House and home and their interaction with changes in New Zealand's urban system, households and family structures

The place where we live is one of the key locales which shapes our sense of place and enables us to develop our sense of who we are. The paper explore s the linkages between the literature on "the home" and the meaning of plac e. We argue that "homes" are special kinds of places and are socially const ructed in a continual and changing process. Houses as material objects and homes as symbolic entities are shaped and reshaped by owners and tenants ov er time in response to both changes in the individual's life course and the social context within which they are set. We therefore interpret the meani ng of home against the changing backdrop of New Zealand's urban system and the two decades of economic and social change from 1980 to the late 1990s.