‘A solid partner in a fluid world’ and/or ‘line of flight’? Interpreting second homes in the era of mobilities

Abstract

The article is the product of the author's recent engagements in rural second home research in Norway. Sensing that the predominant everyday ‘meaning’ of second homes within Nordic countries generally is markedly different from the UK, the article draws attention to how they are contextually interpreted. From a focus on everyday life and post-capitalist critique, attention is given to the diversity of interpretations applicable to second homes consumption. Whilst ‘mainstream’ interpretations or readings tend to stress either the ‘elite’ character of second homes consumption or rootedness within more democratic ‘tradition’, foregrounding the context of the ‘era of mobilities’ presents two different readings. First, second home consumption appears congruent with a ‘dynamic heterolocalist’ existence, whereby ‘home’ is distributed across places of differing experiential qualities for the consumer. Second, and more radically, the latter reading can be challenged. It is suggested that instead of being functional for achieving home within the era of mobilities, second home consumption, not least through association with both representational and more-than-representational aspects of rurality, traces an attempted ‘line of flight’ to a heterotopic place and to potentially post-capitalist existential priorities. The conclusion calls for more in-depth research on second home consumption, whilst noting that despite any earlier radical message second homes remain elite forms of consumption.

Keywords:

• consumption
• mobilities
• reading for difference
• rurality
• second homes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all those I have met and engaged with in Norway and elsewhere over the past few years who have had research interests in rural second homes and related developments. There are too many people to list individually, but special thanks go to Nina Gunnerud Berg, Winfried Ellingsen, Svein Frisvoll, Kjell Overvåg, Vicent Querol, María Jesús Rivera Escribano, and Johan Fredrik Rye. As for the article itself, the usual disclaimers apply but I very much thank four constructive and insightful referees.

Notes

1. In terms of what is understood by ‘second home’, I initially follow Shucksmith's (1983, 174) definition of an ‘occasional residence of a household that usually lives elsewhere and which is primarily used for recreation purposes’. However, as the article progresses this may be seen as increasingly inadequate. Indeed, attention should be drawn both to the long global history of second home ownership and the great diversity of forms and experiences apparent around the world today (Bendix & Löfgren 2007; Rolshoven 2007; Paris 2011).

2. The two projects, for which I acted in an advisory capacity, were ‘Conceptions of centre and periphery and mobility's transforming power’ (Project leader: Winfried Ellingsen) and ‘The second home phenomenon and new rural conflicts. Implications for policies for a rural “part-time” repopulation’ (Project leader: Johan Fredrik Rye).

3. Sedentarism is represented, for example, within the humanistic geography tradition (Relph 1976), anti-nomadic prejudices (Malkki 1992), and in census concepts of ‘usual residence’ (Gustafson 2006; Paris 2009).

4. The ‘home’ literature has not engaged much with mobilities either, with the exception of work on transnationalism (Blunt & Dowling 2006). This is perhaps largely because, as Paris (2009, 295) recently noted, there is ‘an implicit assumption that there is one such special valued place [home] for each household’.

5. This also applies to the issue of ‘dwelling’, which for clarity is largely overlooked here; see Gallent (2007) and McIntyre (2006) for excellent considerations of second homes and dwelling.

6. The line is from Bruce Robinson's late 1960s film Withnail and I (1986) and refers to the protagonists’ access to a dilapidated second home in the English Lake District.

7. Per Petterson's novel Out Stealing Horses (2006) is an interesting expression of this reaffirmation within the Norwegian second homes context.

8. Slogan advertising Fabricom engineering services noted by the author at Stavanger Airport, 21 March 2010.

9. It is here that interpretation of urban second home consumption (not covered in this article), is likely to diverge.