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A solid partner in a fluid world and/or line of flight? Interpreting secondhomes in the era of mobilities

KEITH HALFACREE

Halfacree, K. 2011. A solid partner in a fluid world and/or line of flight? Interpreting second homes in the era of mobilities.Norsk

Geografisk TidsskriftNorwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 144153. ISSN 0029-1951.

The article is the product of the authors 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

Keith Halfacree, Geography (College of Science), Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

Introduction: travel broadens the horizon

Until very recently second homes1 rarely crossed my

academic radar. When they had I treated them largely in a

critical, even dismissive manner. Second homes were only

for the rich, reflecting their predominant representation

within Britain as an elite form of consumption contributing

to the production of an increasingly elite rural social

geography (compare Coppock 1977; Gallent et al. 2005;McIntyre 2006; Paris 2011). Search for second homes on

the BBC News website, for example, and overwhelmingly

negative stories immediately appear (Table 1). However,

recent years have opened my eyes to some very different

interpretations and presentations of second homes and it is

this altered perspective that inspired the present article.

In particular, although an initial stimulus to reading

second homes differently was provided by a conference

paper by Nick Gallent (subsequently published as Gallent

2007), since 2008 I have been fortunate enough to have been

able to build upon some established links with both the

Centre for Rural Research and the Department of Geogra-

phy at NTNU, Trondheim, and be exposed to a very

different set of second home experiences, namely thosewithin the Nordic countries in general and in Norway in

particular. Indeed, the very co-existence of two substantial

research projects on second homes in Norway2 that had only

limited common academic membership immediately flagged

the clear significance of this topic. This is in stark contrast,

for example, to its much lower UK research profile (Paris

2011). I soon came to agree strongly with Simone Abrams

(2007, 2) observation that One cannot be in Norway for

very long without beginning to appreciate the significance of

holiday homes.

The present article has emerged from these welcome

intellectual and personal perturbations and seeks to promote

readings of second homes and their consumption that are

different from the British norm. It is not a conventional

Norsk Geografisk TidsskriftNorwegian Journal of

Geography article in that it represents my contextually

informed interpretations of second home consumption

inspired by recent developments within social scientific

theory rather than being rooted within detailed empiricalresearch. However, empirical findings from the two Norwe-

gian projects, whilst not explicitly presented here, have

clearly influenced my ideas. Furthermore, as one referee

astutely observed, much of the theory I use is predominantly

Anglo-American in origin, reinforcing the articles status as

an example of what this same referee described as a

personal journey through a theoretical terrain concerning

how to think differently about current second home

consumption.

The structureof the rest of thearticle is as follows. First, the

idea of reading differently is introduced through brief

consideration of a body of academic work that both revisits

the taken-for-granted generallyand findswithin this a critique

of the supposedly all-encompassing character of present-day

capitalist society. Second, this same heterogeneous society is

then styled as expressing an era of mobilities. Heightened

emphasis on movementoverstasisthrows up newquestions of

home and place with a turn towards what is termed dynamic

heterolocalism. Returning to the desire to read the everyday

for difference, attention is given, thirdly, to how to interpret

second home consumption. After initially suggesting that

seeing it as congruent with consumption under present-day

capitalism is necessary but not sufficient, it is then read in the

context of dynamic heterolocalism. On the one hand, it fits

Norsk Geografisk TidsskriftNorwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 144153. ISSN 0029-1951

DOI 10.1080/00291951.2011.598238 # 2011 Norwegian Geographical Society

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well with a dynamic heterolocalist existence, with numerous

writers increasingly placing it within the context of more

fluid expressions of home. On the other hand, however, a

more radical reading for difference suggests even this

interpretation is inadequate. Second home consumption

can instead represent a line of flight that betrays the samedynamic heterolocalist condition through speaking of a

different need for place experiences rooted in both repre-

sentational and more-than-representational encounters with

the rural in particular. The conclusion stresses that second

home consumption within the era of mobilities requires

further research but, however read, remains selective and

should not be seen as any normative consumption blue-

print.

Finally, the article concentrates largely on rural second

homes, as these were the main concern of the two

Norwegian projects and dominate second home research

generally. Nonetheless, although unable to take this further

in the present article, the increasing significance of urban

second homes merits recognition, for both leisure and workpurposes (e.g. Paris 2009; 2011). Their consumption, it is

suggested, can be interpreted similarly to that of the rural

second homes, albeit with the important rural-nature

dimension that underpins the final line of flight reading

substantially excised.

Reading everyday life differently

True to his lifelong spirit of independent iconoclasm

(Merrifield 2006), Henri Lefebvre is now associated with,

amongst other important academic contributions, promot-

ing the problematisation of that most seemingly banal area:

everyday life (Gardiner 2000). Within everyday life the

daily taken-for-granted routines of living all of us engage in

most of the timeLefebvre saw not just a life broken up and

reduced to a set of dull routines underpinned by commod-

ities and exchange values (Lefebvre 1984 [1968])although

he didsee this. Instead, within this alienating milieu he also

acknowledged occasional glimpses of evidence that a

consciousness of alienation is being born, however indirectly,

and that an effort towards disalienation, no matter how

oblique and obscure, has begun (Lefebvre 1991 [1974], 66).

Thus, a task for radical academics was to extract what is

living, new, positivethe worthwhile needs and fulfilments

from the negative elements: the alienations (Lefebvre 1991

[1958], 42). In short, Lefebvre clearly acknowledged the

hegemonic power and consequences of what he termed neo-

capitalism but also saw its underpinning of everyday life as

neverquite the only game in town.

Since Lefebvres pioneering contributions, and in the same

spirit, a number of writers have pointed out how capitalismis not quite the totalising force both its proponents and,

crucially, many of its critics depict it as. First, there is the

postmodern Marxismexpressed through the partnership of

Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham. For Gibson-Graham

(1996; 2006), the idea that capitalism, no matter how

powerfully it has penetrated all aspects of everyday life, is

all-pervasive is a false ideology. Instead, as Stengers (2008,

55) notes, it is the master illusionistand work must be done

to undo the spells it has cast upon our imaginations.

Specifically, the tendency to separate the political from the

economic andto represent economy as a space of invariant

logics and automatic unfolding that offered no field for

intervention (Gibson-Graham 2006, xxi) is rejected. A

search is made for the grounding of a new politicalimaginary (Gibson-Graham 2006, xix) within that which

already exists around the world today. Using the language

of the diverse economy [that] brings into visibility a great

diversity of economic sites and practices in any particular

location(Gibson-Graham 2006, 195), Gibson-Graham seek

to tease out elements, sometimes weakly formed and quite

transient, of a community economy oppositional to the

capitalist mainstream.

Central to Gibson-Grahams affirming constitutive pro-

ject are a range of anti-essentialist thinking techniques

(Gibson-Graham 2006, xxixxxxiii) that help us to read

what is presentdifferently, to break free of the blinkers that

force us to see onlythe powerful mainstream. A key strategy

is to engage in Reading for difference rather than dom-

inance(Gibson-Graham 2006, xxxixxxii), so as to uncover

what is possible but obscured from view (Gibson-Graham

2006, xxxi). This will allow us to acknowledge future

possibilities [that] become more viable by virtue of already

being seen to exist (Gibson-Graham 2006, xxxi). As

suggested, Gibson-Graham themselves utilise such a per-

spective primarily to examine the economic sphere but the

principle can be extended to investigations of everyday life

generally.

Other writers also suggest the need to identify and

promote Lefebvres signs of dis-alienation. For example,

John Holloway (2010) sees capitalism as profoundly

cracked. In reality it expresses a society of non-correspon-

dence, in which things do not fit together functionally

(Holloway 2002, 187). People around the world in almost

every area of life are screaming against this mainstream

and making smaller or larger attempts at negating that

which exists(Holloway 2002, 23; Solnit 2005; Chatterton &

Pickerill 2010). Critically, these attempts are not about

seizing the state through conventional notions ofrevolution

and attaining political completion (Chatterton & Pickerill

2010, 479). Instead, there is a more anarchist emphasis on

bypassing both the mainstream and the usually proposed

ways of replacing it, which are all too easily absorbed into

Table 1. Sample of British second home controversies from the BBCs news

website

Headline Date

Battle lines over second homes 16/03/2009

MPssecond home profits should be surrendered 16/02/2010

Co rnwall MPs u rge re think on sec on d ho me s 24/02/2010

High house prices creating brain drainacross Dorset 12/04/2010

Call to en d seco nd h ome subsidy in C umbria 16/04/2010

North Cornwall candidates split on second homes issue 19/04/2010

Tory candidate slams Lib Dem second home pledge 04/05/2010

Fe ars raise d on Co rn wall sec on d h ome vot es 11/07/2010

Holiday homes targeted by new government tax proposals 11/08/2010

Bishop of Bath and Wells voices concern over rural life 05/11/2010

Source: Simple search for the termsecond homeson http://search.bbc.co.uk/

undertaken 19 November 2010

NORSK GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFT 65 (2011) Interpreting second homes in the era of mobilities 145
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the same logic (Stengers 2008), as the experience of so many

failedrevolutions attest.

Crucially for the remaining part of this article, Holloways

sense of revolution is rooted very much within the ordinary,

within everyday life what I have called elsewhere the

extraordinary within the ordinary (Halfacree 2007). It

features axiomatically the explicit affirmation in all its

infinite richness of that which is denied (Holloway 2002,212). In Holloways words:

To break from capital, it is not enough to flee. It is not enough to

scream. Negativity, our refusal of capital, is the crucial starting

point, theoretically and politically. But mere refusal is easily

recaptured by capital, simply because it comes up against the

capitals control of the means of production, means of doing,

means of living. For the scream to grow in strength, there must be

a recuperation of doing, a development of power-to. That implies

a re-taking of the means of doing... [and] the return of the

repressed, the revolt against fetishism... the revolt against the

process of denial.(Holloway 2002, 208, 211, my emphasis)

Consumption practices can be implicated within these

everyday revolts for less alienated everyday life (Halfacree

2010). Whilst consumption of commodities is clearly a

defining feature of any capitalist mainstream, such con-

sumption is not only. . .an aspect of [this] general problem

of commodities (Miller 1987, 189). Instead, the fate of a

commodity can be focused upon and in particular its

entanglement with its consumer following appropriation.

Through doing so, certain forms of consumption practices

may be re-readable as both in part and part of Holloways

revolt against the process of denial. Lefebvre (1991 [1958],

40), for example, saw leisure as both alienated and a revolt

against alienation. Miller (1987, 191192) expresses the

general hypothesis thus: far from being a mere commodity,

a continuation of all those processes which led up to the

object. . .

the object in consumption confronts, criticizes andfinally may often subjugate these abstractions in a process of

human becoming.

Bearing in mind this inherent sense of duality within

consumption practices being part of the mainstream, on

the one hand, but also having the potential to become part

of a lived critique of that mainstream, on the other the

article will eventually take the reader to consumption of

rural second homes. This consumption will be read differ-

ently at first as not just a form of elite consumption but as a

means to express issues related to home within an era of

mobilities. Before second homes, however, this mobile

condition must be introduced.

Migration and home in the era ofmobilities

The era of mobilities and human migration

Although near constant change and transformation has

long been acknowledged as a key feature of capitalist

society (e.g. Berman 1983), over the last two decades a

number of writers have elevated mobility more generally

to existential zeitgeist (spirit of the times) status (compare

Clifford 1997; Bauman 2000; Cresswell 2006). As Sheller &

Urry (2006, 207) succinctly put it, All the world seems to

be on the move, with both an experiential and metapho-

rical sense of flux that is almost ubiquitous within everyday

life and consciousness. Humanity has entered an age of

mobility (Rolshoven 2007) or era of mobilities (Halfacree

in press, a).

Sociologist John Urry has probably done more workthan anyone in detailing this era of mobilities, both on his

own and with co-workers (e.g. Urry 2000; 2007; Hannam et

al. 2006; Larsen et al. 2006; Sheller & Urry 2006). This is

not just a task to detail the multiple forms and guises of

mobility present today, itself a major challenge (Urry 2007,

1011), but requires a conceptual re-think. Metaphors of

movement, mobility and contingent ordering need to

replace those of stasis, structure and social order within

a sociology beyond societies (Urry 2000, 18; see also

Miller 2008). A resultant new mobilities paradigm (Sheller

& Urry 2006; Urry 2007) challenges first the predominant

sedentarist tradition within social science (Cresswell 2006)

or the place-fixated paradigm of the modern age

(Rolshoven 2007, 21). This rests on the essentialist assump-

tion that boundedness and authenticity-in-place are foun-

dational to human life.3 The mobilities paradigm also

challenges sedentarisms equally essentialist nomadic oppo-

site, which often naively exalts the supposed freedom of

lifestyles within liquid modernity (Bauman 2000). Aiming

to transcend sedentaristandnomadic conceptualisations of

place and movement (Sheller & Urry 2006, 214), the new

mobilities paradigm recognises stability-within-movement

and movement-within-stability roots androutes (Clifford

1997).

Unsurprisingly, the era of mobilities accords a central

place for migration or other kinds of semi-permanent

geographical movement (Urry 2007, 8) (see also Cresswell

2006) and it is from such a direction that interpreting second

home consumption in the 21st century can be approached

(Halfacree in press, a). Migrations importance is expressed

in the increased frequency and diversity of migratory

experiences within everyday life. However, such migration

and the more general set of mobility experiences also

impact on the human condition, including issues such as

belonging, community, identity, social-cultural expression,

and home.

Home in the era of mobilities

Surprisingly, whilst the mobilities literature encompasses

migration, it has not engaged much to date with that

conventionally most sedentarist concept of home.4 Instead,

this issue5 is often submerged within broader discussions of

the role and status of place (often vis-a-vis space) in the

context of globalisation. Gustafson (2006, 2122) notes

that a number of authors suggest the experiences of

globalisation, understood broadly as the increasing exten-

sity, intensity, velocity and impact of global processes of

various kinds[, provoke] feelings of insecurity and lack of

control, which in turn give rise to a search for home, roots

and community. Thus, within the second homes literature

146 K. Halfacree NORSK GEOGRAFISK TIDSSKRIFT 65 (2011)

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Kaltenborn (1998) placed second home consumption in the

context of globalisation inducing a yearning for stability;

stability-within-movement. However, there is usually caution

in how to interpret this search for home: is it validating

traditionalism, chauvinism and xenophobiaor expressing a

more radicalform of resistance (Gustafson 2006, 22)? This

is an issue Harvey (1989, 292) engages with, for example,

when noting how:

as so often happens, the plunge into the maelstrom of ephemer-

ality has provoked an explosion of opposed sentiments and

tendencies. . . .Deeper questions of meaning and interpretation

. . .arise. The greater the ephemerality, the more pressing the need

to discover or manufacture some kind of eternal truth that might

lie therein. . . . a search for more secure moorings and longer-

lasting values in a shifting world.

To enable us to consider further this search for home in the

era of mobilities and then go on to relate it to second home

consumption, inspiration can be drawn from the transna-

tionalism literature (Gustafson 2006). In brief, transnational

theory developed from anthropologists Basch et al.s (1994)

representation of the multiple place attachments expressedby international migrants (Levitt & Nyberg-Srensen 2004;

Blunt & Dowling 2006). Basch et al. (1994, 7) went on to

define transnationalism as: processes by which immigrants

forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link

together their societies of origin and settlement. . . . An

essential element of transnationalism is the multiplicity of

involvements that transmigrants sustain in both home and

host societies(my emphases). Thus, in contrast to sedentar-

ist perspectives on migration, transnational perspectives

regard migration as an ongoing process (Gustafson 2006,

27), present in a life-world characterized by mobility

(McIntyre 2006, 4). They move firmly towards the idea of

home formation taking place across or through multiple

locations.Transnationalism encompasses a broad range of connec-

tionsbetweenhereand there(Waldinger & Fitzgerald

2004, 1177) that are not the preserve of a narrow global

migratory elite. Yet, a transnational sensibility also retains

an emphasis on the continuing significance of home as a key

site of identity formation (Perkins & Thorns 2006; Miller

2008; Lewicka 2010). However, it is now imagined as

distributed across space-time rather than essentially orien-

tated towards and around a single point. Thus, home can

embrace rather than negate mobility (Quinn 2004; Tuulentie

2007). It is a manifestation of howplaces are. . .central to a

networked social life(Urry 2007, 234), but not just in terms

of their importance for face-to-face meetings.

The transnational literature thus proves a powerful

introduction to how in the era of mobilities work, home

and play are separated in time and place, and meanings and

identity are structured around not one but several places

(McIntyre et al. 2006a, 314). However, it can be brought

closer to home for lives that do not imply experiences of

international migration via Zelinsky & Lees (1998) concept

of heterolocalism. This concept sought to express how

ethnic minority communities in the USA were neither

assimilating fully nor existing as isolated ethno-cultural

islanders, but were adopting dispersed patterns of residential

location whilst retaining strong ethnic community identities.

The communities were expressed as a sequence of spatial

disjunctures (Zelinsky & Lee 1998, 287) between places of

differentiated significance within everyday life. Taking the

concept beyond such ethnic communities, dynamic hetero-

localism (Halfacree in press, a) has wider applicability.

Dynamic is appended, however, to stress how heterolocal-

ism is always shaped by motility or how an individualappropriates what is possible in the domain of mobility and

puts this potential to use for his or her activities(Kaufmann

2002, 37). In summary, dynamic heterolocalism is concerned

with the multiple ways that identities are forged through

multiple places which do not depend on the axiomatic

sedentarist assumption of single, settled home place.

Dynamic heterolocalism and second homeconsumption: towards reading fordifference

In the context of a dynamic heterolocalist condition ofeveryday life, the article now turns to consider how one can

read second home consumption. Three perspectives are

given, one rooted within relatively conventional interpreta-

tions and two that read this consumption differently. Both of

the latter centre the dynamic heterolocal context, one seeing

second home consumption as falling in line with it and the

other taking a more critical stance.

Established readings: elite consumption, tradition, andan escapist perspective

The wide literature on second homes presents a number of

interpretations of this phenomenon that vary according to a

number of criteria. Crucially, as I encountered, readings vary

considerably with nation and culture (Paris 2009; Paris

2011), reflecting the context of differing physical, socio-

economic and cultural geographies, and differing motilities.

This will be shown here by an initial focus on interpretation

rooted in the British experience before interpretations more

embedded in a Nordic context are introduced.

Interpretation of second home consumption rooted within

mainstream readings of consumption practices (Halfacree

2010) returns first to my own earlier expressed prejudices

towards or against British second homes, namely that they

were a form of conspicuous consumption by the rich. In

short, the second home, like the luxury car, expensive

jewellery or finest wines, represents a clear symbol of

economic success, an integral part of the habitus (Bourdieu

1984) of the wealthy. In terms of practical outlay and

consequence they are free to those that can afford it, very

expensive to those that cant6 (Robinson 1989, 38). They

become objects of consumption just because the purchaser

can afford them (Paris 2009). Interpreted in this way, second

homes are indeedsecondary. . .in an elite landscape for the

privileged(McIntyre 2006, 13), an interpretation that is not

only confined to Britain (e.g. Halseth 2004). Furthermore,

through the alleged impacts on local house prices, for

example, elite second home consumption is also associated


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with a number of negative socio-economic consequences,

such as raising local house prices, as implied in Table 1

(Coppock 1977; Gallent et al. 2005). Paris (2009; 2011) thus

sees second homes increasingly as a form of gentrification,

for example.

Even in the case of the socio-economic elite, it is

interesting to examine why they partake in second home

consumption and what it provides them. What is the usevalue of the second home that has such a high exchange

value? In terms of the available range ofnormalobjects of

consumption, the wealthier the person, the broader this

range will be, so why is the second home purchased beyond

simply being a status symbol? Responding to such questions,

analysis immediately becomes more sophisticated and, in

particular, a distinct sense ofescapism comes through.

Escapism can be seen to overlay interpretations of second

homes from, in particular, a Nordic perspective that stresses

their cultural rootedness within tradition less than their

elitism. As numerous authors note, Nordic second homes or

summer cottages express common heritage (Hall & Muller

2004a; Muller 2007), as part of Finnish (Periainen 2006) or

Norwegian (Abram 2007) national identity, for example.Within Norway, Bjerke et al. (2006, 87) suggest owning a

cabin . . .seldom needs further explanation, connecting as it

does the increasingly urban Norwegian with friluftsliv

(Abram 2007), an alternative life of outdoor recreation

and simplicity (Vitters 2007). Rooted in tradition, the

second home represents a radical alterity from [the] every-

day working life(Abram 2007, 5) of modernity (Kaltenborn

1998).

Within the contemporary literature, therefore, desire for

escape is widely recognised as a key aspect of second home

consumption (McIntyre et al. 2006b), whether seen as

rooted in tradition or more as expressing class privilege.

Such consumption can thus be interpreted as expressing

attempts atEscaping modernity by seeking refuge in nature

(Williams & Van Patten 2006, 38), seeking a ruralbolt-hole

(Halfacree 2010) where one can temporarily drop out

(McIntyre et al. 2006a). From this perspective, almost all

aspects of the second home, from its (typically) rural

location, to its simple design and layout, to the activities

undertaken there, to its association with leisure not work, to

the time-space rhythms of its consumption, can be seen as

opposite to those of the primary home. Hence, perhaps

rather than expressing flight, escape is the negation of the

primary home experience (Garvey 2008).

Whilst this idea of second home consumption as escape

has clear romantic appeal, suggesting a reaffirmation of

life,7 research has increasingly shown any related sense of

definitive negation is problematic. Almost everything asso-

ciated with the primary home can also be found in the

second home (Perkins & Thorns 2006). For example, second

homes are used for work, gender patterns are often repeated

and even enhanced within them, and many second homes in

both structure and content are far from the simple summer

house of Nordic national ideologies (see case studies in Hall

& Muller 2004b; McIntyre et al. 2006b; Muller 2007). A

manifestation of this lack of difference is the growth of

commercial, purpose-built second home developments

(Bendix & Lofgren 2007; Overvag 2009; Paris 2009) in

popular holiday areas which, in contrast to traditional

Norwegian hytter, for example, mark a continuity with

everyday and working life (Abram 2007, 5).

Close analysis of secondary home practices thus soon

leads to the conclusion that the idea that primary and

secondary homes represent distinct worlds a clear expres-

sion of sedentarist assumption (McIntyre et al. 2006a) is

untenable (Paris 2009). Second home consumers rarelytravel without baggage and the content of this baggage is

unpacked at the second home and features in subsequent

place consumption (Halfacree in press, a). Consequently,

the cabin is as much a product of daily life and normative

domesticity as it is a product of its escape (Garvey 2008,

218). However, whilst this metaphor of unpacked baggage

may suggest amachine in the garden(Marx 1964), whereby

opening the baggage will break any escapist spell, the idea of

connection rather than escape can be read differently and

more positively.

Reading differently: a dynamic heterolocalistcomplementary perspective

A form of elite and/or traditionally rooted consumption that

strives to provide an escape-through-negation from the

assorted stresses of everyday life is one way in which second

home consumption can be read. Such a reading is a

necessary part of the overall explanatory picture, for

example, in order to recognise the continued selective

consumption of second homes even within relatively egali-

tarian countries (in Norway 40% of the population may have

access to an estimated 420,000 second homes (Overvag

2009), but 60% do not), but it is also inadequate. Instead, as

researchers have increasingly noted, second home consump-

tion can also be seen as a ploy or tactic to engage creatively

and potentially critically with the practice of home within

the era of mobilities.

Philosopher Edward Casey (2001) maintains how place

and self are mutually constitutive the geographical self

(Casey 2001, 683) even when a scattered self of

postmodern society . . . is correlated with the disarray of

place (Casey 2001, 684, emphases removed). Indeed, he

goes on to argue how: the self is [not] merely enfeebled by

nonrobust places . . . [but] can also make a virtue of the

circumstance by becoming more responsive to differences

between places . . . The more places are levelled down, the

more. . . may selves be led to seek out thick places in which

their own personal enrichment can flourish (Casey 2001,

685).

Applying this perspective to the home, whilst (post)mo-

dernity may be seen to thin . . . the primary home of

meaning (Williams & Van Patten 2006, 38), people may be

increasingly seeking out second homes to complete their

sense of both self and home (Tuulentie 2007). Thus, the

second home forms a key node within the dynamic hetero-

localist geographically extended network of social relations

and . . . multiplicity of dispersed people and regions

(Williams & Kaltenborn 1999, 227). Within multilocality

as a way of life (Rolshoven 2007) that links mobility,

materiality and belonging (Bendix & Lofgren 2007, 15),


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thesecondhome suppliesaspects or dimensions of lifestyle

that are not offered in [the] primary home orordinarylife

(Bjerke et al. 2006, 88).

Returning to the idea of escape, it may therefore be more

the case that second home consumption represents an

escape for home, not just from home (Crouch 1994, 96,

my emphasis). It comprisesan act of connecting rather than

an act of distancing (Rolshoven 2007, 17). Overall, there-fore, a dynamic heterolocalist reading of second home

consumption promotes the idea that primary and secondary

homes, and lives lived within them, are essentially comple-

mentary and mutually reinforcing (McIntyre 2006; McIntyre

et al. 2006a). In the words of Perkins & Thorns (2006, 80):

Second-home owners escape their primary homes for a

simpler life during their holidays and, once satiated, escape

their second homes to have a more challenging, complex and

stimulating life for the remainder of the time. In this process,

primary and secondary homes become extensions of each

other both in a sense home, and a place of escape.

Interpretation of second home consumption could end

here, with this initial stab at corralling evidence from what is

now a huge range of studies and contextualising it fullywithin the era of mobilities; building on the excellent recent

edited collections of Hall & Muller (2004b), McIntyre et al.

(2006b) and Brand & Lofgren (2007). In short, second

homes can be a solid partner in a fluid world8 expressing

a territory of rootedness (Tuulentie 2006, 148) for those

able and willing to access them. Their rising numbers and

prominence, certainly within Nordic countries (e.g. Bjerke et

al. 2006; Sta 2007; Vitters 2007; Overvag 2009), is thus

readily understandable. However, a more developed sensi-

tivity to reading for differencesharpened by my own need

to read second homes differently through my Norwegian

exposure suggests such a conclusion would still be

inadequate. It is an all too neat and functionalist rendering

of a more confused and less finished picture.

On the one hand, second homes maynotcomplete the self

and/or consolidate home, at least not in any comprehensive

or conclusive manner. To reverse the emphasis given earlier,

whilst Lefebvre recognised spontaneous critique of the

everyday within leisure practices, he also stressed that since

these practices remain in everyday life, they are alienation

(Lefebvre 1991 [1958], 40). One must ask, therefore, whether

and to what extent second home owners are more existen-

tially grounded or fulfilled than those who do not consume

such a commodity. In this respect a personal sense of unease

comes from observations such as family practices being

displaced to the spaces of and around the second home

(Vitters 2007) or Tuulentie (2006, 148) asserting that

Home is not only here and now but, in a contemporary

world of movement, is more and more elsewhere , perhaps

endlessly deferred. Similarly, Bendix & Lofgren (2007, 8, 14)

write of the threat of a double homelessness, noting the

often challengingpractical and emotional divisions of labor

that come from living in two places. Future research clearly

needs to explore such issues, notwithstanding suggestions

returned to below of the restorative potential of Norwe-

gian cabin life (Bjerke et al. 2006), for example.

On the other hand, one can again be more positive and

revisit Millers (1987, 192) object in consumption and

examine what second home consumption does provide. In

Tuulenties (2007, 295) words, Everyday life and the whole

lifespan are narrated when speaking of the second home ;

then what more can be read from this story? Williams & Van

Patten (2006, 33) give us an introductory cue or clue:

Globalization appears to have given mobility and rooted-

ness new meaning, paradoxically both by empowering

individuals to create multicentred identities and simulta-neouslyimploring them to seek out and protect what remains

of the authentic that modernity makes so elusive (my

emphasis).

Reading still more differently: a line of flight criticalperspective

[A]line of flight does not entail denouncing the territory but

betraying it: bringing into disclosure an ingredient that both

belongs to the territory and connects with an outside against

which this territory protects itself. Such an outside is not an

absolute one that would transcend the territory and allow it

to be defined by what it refuses or protects itself against.

Furthermore, the outside of the territory and the definition of

this outside as dangerous were produced together with the

territorial refrain (ritournelle), shaping both the inside and

what is kept outside. Correlatively, there is no line of flight

that could act as a voie royale, there is no definitive flight, no

model others would have to follow. (Stengers 2008, 42)

Inspired by Stengerss complex exposition, in this section I

argue that second home consumption can be read differently

as a form of line of flight (Deleuze & Guattari 1987) that

betraysthe previous dynamic heterolocalist reading. It does

this through unsettling its functionalist (re)integration of the

geographical selfthe home deferred thus becomes central

in part through returning to some of the escapist and

tradition aspects of the established readings. To get to this

new alliance, the present article considers representational

and then more-than-representational elements of specifically

rural second home consumption.9

I have already suggested that the second home typically

represents a different everyday life experience than that

obtained at the primary home. Whilst, as noted above,

recent developments in second home production and con-

sumption may be undermining the subsequently experienced

reality of these negations of everyday life, an imagined

vacation from modernity clearly retains broad appeal. This

in itself, again following Lefebvre on leisure, may be seen

as a dissenting commentary on the everyday, part of

Holloways (2002) scream, with its represented space of

critical difference.

On top of this sense of critical differentiation represented

by the second home, the rural location is also far from

incidental. With everyday life now largely urban, the rural

represents not just the Other of the city but also an Other of

everyday life generally. Idyllic rural representations, of which

Bell (2006, 150) recognises three ideal types, namely the

pastoral (farmscapes), the natural (wildscapes) and the

sporting (adventurescapes) position rural places as

relaxed and relaxing, scenic yet human scale, organic and

natural, authentic and rooted, and all-in-all external to or


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otherwise distanced from modern society (Short 1991;

Baylina & Berg 2010). Moreover, as Bunce (2003, 15)

suggests: the values that sustain the rural idyll speak of a

profound and human need for connection with land, nature

and community, with these latter three aspects all having

some grounding within material rural reality (Halfacree in

press, b). The representational association between rural and

nature seems especially important, not least given the latter sassociation with building communities and traditions that

provide an enormously significant sense of meaning and

value in societies struggling to break free from the modern

world (Macnaghten & Urry 1998, 4). As naturalist Richard

Mabey (2005, 19) succinctly expresses it: We constantly

refer back to the natural world to try to discover who we

are.

Besides the representation of the rural second home

speaking of a different everyday reality a heterotopia to

use Foucaults (1986) celebrated expression attention must

be given to how and the extent to which this difference is

actually experienced. Indeed, if second homes are presented

as heterotopic places (Tuulentie 2006), then such an

examination is not only desirable but essential, sinceheterotopic places are effectively enacted utopia (Foucault

1986, 24) and not solely imagined (utopic).

First, it must be noted that whether or not differences

represented by a rural second home are actually experienced

is highly variable. This is expressed, for example, by the

already noted convergence of activities and behaviours

within primary and secondary homes, often making strong

distinctions between the two conceptually difficult. None-

theless, and implicit in their continued and growing appeal,

it is also clear that many people do obtain much of what

they anticipate through second home consumption. Studies

generally concur with Stedman (2006, 142) that second

homes hardly appear to be second (see also Rolshoven

2007). Thus, Garvey (2008, 218

219) heralds the cabins

place in providingrupturein a life otherwise characterised by

routine and integration. . .in breaking the routineof modern

living, individuals are evaluating the present in different

ways (my emphases). Note here how the emphasised terms

hark back to the escape idea of second home consumption

more than the more integrative and functionalist dynamic

localism interpretation.

It is not just the degree of congruence between represented

and experienced, however, that may be critical to the

success(or not) of second home consumption. Once again,

the rural location appears critical. As already suggested, the

association between representations of rural and land,

nature and community appears especially powerful within

the appeal and consumption of the rural second home (e.g.

see Abram 2007 on the sustained link between hytter and

friluftsliv). This association is enhanced by recognising that

the rural is not just experienced through representations but

also more-than-representationally.

By drawing attention to the more-than-representational, it

is argued that rurality should not be treated as [a] mere

discursive construct . . . [a] product . . . of a mind devoid of

corporeality . . . [since this] is untenable for one reason: we

think, and thus we socially construct, with our bodies

(Carolan 2008, 408). The rural is not a passive preformed

surface(Ingold 2008, 1802), as much of how people know it

comes from their sensing bodies being within it (Casey 2001;

Wylie 2003). Particular attention is drawn to affective

aspects of rurality (Halfacree in press, b), or the feelings,

emotions, and actions brought about through engagement

with the materiality of rural places (Blackman & Venn

2010).

Affective dimensions appear to be of considerable sig-nificance within second home consumption (Williams & Van

Patten 2006), as is the case with places of attraction

generally (Urry 2007, 253). For example, through a focus

on the restorative and affective benefits of Norwegian cabin

life, Bjerke et al. (2006) drew out the mental and emotional

importance of experiences of nature, and the role played by

such affectively imbued concepts as fascination. As these

authors note, natures restorative potential is widely

acknowledged (e.g. Hartig et al. 1996). It also features

strongly within so-calledtherapeutic landscapes(Lea 2008)

and in place attachment (Lewicka 2010), such that an

element of the unwinding that typically accompanies

second home consumption surely relates to affective experi-

ences of inhabitation (Ingold 2008). Through the ruralsecond home place, the body of the second home consumer

both bears the traces of the places it has known (Casey

2001, 688) including the urban primary home place of

everyday life andgoes out to meet that place, facilitating a

coming in of places into the body (Casey 2001, 688).

Through a radical reading for difference of the represen-

tational and more-than-representational dimensions of rural

second home consumption, this ongoing practice can be

interpreted as inscribing a metaphorical life raft(Halfacree

2010). The second home forms the nucleus of a heterotopic

space from which critical engagement with a dysfunctional

world can become grounded or emplaced. However, more

than being solely a life-raft inscribed within the contours of

a dynamic heterolocalist condition

although it does work

this way rural second home consumption also presents a

line of flight (Stengers 2008) from everyday life. Second

home consumption betrays everyday life, disclosing exis-

tential inadequacies within the latter, not least around

experiencing home, whilst being still grounded within it.

Rurality, both representational and more-than-representa-

tional, appears central to this critical expression. Second

home consumption seeks connection with a more natural,

grounded outside or experience of home that mainstream

everyday life undermines and evicts yet paradoxically also

seeks to re-engage through promoting existentially compen-

satory consumption practices, including those associated

with second homes.

From the line of flight interpretation, second home

consumption is less an attempt to gain a solid partner in

a fluid worldthan an attempt to temporarily disengage from

a deficient mainstream everyday life, albeit a life that the

consumer nonetheless remains part of and which even

facilitates this same critical consumption practice. Further-

more, whilst second home consumption can thus be inter-

preted as both escapist and complementary, it can also be

seen to maintain a sustained critical stance, as I suggest that

neither escape nor existential completion are ever conclu-

sively attained. It is within this sustained critical perspective


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