Domesticity under Siege

Mark Taylor, Georgina Downey, Terry Meade

"Theories of the domestic stemming from the 19th century have focused on the home as a refuge and place of repose for the family, a nurturing environment for children and a safe place for visitors. Under this conception, domestic space is positioned as nurturing and private, a refuge and place of retreat which gave rise to theories of 'home as haven'. While, arguably, some social conditions might suggest this is the case, Domesticity Under Siege exposes a different world, one in which the boundaries of nurturing domesticity collide with both outside and inside agents. Whether these agents are external military forces, psychological trauma or familial violence, they re-position meta-narratives of domesticity, not through identity politics or specialized subgroup experience, but relative to the actions of the world around an inhabited domain. That is, when home is constituted as a...