Dangerous Houses

Abstract

The home, in its material and symbolic dimensions, holds a special place within the Anglophone countries of the West as a sphere of privacy and security, of sanctuary. Lifestyle television has played a key role in this process. Yet this article explores how two Australian lifestyle television programs, Is Your House Killing You? and Carbon Cops, present the home as a site of danger, either to the private sphere and its inhabitants or to the broader environmental public sphere. It is argued that such programs play a role in disseminating neoliberal ideologies, encouraging the implementation of governmental regimes to discipline, transform, and ultimately self-regulate householder and consumer behavior. Through such regimes, the subjects produce less dangerous houses, and Downloaded by [New York University] at 17:18 22 June 2015 HOME CULTURES 174 BUCK CLIFFORD ROSENBERG > the home is restored as a sanctuary and site of ontological security.