Overview

Whether a modest rural lakeside cabin or a multi-million dollar ski chalet, family vacation homes can be settings for relaxing, memory-making, attending family-defining events and gatherings, and participating in activities in amenity-rich tourist destinations. But they are also places where we can see the enactment of changing patterns in families, shifting definitions of community, and increasingly complex intersections between the family and the economy, especially when these spaces may be rented out to other families seeking their own vacations. Whether for personal use or economic gain – or somewhere in between – family vacation homes are vivid settings that show the importance of spaces and places in our understanding of our social world. But how? How do family vacation homes – their existence, their meaning, their ownership, their use – tell a larger story of shifting realities for families in contemporary society, especially given the impact COVID- 19 and the sharing economy have had on travel, the meaning of home, and community connectedness? To answer this question, author and sociologist Michelle Janning innovatively updates the already-rich body of knowledge on vacation homes and communities by integrating new data gathered from mixed methods research, alongside compelling and complex stories that cleverly elucidate the vacation home story today as it relates directly to changing family patterns.

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9781538182680

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Reviews

A fascinating look at vacation homes and the owners and industry behind them. Dr.Janning insightfully explores how owners navigate attachments, nostalgia, communities, inequalities, and boundaries around the places, spaces and objects of second homes. Perfect for a college classroom, or your next vacation reading! --Arielle Kuperberg, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

A fascinating look at vacation homes and the owners and industry behind them. Dr.Janning insightfully explores how owners navigate attachments, nostalgia, communities, inequalities, and boundaries around the places, spaces and objects of second homes. Perfect for a college classroom, or your next vacation reading! --Arielle Kuperberg, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro In this comprehensive and sympathetic study, Michelle Janning untangles the twisted skeins of enchantment and authenticity, of magic and realism, that underlie the complexities of vacation homes. With an acute eye for contradiction and irony, Janning gently reveals the subtle paradoxes and silent compromises people make in pursuit of the enchanted vacation home, and along the way asks powerful questions about how people know they belong, what it means to be a good neighbor, and what their dreams of the future mean for the meanings of the present. --Allison Pugh, University of Virginia

Author Information

Michelle Janning is the Raymond and Elsie Gipson DeBurgh Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Her teaching and advising, is situated primarily within sociology of family, education, and material culture, but also includes interdisciplinary courses on homes, childhoods, popular culture, design, and community studies. Janning has written or edited numerous articles, chapters, and books about everyday family life, intimate relationships, material culture, design, and the digital and spatial geographies of social inequalities. These include The Stuff of Family Life: How our Homes Reflect our Lives (Rowman & Littlefield 2017), Love Letters: Saving Romance in the Digital Age (Routledge2018), Contemporary Parenting and Parenthood: From News Headlines to New Research (Praeger/ABC-CLIO 2019) (editor), and A Guide to Socially-Informed Research for Architects and Designers (Routledge 2023).

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