Unneighbourliness And The Unmaking Of Home

Dwellings become home through the social, emotional and psychological meanings that dwellers attach to them. These meanings often revolve around home as a haven, a site of autonomy and a vehicle for the expression of social status. Yet, homes can also be unmade, not only through external acts of 'domicide', but also through networks of local social relations in which homes are embedded, such as those with neighbours. This paper explores the role of "unneighbourliness" in home unmaking as recounted by clients of neighbourhood mediation services in Queensland, Australia. It shows that disputes with neighbours can undermine one's sense of home as haven, autonomy and status. But it also reveals how home (un)making occurs as a dialectic in the context of physical proximity and shared boundaries between residential dwellings where the homemaking practices of one neighbour spill over into, and impede, the sense of home of another.