Provides a highly original and artfully composed interpretation of the cultural significance and inherently paradoxical nature of camps and camping in contemporary American society. Charlie Hailey explores campsites as places that necessitate a unique combination of contrasting qualities, such as locality and foreignness, mobility and fixity.

Camping is perhaps the quintessential American activity. CAMPSITE presents a highly original and artfully composed interpretation of the cultural significance and inherently paradoxical nature of camps and camping in contemporary American society, offering a new understanding of the complex relationship between place, time, and architecture in our increasingly mobile culture. Author Hailey explores campsites as places that necessitate a unique combination of contrasting qualities, such as locality and foreignness, mobility and fixity, temporality and permanence, and public domesticity. As he explains, camping practices remind us that our places, our built environments, our homes are constantly being made, constructed, and always becoming. With CAMPSITE, Hailey makes a singular and significant contribution to current studies of place, American studies, and vernacular architecture while also reinventing methods of research in cultural studies, architecture theory, and geography.