As you probably know, in the US, manufactured home tends to be "mobile" (not actually mobile) homes, which are often expensive but seen, strongly, as underclass. "Trailer park" carries profound negative connotations in the middle class mind, fears of decline, maybe mental collapse, and sometimes hopes for escape, floating in the collective imagination somewhere above homelessness. At the same time, the problem of housing people has become acute in many parts of the country -- mass immigration, mass mental health, mass drugs, miscellaneous forms of precarity. So we are trying to build housing of this or that sort, and . . .
I think "refuge from modernity" is right, but you might go much further with this idea. Modernity, unfortunately, is a perennially difficult idea, but one thing it tends to be (and maybe all it really is), is a departure from the established. Every era has its "modern." (Mark Maguire and I discuss conceptions of the modern in Getting Through Security, which might be useful.). But home, at least in the middle class mind, is where one is, it identifies a person, not least legally. And home is where one hopes to live a long time, abide. So the idea of home devoted to replacement, abandonment, is a bit of a non-sequitur. Humans do not always think like that, of course. We might live in hotels, for example, or amongst properties and aristocratic kin, or perhaps be Japanese, or nomadic. But those would be different kinds of lives with different psychologies, as you suggest, anchored otherwise (or not, terrifyingly, and I've got homelessness on the brain). Anyway, keep up the good work.
Nicely done, as was the Unherd piece.
As you probably know, in the US, manufactured home tends to be "mobile" (not actually mobile) homes, which are often expensive but seen, strongly, as underclass. "Trailer park" carries profound negative connotations in the middle class mind, fears of decline, maybe mental collapse, and sometimes hopes for escape, floating in the collective imagination somewhere above homelessness. At the same time, the problem of housing people has become acute in many parts of the country -- mass immigration, mass mental health, mass drugs, miscellaneous forms of precarity. So we are trying to build housing of this or that sort, and . . .
I think "refuge from modernity" is right, but you might go much further with this idea. Modernity, unfortunately, is a perennially difficult idea, but one thing it tends to be (and maybe all it really is), is a departure from the established. Every era has its "modern." (Mark Maguire and I discuss conceptions of the modern in Getting Through Security, which might be useful.). But home, at least in the middle class mind, is where one is, it identifies a person, not least legally. And home is where one hopes to live a long time, abide. So the idea of home devoted to replacement, abandonment, is a bit of a non-sequitur. Humans do not always think like that, of course. We might live in hotels, for example, or amongst properties and aristocratic kin, or perhaps be Japanese, or nomadic. But those would be different kinds of lives with different psychologies, as you suggest, anchored otherwise (or not, terrifyingly, and I've got homelessness on the brain). Anyway, keep up the good work.