Home, home ownership and the search for ontological security Ann Dupuis and David C. Thorns Abstract The central focus of this paper is the notion that the home can provide a locale in which people can work at attaining a sense of ontological security in a world that at times is experienced as threatening and uncontrollable. The paper builds on and develops the ideas of G iddens and Saunders on ontological security and seeks to break down and operationalise the concept and explore it through a set of empirical data drawn from interviews with a group of older N ew Zealand home owners. The extent to which home and home life meets the conditions for the maintenance of ontological security is assessed through an exploration of home as the site of constancy in the social and material environment; home as a spatial context in which the day to day routines of human existence are performed; home as a site free from the surveillance that is part of the contemporary world which allows for a sense of control that is missing in other locales; and home as a secure base around which identities are constructed. The paper also argues that meanings of home are context specific and thus the data need to be seen in relation to N ew Zealanders’ long standing pre-occupation with land and home ownership. The paper concludes by speculating on how meanings of home may be changing. Introduction The importance of tenure in shaping material life chances, political values and personal identity has been a topic with a long history of debate within the sociology of housing literature. The ideology of home ownership has been a central component shaping policies and practices in such countries as Britain, Australia, N ew Zealand and Canada. The tenure shift to ownership accompanying the ideology has been associated with the embourgeoisement thesis and debates © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, U K and 350 M ain Street, M alden, M A 02148, U SA. H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security in the 1950s and 1960s about the expansion of middle class life styles, the blurring of class distinctions and the impact of rising working class affluence on class structures (Rose, 1960; G oldthorpe et al., 1969). In the context of welfare state restructuring, and the resulting privatisation of council housing in the 1970s and 1980s however, this debate has taken on a new shape (D unleavy, 1979, 1983, 1986; H amnett, 1991; Forrest and M urie, 1986, 1987, 1988; Saunders, 1986, 1989a, 1990; Winter, 1994). The largely new phenomenon for Britain of mass home ownership, and the keen desire on the part of council tenants to avail themselves of the right to buy plan, brought forth questions on the influence of tenure in shaping the understandings and expectations of home and home life (Allan and Crow, 1989). Concurrently, other influences too played their part in shaping questions about the meaning of home. These included a rapidly developing feminist critique concerning the androcentric conceptualisation of home (Watson, 1986; Watson and Austerberry, 1986; H ochschild, 1989; M adigan, M unro and Smith, 1990; M unro and M adigan, 1991; Thompson, 1994) and the growing influence of post-modernism that drew attention to the central role of home in the politics of identity. It is intended for this paper to build on and extend existing work on the meanings of home. The starting point is a proposition put forward by Saunders (1984, 1986) that home ownership offers individuals a means through which they can attain a sense of ‘ontological security’ in their everyday lives. Saunders claims that home is where people feel in control of their environment, free from surveillance, free to be themselves and at ease, in the deepest psychological sense, in a world that might at times be experienced as threatening and uncontrollable. Although Saunders later added empirical support to his earlier proposition by drawing on material generated in a household survey in three English towns (Saunders, 1988, 1989a), the concept of ontological security and its application to home ownership as a means of attaining this state requires a more systematic elaboration that that found in Saunders’ work. Hence the attempt in this paper to break down the concept into operationalisable themes which are then addressed through a set of empirical data. In addition, two themes which develop from a claim made by Saunders and Williams (1988) are woven through the paper. Picking up on Saunders and Williams’ claim that the meaning of home reflects the society around it, the first theme focuses on the idea that the meanings of home are context specific. The argument will be made here that in order to understand the meanings of home for New © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 25 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns Zealanders, it is necessary to understand the long-standing, national preoccupation with land and home ownership and its economic, ideological and political importance in New Zealand’s development. The second theme concerns variations in the meanings of home. While this paper is limited to a consideration of variation in the meanings of home for older home owners and thus focuses on age as a key factor, other factors too like gender, ethnicity and class are also likely to impact on the way in which home is understood and a more complete understanding of variations in the meanings of home could benefit from further research that takes account of these factors. The group of older home owners on whom we focus is, by and large, one whose experiences and understandings of home have been shaped by the context of the D epression and World War II and their accompanying insecurities, and an expansionist, postWar, housing policy intended, at least in part, to protect N ew Zealanders against such events in the future. We argue that within this context the home offered the possibility to people of re-establishing a sense of security that had been largely undermined by the vicissitudes of the D epression. In so doing we raise issues regarding the generalisability of our findings and speculate on first, whether conceptions of home change as people age and are therefore age dependent and second, on whether our findings might be generalisable to other largely home owning countries that share common historical experiences. The following section examines in more detail the concept of ontological security as developed in the work of Anthony G iddens and extended into the debate on the meaning of home by Saunders. Section 3 briefly outlines the research that provides the data for this paper. Section 4 draws on the research material to explore systematically, the contention that home ownership does provide a means through which a sense of security can be sustained. The focus of Section 5 is the historical context in which home ownership developed as the dominant tenure in N ew Zealand. Particular attention is paid to the economic and ideological impact of the D epression in shaping the desire for both establishing a home and achieving home ownership. Ontological security In order to examine the idea that the home may represent a response to the ‘problem of ontological security’ (G iddens, 1984), it 26 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security is first necessary to clarify what is meant by the term itself. Stated simply, ontological security is a sense of confidence and trust in the world as it appears to be. It is a security of being. G iddens (1990) describes ontological security as the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of their social and material environments. Basic to a feeling of ontological security is a sense of the reliability of persons and things. Ontological security has to do with: . . . ‘being’ or, in the terms of phenomenology, ‘being-in-theworld.’ But it is an emotional, rather than a cognitive, phenomenon, and it is rooted in the unconscious (G iddens, 1990: 92). G iddens argues that ontological security is a deep psychological need for individuals in all societies. It is founded on the establishment of the trust relationships of early childhood, and is closely connected with routine, through the pervasive influence of habit. G iddens contends that people work to maintain a framework of ontological security in their everyday lives, an activity which he describes as ‘an ongoing accomplishment of lay actors’ (G iddens, 1976: 117). M uch of the work that goes into maintaining or restoring a sense of ontological security takes place in the private realm, where tensions built up from the constant surveillance in other settings of daily life can be relieved. U nlike G offman (1959) who sees backstage, or the private realm, as a place of preparation for the front stage performance, G iddens sees the private realm as a place where people’s basic security systems can be restored. A key feature of G iddens’ depiction of ontological security, and one with which Saunders disagrees (Saunders, 1989b), is the distinction made between the nature of ontological security in the premodern and the modern worlds, in particular that its relation to day to day routines differs systematically between the two worlds (G iddens, 1989: 278). U nlike pre-modern worlds, where ontological security was sustained by the routine of face to face interaction within the kinship system, ontological security in the modern world is fragile and tenuous in nature. This is largely due to the changed nature of trust mechanisms which in the modern world are based less on routine, face to face interaction, but instead, on abstract tokens like money and expert systems like professional expertise. M odern trust mechanisms therefore, have more to do with technical effectiveness, than the moral worth they had in times past. As a consequence, ontological security has to be actively regrounded in © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 27 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns personal ties with others, which according to G iddens, helps account for the obsession that modern society has with relationships between friends, lovers and spouses. In short, G iddens argues that possibilities through which ontological security can be attained have been undermined by the rapidly changing nature of the modern world. H ere his position takes on something of an anti-urban tone. It also sounds very much like an alternative rendition of Simmel’s claim that the modern metropolis is characterised by indifference, the blasé attitude and individualism. This is the point too where Saunders takes issue with G iddens. Saunders (1986) argues that G iddens is not correct to stress the importance of natural, rather than created environments for the maintenance of ontological security. H e asks, for example, what is the difference in type of routine between people in the modern world going to work every day, over the same route, on the same train, to the same destination and the peasant of times past treading the same fields on a regular basis? Why should the latter routine maintain ontological security, while the former does not? For Saunders the important point is that the day to day activity in both worlds is routinised and takes place through familiar time-space paths. U nlike G iddens, Saunders can see no necessity for these paths to be ‘natural’ rather than ‘created’. Once it is accepted that ontological security can be maintained in the built environment, it is only a small step further to Saunders’ proposition that the home is the key locale in modern society where ontological security can be sought. The research Our interest in the meanings of home arose during the course of a larger piece of research designed to examine aspects of housing wealth inheritance in N ew Zealand. This subproject on the meanings of home drew on interview data from a subsample of housing inheritors, who in the large majority of cases had inherited from their spouse. In all, 53 in-depth interviews were carried out. At the time of the interviews not all the respondents were home owners, but all had been at some stage within the previous four years. Almost all the respondents were middle aged or older, only two respondents were aged under 50, and a further six were aged between 50 and 59. Of the 53 respondents, 41 were women and 12 were men, which reflects the statistical fact that the male partner of 28 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security a married couple dies first. All respondents were Pakeha (that is there were no M aori, Pacific Island or Asian respondents).1 M ost respondents were widowed (47), 4 were married and 2 were single. We thought it significant too, that four fifths of our respondents had parents who had been home owners. Given the make-up of the sample, the focus of this paper is on the meanings of home of only one group within New Zealand society, older home owners. This limited focus, while on the one hand allowing us to develop more fully the argument that understanding the wider social context is vital to understanding the meanings of home, on the other ensures that no claims can be made that the meanings of home held by the respondents are representative of the total population. This raises the issue of whether the people in the sample hold the views they do because of the specific sets of life experiences they have gone through, whether their views simply reflect the fact that home comes to mean different things as people age and pass through different stages in the life cycle, or whether their views reflect an interweaving of these two factors. To address this issue further research needs to be done with younger home owners and people in the rental sector. We can argue however, that the insights offered from the interview data are likely to be generalisable to a broad range of middle aged and elderly New Zealanders, given that 86% of all those aged 65 and older are owner occupiers. We also suggest that the views on home articulated by our respondents might be very similar to those held by most elderly people in western countries which have similar high home ownership rates to New Zealand. Home as a source of ontological security In light of the previous discussion on ontological security, it can be argued that ontological security is maintained when the following four conditions are met: (i) home is the site of constancy in the social and material environment. (ii) home is a spatial context in which the day to day routines of human existence are performed. (iii) home is a site where people feel most in control of their lives because they feel free from the surveillance that is part of the contemporary world. (iv) home is a secure base around which identities are constructed. © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 29 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns In this section interview data is used to establish the extent to which the home can provide a basis for these four conditions to be met and thus a source of ontological security. ( i) H ome as constancy in the social and material environment G iddens’ conceptualisation of ontological security is complex. H e refers to it as an emotional phenomenon rooted in the unconscious, rather than as a cognitive phenomenon. A more general understanding of ontological security might be as a sense of feeling at ease, or at home in a world which can appear external and threatening. Yet sometimes overlooked in discussions of this concept is G iddens’ recognition that ontological security is strongly linked to the material environment. The material environment in the modern world is the created or built environment. In keeping with Saunders’ position, our view is that the created environments of the modern world can maintain an ontological security that is no more or less fragile or tenuous than that achieved in the natural environments of the pre-modern world. That is because no environments of themselves, whether natural or created, are imbued with essential qualities supportive of ontological security. Environments can only be a source of security, or a site through which ontological security can be attained, through the meanings attached to them. Therefore, as Saunders suggests, it hardly matters whether an environment is natural or created. The routine and comfort of the ‘time-space paths’ of ease and familiarity can be achieved in either natural or built environments. What is at issue, however, is the extent to which ontological security is a deep psychological need. In contrast to G iddens’ overly psychological position, we would argue that while ontological security may be deeply rooted in the unconscious, it is also a phenomenon that is actively sought at a conscious level. The active search for ontological security is, therefore, a form of social action and like any other social action, is shaped and constrained by the particular framework or setting in which it occurs. The means through which ontological security can be attained is thus likely to vary according to the particularities of the social context. The specific aspect of the built environment pertinent to this analysis is the ‘home’. Home is an encompassing category that links together a material environment, in this case the physical structure of a house, with a deeply emotional set of meanings to do with permanence and continuity. While other facets of the built environment, 30 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security like churches or familiar streets and neighbourhoods, might also offer a strong sense of familiarity, it is the home that provides the material environment most closely associated with permanence and continuity. In particular, the control and privacy associated with the home does not extend to other features of the built environment. Our interview data indicated that the sense of permanency associated with home is neither naturally occurring nor instant but is created over time. This creation is most often conceptualised as ‘making a house into a home’. It is viewed as a process through which an empty shell of a house is slowly reconstructed into a home by the constant patterns of social interaction of those living in the house: the family. It was generally agreed that homes could not be bought. H ouses were bought and made into homes. H ouses are just buildings. T he people in them make them homes. I think you’ve got to live in a place for a while before it becomes a home. It takes a long time for a house to become a home. We had a new house and it took a long time even with all my furniture in it to be one. A family in it is also important. The two factors most commonly cited as part of the process of home creation were home ownership and family. In fact for almost all our respondents the connections between ownership, family and home were so deep that they went unquestioned. These connections were nicely summed up by one respondent who said: W hen you move into a house a home grows as the family grows and it grows with you because you own it. A recurring theme in the discussions on home ownership was the security and stability it offered. For example: It gives you a real stake, an interest you wouldn’t normally have. It provides you with real roots which you can progress from. N o one could take it off you. You always have a roof over your head. Being able to have your own place to do as you like with it I suppose comes into it. But I think more of security. On the other hand, renting was generally seen as much more of a risky business with vulnerable tenants subject to the whims of the landlord and eviction a constant fear. © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 31 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns Knowing that you’re there and you’re not likely to have it sold over your head. T hat’s the greatest fear of people, that it will be sold and you can’t do anything about it. W hen you own you know you’re not going to get the rug whipped out from under you. In a rental property, in one minute and out the nex t. For our sample of older home owners, home also meant the constancy of family, with approximately 90% of respondents associating home with bringing up children and being surrounded by family. As one respondent commented: You wouldn’t talk about your home as just a house, would you? T hen you have a family and they say it’s home. T he whole point of making a house a home is for every member of your family to enjoy and feel part of it. The link between home and the daily routines and important rituals of family life will be commented on in the next section. H ere we wish to highlight the sense of continuity that home represents. This sense is most clearly exemplified in the issue of inheritance. There are numerous beliefs about the value of home ownership in N ew Zealand. For example, it is widely believed that paying rent is ‘throwing money down the drain’ whereas home ownership is a good investment. For most of their lives our respondents had takenfor-granted that, not only was home ownership a good investment and a way of building up capital, but also that on their deaths, their children or other family members would benefit from this investment. For example: I think most people have pride of ownership and who they want to pass it on to. W hen they own a house they know it is a set investment that improves it value and provides [ the children with] some further security. I don’t think people are so much interested in the property but their family. W hat they’ve built up or accrued in – like they want to know will be shared among their offspring. I feel very strongly about this. The importance of knowing they could pass on the value of their homes to their families was shown by respondent attitudes to the issue of reverse mortgages. While most respondents could see the 32 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security practical benefits of such schemes, all but one said they would not consider taking out a reverse mortgage except as a measure of last resort. They wanted to be able to pass on their property to their families and could not contemplate the prospect of the value of their homes being eroded, even if it meant having fewer financial worries in their own lives. The sense of continuity that home represents is further borne out by the way in which beneficiaries of housing wealth understand the significance of their inheritance. G enerally, the inheritance is perceived as a ‘special money’ because of its association with home and family. As a consequence, it is treated differently from other monies like wages, salaries or lotto winnings, and seldom spent carelessly. The prospect of ‘frittering away’ an inheritance is generally viewed as an anathema (D upuis, 1997). ( ii) H ome as the spatial contex t for the establishment of routine A significant proportion of our daily activities are routine actions, or at least actions which have a sense of the routine about them. Routine can be understood as the following of familiar time-space paths or courses of action. Routine is also associated with the predictability of daily life and the patterns of living that are regularly followed. Perhaps the most salient characteristic of routine is familiarity. Of all aspects of familiarity associated with home, it is the familiarity with family and children in particular that was alluded to most commonly in the interviews. Often familiarity extended far beyond immediate family members. I guess being on the Coast might have made a difference. You had people come into your home and you shared it. Up until your family had their family they always used to share. On S aturday night we would have open house and all their friends would be there, and I’d never know how many would be there for a meal and on the S unday morning I would never know how many bods would be in my son’s bedroom. T hey’d be on the floor, and top and tailing, great big six footers . . . it was nice. Although our respondents were no longer engrossed in the daily routines of child rearing, their association of home with children was still extremely strong. A common topic during the interviews was the familiarity with which even adult children treated the home of their parents. © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 33 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns M y children come around and when I say to them ‘you wouldn’t do that at your place’, they say, ‘N o, but we’re home.’ M any of our respondents conceptualised home as the site where intergenerational relations of help and support took place. H ome is where my parents lived, and it’s been a place I’ve been able to go after marriage for their help if I needed it. I’ve offered the same to my family and it’s a place they still come to. H ome is where M um and Dad are. H ome has always been a place where all the family can bring their troubles. Even after [ my son] was married and they had problems with his career, he used to always come down, and his wife would come with him, to ask his father and seek out his advice. H ome was also strongly associated with the rites and rituals of the collective life of a family and was seen as the gathering place for family celebrations like birthdays, Christmas and weddings. R ituals reinforce the family-home link, as they become a marker of who is included in ‘family’ being invited into the home. Over time the composition of the family changes. Children move out, new families are formed and spouses die. The memory of home remains, however, as do feelings of nostalgia when associating specific life stages with particular houses. One respondent commented that he remained in his home after the death of his wife because they had lived there together and he would not feel right living anywhere else. On the other hand, a number of widows we talked to felt that home was no longer the same for them now they were alone. One said: S ince my husband died home isn’t home any more and that’s the way I feel. H e’s been gone for five years now and although you get used to being on your own most of the time, well it’s home to me now I suppose. In the last six months I have looked on this place as home . . . but definitely it’s not what it used to be. Yet almost all conceded that memories and nostalgia were an intrinsic component of the way they understood home. M emories are very important. Being in the same place for so long, especially when the children grow up, everything is there still. T hey all come home regularly, especially since I’ve been sick. We built this house and it has memories everywhere. I don’t want to move. 34 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security Two of my boys don’t live locally any more, so I was more surrounded by my family before. But I can still be, as it’s where they can come to. A ll my memories are here and things I’ve collected over the years. H owever, not all memories were joyful. M any were tinged with grief over the death of a spouse and for some the power of memories was so strong as to be unbearable. In my other place . . . when my husband died it was not the same. S ome people can’t leave because of the memories, but I had to. The desire to return to the familiarity of home, especially after a holiday, was a further theme that emerged from the interviews. For example: You always want to get home. I’ve got to face up to going on a holiday now, and as you get older its so hard to accommodate yourself into other people, especially when you’ve been living on your own for a while and you have your own funny little ways and you find it very hard to adjust. Even the matter of a strange bed. A s everybody says, you are always happy to get home. I can’t get home quick enough from my holidays. I get homesick. It’s lovely to come home. It’s the best part of a holiday. The final element to note is the routine associated with the seasons. A number of respondents talked about the importance of their gardens and the pleasure of being able to watch familiar plants flower season after season. As one woman commented: I was going to shift until I saw the camellias coming out here, and I’m going to come back and haunt them over my roses if they throw them out. ( iii) H ome as a site where people feel most in control of their lives because they feel free from the surveillance that is part of the contemporary world A third aspect of ontological security focuses on home as a refuge from the outside world. That the home is perceived in this way indicates that it is a site where people feel free from surveillance. © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 35 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns I think [ home] is a refuge . . . home is a place where you should go and be on your own if you want to and you’ve got a place to hide. W hen you own a house you can close the door on the world when you go in because it doesn’t belong to anyone else but you. A number of widows commented on the comfort having their own home gave them after their husband’s death. H ome provided a refuge where they could go through the grief process in private, in whatever way they chose. W hen my husband died, my home became absolutely everything to me. If I was up at the supermarket shopping and there might be some music from our old days of dancing and I’d scuttle home and as soon as I shut the front door I was secure and comfortable. In my circumstances I could have curled up and stayed inside forever, but I had to make myself get out. Particularly now since I’ve lost my husband, this is mine and I feel secure here. H ome was also characterised as a place of total privacy where one could do as one pleased without disturbances from the outside world. M any respondents commented on the sense of autonomy they had as home owners and the freedom they had to shut out the rest of the world. Frequent references were made to ‘being able to do what you wanted, when you wanted’, in your own home. We have a sleep out. W hen I don’t want to speak to anybody I go out there for the afternoon. I can’t hear the phone or if anyone comes to the door and that’s good. It’s a place you can do what you want, come and go as you please and close the door and shut the world out. Being able to control the environment in other ways was also important and respondents spoke of adapting their homes in ways to suit themselves: of changing the colour of the decor, putting in a garden and keeping pets. M ost felt it was important to be part of their own environment and home ownership allowed them the ability to ‘do their own thing’. T his is my survival plot, if I need to I can turn the whole world from garden into a vegetable plot. 36 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security While the home offered a locale in which people could be autonomous from the outside world, within the home itself autonomy was more of a problem. The majority of women respondents commented on the sense of autonomy within the home they experienced after their husband’s death which they had not felt before. For most, their husbands had been the head of the household and living alone gave them the chance to experience control within the home, for perhaps the first time in their lives. As one widow commented: Well, I was never boss, but I can be myself and I am boss now because there is only me. ( iv) H ome as a secure base around which people can construct their identities The confidence in one’s self identity is an element in G iddens’ depiction of ontological security. In this section we argue that within the particular context of N ew Zealand society, being a home owner provides a secure base around which identities can be constructed. In N ew Zealand, becoming a home owner is viewed almost as a rite of passage. It is looked on as an achievement and a source of pride. To be a home owner is to have ‘made it’. H ome ownership, therefore, is part of accomplishing an adult identity. To me [ home ownership] is about doing your own thing and not having to answer to anyone. I’d like to think it was pride . . . but it is definitely one of the motivating factors and a sense of satisfaction and achievement. H ereditary. You grow up with the idea of owning your own home. I was brought up that if you rented you were really throwing your money away, and to own a house was an achievement, a mark of your success. We would argue that home ownership is also part of the normative culture of N ew Zealand. M any respondents simply looked on home ownership as the expected pattern of behaviour for couples of ‘their generation’. I think it’s inbred in us. We were always brought up with the idea you’d save up and buy your own home. I guess it provides stability. . . . For people my age group . . . that was our goal, to own your own © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 37 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns home. I don’t think there was an option to rent as far as we were concerned. In our generation I don’t think we thought of anything else. You got married and got a house. I think we all like our own patch of dirt though. H ome ownership was also looked on as ‘just part of being a N ew Zealander’. M ost men in N ew Z ealand are keen to own their own homes, because their parents did too. M y father did and Jim’s father did. W hen they all do it you’re sort of used to it. It goes back to our ancestors who came here for a purpose – to own land and a home. It’s part of a do-it-yourself Kiwi business. Our respondents also recognised that home ownership offered them the possibility of modifying their environment and thus stamping their personality on their home. One respondent described her home as: . . . a personal possession which has the stamp of your own identity. It’s also a place for people and families to come back to. H ome should be a place for people to feel comfortable in, with the children and their families coming here. It’s somewhere you can stamp your own personality on to. It doesn’t have to be a house. It could be a flat, or a tumble-down cottage but it is somewhere you can do your own thing and have your personal space around you. G endered identities were also fashioned through the home. The women we spoke to tended strongly to fit the stereotypical gender role of the housewife and mother. With regard to the home, they tended to be the caretakers of the wealth stored and displayed in the home and were largely responsible for the cosmetic embellishment of the home. M en, too, tended to fit the stereotypical roles. In general, they had looked after the structural side of things both within and outside the home and had also tended to do the kinds of jobs that add value to the house such as handyman jobs, carpentry and painting and papering. 38 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security The context of home ownership The years in which almost all our respondents entered owner occupation were those from the immediate post-D epression days until the 1960s. The group they comprise within the home ownership sector is one profoundly affected by the economic destruction of the 1930s which, at its height, saw close to 40% of all male workers aged between 16 and 45 unemployed.2 We argue that to understand the role of home ownership in N ew Zealand society it is necessary to understand the impact of the D epression on N ew Zealanders. According to the social historian Simpson (1984: 17), the experience of the D epression for the majority of N ew Zealanders was one of ‘sheer misery and horror’ that made an unprecedented impact on the national psyche which, as time went on, grew to be more than an event or episode in N ew Zealand’s history. The impact of the D epression was such that it became part of a national mythology, so strong that it had the power to shape N ew Zealand society for decades after the event itself had passed. Simpson writes of the mythological dimension to the D epression as follows: To say that the D epression is a great sustaining myth is not to say that it never happened; it is simply to say that we have forced ourselves to continue to live out for forty years certain fantasies forged in its furnace (Simpson, 1984: 18). The fantasies to which Simpson refers involved feelings of insecurity and vulnerability, and were passed down to the next generation. In the following extract Simpson vividly recounts the impact of such stories on him, as a N ew Zealand child growing up in the 1950s and living in a society obsessed with, and stifled by, the memory of the D epression. The D epression is part of the folklore of my childhood, a grey and ill-defined monster, an unspeakable disaster, and yet a triumphant major chord. It cast a long shadow, a blight on everything it touched, but it was never recounted in detail. M emories of wasted years, hugged tight to the self and never disgorged – just T he Depression. M y generation, how could we know? You wouldn’t understand it unless you saw it . . . It was only something which was, and had been experienced, the final world in quarrels: ‘You’d never think that way if you’d known what I knew in The D epression’ (Simpson, 1984: 12). © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 39 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns Some of our respondents could remember the D epression and remarked on their experience of vulnerability at the time. For example, one woman commented: I think owning our homes is so important as a throwback to the depression years, when I remember my own parents being thrown off their property because they couldn’t pay a mortgage. It would be misleading, however, to argue that a belief in the positive aspects of home ownership arose in N ew Zealand only as a result of the D epression. It already had a long history and was well established as the majority tenure when the experience of the D epression made evident the security of outright home ownership. The belief in individual property ownership as the most appropriate form of tenure was institutionalised very early into both the N ew Zealand ethos and legislative pattern (Thorns, 1984: 218). The state in N ew Zealand has had a long history of interventions aimed at setting the conditions through which at least certain groups of N ew Zealanders could acquire ownership. Following the nineteenth century Land Wars, the confiscation and alienation of vast tracts of M aori land enabled Pakeha (European) settlers to lease and buy land for farming (Sorrenson, 1981; Oliver, 1988). As the colony became more populous and developed economically, urban centres grew in size, and the support initially given by the state for rural land ownership and the setting up of farms was gradually extended to include urban home ownership. With the onset of the twentieth century, came a flow of legislation aimed at extending home ownership to the working class, with the result that by 1921 nearly 60% of all N ew Zealand households were owner occupied. The social and economic impact of the D epression on N ew Zealand can be observed in tenure figures which show that by 1936 the proportion of home owners had declined by nearly 10% to just over 50% of all households. The wider impacts of the D epression set the scene for the election in 1935 of the first Labour G overnment in N ew Zealand’s history. On taking power Labour set about to insulate the N ew Zealand economy from the effects of external economic forces such as those that produced the D epression. N ew Zealand was to be a utopia in which affluence was maintained, inequalities tempered, and above all, security sustained (D unstall, 1981: 398). F undamental to these aims was the establishment of a welfare state which was intended to guarantee 40 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security . . . to every person able and willing to work an income sufficient to provide him (sic) and his dependants with everything necessary to make a ‘home’ and ‘home life’ in the best sense of the meaning of those terms (Quoted in Sinclair, 1959: 259). Within the grand scheme of re-establishing a sound economy, full employment and a full blown welfare state, housing was to play so vital a role that suburban housing was described as the central motif in N ew Zealand’s post-War social pattern. The vast tracts of two and three bedroom bungalows sprawling across new suburbs, represented dominant beliefs about family life, child rearing, privacy and space. H ome ownership lay at the heart of ‘the prevailing ethos, reflecting aspirations for security, independence, and respectability’ (D unstall, 1981: 404). Between 1935 and 1950, the means of achieving the dreamed of security of home ownership for low and modest income earners was through a ‘happy marriage’ between state departments and the private sector; a union which also acted as a major economic pump primer for creating a demand for manufactured goods to be used in building and other associated activities, a demand which was to be met by newly set up local, protected industries. Labour’s proposed housing plan was two pronged. F irst, a state housing programme was established through which the state would finance and administer a stock of privately constructed, rental houses; and second, an offer of cheap mortgages was made which would allow for certain groups of people to become home owners.3 In the years from 1936 to 1951, home ownership rates increased from 50.23% to 61.38% of all households, attesting to the success of the government’s strategy to support home ownership. D uring the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, N ew Zealand, like most other western countries, experienced a period of sustained prosperity. U shered in by a change of government from Labour to N ational, the 1950s and 60s saw a further reinforcement in the support of home ownership, although the first stages of the residualisation of state housing became apparent. The ideology of home ownership was made clear in the 1950 White Paper on H ousing which stated: The G overnment has great faith in the value of home ownership. . . . home building and home ownership develop initiative, selfreliance, thrift and other good qualities which go to make up the moral strength of the nation. H ome owners too, by building up © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 41 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns an equity in their properties, are saving in one of the safest and most effective ways . . . Above all, home ownership promotes responsible citizenship (AJH R , 1950 J6: 3). This period saw three important state initiatives in the promotion of home ownership. The first, the G roup Building Scheme, was initiated to stimulate and streamline the large scale building of low cost houses (AJH R , 1960 B13: 11). In this scheme private builders worked with the state. The state facilitated the scheme by preparing and making available serviced, subdivided sections and supporting a flexible system of deferred payment on the sections, setting the final sales price of the house with the builder and agreeing to buy the house from the builder if no immediate purchaser was available. The second post-War initiative supporting home ownership was the State Advances 3% lending scheme, initially intended to help young couples and families into new housing and later extended to existing houses. The third initiative, the Family Benefits Act of 1958, was intended to assist married couples with children to buy a home. This act allowed for the capitalisation of the family benefit in favour of a lump sum worked out at a 3% interest rate. Overall, the decades of the 1950s and 1960s saw home ownership rates increase from 61% to nearly 70% of all households. In this section we have described the context in which most of our respondents became home owners. It has been shown that the D epression brought with it a fear of insecurity that, as time went on, took on near mythical proportions. The election of the F irst Labour G overnment in 1935 can be seen as a collective response to this fear of insecurity. The prime role played by housing in the attempt to establish a society protected from the influences of external events can be analysed as a means of attaining security. A major response to the insecurity that accompanied the D epression was that the home became the symbol of continuity, reliability and constancy: all features of human existence that were undermined in the D epression. It also became the spatial context in which the routines of daily life were carried out, as well as a solid base from which feelings of identity could flourish. Conclusion This paper has built on and expanded existing work on the meanings of home, stressing in particular that these meanings are multi42 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security faceted and complex because they develop in specific temporal and social contexts. The central focus of this paper is the notion that the home can provide a locale in which people can work at attaining a sense of ontological security in a world that at times is experienced as threatening and uncontrollable. The extent to which home and home life meets the conditions for the maintenance of ontological security has been assessed through an exploration of home as the site of constancy in the social and material environment; home as a spatial context in which the day to day routines of human existence are performed; home as a site free from the surveillance that is part of the contemporary world which allows for a sense of control that is missing in other locales; and home as a secure base around which identities are constructed. G iddens asserts that a framework through which ontological security can be attained is actively sought by individuals. In this paper we have attempted to provide a more concrete understanding of what this framework might be. We have argued that while ontological security is complex, in order to understand its nature it is necessary to understand the context in which it is sought. Therefore, if ontological security can be attained through the home, and in particular through home ownership, as has been suggested by Saunders in particular and endorsed by the respondents in this study, it is necessary to understand the wider context in which home and home ownership has developed such significance. The interview data which provided the empirical base for this paper supported the contention that the D epression of the 1930s, and the mythology that developed around this event, had a powerful influence on the way older people have constructed their understandings of the nature of security and the role of home ownership in attaining a sense of security. The group of home owners whose understandings we sought, not only pursued the maintenance of ontological security through the economic benefits they perceived home ownership brought them, but also through the routines and practices which they established, and the binding familial relationships they built up over a long period of time, within the specific material environment of the home. These factors are, in part, the explanation for the strong reaction of older people to the N ew Zealand G overnment’s asset testing regime for long term rest home and hospital care which could result in the elderly having to sell their homes to pay for health care. Such schemes have disrupted enduring beliefs and practices and reawakened the spectre of the D epression. They are therefore viewed by older people as a threat to © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 43 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns the sense of security which they have spent their lives building up, an intrinsic aspect of which is the ability to transfer the benefits of home ownership on to the next generation, so protecting them from adversity (Thorns, 1996; D upuis and Thorns, 1996). This paper has focused on the meanings of home for only one group of home owners: older home owners. We therefore can do no more than speculate over whether the views held by this group are age dependent, or whether they reflect the views held by N ew Zealand home owners of other age groups. A number of our respondents noted that home and home life were different for younger people than for people of their age group. For example, one woman thought that: . . . these days [ home is] just a place to live. I really do think that with young people these days. T he ones that I know mainly, they seem to be all having two jobs, the wives and the husbands, and it’s just a place, it’s not home as I knew it. W hen I stayed at home I didn’t go out to work or anything. I enjoyed being at home. M y mother was the same and my grandmother was the same. We enjoyed looking after the families and doing all the things that have to be done for the family and I can’t say that I’d have been happier having done anything else. H ome was a home where children enjoyed coming home to. T hey could be happy and content in their home . . . I can’t speak for an awful lot of people, but those that I do know, it doesn’t seem to me that the homes are the same as they used to be. It may be the case that for younger people, whose life experiences differ significantly from the older people we spoke to in the process of this research, home does not hold the same importance. On the other hand, it might be that older people are merely commenting on such observable differences between generations as greater mobility and different types of daily routines which involve less time spent at home. That younger people’s patterns of daily routines differ from those of older people, does not in itself mean that younger people do not seek ontological security, nor that their home does not offer them a site through which this can be attained. In a world of ever increasing surveillance it is likely that the home can still be a site which offers a refuge from the outside world as well as a base around which identities can be constructed. Kumar (1995), writing about the development of ‘informational capitalism’, notes how the home has become increasingly important as a site for leisure and 44 © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 H ome, homeownership and the search for ontological security entertainment with ‘going out’ being replaced by ‘staying in’. With the spread of tele-banking, tele-shopping and tele-education alongside home based entertainment on television, video and home computers linked to the internet, the home has become refashioned as the site where people’s experiences are finding a new intensity. H owever, home here is a place rather than necessarily a set of shared meanings and activities. The new information society puts the whole world into the hands of an increasing number of individuals. For these individuals their sense of ontological security may well be fashioned through lives lived essentially independently of, and isolated from, each other with no necessity for them to engage in collective activity, with, as Kumar suggests, ‘the home becoming less of a haven in a heartless world for the family and more like a hotel for paying (and non-paying) guests’ (Kumar, 1995: 159). This sentiment too was shared by some of our respondents. For example one woman’s thoughts on the intergenerational changes in the way home was viewed were expressed as follows: Because of the mobility of the youngsters, a lot of them now only see it as a hotel and I don’t think it means so much to them as it does to us. The analysis presented in this paper thus raises questions for future research, particularly on how meanings of home vary across different groups of the home owning population and for tenants, and how these are likely to be reshaped through a changing social context and the extension of home based work, consumption and entertainment. The older people interviewed for this study had a sense that change was occurring, with the next generation much less committed to the home as the site of their ontological security. Whether this will mean that the next generation has a constant search for that security, or whether they will become closer to the indifferent, blasé individual of the modern world, or the fragmented self of the postmodern world is as yet a matter of conjecture. University of Canterbury, N Z Received 7 February 1997 F inally accepted 15 September 1997 Notes 1 The sample is not generalisable to the N Z population as a whole, but likely to represent the specific group of elderly South Island home owners reflecting the lower © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998 45 A nn Dupuis and David C. T horns incidence of M aori and Pacific Island Polynesian groups in the South Island population as well as the lower incidence of home ownership rates for non-Pakeha groups. At the 1991 Census, the percentage of owner occupied households (ie with, and without a mortgage) for the total population was 73.6%, while the percentage of M aori ethnic group households was 54.4%. The make-up of the sample also represents the ethnic characteristics of South Island home buyers of the decades of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, which would have been substantially Pakeha. The word Pakeha refers to N ew Zealand people of European descent. 2 If female unemployment had also been included the percentage of unemployment would have been considerably higher. 3 These loans fell into two categories both of which attracted certain restrictions. Ordinary loans had an interest rate of 41⁄ 8% and special loans a rate as low as 3%. References AJH R : Appendices to the Journals of the H ouse of Representatives, (various years), Wellington: N ew Zealand H ouse of Representatives. Allan, G. and Crow, G., (eds.), H ome and Family: Creating the Domestic S phere, Basingstoke: M acmillan. 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