Connected Communities: Imagining the Place of Home

该项目将探讨在日益全球化的世界中，家庭和互联社区之间的关系。这项研究的概念工作的基础是理解家的范畴既是一个深刻直观的、普遍重要的概念，也是一个多面性的、难以捉摸的概念。无论他们的处境、文化或宗教信仰或种族如何，许多人都有一个大致相似的、广阔的家的概念。客观地定义它往往是有问题的，然而，对家是什么有一种感觉，并能够宣称它的意义，是我们对什么是人类的概念的基础。理解和代表家涉及到想象的行为。家是一个归属和熟悉的地方。它可能被认为是家人和朋友所在的地方，或者是某人长大的地方，或者是他们渴望返回的地方。通常，家和社区的概念几乎是同义词。社区可以被看作是家庭和家庭的延伸，其中家庭的一些关键价值、标志和从属关系仍然很重要，例如宗教、食物、语言、种族、个人和社区历史。该项目将情感反应与快速变化的世界中的物理空间和环境、物质文化、民族和后民族等更具体的概念融合在一起。通过提出和发展关键问题的答案，我们将对归属、身份、公民身份和社会等紧迫的国家和国际挑战做出新的分析。流动的经验如何将一个特定的家的概念转变为一个以多样性和多元性为特征的概念？在这里，我们考虑想象不止一个地方是家。家是否正逐渐成为后国家秩序中的一个神话场所，属于一种怀旧的想象和静态的过去，在那里，一切都更好、更安全、更熟悉？我们问是否有可能回家。在一个日益科技化的新自由主义的21世纪，什么样的地方才是家？在这里，我们反思技术对我们的家庭体验的转变。家与流亡、家与流散、家与移民之间的关系是什么？我们考虑无家可归的过程和无家可归的状况，并要求一个新家。在设想家庭和社区之间的关系时，想象力发挥了什么作用？作为一个地方，家庭是否继续拥有一个充满活力的未来，公民可以将自己投射到其中，并在公正和公平的社会中塑造想象中的生活？在这里，我们考虑想象行为的变革可能性。艺术和人文学科可以为社会科学的现有研究做出重大贡献。通过关注想象和表现（文学研究的关键类别）在家庭中所扮演的角色，就有可能对社区如何看待自己、如何创造和维持创造性联系、如何培养最深刻的情感元素等问题产生更有成效和更细致的理解。从这些方面理解和调查社区可以加深对其相互联系的理解。它使人们注意到家作为一个想象和想象的范畴与表现和文学研究本身的想象性质之间的关系。它还有助于分析那些紧张和脱节的变化点，这些变化点往往可以通过强大的想象力来最好地表达和解释。

The project will investigate the relationship between home and Connected Communities within an increasingly globalised world. Fundamental to the conceptual work underlying the research is the understanding that the category of home is both a profoundly intuitive, universally significant concept and a multi-faceted and elusive one. Whatever their situations, cultural or religious beliefs or ethnicities, many people have a broadly similar, expansive idea of home. Defining it objectively is often problematic, yet having a sense of what home is, and being able to lay claim to what it means, is fundamental to our idea of what it is to be human. Understanding and representing home involves an act of the imagination. Home is a place of belonging and familiarity. It might be conceived of as the place where family and friends are, or where someone grew up, or where they long to return. Frequently, ideas of home and of community are almost synonymous. Communities can be seen as an extension of family and home in which some of the key values, markers and affiliations of home remain significant, such as religion, food, languages, ethnicity, individual and community histories.The project involves mingling affective responses with more specific ideas of physical space and environment, material culture, nation and postnation in a rapidly changing world. By asking and developing answers to key questions we will contribute new analyses of pressing national and international challenges about belonging, identity, citizenship and society. How does the experience of mobility transform a particular idea of home into one characterised by multiplicity and plurality? Here we consider imagining more than one place as home. Is home increasingly a mythic site in a postnational order, belonging to a nostalgically imagined and static past in which things were better, safer and more familiar? We ask whether it is ever possible to return home. What kind of a place is home in an increasingly technologised neoliberal twenty-first century? Here we reflect upon the transformations technology makes to our experiences of home. What is the relationship between home and exile, home and diaspora, or home and migrancy? We consider processes of unhoming and the condition of homelessness and laying claim to a new home. What role does the imagination have to play in conceiving of relationships between home and communities and does home continue to have a vibrant future as a place into which citizens can project themselves and shape imagined lives within just and fair societies? Here we consider the transformative possibilities of acts of the imagination. The arts and humanities can make significant contributions to existing research from the social sciences. By focusing on the role of the work that the imagination and representation - key categories for research in literary studies - can perform on home, it is possible to develop more productive and nuanced understandings of how communities conceive of themselves, how they create and sustain creative connections, how they foster their most profoundly affective elements. Understanding and investigating communities in these terms adds depth to conceiving of their interconnectedness. It draws attention to the relationship between the home as an imaginary and imagined category and the imaginary nature of representation and literary studies themselves. It also helps in analysing those changing points of tension and disjunction which can often be best articulated and interpreted through powerful acts of the imagination.