House and Home: The Meaning Production of House and Family

Abstract

Anthropology has paid constant attention to houses and homes. Houses are not only a place for people to dwell, but also a living space, thus being endowed with social and cultural significance. Family is a social unit and a space of kinship. In this paper, the anthropological house theory, Messi’s and Lefebvre’s space theory are used as analytical tools to analyze the three types of traditional houses in L village, Sichuan Province, in order to discuss the interaction between the material and cultural levels of the home. The article points out that housing is connected with the meaning of “home” as a social unit. Housing realizes self-reproduction through the reproduction of family, and the generation of home is also rooted in housing as its material basis. At the same time, housing also reproduces the order and rules of “family” in social culture in a symbolic way, and society realizes the control of individuals through housing as a bridge.