Home, Pandemic and Beyond. Senses and Emotions about Home in Buenos Aires City

Abstract

Considered as the epicentre of private life, home is a particular form of social organization. Inside it, various productive and reproductive tasks are planned and executed, as well as daily practices associated with conflict, care and enjoyment. In the face of the decline of the public sphere as an arena for collective expression and mobilization that accompanies the current development of capitalism, the irruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has had an undeniable impact on the home, re-centering it even more in the social dynamics as a central spatial-affective place for the production of bodies, experiences and sensibilities. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze, from a sociology of sensibilities, the senses and emotions about the home identified in Buenos Aires City in a pandemic and post-pandemic scenario, taking as empirical reference data from two online surveys conducted in 2021 and 2023. After analyzing some ruptures-continuities identified in the senses and emotions of 'porteños' during and after the isolation, we present some readings related to the home as a space in which, in addition to producing “the domestic”, a set of senses associated with care, comfort and conflict are at play.