Great house tour…makes me wonder what a comparative tour would look/feel like in the U.S. Or somewhere completely different. Within four square blocks of my professorial home (w/it’s non-normative dirt), there are at least twenty faculty homes…I’ve never thought to stop and count, but I think that’d be accurate. But we don’t interact as faculty in these spaces at all. Very little “sherry and dialogue” going on. More “waving on the way to the kid’s soccer game”. Despite the enclaves created by our “college towns”, we don’t seem to have a sense of intellectual solidarity. Or perhaps it’s because of the college town we have no clear sense of us vs them?

Fascinating.

Institutionalized people don’t have such a private space; it’s a bit of a privilege. But your friend seems exceptional.

another problem with my offhand comment about “institutional spaces” is that, when you come down to it, even seemingly unstructured spaces like “the family” or “the home” are no less institutions than a university, in a more holistic, sociological sense of “social institution.” i guess what i should have invoked in the post was some kind of a distinction between impersonal, bureaucratic, mass institutions (like universities) and the institutions of “private life” like a home… not sure that this distinction is completely solid either, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. does your social theory class this semester have anything to say about this?