The aim of this book is to reflect on vernacularity and culture. It concentrates on two major domains: first it attempts to reframe our understanding of vernacularity by addressing the subject in the context of globalisation, cross-disciplinarity, and development, and second, it discusses the phenomenon of how vernacularity has been treated, used, employed, manipulated, practiced, maintained, learned, reconstructed, preserved and conserved, at the level of individual and community experience. Scholars from a wide variety of knowledge fields have participated in enriching and engaging discussions, as to how both domains can be addressed.

To expedite these aims, this book adopts the theme "Reframing the Vernacular: Politics, Semiotics, and Representation", organised around the following major sub-themes:

Transformation in the vernacular built environment

Vernacular architecture and representation

The meaning of home

Symbolic intervention and interpretation of vernacularity

The semiotics of place

The politics of ethnicity and settlement

Global tourism and its impacts on vernacular settlement

Vernacular built form and aesthetics

Technology and construction in vernacular built forms

Vernacular language - writing and oral traditions