Dysplacement and the Professionalization of the Home

Abstract This research directs our attention to the dynamics surrounding the changing cultural understanding of the place we call home. Traditionally, the home is regarded as a place of singularization that is to be aligned with the homeowner’s unique identity. This traditional meaning has come to be confronted with a contradictory understanding of the home as a marketplace asset. Homeowners come to experience a market-reflected gaze that shuns singularization while driving homeowners to exhibit expertise in aligning their homes with marketplace standards. Professionalization of the home, through marketplace expertise and standardization, discourages personalization, leading to an experience of disorientation with the place of home. In this ethnography of the home renovation marketplace, we build on the concept of ‘dysplacement’ whereby this contradictory cultural understanding of the home disrupts the homeowner’s ability to achieve implacement. The concept of dysplacement and the corresponding place disorientation experience has the potential to enrich our theoretical understanding of place by integrating the cultural meaning of place as a domain with marketplace dynamics and individual consumer practices surrounding place.