Images Added to Melody Graulich's (Religion and Identity) Post

New version of the post here:


http://neasaconference.blogspot.com/2011/08/melody-graulichs-religion-and-identity.html

Week 4 (and 1-3) Recap and Open Thread

This week a presenter from the Places and Spaces panel, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, blogged about five different aspects of the complicated and crucial American themes of house and home, domestic life and identity, and the American Dream. Her five posts are:

--An introductory post on her major focal points here;

--A post on realities and images of the home post-World War II here;

--A post on domestic consumerism and etiquette over the centuries here;

--A post on recent challenges to federal homeownership policies here;

--And a post on some of her favorite musical images of home here.

Please feel free to continue reading and commenting on all five posts! For your convenience, here are links to the three prior weekly recaps:

--In week 3 we heard from the Pop Culture and Identity and Religion and Identity panels;

--In week 2 we heard from the Transnational and Religion and Identity panels;

--And in week 1 we began with the War and Transnational panels.

Please feel equally free to return to any one of those weeks and posts; they all continue to have a lot to say and offer, the posters will still get the benefit of your comments, and our pre-conference conversations will continue on as many levels as possible. As always, this recap can also serve as an Open Thread for any of those conversations. Next week, we hear from the Literature and Slavery panels!

Home Sings Me of Sweet Things

The issue of home, homeownership, popular culture, public policy, and the inextricable web they weave in our national narrative is fascinating… and I am pleased to be able to present my research and thoughts on the subject at the 2011 New England American Studies Association Conference in November. I hope you will join the “Places and Spaces” panel on Friday, November 4, 2011 at Plimoth Plantation.

In the mean time, I leave you with some of my favorite songs about home... and encourage you to share yours below. 

Little Boxes by Melvina Reynolds 

There's a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one,


And they're all made out of ticky tacky


And they all look just the same.

(or the same song performed by the amazing Pete Seeger) 

This Must Be the Place by the Talking Heads

But I guess I'm already there

I come home –she lifted up her wings

Guess that this must be the place

I can't tell one from another

Did I find you, or you find me?

Home is Where the Heart Is by Elvis Presley

Home is where the heart is

And my heart is anywhere you are

Anywhere you are is home

I don't need a mansion on a hill

That overlooks the sea

Anywhere you're with me is home

I’m Going Back Home by Nina Simone

I'm going back home where I was born

First I planned to stay but I can't live this way

I'm going back home where I was born

Written by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

University of Southern Maine, American and New England Studies 

Questioning Federal Homeownership Policy

“As a people we need, at all times, the encouragement of homeownership.” 

– Herbert Hoover, 1932

“Owning a home can increase responsibility and stake out a man’s place in his community. The man who owns a home has something to be proud of and good reason to protect and preserve it.” 

– Lyndon Johnson, 1968

“Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.”

– George W. Bush, 2002

Objectives of current U.S. Housing Policy are to ensure a minimum level of housing quality; to increase the supply of housing by stimulating new construction, maintenance, and improvement of existing stock; to maintain incentives for savings and investment; to stabilize rents and asset prices; to reduce racial and economic segregation; to stabilize construction and business cycles; to reduce crowding; to foster community development; and to encourage homeownership.^[i]

Federal government intervention to promote homeownership is justified on three grounds: (1) ownership creates positive public externalities, (2) low-income and minority households have inequitable access to ownership, and (3) owner-occupied housing is associated with the stability of the broader economy.

Each of these justifications can, and must, be examined critically: U.S. policy is based on the premise that everyone should be a homeowner, yet by so fervently praising the owned home, other types of housing are left unexplored.

Let me forward a question that the (brilliant) economist and New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman posed in 2008:

Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway?[ii]

I would further Krugman’s questions by drawing upon those posed by Associate Professor and Chair of Policy Programs at the New School for Public Engagement Alex F. Schwartz’s:

What is the role of housing policy in promoting vibrant communities and the economic interests and social wellbeing of the population? And, based on how we answer that question, what are the relationships between housing policy and energy, transportation, education, and other national programmatic priorities?[iii]

I encourage you to read “Home Not-So-Sweet Home” by Paul Krugman—he is succinct and convincing in arguing what I think are very pertinent issues in U.S. housing policy... namely that ownership has become fetishized to a point that we've come to ignore some salient issues it begets, including financial risk, global warming, and inequality.  Senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Adam S. Posen has weighed in on this in a recent "Room for Debate" article in the New York Times Online; "Problem: Home Ownership" is another recommended read. 


What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Krugman and Posen? Should homeownership receive less prominence in U.S. housing policy? Please share your musings below... 

Written by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

University of Southern Maine, American and New England Studies

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[i] Richard K Green and Stephen Malpezzi, A Primer on U.S. Housing Markets and Housing Policy (Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press, 2003): 85.

[ii] Paul Krugman, “Home Not-So-Sweet Home.” New York Times (June 23, 2008), http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opinion/23krugman.html (accessed December 10, 2010).

[iii] Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States: An Introduction (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006): 252.

Dream Homes: Domestic Consumerism and Etiquette

My post yesterday on Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House left me thinking about the plethora of ways that the fantasy and consumerism of home infiltrates our lives…

Think: Home Depot, Martha Stewart, HGTV, Extreme Makeover Home Edition… 

Each of these examples engages us in a home-oriented consumer-culture: a homeowner is responsible for a varied set of commodities and services to maintain the home, from general repairs and snow shoveling to garbage cans and washing machines… but in addition to that we are enticed by a (constructed) cultural ideal of home.  

This fantasy of the ideal home has been shaped in many ways by the domestic advice manual: hundreds of which have been written over the course of the past 150 years.

These are some of my personal favorites:

·         The American Frugal Housewife 

by Lydia Maria Francis Child (1834)

Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy this manual is available on Google Books. 

·         The American Woman's Home: or, Principles of Domestis Science

 by Catharine Esther Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1869)

A guide to the formation and maintenance of economical, 
healthful, beautiful, and Christian homes written by the Beecher sisters is also available on Google Books.

·         Guide to Easier Living

by Mary and Russell Wright (1950)

Republished in 2003, this a handbook for the modern home intended to liberate women from old-fashioned formal entertaining, and families from old-fashioned and high-maintenance furniture. Though not available on Google Books, there is a great New York Times article about the Wrights.

·         Martha Stewart

 (1982-present)

 The epitome of domestic fantasy...

·         Domino Book of Decorating

by Editors of Domino Magazine (2008)

The amazing Domino magazine is no longer in publication, nevertheless this indispensable style manual takes readers room by room, demystifying the decorating process and providing the tools for creating spaces that are personal, functional and fabulous.

·         DesignSponge

edited by Grace Bonney (2004-present)

A daily website dedicated to home and product design with over 20,000 readers daily. 

For a thoughtful study of these manuals (and more), turn to historian Sarah A. Leavitt’s book From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: A Cultural History of Domestic Advice.  Domestic-advice manuals have always been the stuff of fantasy, argues Leavitt, demonstrating cultural ideals rather than cultural realities... but these rich sources reveal how women understood the connection between their homes and the larger world. At its most fundamental level, the true domestic fantasy was that women held the power to reform their society through first reforming their homes.

Have a favorite domestic advice manual? Please share below. 

Written by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

University of Southern Maine, American and New England Studies 

The American Home in the Post-WWII Era

1940 marks a pivotal moment on the U.S. Homeownership Rate graph: looking to a post-war America, architects, designers, and planners saw home as the foundation to national growth and betterment. 

The Veterans Administration Mortgage Program guaranteed low down payments and an increased loan-to-mortgage ratio to returning soldiers, which accounted for significant bump in homeownership during the decades following World War II. 

In addition to this amendment of the G.I. Bill, homeownership grew rapidly in the post-WWII era due to the increase in incomes caused by the strong expansion of the U.S. economy and the new institution of affordable, long-term, fixed-rate, self-amortizing mortgages.^[i] 

The subsidy of homeownership at the end of World War II reaffirmed American rights to those who had fought for the ideals of freedom and liberty and the country transformed from a nation of urban renters to suburban homeowners.

Serving as a testament to this is the 1948 film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

In this film, starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, a man and his wife decide they can afford to have a house in the country built to their specifications… though it turns out to be a lot more trouble than they think.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Home appeared in Life Magazine in April 1946 after which it was published as a novel and then adapted for the screen.

As a promotion for the film, the studio built 73 “dream houses” in various locations in the United States, most of which were equipped with General Electric appliances.[ii]

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House  (besides being a highly entertaining movie) engages in a fascinating discourse that encompasses issues of homeownership, national identity, consumerism, popular culture, postwar planning (or reconversion), and so much more…

Written by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

University of Southern Maine, American and New England Studies

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[i] Richard K. Green and Susan M. Wachter, “The American Mortgage in Historical and International Context,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 97.

[ii] “General Electric has made your Dream House come true!” (advertisement), Life Magazine 24, no. 26 (June 28, 1948): 78.

Home Sweet Home: The Role of Homeownership in American Popular Imagination and Public Policy

I will be blogging all this week about home/homeownership and its presence in public policy, politics, and popular culture. These are just a few of the issues and questions that I will address in November at the NEASA Conference…

Homeownership has long been ingrained in the mythology of what it means to be an American. As former CEO of the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae James Johnson stated, “Property as an individual right has been fundamental to the American vision. Homeownership, from town house to farm, was the central image and reality that defined that right when the nation was born.”[i] The concept of the “American Dream” is grounded in the aspiration of citizens improving their own situations—living better than their parents—wherein democratic ideals promise prosperity. Homeownership (specifically the detached, single-family dwelling) is the cornerstone of this dream.

In her work Redesigning the American Dream (2002), architect and urban studies scholar Delores Hayden, states: 

During the last six decades, government subsidized programs have concentrated the bulk of capital resources for housing on the single-family detached house, and with two-thirds of 100 million occupied housing units are single-detached homes. These house encode Victorian stereotypes about “a woman’s place,” while single-family neighborhoods sustain the separation of the household form the world of jobs and public life. Together, houses and neighborhoods form an architecture of gender to twenty-first-century life.^[ii]

In American society we understand homeownership as a fundamental desire, a right, and a sound financial investment. Yet, with the burst of the housing bubble we must begin look critically at the social value of ownership and to negotiate the 19th century ideologies of home with the socio-economic realities of 21st century families. Government subsidies for homeownership have created an imbalance in economic resources and demonstrate an inequality for citizens.

For an example of the changing dynamics of 21st century families see:  Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik,  “Recession pushes more in D.C. area to live with relatives” Washington Post, August 18, 2011

For an example of the social/economic inequalities of sub prime lending see: Natasha Lennard, “Community Stands Strong to Block an Eviction” New York Times, August 19, 2011

The housing crisis has impeded the simple notion of homeownership as benefiting the general public and the American home has become muddled in our desires to take a chance, to participate in consumer culture, to achieve social mobility, and to cultivate our family by the hearth simultaneously.

I leave you to ponder the following, and encourage you to comment below... 

• Is it possible to update American housing to satisfy many different constituencies and imbue the mythology of the “American Dream” new meaning? What would this look like?

• Is there a utilitarian distinction between renting and owning? Are the benefits associated with homeownership because of ownership itself or from other characteristics of the homeowners?

Written by Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

University of Southern Maine,  American and New England Studies 

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[i] James A. Johnson, Showing America a New Way Home: Expanding Opportunities for Home Ownership (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1996): 30.

[ii] Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002): 28-29.