Mobile dwelling

摘要

Dwelling has conventionally been understood in rather immobile ways. Such a contention owes much to Heidegger's (1993) influential account of what, exactly, constitutes dwelling as a way of being in the world. For Heidegger, dwelling is about building an ongoing practical involvement with an environment, both materially and immaterially. However, while it is a term that insinuates the fervour of practical activity that is required in building a life, rather more problematically, he conceived that the most authentic mode of dwelling was a relatively rooted life which was involved in a particular place. For Heidegger, dwelling involved sparing, preserving, and being at home in a place. The influence of this immobile understanding of dwelling as staying can be traced, for instance, through the way that humanist geographers developed accounts of place that emphasised rootedness. Tuan, for instance, writes that place is "essentially a static concept. If we see the world as process, constantly changing, we would not be able to develop any sense of place" (1977,179). Yet such a static sense of dwelling clearly overlooks the myriad ways that contemporary forms of dwelling involve diverse forms of mobility. As Urry summarises, there are "a variety of ways of dwelling, but that once we move beyond that of land, almost all involve complex relationships between belongingness and travelling, within and beyond the boundaries of national societies. People can indeed be said to dwell in various mobilities" (2000,157, emphasis in original).