
academic career, where again, Iwas working with British
citizens who'd moved to Franceto kind of live the "real
dream". It's really been rightat the heart of things. And I
think for me, it's really theentry point into thinking about
home and migration that reallydrew me in. My experience is

(04:20):
similar to Alexis's. I come froma mixed family. My mother was
born and brought up in HongKong, a place which has changed
beyond recognition since she wasborn there in the 1950s. We also
moved a lot when I was a child.
So, for me, it had a quiteimportant resonance to think
about where home could be in acontext where actually, until

(04:41):
the age of 11, I moved every 18months. So, thinking about home
beyond place was reallyimportant to me.

Your work on Brexit is, I think, super
interesting to, to referencehere because I think it shows
how shaky this idea of home canbe. Because Brexit has affected
people in all sorts of ways, andit's changed their relationship
to where they live. Sort oflike, I think, there are lots of

(05:13):
sort of political upheavals orclimate change related events,
thinking about floods in Europeor, or fire in Australia. Any
kind of event like that reallyshakes up our idea of home. Can
you speak to that a little bit,about being unsettled?

Yes, I think that's really important. Because
I think sometimes we take forgranted, particularly when we're
talking about people who wemight understand as relatively
privileged. So, what I mean bythat is, when I'm looking at the
case of Brexit, British citizenswho were able to move and settle
in other EU member states,because they were British,

(05:53):
because they were European, andactually feeling, you know, the
justification for that always arationalisation was: "well,
we're here because we can behere, we're allowed to be here";
because legally they wereallowed to be here. And yet,
this massive politicaltransformation, whatever you
think of Brexit, you know, asituation where a state decides

(06:15):
to exit a big union of multiplestates, and the transformation
of rights that that brings forall of us who are British
citizens, but particularly forpeople who have used their EU
citizenship, to go and settlesomewhere, shows how kind of

(06:36):
tentative those understandingsof your place in the world can
be. And I think what reallystruck me when it came to
Brexit, and speaking withBritish citizens who settled
across Europe, was not only howthat moment where Britain voted
to leave the European Unionaffected their relationship with
the places they'd settled, butalso how it transformed their

(06:59):
understandings of what Britainwas to them.

So, you mentioned people's sense of what
it means to be British. I knowthere's so much on TV about
home, both in the UK but alsoaround the world. I know where I
am, there are a lot of showsabout celebrities making their
own renovations, selling housesfor profit.

Yeah, we've got those in Australia as well, and
I have to say, I'm currentlyobsessed with a home renovation
show on YouTube actually. I'mwatching it every night. I'm
embarrassed to admit.

I think that's really common, Rosie. I mean,
this is how I started out in myresearch, really, when I was in
the early stages of my PhD,noticing how prolific those
television programmes havebecome. And this is in the early
2000s. And asking myself, well,what, what's going on here? I

(07:51):
mean, now they've just become socommonplace, there are millions
of them.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Do you think
maybe it's appealing to somekind of anxiety that we share
about place and belonging?

For me, I think that actually, yes, there is
that kind of kind of voyeuristicside of things, isn't there,
where we kind of want to have alook and see what other
possibilities are out there. Youknow, those shows are absolutely
rife with kind of dreams of anideal life. I mean, it kind of,
in a way, it goes back to thoseconversations about the "ideal

(08:24):
home" that were happening in the1990s, which were to do with,
you know, making a particulartype of domestic space. But I
think that the other thing aboutit, the proliferation of these
shows, really speaks to me abouthow over the course of the last
20-30 years or so, propertiesbecome really fetishized. It's

(08:46):
no longer just about, you know,having a place to live and to
settle, which, you know, we all,we all need that. It's something
about the kind of aesthetics,the kind of lifestyle that you
can cultivate in and throughyour home.

What you mention here about dreaming an
ideal life and kind of like thisfetishization, like really
focusing on, on home as, as thiselement of lifestyle is quite
interesting. In a bit we'll hearfrom activists trying to give a
whole new meaning to home in oneof the world's most expensive
cities, London. But first timefor a word from our producer,

(09:23):
Alice.

Alice Bloch (09:28):
Hi there, you're listening to Uncommon Sense from
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(10:09):
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every single episode. Thanks forlistening.

Okay, back to home. Michaela, one group you've
met through your work is RUSS.
That's the Rural Urban SynthesisSociety. Based in London,
they're working to makesustainable community-led and
truly affordable neighbourhoodsthat will stay that way for the
long term. In short, they'rewhat's called a Community Land
Trust.

Yeah, so, as CLT, RUSS's founding chair was
Kareem Dayes who grew up on astreet called Walters Way, where
his family was one of a groupwho built their own timber frame
homes in the 80s. It was part ofa radical council-backed
self-build project, using themethods of architect Walter
Segal.

And right now, RUSS is working to provide 36
truly affordable new homes at asite called Church Grove in
Lewisham, a part of South Londonwhere average house prices are
around half a million pounds. Solet's hear from two people
who've been part of the RUSSstory.

Kwame Lowe (11:19):
So, yeah, my name is Kwame, I was the co-chair of
RUSS. I'm born and bred inLewisham. I'm like a real local
boy. I went away to universityand studied, and I came back.
And I was wanting to find a wayto get involved with the
community I was from and thearea I was from, and I've seen a
lot of changes happening. And Iactually had my first kind of

(11:40):
full time job on a councilestate of the Old Kent Road. So,
I was working for the City ofLondon, and I did it for a year
and I just became quitedisillusioned. But it was about,
I guess, the system and the waythat the system didn't really
speak to a lot of their needs.
And then, I did another job thatwas unrelated, but I also joined
RUSS. So, my parents are friendswith Kareem's parents, and I

(12:02):
went to Walters Way a lot as achild. And I didn't really know
it was self-built, I didn't knowit was community-led housing. I
just thought it was amazing.
They just had its own vibe, itjust felt very different to the
kind of other streets in thearea. And I think that just
stayed with me. And I think whenthat RUSS kind of opportunity

(12:26):
came back up, and when I kind ofgot involved with RUSS, that was
somewhere in the back of mymind, was that there were
alternative ways to live inLondon.

Alice Grahame (12:33):
My name is Alice.
I also used to be a trustee ofRUSS. I live in Walters Way, and
one of my neighbours was KareemDayes and his parents. And
through that connection, I heardabout RUSS and that Kareem was
setting up a new housing projectinspired by Walters Way. And I
just thought that sounded like abrilliant idea because, living

(12:54):
in Walters Way, I knew that itwas possible to form housing
development that had a reallygood strong community and it
could be affordable. The waythat Kareem designed it was
setting it up as a CommunityLand Trust, which means that the
land is owned by a trust, ratherthan by individual homeowners,

(13:16):
which means that there's achance for the homes to stay
affordable, rather than be soldand then end up on the housing
market. I actually remember inthe 1990s – that's when I first
heard about people of my agebuying a home – and I do
remember a friend who had asalary of 15,000 buying a home

(13:36):
in one of the outer suburbs ofLondon. And she got a mortgage,
which was three times hersalary, which was 45,000 pounds.
So, it was perfectly within theimagination of me and my peers
to, to own a home. A few yearslater, I then also bought a
home. So, because of having thatopportunity, with house prices

(14:00):
being so much lower in relationto an annual salary, I was able
to get on that property ladder.
And I think the problem is,today, that the prices are so
high compared to salaries that,unless you already own a
property, the chances of buyinga property seem to be very
remote.

Kwame Lowe (14:19):
I think it's really strange to hear that there was
ever a time when people couldafford to buy a home. And it's
like almost unthinkable, Ithink, for a lot of people my
age in London to ever aspire tothat. And I think that's really
really difficult as a youngperson, and, I think, to not

(14:40):
ever kind of foresee yourselfhaving that security and, like,
a place in the city you're from,I think, is like a really
strange thing to sort of growinto. And that's definitely a
big reason why I got on boardwith RUSS. And I think the other
thing I'd say as well is justthat once I think it is a
generational problem, I thinkit's also to do with the kind of
way land prices and the pricesof homes in London is just so

(15:04):
massively inflated. Because theeconomy in this country is just
so imbalanced. And it's also todo with the global ... The
global nature of investment inLondon as well, I think, is a
big reason why people mightcan't afford to live in places
they're from. And I just thinkLondon as a city is almost
losing, very quickly – I thinkevery city changes – but I think
London is just losing the peoplethat made the city what it was.

(15:28):
And that's, I just think themassive thing for policymakers
to think about. I don't thinkI'd blame an older generation
necessarily, I just blame peoplewho have that kind of power to
change the bigger structures. Idon't know what you think about
that, Alice? I don't know if youkind of feel any guilt, or if
you feel any responsibility, oryou think it's a bigger problem?

Alice Grahame (15:47):
I don't really feel guilt, because at the time,
in the 1990s, it was possiblefor someone, you know, at a
regular job to buy a property. Iguess we, we didn't know that
prices were going to shoot up sohugely and that houses would
then become completelyunaffordable. I suppose, looking
at the factors that cause thoseprices to inflate, I think

(16:11):
that's something that was reallyout of my hands. And is to do,
more to do with sort ofinternational finance rather
than sort of regular people whowere really just buying a place
to live. I know there is alsothe question of gentrification.
And by moving into areas thatwere relatively cheap, and

(16:38):
buying a property that does pushthe price up. So in that sense,
then I am guilty. In that sense,because Walters Way was
initially a social housingproject. It was for people who
were in housing need. Whathappened was with Right to Buy
and Leasehold Reform, the peoplewho built their own houses – the
self-builders, they owned theirhouses – the majority sold their

(17:00):
houses privately on the on theprivate housing market. I
remember when I first lookedaround Walters Way, it was
definitely marketed as beingcheaper than other houses, and
Walter Segal and his houses werenot known about at all. Those
houses now exchange hands at avery high price. Something that

(17:20):
was initially affordable socialhousing no longer is. And I
think that's why, with RUSS, itwas set up as a Community Land
Trust to ensure that thatwouldn't happen in the future.

Kwame Lowe (17:30):
So much of what made London great, and what still
makes London great, is just itsdiversity, and that's like in so
many forms. It's, like, in termsof, like, places and the kind of
character of places, London'slike a city of kind of towns
almost. And um, I just think theway that we're developing in
terms of, like, the kinds of,like, houses we're building, the

(17:51):
kind of affordability of themand the kind of the limitations
and the kinds of people that canlive in them, that's just making
London not as vibrant or asinteresting and as creative as
well. And so much has come outof London, I think, because of
that, and so much may not comeout of it because of that. And
so, for me, I felt like, whilstI could always live in London,

(18:12):
it might not always provide mewith what I feel like it has up
until this point. And I think Icould say the same for, for a
lot of my peers who grew up inthe kind of area that I grew up
in. So, yeah, that's kind of howI see it going. And I hope that,
yeah, that organisations likeRUSS can, can make a difference
in in kind of halting that orreversing it at least.

Kwame Lowe and Alice Grahame discussing
housing in London.

Michaela, you've studied self-build in the UK.
That's people who take DIY tothe next level and build their
own place. That is, I think, howyou came to know RUSS? I know
that when I was in my 20s Inever even stopped to think that
I might be able to buy my ownhome, let alone actually build
it. So, if I wanted to pull offbuilding my own home, what kind

(19:06):
of resources would I need? Andto be honest, why would someone
even want to?

I think that's a really important question,
Rosie. Building your own house,particularly through a kind of
community-led scheme is apossibly affordable way of
getting your own home. Now, I'vegot big quotation marks around
everything that I've said itbecause, you know, in
introducing this, you alsotalked about how London is one

(19:35):
of the most unaffordable placesin the world. And where we see
something like self-build reallyworking for people who can't
afford to get into housing isactually in parts of the Global
South. I mean, it's been a very,very long tradition of where
people are struggling withhousing that they've gone away

(19:56):
and they've built their own.
Now, in the UK, we've got areally long running series about
people building their own homes– Grand Designs – and I used to
love this show.

So do I.

I mean, I think they've got like Grand Designs
Australia as well.

Yeah.

It's about, like, these kind of seemingly
completely impossible projectsthat people take on. And you,
you know, towards the end, itall comes good. But you see the
struggle. What I think we'reseeing when we see that struggle
in those programmes is actuallyhow housing markets in a lot of
places – the UK is one of them –are really not set up for people

(20:38):
to build their own homes. Sothere are lots of impediments.
First of all, in the UK, itsland that's really expensive,
that's prohibitive to mostpeople in terms of building
their own homes. And then itgoes down into things like, you

know (20:51):
how do you even find the people who would do the work on
those houses? There's a lot oftime and energy that would need
to go into building your ownhome, if you were going to do it
as an individual. If you'regoing to try and do it as a
community, this could providesupport, it can provide a way of
championing a kind ofcommunity-led programme, which,

(21:14):
you know, as in the case ofLewisham, can result in some
backing from kind of localgovernment. But again, it's time
and energy, and a certain degreeof what we could call cultural

capital, you know (21:25):
how are you going to network with the people
that you need to network with tomake something like this happen?

I think that's really interesting, Michaela.
Particularly this idea that youneed some kind of cultural or
social capital – I think that'sreally true. I, I research
grassroots activism in my ownwork, and I find that a lot of
my own activists, the moresuccessful groups are groups

(21:51):
that come with that kind ofcapital. So, in my case, that's
people that have particularlevels of education, they don't
have the wealth in order todedicate time to projects. Is
this the kind of thing you'retalking about in this context as
well?

I think that that's definitely important. And
certainly when you start to workwith, well, the work that I did
with those community groups, soRUSS was one of them – actually,
they were only just starting outwhen I was doing that research,
but I've been working with othercommunity groups as well.
Actually, some of the early workthey had to do was to actually

(22:26):
kind of pool those kind ofnetworks, pool that kind of, you
know, the kind of skills andknowledge base that they had,
and kind of think about whocould be best positioned in
order to navigate what is a verycomplicated environment to build
those things up. But I thinkthat the other thing is, you

(22:47):
know, we can't really talk aboutthis in London without talking
about money. Money is really,really important, because as I
said, land is incrediblyexpensive. And the final thing I
would say is time, these thingstake a really really long time.
So, I did that research in theearly ... well, I finished that
research in 2015, and RUSS arestill building.

That's interesting. So, those TV shows
kind of, they make you feel thatanyone can do it, and that maybe
everyone should do it. I knowthat working around the house
here, I've received a lot ofhelp from my partner's father,
and in the recording, Alice andKwame are candid about the
differences between generations.
What do you make of Alice'scomments on this whole issue of

(23:28):
responsibility and blame?

I think that when we, you know ... So, I'm in
my 40s, and I think about whatmy parents were able to afford
to do. And then I think aboutwhat I'm able to afford to do.
And then I think about what mysisters are able to afford to
do. And there are notabledifferences. But I think what's
really important about this, isthat rather than thinking okay,

(23:53):
well, you know, that this iscaused by some kind of selfish
previous generation, actually,we have to ask ourselves the

question of (24:01):
what was available to those, to the people in that
generation? What was the kind ofnormative expectations about
what they should do? And whatwere the opportunities that they
had? They took thoseopportunities, because the
markets enabled them to do it.
The market has changed. We're inthis kind of a very different
political economy of housing,where the costs of everything

(24:23):
have gone on. But these are notnecessarily caused by
individuals. They're caused by awhole variety of factors coming
into play. From what thegovernment decides to do, about
facilitating people intohomeownership. So, you heard
Alice there talking about howthe Thatcher government in the

(24:45):
1980s in the UK introduced thisscheme called Right to Buy,
which meant that this stock thathad been set aside to provide
affordable rent for people whocouldn't afford to rent through
the private sector, actuallymeant that a lot of that housing
stock moved into privateownership. And that's not

(25:05):
something that an individualcould have necessarily any
control over. It's somethingelse. There's those bigger
structures, as we'd refer tothem in sociology, that really
shaped what opportunities areavailable to us.

So, Michaela, I mean, you've just said, you
know, individuals versus thesocial structure, right? We
shouldn't be focusing onindividuals. What kinds of
questions should we be asking,as sociologists? Do we even do
blame?

I think it's probably worthwhile going back
to that idea of DIY. And we'vementioned that a few times while
we've been talking about housing– Doing It Yourself – and we
need to ask ourselves a questionabout why, in the current
housing market, people areexpected to do it themselves?
What does that mean in terms ofwhat is otherwise available to

(26:00):
them? The kind of socialsupport, the state support that
we might have seen in previousgenerations ... So, we kind of
have to look at it from thatperspective, I think. I mean, I
realise that I've just avoidedthe question about blame. But I
think it's, I think it reallyis, it's like a question of like
saying "okay, well ..." If wefocus too much on individuals

(26:23):
and their actions, I think wecan miss the broader absence of
those structures, which mightsupport people to do something
otherwise. You know, marketsdon't function on their own.
They're not autonomous. They arecurated and constructed by
governments and other types ofstakeholders to make money for
some people. And actually, yes,the individual person who owns a

(26:48):
house might have made money inthat particular way. But I
actually think we have to askabout who the big winners are in
that situation.

Right. Okay. So, not the individual, the social
structure, but then also, whowins and who loses.

Exactly.

So, one of the reasons that we wanted to start
this podcast is that there areso many ideas out there that we
and the media take for granted.
They've become so ingrained inhow we live and how we're told
to live, how we think aboutwhat's right and what's wrong.
And we don't stop to questionthem. So, in each episode, we're

(27:27):
pausing to cast a sideways eye,something that seems to be
common sense, to see if we canthink about it differently. So,
today, we're talking about theidea that where you live affects
your life chances. That's theidea that living in a more
deprived neighbourhood couldhave a negative impact on
people's prospects; things likelife expectancy, for example,

(27:49):
but also people's behaviour.

It's known in some policy in academic
circles as neighbourhoodeffects. Michaela, how do you
understand it and how can weshake it up a bit?

I think that this idea of neighbourhood
effect is one that attributeskind of negative characteristics
to a particular place. And Ithink what this does is that it
actually fails to consider whatthe other issues are, that might
be making that place in aparticular way, that might be

(28:22):
introducing deprivation into anarea.

So, is it kind of, like, that places that have
certain problems become labelledas "problem places", yeah? And
then, because the places getdemonised, the people who live
there do as well. So, like, ayoung person growing up in a
place that's been labelled as"problem", that kind of

(28:46):
negatively affects theirprogress through life, in a way,
they get tarred that same brush.

That's absolutely the case. The place
becomes demonised and the peoplewho live within it becomes
stigmatised. And I think thatthat's a really good way of kind
of drawing attention to what theissues really are here. Because
what it does is it stops us fromhaving a look at, you know, what
type of disinvestment hashappened in those areas. Quite

(29:14):
simply, how have centralgovernments or local governments
stopped putting money andresource into a place.
Basically, it's a very, verysimplistic understanding; it's a
simplistic understanding, whichstops us from looking at the
kind of root causes of povertyand inequality.

I'm curious, is there, like, a relationship here
to gentrification in the sensethat the government doesn't
invest in a place, it becomes a"problem place", but then
there's a certain culturalcachet, let's say, for people to
move to that place? It's alsoprobably cheap, right? So, you

(29:54):
get these people moving in;maybe artists, queer people – I
say this as a queer person who'smoved to a kind of a cheaper
suburb in my own city, so I'm,in a way, I'm talking about
myself here – and that thenleads to gentrification. Does
that gentrification process endup reaching the people that live
there, though? Like, I'm justcurious about what the

(30:16):
relationship is between "problempaces" and gentrification?

I think that there's quite a lot wrapped up
in what you've just said, Rosie.
I mean, I think that we can alsothink that there are other ways
of devaluing a place. And you'rekind of right to point to the
kind of processes by which theremight be a purposeful
devaluation of a place in orderto, for example, run it down,
make it so uncomfortable forpeople to live in, so that other

(30:42):
people could kind of – and I'mnot talking about people really,
I'm talking about kind ofcorporations, development
companies – can move in, can buyup at a low cost, and then it
can raise the value throughbuilding on that land, or
through developing thoseparticular places in particular
ways. So yes, there is a storyabout, you know ... In a context

(31:07):
like London, for example, I'vedone work in Peckham with my
colleague Emma Jackson, anotherone of the editors at The
Sociological Review, and we'vewatched how, over a long period
of time, there have been variousefforts and kind of
contestations over what's valuedin that place. And yes, there
are people who move in becausethe costs of living there are

(31:29):
low. And yes, you know, there isthat tendency towards kind of
displacing those populations whoare already living there. And
that's kind of what's at theheart of that narrative around
gentrification.

You mentioned being careful not to
have oversimplisticunderstanding. And if you're
thinking sociologically, thereare certain things you might do
to avoid the risk of being toosimplistic about how you
understand a place, not least,actually, talking to people
there properly over a longperiod of time. People are more
than statistics, right?

Absolutely. And I think that when we're thinking
about gentrification, the workof Kirsteen Paton really does
come to mind in this. So, she'swritten this fantastic book

called "Gentrification (32:14):
A Working-Class Perspective",
where she works with workingclass communities in Glasgow and
talks to them about how theyexperienced that process of
gentrification. And yes, youknow, the landscape is
transforming, the propertymarket is transforming. But she
presents this really nuancedunderstanding, where, you know,

they're asking (32:36):
"Well, why, why can't we have this as well?" You

know (32:39):
"Yes, I want to be able to go in and buy a nice coffee from
that coffee shop." In fact,that's the opening example in
her book. So, people'srelationships to those places
that are gentrifying are alsoquite complicated. And I think
it's really important that wedon't oversimplify that.

So, it's about not simplifying things too
much, but also not makingassumptions about what people
want based on who they are onthe page. Anyway, almost time to
go. But before that, we want toask, Michaela, one book or film
or music or artwork you'drecommend on this topic of home?

(33:15):
It could be Nomadland, orNeighbours?

Yeah, I mean, Neighbours are an earlier part
of my life and I just watchedNomadland last weekend, but,
actually, what I wanted to talkto you about today is a book
that I read recently, by afirst-time novelist, Catherine
Menon, and the book is called"Fragile Monsters". It's a book
about a young woman who has beenworking in Canada and, because

(33:43):
of a crisis in her life, shedecides to return to Malaysia,
which is where she was born. Andit's about her relationship with
her ageing grandmother. And inthis story, we see that the
health of her grandmotherdeteriorate over time, and
alongside it, the kind ofconnections to a family home

(34:05):
that has been a site of a lot ofmemories, good and bad, are at
the centre of the narrative.
What's interesting is that thishouse is in a swamp, and as
floods and floods and floodscome in – Malaysia is a very wet
country – the house basicallystarts to crumble into its
surroundings. Now, I think thisbook speaks to the themes we've

(34:25):
talked about today, because it'sabout the relationship between
the generations. It travelsthrough the history of this
Malaysian family from the 1920sonwards, but it's also about the
"myth of return". The "myth ofreturn" is a kind of central
theme in a lot of work around

migration (34:45):
the idea that if you go back to the place that you
originate in, it's a kind ofdream that lots of migrants hold
on to. But what we get fromCatherine Menon's book is
actually that being at home isnot quite all it cracked up to
do. The house and actually theplace are not the same, the

(35:07):
relationship isn't the same. So,it ties in quite well to that
question that you presented tome at the beginning, about this
process of unsettling.

Just picking up on this idea of the "myth of
return"; is that something thatyou've ever experienced?

I think that I haven't had that "myth of
return". And actually, I think,in my family, I've been
reflecting on this a lot inrespect to my family's history
with Hong Kong, because the HongKong that they knew about wasn't
there to return to. So, theyleft a place that had been on
borrowed time in the 1990s, asit was kind of leading up to

(35:45):
Britain transferring sovereigntyof the region to China. And once
they left – my grandparents thatis, my mother had left years
before – I don't think they everimagined going back because
there was nowhere to go back to,in their mind. Because the place
that they had left, the colonialHong Kong, had been surpassed by

(36:08):
Chinese Hong Kong. But what's,what's interesting about this
is, I think, that there was amoment of hope. My mum went back
in around 2010 to visit mysister who was living there at
the time, and she was reallysurprised to find that that Hong
Kong was still there, or partsof it were still familiar to

her (36:24):
the sights, the smells, even some of the street scenes.
But watching her kind of mournthrough this now – what's
happening to Hong Kong, what'shappened to her beautiful city –
has, I think, brought onceagain, the sense that her home
is no longer there.

Yeah, that's ...
The "myth of return" reallyspeaks to me, I think, because,
when I go back to New Zealand,my parents sold – well, they
didn't sell – my parents movedfrom the house that I grew up
in, and live somewhere entirelydifferent. So, going back is not
going back to the same place.
It's, it's going home, but it'snot going home to the home that

(37:02):
I knew growing up. It's a verybizarre kind of thing. So, my
recommendation, if I can jump inwith my own recommendation here,
is also a novel as well. So,mine is "Unsheltered" by Barbara
Kingsolver. It's about a middleaged woman and her family, and
they have ... Their supposedlysecure life with their good

(37:25):
middle class jobs and the homethat they own crumbles down
around them. And it's a reallygood reminder, I think, that
home isn't always a place ofsecurity that we think it might
be. Alexis, what about you?

I'm quite into science fiction, and maybe
it's like, hmm ... the"Foundation" would be my
recommendation, because, eventhough the theme of home might
not be, like, a central one, Ido remember this part about one
of the protagonists kind ofcoming with a spaceship and
landing on a planet and comingout of the spaceship and just
like really taking in the smellsof the planet. And that kind of

(38:02):
really connects to my ownunderstanding of home, like
going into the house and just,like, smelling food, type of
thing, like these nostalgic orcomforting smells, I guess.

Yeah. I love that you, I love that talking about
home you jumped to outer spacescience fiction.

Outer space pudding.

Well, thanks so much Michaela, it's been really
great to have you with us.

Thank you very much. Lovely to speak with you
both.

And that's it from us for now, if you want to
see what the team here at TheSociological Review has
recommended on Home, from therecent farming film "Minari" to
art on global migration, you'llfind it all in our show notes
and over atthesociologicalreview.org.
Alexis, today has been sointeresting for me, particularly
hearing Michaela talk aboutself-builds. I'm trying to buy a

(39:00):
house in Sydney with my partnerand, tell you what, buying
property in Sydney is soexpensive, so, if I could just
build my own place with myhands, I think that would be
much, much easier.

Yeah. So, me and my partner, we're really
privileged to be able to buy ourown place, but we had to do a
lot of work around the house.
So, I can definitely let youknow about some of the things
that went wrong with our DIY.

Oh, no. Okay, well, maybe that's, maybe that's
a reminder that perhaps justfind something a bit easier. If
you've enjoyed listening today,please subscribe and give us a
rating in whatever app you'reusing. It takes a couple of
seconds, but it will make ourday. And if you've got longer,
why not leave us a nice review.
We'll be back soon with moreUncommon Sense. Our producer was

(39:50):
Alice Bloch. Thanks forlistening. Bye!

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