Professor Steven Bouma-Prediger of Hope College, Holland, Michigan and Campus Minister Brian J. Walsh of the University of Toronto have written a remarkable, important and timely book which contributes to Christian social analysis as well as to the understanding of how Western culture is presently being shaped. With great sophistication and profundity – the footnotes alone in the best scholarly style are a gold-mine – the authors cover the subject of homelessness in socio-economic, ecological and psycho-spiritual terms. They provide clues on how ‘the scriptures of Israel and the [Christian] Church provide us with a powerful vision of home, a devastatingly truthful picture of homebreaking, and an empowering hope for homecoming’ (p. xii). The book makes clear that symbols and memories have crucial importance in transforming a house into a home as ‘a space is transformed into a place when it tells a story, and stories are carried in human life by symbols’ (p. 133) which, by the way, are ‘never objectively neutral’ (p. 9).
Unfortunately, one great expectation was not met: in spite of the great effort made by the authors, it does not present a view which could be readily interpreted and translated into cultures beyond North America.
There is a constant tension between ‘the postmodern turn to recognize the constructed character of boundaries and their inherent “deconstructability”’ (p. 47) and the fact that boundaries are constitutive of life and ‘to turn space into place is to establish normative boundaries that bring a certain kind of order of life lived within those boundaries’ (p. 53). In the dialectics of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, the favoured alternative has, in most cases, a strong North American interpretation.
In fact, in discussing Postmodern Homelessness, the authors use ‘cosmopolitanism as roughly synonymous with what [they] have described as globalization’ (p. 262). It is a very rough comparison indeed. Professor Anthony Kwame Appiah of Princeton University has extensively discussed Cosmopolitanism and drawing from his research we can consider such a comparison outdated, to say the least.
The critique of globalisation seems to be a reinforcement of globalised cultural colonialism – here understood as a one-way avenue from North America to the world. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ might be a relevant and fundamental story in North America, but this is certainly not the case elsewhere (pp. 242–6). Assertions such as ‘we in North America live in a culture of displacement’ (p. xii) or ‘the mobility of the American people is legendary’ (p. 255) are stated as fundamental. Not questioning the North American legend, the authors do not point out that experience in other Earthly contexts might be different and differently approached.
On the structural analysis of socio-economic homelessness, the engaged authors state that ‘we cannot meaningfully address the crisis of homelessness and poverty without addressing globalization’ (p. 97). Indeed! I immediately heard the words multiculturalisation and pluriculturalisation tolling in my ears. Unfortunately those concepts are never clearly mentioned (although hinted at on pp. 282 and 283), even though they might have provided precious tools to understand the concept of habitus (p. 106).
To be clear: the book is excellent but, in spite of the great effort made by the authors to write otherwise, I still get the impression that the ideas of the Provinces must be always adaptable to the ideas of Roma, for Roma knows no other way. Renewal of home does not necessarily mean ‘abandoning old cultural patterns of home construction’ (p. 16), which might lead to the adoption of foreign patterns. On the other hand, it certainly requires reinterpretation, reframing and inspired ideas. All are welcome, if contextualised.
