Originally published in 1982, Housing and Identity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives represents an attempt by scholars in a number of different disciplines to bring a common social-psychological perspective to bear on the study of the house and its relation to the self and the nature of the social order. The house, it is argued, is an extremely important aspect of the built environment, embodying not only personal meanings but expressing and maintaining the ideology of prevailing social orders. The essays draw upon material from a wide variety of intellectual, cultural and historical contexts.

James Duncan was Reader in Cultural Geography at the University of Cambridge and is an Emeritus Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has done both contemporary and historical research in Sri Lanka and the United States.