Hart, M. and M. Ben-Yoseph (Eds.). PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF HOME

Abstract

Hart, M. and M. Ben-Yoseph (Eds.). PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICALAND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF HOME. New York: Haworth Press, 2005.The analysis of has received relatively less attention in the social sciences than in the arts where literature, painting and music have given voice, colour and sound to the meaning of in different cultures throughout the ages. For that reason, I was keen to read what the contributors (all from DePaul University in Chicago) wrote about the psychological, political and cultural of home.The two editors, Mechthild Hart, a Professor of Education, and Miriam Ben-Yoseph, also an education specialist, wrote the introduction Shifting meanings of home and put together this collection of ten papers. The book was published concurrently as a set of articles in the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community (Volume 30 Numbers 1 -2,2005). addition to the introductory chapter there are nine substantive chapters.Chapter 2 Facing aliens under globalization: changing meanings of for employers of foreign domestics is a discussion of the situation of 12 foreign domestic and their employers in Taipei by sociologist SJ. A. Cheng. While the 12 cases were described in detail, they do not justify Cheng's generalization of her findings to all Taiwanese employers of domestic workers (p.24).Chapter 3 Home as a locus of work and career by management specialist Lisa K. Gundry is a review of selected studies and statistics on the American trend to locate one's office at and offers some suggestions on pitfalls to avoid and things to do when moving your office home. Unfortunately, this orientation of the chapter sets it apart from the other contributions as it is the only chapter that addresses potential home-office owners and offers recommendations.The fourth chapter presents an unusual and absorbing topic: Convents as homes. The author, Enrique A. Arias, writing as a music historian, wrote a well-documented historical depiction of the convent or monastery as centre of Gregorian music and convent inhabitants as people dedicated to the artistic expression of worship through music. The author's erudite comments gave me the impression that he had much more knowledge to share. The editor indicated that this piece was part of Arias' larger study on the role of Gregorian chant. Regrettably, E.A. Arias passed away when the volume went into print.Educationist Ann F. Stanford discusses the prison as in Chapter 5 Where love flies free: women, and writing in Cook County Jail. Stanford relates her own experiences running creative writing (mainly poetry) workshops for inmates mainly in terms of the impact that the close contact with prison life has had on her own ideas of house and home.Chapter 6 follows the same theme of creative writing. Entitled In the absence of home: the meaning of homelessness it was written by Susanne M. Dumbleton, also an education specialist. This chapter focuses on how imaginative writers can give voice to the (pp. 58-59) in the way they present the homeless in fiction. Dumbleton illustrates her point with numerous lengthy quotations from a few celebrated American fiction writers. …