Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this book investigates how home is imagined, staged and experienced in western culture. Questions about meanings of ‘home’ and domestic culture are triggered by dramatic changes in values and ideals about the dwellings we live in and the dwellings we desire or dread. Deborah Chambers explores how home is idealised as a middle-class haven, managed as an investment, and signified as a status symbol and expression of personal identity. She addresses a range of public, state, commercial, popular and expert discourses about ‘home’: the heritage industry, design, exhibitions, television, social media, home mobilities and migration, smart technologies and ecological sustainability. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research including cultural history and cultural geography, the book offers a distinctive media and cultural studies approach supported by original, historically informed case studies on interior and domestic design; exhibitions of model homes; TV home interiors; ‘media home’ imaginaries; multiscreen homes; corporate visions of ‘homes of tomorrow’ and digital smart homes. A comprehensive and engaging study, this book is ideal for students and researchers of cultural studies, cultural history, media and communication studies, as well as sociology, gender studies, cultural geography and design studies.

House and home are words routinely used to describe where and how one lives. This book challenges predominant definitions and argues that domesticity fundamentally satisfies the human need to create and inhabit a defined place in the world. Consequently, house and home have performed numerous cultural and ontological roles, and have been assiduously represented in scripture, literature, art, and philosophy. This book presents how the search for home in an unpredictable world led people to create myths about the origins of architecture, houses for their gods, and house tombs for eternal life. Turning to more recent topics, it discusses how writers often used simple huts as a means to address the essentials of existence; modernist architects envisioned the capacity of house and home to improve society; and the suburban house was positioned as a superior setting for culture and family. Throughout the book, house and home are critically examined to illustrate the perennial role and capacity of architecture to articulate the human condition, position it more meaningfully in the world, and assist in our collective homecoming.

Stir It Up explores the changing aims of home economics while putting the phenomena of Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, Ty Pennington, and the "Mommy Wars" into historical context.

Assembling Mass Observation Archive material with historiographies of family, house and nation from ancient-Greece to present-day Europe, China and America, this book contributes to current debates on identity, belonging, memory and material culture by exploring how power works in the small spaces of home.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this book investigates how home is imagined, staged and experienced in western culture. Questions about meanings of 'home' and domestic culture are triggered by dramatic changes in values and ideals about the dwellings we live in and the dwellings we desire or dread. Deborah Chambers explores how home is idealised as a middle-class haven, managed as an investment, and signified as a status symbol and expression of personal identity. She addresses a range of public, state, commercial, popular and expert discourses about 'home': the heritage industry, design, exhibitions, television, social media, home mobilities and migration, smart technologies and ecological sustainability. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research including cultural geography, the book offers a distinctive media and cultural studies approach supported by original, historically informed case studies on interior and domestic design; exhibitions of model homes; TV home interiors; 'media home' imaginaries; multiscreen homes; corporate visions of 'homes of tomorrow' and digital smart homes. A comprehensive and engaging study, this book is ideal for students and researchers of cultural studies, cultural history, media and communication studies, as well as sociology, gender studies, cultural geography and design studies"

The 21st century is marked by the intensive movement of people across international borders. While languages are used as a means of interaction across the globe, the nuances of communication vary from culture to culture. This book explores how the misperception of cultural values and norms may result in misapprehension and communication breakdowns in various settings.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the issues, concepts and theories through which people have tried to understand consumer culture throughout the modern period, and puts the current state of thinking into a broader context. Thematically organized, the book shows how the central aspects of consumer culture - such as needs, choice, identity, status, alienation, objects, culture - have been debated within modern theories, from those of earlier thinkers such as Marx and Simmel to contemporary forms of post-structuralism and postmodernism. This approach introduces consumer culture as a subject which - far from being of narrow or recent interest - is intimately tied to the central issues of modern times and modern social thought. With its reviews of major theorists set within a full account of the development of the subject, this book should be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the many disciplines which now study consumer culture, including communications and cultural studies, anthropology and history.

Biblical Multicultural Teams speaks to the heart of cultural misunderstanding- our childhood upbringing. Sheryl Takagi Silzer is able in this work to provide both an honest look at her own cross-cultural experience and an astute academic understanding of cross-cultural communication. We all work and function in a multicultural world. The advice and wisdom in Biblical Multicultural Teams will thus enable you to take a hard look at assumptions and attitudes found in your team and to work on submitting them to biblical standards of interaction.Sign up for the WCIU Press newsletter to be notified about new books from this author and more! http: //eepurl.com/rB15L

The Chinese have been one of the oldest and largest ethnic communities across the world with well over 35 million people living overseas. Despite their relatively large cultural distance from the host countries, and the ordeals faced by generations of Chinese immigrants due to stereotypes, prejudice, and racism, many have adjusted remarkably well economically and socially in their new country. But how do generations of Chinese immigrants reconcile seemingly incompatible demands from home and host cultures to negotiate bicultural or multicultural identities? Identity, Hybridity and Cultural Home explores the multifaceted concept of cultural identity to uncover the meaning of cultural home for Chinese immigrants in multicultural environments. It questions the conventional notion of a stable and secure cultural identity, challenges the common conception of bilingualism and biculturalism, analyses hybrid identities, and identifies directions for future research on the critical issue of searching for a cultural home in a multicultural society.