Dispersion : Family, Identity, and the Delocalization of Home

Home connotes a single geographical space. City, region, and country are often called upon to describe the condition of Home. Associations tied to place are privileged and often dominate meanings of Home. Additionally, the idea of Home is coupled with the idea of family. Home is the territory where family is defined.
The geographic fragmentation of family is a common contemporary condition. The dispersed family often requires a reinterpretation of Home. My thesis proposes to investigate the meaning of Home as the territory in which the group identity of the geographically dispersed family is constructed.
In this investigation, I will draw upon personal ideas of Home and family. Although personally relevant, conditions of fragmentation, asynchronicity, plurality, and dispersion are also representative of a general post-modern reality. In assessing an alternate nature of Home, I will consider globalizing trends including increased personal mobility and electronic communication, multiple sites of habitation, and wider social and infrastructural networks. As local spatial conditions dissolve or become blurred, temporal coordinates are elevated to emphasize and anchor the meaning of Home.