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Contributors to the housing field broadly agree that home is a multi-dimensional concept. Indeed, informed by the proposition that home and housing should not be conflated, the social, psychological and emotional elements of home have been well documented. Home is thought to be subjectively experienced. As such, some have shown that people defined as homeless may not actually feel homeless, but rather experience their accommodation or situation as home. This paper is based on ethnographic research with a group of people sleeping rough in Brisbane, Australia. It argues that their problematic experiences residing in public places, together with their biographies of feeling disconnected from society, underpinned their ideas of home. For people in this study, housing and home were synonymous. The physical structure of a house was important to assume control over their day-to-day lives. Home, however, stood for something beyond housing. Home was constructed as a signifier of normality, and as a commitment to participation in Australian society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Master planned estates (MPEs) are marketed, sold and purchased on the basis of powerful symbols of security and aesthetics, as well as shared aspirations, values and lifestyle patterns. Living in an MPE not only represents a significant economic investment, but also provides residents with symbolic capital that comes with living in a new, secure, and high status community. Drawing on a case study of an MPE in Brisbane, Queensland, this paper examines the discursive strategies used by residents when the symbolic representation of their suburb is challenged by an ongoing problem of delinquency. By reviewing resident ‘blogs’ on community forums, it examines how the dissonance between the representation and the experience of the MPE is collectively managed, through the medium of talk, to rationalise and neutralise the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]