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Title details for Home by John S Allen - Available

Home

How Habitat Made Us Human

by John S Allen
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A leading anthropologist studies the science behind "feeling at home" to show us how home made us human
Home is where the heart is. Security, comfort, even love, are all feelings that are centered on the humble abode. But what if there is more to the feeling of being at home? Neuroanthropologist John S. Allen believes that the human habitat is one of the most important products of human cognitive, technological, and cultural evolution over the past two million years. In Home, Allen argues that to "feel at home" is more than just an expression, but reflects a deep-seated cognitive basis for the human desire to have, use, and enjoy a place of one's own.
Allen addresses the very basic question: How did a place to sleep become a home? Within human evolution, he ranks house and home as a signature development of our species, as it emerged alongside cooperative hunting, language, and other critical aspects of humanity. Many animals burrow, making permanent home bases, but primates, generally speaking, do not: most wander, making nests at night wherever they might find themselves. This is often in home territory, but it isn't quite home. Our hominid ancestors were wanderers, too — so how did we, over the past several million years, find our way home? To tell that story Allen will take us through evolutionary anthropology, neuroscience, the study of emotion, and modern sociology. He examines the home from the inside (of our heads) out: homes are built with our brains as much as with our hands and tools. Allen argues that the thing that may have been most critical in our evolution is not the physical aspect of a home, but developing a feeling of defining, creating, and being in a home, whatever its physical form. The result was an environment, relatively secure against whatever horrors lurked outside, that enabled the expensive but creative human mind to reach its full flowering. Today, with the threat of homelessness, child foster-care, and foreclosure, this idea of having a home is more powerful than ever.
In a clear and accessible writing style, Allen sheds light on the deep, cognitive sources of the pleasures of having a home, the evolution of those behaviors, and why the deep reasons why they matter. Home is the story about how humans evolved to create a space not only for shelter, but also for nurturing creativity, innovation, and culture — and why "feeling at home" is a fundamental aspect of the human condition.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 29, 2015

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780465073894
      • File size: 897 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780465073894
      • File size: 897 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2015
      A neuroanthropologist tackles the questions of how home came to be a central feature of human life and what we mean when we say that we feel at home. In this well-presented natural history of home, Allen (Research Scientist/Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center and the Brain and Creativity Institute, Univ. of Southern California; The Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food, 2012, etc.) does not assume that readers have specialized knowledge of anthropology, evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or cognitive neuroscience. The author guides readers through unfamiliar territory by looking at feelings of home as a cornerstone of human cognition, as basic perhaps as language. Then he examines how a feeling or desire for home may have evolved, finding a possible precursor in the sense of place exhibited in the nest-building of apes and tracing its transition to the human pattern of living a life based around a single home. Along the way, he introduces readers to the burial customs of Neanderthals and to the identification of fire with a home base. Turning to modern man, Allen writes that home is all about our complex and multifaceted relationships with the places we live. He cites the recent housing boom and bust to demonstrate how decisions about housing]buying, owning, renting, selling, moving]are often based on emotions such as anxiety or overconfidence, and he examines what it means to experience homesickness and what it is to be homeless. Home, writes the author, is "where self and place combine to form something that is unique to each person." The perspective that Allen brings to this work makes clear that one can buy a house, but a home is built on evolutionary history, cultural traditions, technological advances, psychological factors, and personal experiences. Excellent supplementary reading for a variety of college courses, but the book's scope and accessibility make this one for general readers, too.

      COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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