Ours is an era of uprootedness, with fewer and fewer people living out their lives where they are born. At such a time, in such a world, what does it mean to be "at home"? Perhaps among a nomadic people, for whom dwelling is not synonymous with being housed and settled, the search for an answer to this question might lead to a new way of thinking about home and homelessness, exile and belonging. First published by Duke University Press in 1995, "At Home in the World" is the story of just such a search, chronicling Jackson's experience among the Warlpiri of the Tanami Desert in Central Australia where he lived, worked and travelled intermittently over three years. Blending narrative ethnography, empirical research, philosophy and poetry, Jackson construes the meaning of home existentially, as a metaphor for the balance people try to strike between the world they call their own and the world they see as "other". Home is never a stable essence, therefore, but a constantly negotiated relationship between being closed and open, acting and being acted upon.
At once a moving depiction of an aboriginal culture, and a meditation on the practice of anthropology, "At Home in the World" is a reflection on how, in defining home, we continue to define ourselves.
