Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors
... Within the United States' general population, voluminous amounts of belongings, accrued throughout one's life, is a recent phenomenon. Contributing factors include rising per capita disposable income and ever-increasing product selections in the twentieth century (Arnold et al., 2012;Ekerdt et al., 2012;Hendricks, 2019). This results in a culture of personal fulfillment sought through ownership of material possessions (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981). ...
... Termed the hedonic treadmill, this perpetual cycle of accumulation built the modern culture of materialism (Brickman et al., 1971). Although Baby Boomers responded to abundance while the GI and Silent Generations reacted to scarcity, a similar residential pattern of houses inundated with objects occurred for both (Arnold et al., 2012). ...
... Living in a smaller portion allows convenient accumulation in the remainder of the house. Empty rooms become out-of-sight, out-ofmind storage areas, providing no impetus to discard any possessions (Arnold et al., 2012;Ekerdt & Baker, 2014). Depression, the most common mental disorder of later life, diminishes effort, desire, and pleasure for organizing and cleaning (Fogel, 1992). ...
Due to continued societal affluence, the households of many older people aging in place contain innumerable items, each with a complex story of origin, selection, and provenance. Excess possession accumulation can induce stress, create fall hazards, and impact indoor air quality. Often the burden passes to heirs who distribute or eliminate what is left behind after the death of the elder, an unpleasant task no matter the circumstances. Although academic discourse addresses the disbandment of households during late-life residential downsizing, issues related to accumulation and dispossession within the lives of people who continue to reside at home remain unexplored. The question, What is the collective cost of too much stuff? is a complex social issue for older people and their families, and one that requires additional research. This study reports possession management issues identified in a qualitative analysis of interviews with ten late-life older-old adults aging in place. Findings indicate that excess accumulation of possessions in a long-occupied home can lead to personal maladjustment and familial stress regarding eventual possession divestment. While future research must identify better strategies to alleviate the impact, this paper proposes active possession management as a necessary intervention in supporting older adults who age in place.
... The retention of unused and otherwise unwanted objects in contemporary American household inventories is a measurable outcome of decades of unfettered consumption. Arnold et al. (2012) have rigorously documented the extraordinary ways that homeowners use various residential spaces to store massive accumulations of consumer goods and other objects, many of which are merely newer replacements for still-functional antecedents. Material overabundance and a reluctance to part with inessential and redundant possessions have created an emotional burden, of sorts. ...
... That is, the wedding dress did not just once belong to any young woman; we knew her name, we cataloged some of her other belongings, and we were able to piece together some of her major life experiences (e.g., childhood memories, military service, and marriage). However, it is worth noting that one of the authors (AG) has documented tens of thousands of objects in twenty-first century American households (e.g., Arnold et al. 2012) but never experienced such a profound affective response to interacting with culturally familiar objects until studying illegal discard. That is, familiar objects in an archaeological or near-archaeological context seemingly resonate meanings in ways that are seldom experienced when handling the same culturally familiar objects in a systemic context. ...
As anthropologists we know that the heart is considered a source of strength in many cultures. Yet in Western society and the culture of science, the heart is generally feminized and, as a consequence, devalued. Guided by feminist and Indigenous theory, I have established an archaeological practice that foregrounds heartfelt thinking as part of community-based heritage work. Importantly, I strive to train the next generation of archaeology professionals to recognize the role of the heart in promoting an effective multivocal research perspective. There are many challenges to such an approach, not least of which is the perception that inclusive and reflexive practice is a sign of weakness. This chapter reviews personal challenges I have experienced in operationalizing an epistemology of the heart. I explore why it is imperative to overcome these problems to reinvent the discipline of archaeology.
... The retention of unused and otherwise unwanted objects in contemporary American household inventories is a measurable outcome of decades of unfettered consumption. Arnold et al. (2012) have rigorously documented the extraordinary ways that homeowners use various residential spaces to store massive accumulations of consumer goods and other objects, many of which are merely newer replacements for still-functional antecedents. Material overabundance and a reluctance to part with inessential and redundant possessions have created an emotional burden, of sorts. ...
... That is, the wedding dress did not just once belong to any young woman; we knew her name, we cataloged some of her other belongings, and we were able to piece together some of her major life experiences (e.g., childhood memories, military service, and marriage). However, it is worth noting that one of the authors (AG) has documented tens of thousands of objects in twenty-first century American households (e.g., Arnold et al. 2012) but never experienced such a profound affective response to interacting with culturally familiar objects until studying illegal discard. That is, familiar objects in an archaeological or near-archaeological context seemingly resonate meanings in ways that are seldom experienced when handling the same culturally familiar objects in a systemic context. ...
Moral sanctions, religion, oral stories/histories, and other codes of ethics that evolved to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources are a cornerstone of human social organization. The management of archaeological and heritage resources today are generally top-down and government-sanctioned efforts that are woefully inadequate for considering culturally attributed meaning and value. We argue that a more heart-centered approach to archaeology considers culturally attributed value to heritage, which, in Northwestern North America, includes an array of ecocultural, land-based, and ephemeral heritage sites resulting from the careful management of people over millennia. Consulting archaeology practiced in Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en territory, a contested landscape where oil and gas development displaces people from their lands, is fundamentally at odds with these communities’ treatment and ethos of their ecocultural inheritance. The consideration of ecocultural and land-based heritage is not merely good practice for archaeologists; it follows from a suite of resource management strategies that have been tried and tested by Indigenous peoples over millennia—it is a more effective, just, and productive practice.
... 1-3). CELF scholars study families in the Los Angeles area and additionally use data collected from Ochs' first project, "Discourse Processes in American Families" (Arnold, Graesch, Ragazzini, & Ochs, 2012;Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2013). One of the earliest CELF studies was published in 2005 before the first CELF project was complete (Paugh, 2005). ...
... Paugh and Izquierdo framed their study around the current obesity crisis and justified that this research was necessary to help improve childhood health. The most recent publications from CELF have utilized photography and archaeology of household trash to increase the scope of these linguistic ethnographies (Arnold et al., 2012). ...
In light of the obesity epidemic, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has been extensively analyzed and criticized. Thus far, literature examining the NSLP has focused on what foods are provided rather than what is actually eaten. Additionally, there is limited research on the socialization effects of school lunch and childhood foodways within a school setting. The socialization of children during household mealtimes has been extensively studied, but these studies have been limited to the family dinner table. The purpose of this ethnographic study is to determine how children are socialized during school lunch and to examine the extent to which children understand health and nutrition. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students from a middle school in northern New Jersey. The participants were also observed during various lunch periods in the school cafeteria. Faculty members and lunch service workers were also informally interviewed. The data from the participant interviews and lunchroom observations was synthesized and the analysis of the data revealed common thematic elements: gender, nutritional discourse, commensality, and socialization mechanisms. During school lunch, children sit with students of their own gender, so male and female students are socialized differently. Observations indicate that female students are more likely to share food at the lunch table and male students are more physically active and are less likely to finish their meals. The interviews suggested that children have a basic and profound understanding of health and nutrition which is primarily learned at home. The observations suggest that the mechanism of linguistic socialization deviates from the narrative structure described in the mealtime literature; children reinforce gender roles during lunch time conversations, but their conversations follow different narrative structures. In the context of the obesity crisis, this study reveals the importance of school lunch on socialization and its effects on students’ food choices.
... 4 Amongst the literature on the rapidly unfolding electronic waste crisis and 'mass wasting' practices (Reno 2016), less attention has been paid to the micro-practices that formulate the performative, affective and embodied experiences of electronic objects and e-waste in everyday lives 4 . Research in different fields and with different objectives tells us that hundreds of millions of unused electronic devices are in storage in American homes (e.g., Saphores et al. 2009;Arnold et al. 2012). But, this phenomenon has so far been completely unaccounted for in Life Cycle Analysis models used to inform decision making in manufacturing, recycling, and waste management. ...
... We considered the junk drawer space as a critical site that reflects much about individual and household collection practices and relationships to electronic objects. For example, in their anthropological study of household material and visual culture in LA, Arnold et al. (2012) write: Across the U.S., every home on every block is its own small, informal museum with a unique set of material culture filtered from a wider spectrum of available art, furnishings, and technologies. Americans display many of their most cherished possessions in the 'public' rooms of houses because they assist in telling family histories and expressing what is most important about family members (135). ...
The interdisciplinary Electronic Life Histories Project integrates behavioral archaeology, engineering, anthropology, art, material culture, and science and technology studies to employ a life history model, community-based research and creative engagement to address the making of electronic waste. Focused in the Greater Lafayette area of Indiana, which is home to a major university, this project examines the entanglements among people, electronics and waste-making. Specifically, this paper focuses on a significant interstitial stage between reuse and discard. We consider the stories and meanings affixed to electronic objects once they have entered people’s homes, and the complex lives they have before they are discarded, reused, or repurposed. We find ‘closet fill’ or junk drawers of electronic devices, bits, bytes and peripherals are often unintentional collections that are situationally valued through a constellation of factors that include emotional attachments, technological obsolescence, imagined use-value, as well as discrepancies between perceived value and market value. While the problem of closet fill has been discussed by scholars, how electronics enter this interstitial stage, why they remain and what motivates movement out of this part of the life history of objects have not been closely examined. We suggest a life history approach can make these interstitial phases visible in a way that illuminates the key factors in keeping electronics versus discarding. As opposed to descriptions of waste as disorderly, abject, or disgusting, our work shows that objects at the interstices of wasting practices embody, represent, and express many meanings to participants socially, spatially, and structurally.
... Despite house sizes in the United States tripling since the 1950s, increased consumption has created challenges with clutter and increased demand for storage. This struggle with managing enormous volumes of possessions is illustrated in an ethnography of 32 middle-class American families (Arnold et al., 2012), which contains photographs of cars in driveways because garages are stuffed with possessions, a shower cubicle filled with clothes, and a display of 248 dolls in a child's bedroom. Clutter might seem unimportant, but it can result in procrastination, higher cortisol levels, lower wellbeing, and reduced attention in children (Ferrari et al., 2017;Fisher et al., 2014;Rogers & Hart, 2021;Roster et al., 2016;Saxbe & Repetti, 2010). ...
Everyone must consume, but the wealthy consume more than most. Half of global household emissions come from the world's top 10% of income earners. In this review, we investigate the minimalist lifestyle to find out if minimalism could deliver the dual benefit of reduced carbon emissions and increased wellbeing. Minimalists have voluntarily chosen to have few possessions, despite economic and social structures that encourage consumption. Having fewer possessions suggests they might have a lower carbon emissions. A review of three other low‐consumption lifestyles: frugalism, tightwadism and voluntary simplicity, offers some support for this hypothesis, but the empirical evidence regarding minimalism is scant. We also review minimalist motivations, finding some support for a positive association between wellbeing and minimalism. We conclude that while minimalism might offer wellbeing benefits, research on carbon emissions is inconclusive. Furthermore, even if minimalism did result in reduced emissions, the minimalist lifestyle maybe too individualistic to create social change.
This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Behavior Change and Responses
The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Policies, Instruments, Lifestyles, Behavior
Climate and Development > Sustainability and Human Well‐Being
... Meanwhile, a smaller private yard space aligns with current market trends. Research has shown that adults spent less than 15 min of time per week in their yards, while children averaged less than 40 min per week [147]. ...
Today, suburban areas are home to an ever-increasing majority of the global population. Models indicate that the next generation of US metropolitan growth will rapidly continue outside of urban cores, where car-based development patterns have served as the dominant paradigm for more than a century. With the emergence of autonomous mobility technologies and services, the suburbs of the future offer key opportunities to tackle pressing environmental challenges, such as significant GHG emissions from private vehicle trips, underutilized and fragmented landscape spaces, and a high proportion of impervious surfaces. To leverage this opportunity, our research team employed a novel scenario-based parametric modeling framework to generate and optimize suburban land use patterns and block configurations that leverage autonomous mobility to optimize environmental performance and accessibility metrics. The framework performed through our project, NOGAS (Next Optimized Generation of Autonomous Suburbs), consists of five key parametric modules and a heuristic design process covering various planning and design decision-making stages including scenario generation, analysis, optimization, and visualization. It is the first of its kind tailored for suburban settings with emerging mobility systems, which, more importantly, prioritizes landscape performance and accessibility over the traditional automobile-centric approach in suburban development. One of the most significant findings from this research is that substantial enhancements to a neighborhood’s environmental performance and overall accessibility can be achieved by modifying existing suburban land use patterns and individual block configurations, without the necessity of increasing density. The results of the framework further suggest that a strategic atomized land use scheme, combined with an innovative clustered block typology, is favored for the anticipated widespread adoption of autonomous mobility systems and improved environmental performance. The innovative methods and findings introduced in this research illuminate an alternative approach to sustainable suburban development, offering valuable insights for city planners and developers to shape future suburban master plans, zoning regulations, and design guidelines.
... Another study found that over 50% of residential off-street parking in Melbourne was used as storage by residents who had access to on-street parking 55 ; in Dortmund, Germany, that rate was 12-22% 123 . Studies in Los Angeles and Sacramento, USA, measured 75% and 76% of residential garages were used as storage respectively 57,124 . ...
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are recognised as a means to address challenges such as heatwaves, flooding and biodiversity loss. Delivering these benefits at scale will require large areas of scarce urban land to be converted into green space. Here we show an approach by which cities can make substantial progress towards their sustainability targets using NBS, by converting redundant street parking into biodiverse green space. We demonstrate that up to half of street parking in our case study municipality (The City of Melbourne) could be accommodated in garages within 200 m, freeing up large areas for greening. Our modelling projects significant benefits in terms of tree canopy over, stormwater and ecological connectivity. These would represent strong progress towards a number of the city’s ambitious NBS targets. As many cities allocate extensive areas to both street parking and off-street garages, this approach to freeing up space for nature in cities is widely applicable.
... 11. For example, Bruno Latour's (2004) "online" book made in collaboration with Émilie Hermant, the visual exploration of domestic spaces in the collective work gathered in Arnold et al. 2012, Mirko Zardini's (2005 sensory account of urbanities, Lewis Bush's (2020) reflection on the algorithmic stakes of contemporary photography, or Catherine de Clippel's (2020) recent photographic book on voodoo. 12. ...
This article explores the relationship between photography and anthropology in the age of digital ethnographies and anthropologies of the future. It focuses on the phenomenological bond between the picture-taking process and the politics of visual representations by looking at an object that has shaped the discipline since its very origins. Based on a series of visual encounters in a French banlieue, I describe to what extent good pictures are relative, incomplete, uncertain, sometimes inconsistent, and contain contradictory objects interacting with existing cultural and photographic conventions. I argue that good pictures are experienced pictures that go beyond the realm of a photograph. To this end, I consider the material and experiential connections between photography, sound, and text. Finally, I discuss how anthropologists’ pictorial choices redefine the material and experiential ties to photographic materials. From a critical standpoint, a good picture might challenge the politics of visual representation of the imaged subject through both a photographic and ethnographic engagement. RÉSUMÉ Cet article explore la relation entre la photographie et l’anthropologie à l’ère des ethnographies numériques et des anthropologies du futur. Il examine le lien entre le processus de prise de vue et la politique des représentations visuelles en s’intéressant à un objet qui a façonné la discipline depuis ses origines. Suivant une série de rencontres dans une banlieue française, je décrirai dans quelle mesure les bonnes images peuvent être des objets incomplets, relatifs, incertains, parfois incohérents et contradictoires qui interagissent avec des conventions culturelles et photographiques existantes dans le milieu étudié. J’affirme que les bonnes images sont des images « expérimentées ». J’analyse en quoi les choix plastiques des anthropologues redéfinissent les liens matériels et expérientiels avec les matériaux photographiques issus de l’enquête de terrain. D’un point de vue critique, une bonne photo peut remettre en question la politique de représentation visuelle du sujet imagé, par un double engagement à la fois photographique et ethnographique. RESUMEN Este artículo explora la relación entre la fotografía y la antropología en la era de etnografías digitales y antropologías del futuro. El texto analiza el vínculo fenomenológico entre el proceso de realización fotográfica y la política de representación visual mediante el estudio de un objeto que ha forjado la disciplina desde sus orígenes. A partir de una serie de encuentros visuales en un suburbio francés, describiré hasta qué punto las buenas imágenes son objetos relativos, incompletos, inciertos, a veces incoherentes y contradictorios que interactúan con convenciones culturales y fotográficas existentes. Las buenas imágenes son imágenes “experimentadas” que van más allá de la fotografía. Para ello, considero las conexiones materiales y experienciales entre la fotografía, el sonido y el texto. Des ésta manera analizo cómo las decisiones plásticas de los antropólogos redefinen los vínculos materiales y experienciales con los materiales fotográficos. Desde un punto de vista crítico, una buena imagen puede desafiar la política de representación visual del sujeto representado a través de un compromiso tanto fotográfico como etnográfico.
... Two of the three of us live in them, and we all grew up in them. Living in a detached single-family home is a perfectly acceptable private choice, albeit one with real social and environmental costs (Arnold, Graesch, Ragazzini, & Ochs, 2012;Norman, MacLean, & Kennedy, 2006). But it is not a choice that warrants public protection. ...
... Early access to objects is also shaped by culture-specific practices for carrying children, keeping them safe and warm, and scaffolding their development of locally-valued capacities (e.g., word learning in many US families, walking in Kenyan Kipsigis families : Super, 1976; see Adolph, Karasik, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2010, for an overview). Take, for example, middle-class US family homes, which have been noted for their "clutter" or large quantities of possessions-many of which are designed specifically for children (e.g., toys and picture books: Arnold et al., 2012). We might infer, based on these assemblages of home objects, that much of what children do and talk about at home is centered around what particularly interests them. ...
Object-centric interactions provide rich learning moments for young children, including opportunities to discover word meanings. Children’s first-person object handling experiences, in particular, form a key source of input—one that varies across cultures and across development. Using daylong photo streams from child-worn cameras, we analyze >17k images to identify the frequency and targets of child object handling across the first four years in two small-scale subsistence farming communities on opposite sides of the globe (Rossel Papuan and Tseltal Mayan). Overall, we see general consistency in the distribution of object categories (e.g., consumables, mealtime tools, natural objects, etc.) handled by children across cultures and age, likely reflecting stable properties of children’s physical environments and day-to day routines. However, the exact objects available to children vary both within and across communities and diversify with age. These various distributions of handling patterns are discussed in their relation to potential consequences for early learning.
... In aggregate, the average US citizen enjoyed 1,058 ft 2 to themselves in 2015 compared to a 551 ft 2 in 1973 (Perry, 2016). Anthropological studies of modern households indicate that occupancy patterns tend to cluster in a few rooms with many spaces rarely utilized (Arnold et al., 2012). While storage space must not be neglected, this suggests that decreasing unit size may be one of the simplest strategies for driving down the cost of housing. ...
Affordable, energy efficient, and healthy housing is a key component of individual, community, and planetary resilience and is increasingly scarce in both rural and urban regions on the West Coast of the US and many other locations globally. To address this issue, we assembled a diverse team including designers, manufacturers, researchers, economic and legal experts, community organizers, and students from many fields to develop complementary systems for modular, affordable housing and supportive site enhancements. By pursuing an 'open-source' design process, our research and concepts are shared freely to engage and welcome input from a broad spectrum of perspectives. Our goal is to leverage disruptive new technologies like mass-timber panelized digital manufacturing, distributed energy production/storage, and water reclamation micro-grids to support systems-based approaches to creating affordable housing and resilient communities. Our flexible modular solution is rapidly deployable, reconfigurable, and relocatable. It includes on-board photovoltaic arrays and battery storage and can be positioned as a standalone accessory dwelling unit or as a cluster community. We propose service-based and on-site approaches to water and waste treatment in response to different configurations and contexts. Each unit provides much-needed housing while reinforcing the local utility grid and providing essential services during grid-disrupting events. This paper documents initial results of ongoing research, financial and sociopolitical implementation plans, and site improvement and modular housing system concepts. Moreover, we invite the ACEEE community to contribute their expertise as part of open source knowledge network.
... Podemos rastrear el surgimiento de colectivos de artistas u oficios en ciertas ciudades de E.U.A aunado a movimientos sociales como el de la economía compartida, el movimiento minimalista y el surgimiento de una nueva población de jóvenes "nómadas" quienes dedican mayor tiempo a estar en su trabajo, en vez del hogar, más dispuestos a compartir el espacio con otros [21] rechazando la co-habitación de familias nucleares tradicionales y más familiarizado con las tecnologías que le permiten estar multi-conectado [10]. Estos nuevos patrones de cambios de comportamiento en el habitar, hacen cada vez más tenue la línea entre trabajo y el hogar e implican una demanda de mayor multifuncionalidad y flexibilidad en ambos espacios que se refleja en la tendencia a crear "escenas" más "hogareñas" en el entorno laboral, como "cocinas", "espacios de relajación o lúdicos [3]. ...
During the last decade, Future studies have developed a wide corpus of theory and methodologies where the "weak signal" framework stands out as controversial and complex to apply. In spite of these, there is a growing interest from government, urbanists and academics for analyzing future scenarios of a city. This article aims to revisit the notion of “weak signal” in the urban context, using retrospective analysis of three case studies where we traced weak signals linked to urban innovations in transportation, work and food domains. Our results let us conclude that cities' innovations are preceded by early signs, diffuse and low on visibility at first, which gradually incorporate strong contextual aspects and tendencies that could be associated with foresight scenario building. The three cases analysed, evidence that cities are undergoing great transformations guided by a combination of emergent economic movements and the incorporation of collaborative values that shape the way citizens move, work and feed.
... In 1987, Los Angeles Times reporters undertook a systematic study of garage use and found that 3.2% were inhabited (Chavez & Quinn, 1987). A subsequent study of 32 "middle-class" households reported that 75% of garages were used exclusively for storage of household belongings (Arnold et al., 2012). The authors further estimated that roughly 90% of garage space in middle-class Los Angeles neighborhoods is used for storage rather than parking. ...
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are increasingly touted as
part of the solution to the intransigent housing shortages facing many
metropolitan areas across the United States. But numerous barriers
to ADU development persist, including opposition by neighboring
households. One persistent question is whether ADU residents would
overwhelm on-street parking in the predominately single-family
neighborhoods where ADUs are typically built. That question is difficult
to answer because there is a surprising dearth of research on the effective
parking supply in single-family neighborhoods. We use a survey of
homeowners in Sacramento, California, to investigate the supply and
sufficiency of residential parking for single-family homes, including how
households actually use their garages, and help answer the ADU parking
conundrum. After estimating and accounting for actual garage use, we
find that more than 75% of households have enough off-street parking
available to park all their vehicles. When we combine off-street and onstreet
parking supplies, we find that households have an average of 1.6
more parking spaces available to them than they have vehicles. That
parking surplus is more than enough to accommodate the average ADU
tenant and their vehicle, belying claims that ADUs will overwhelm
existing parking supplies in single-family neighborhoods.
... Also, the beauty and utility of plastics as a material are overshadowed by the thoughtlessness characteristic of fossil technology. Instead of being used prudently, plastics have taken over virtually all product niches, so that a typical US household contains hundreds of different plastic products in tens of different kinds of plastics (Arnold et al. 2012). And, again, without proper consideration, plastics have been discarded in landfills and at roadsides, virtually everywhere, not to speak of the wear and tear on plastic items that produces ever smaller plastic particles carried by wind and water. ...
Current debates on sustainability are largely building on a problematic assumption that increasing technology use and advancement are a desired phenomenon, creating positive change in human organizations. This kind of techno-optimism prevails particularly in the discourses of ecological modernization and green growth, as well as in the attempts to design sustainable modes of production and consumption within growth-driven capitalism. This transdisciplinary book investigates the philosophical underpinnings of technology, presents a culturally sensitive critique to technology, and outlines feasible alternatives for sustainability beyond technology. It draws on a variety of scholarly disciplines, including the humanities (philosophy and environmental history), social sciences (ecological economics, political economy, and ecology) and natural sciences (geology and thermodynamics) to contribute to sustainability theory and policy. By examining the conflicts and contradictions between technology and sustainability in human organization, the book develops a novel way to conceptualize, confront, and change technology in modern society.
... Also, the beauty and utility of plastics as a material are overshadowed by the thoughtlessness characteristic of fossil technology. Instead of being used prudently, plastics have taken over virtually all product niches, so that a typical US household contains hundreds of different plastic products in tens of different kinds of plastics (Arnold et al. 2012). And, again, without proper consideration, plastics have been discarded in landfills and at roadsides, virtually everywhere, not to speak of the wear and tear on plastic items that produces ever smaller plastic particles carried by wind and water. ...
With severe ecological degradation unfolding, the strong sustainability approach underpinned by ecological economics calls for a post-growth vision of the economy. This chapter adopts a philosophical perspective of critical realism and argues that such a vision of the economy does not arise on its own. It is the result of intentional transformation of structures by agents, the result of sustainable change. The chapter proposes small, local, and low-tech firms as agents of sustainable change. Such agency needs to be operationalized, which should be done via the development of the moral agency of individuals. The chapter warns that sustainable change is not an easy undertaking, since agents are constrained by structures which operate against it. It concludes that it is not merely concrete practices, but moral agency and the values and world views of individuals that need to receive more attention in investigating sustainable change and bringing about a post-growth world.
... Through communication, individuals involved in care activities, for instance, dressing and bathing (Backhaus 2017;Sadruddin 2020) or beauty work (Toerien and Kitzinger 2007), are able to closely coordinate the actions of their bodies with one another. This has been demonstrated in relation to in-home care between nuclear family members (Arnold et al. 2012;Goodwin 2015;Goodwin and Cekaite 2018) and in encounters between patients and health practitioners (Drew et al. 2001;Maynard and Heritage 2005). Through such interactions, care and language become mutually constitutive. ...
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... 32 Recent research studies 33 The scientific literature related to transmissions in buildings, 35 the spread of infection in family environments and households, 36 and the behavior of close contacts including the body positioning in detail 37 is almost unanimous in considering that in a closed architectural environment, such as dwellings and similar spaces, the risk of transmission due to proximity is high, particularly if an occupant is infected outside and lives with the other occupants of the dwelling. The main reasons are the characteristics of these closed spaces and the occupants' behavior because there is usually a greater interaction among them, 38 particularly in modest dwellings and in situations in which the cohabitation is intensified. 36 In these cases, the transmission risk is closely related to the distance and position among individuals, the numbers of individuals, the actions related to the expulsion of contaminated droplets (sneezing, coughing, speaking or just breathing), and the exposure time, among other specific characteristics of these spaces. ...
One of the main modes of transmission and propagation of Covid‐19 (SARS‐CoV‐2) is the direct contact with respiratory droplets transmitted among individuals at a certain distance. There are indoor spaces, such as dwellings, in which the transmission risk is high. This research aims to record and analyse risk close contacts in this scope, experimentally assessing the effectiveness of using electronic proximity warning sound devices or systems. For this purpose, the methodology is based on monitoring the location of the occupants of a dwelling. Then, the days in which a proximity warning sound system is installed and activated are compared to the days in which the system is not activated. The results stressed the significant reduction of time and number of close contacts among individuals when the warning was activated. Regarding the relation between the number and the duration of close contacts, together with the reductions mentioned, the possibility of making certain predictions based on the distributions obtained is proved. All this contributes to the progress in the prevention of Covid‐ 19 transmission because of close contacts in dwellings.
... While the problem of domestic clutter is not big, it is real. Many contemporary Western households are plagued by mounting accumulations of possessions (Arnold et al., 2012). At the same time, many homes and apartments are shrinking in size. ...
Philosophical assumptions influence empirical design. For example, physical shape is typically described in terms of 'positive form and 'negative space.' Here, a third type of shape is proposed, called "phantom volume," comprised of the geometrically-predictable forms delineated by movements of a product, its parts, accessories, the user's body, and the cone of vision. Phantom volumes are critical to product function, because things cannot be used if access is blocked. This observation suggests that domestic "clutter" may be defined as the physical effect created when the phantom volume of one object is obstructed by the positive form of another-proposing a mechanical origin for psychological frustrations. The concept is illustrated with 3D renderings of a domestic coffee maker, revealing unexpectedly large and irregular phantom volumes. The quantitative 3D methodology might offer future applications in planning, research, or student assignments.
... 6 All of this, then, contributes both to the production of more and more things and also to the likelihood of individual people possessing more things over the course of their lifetimes than did people in pre-industrial times. Indeed, research shows that people living in industrialised Western countries today typically have vastly more objects in their homes than did earlier generations (Arnold et al. 2012). ...
Preservation of natural and cultural heritage is often said to be something that is done for the future, or on behalf of future generations, but the precise relationship of such practices to the future is rarely reflected upon. Heritage Futures draws on research undertaken over four years by an interdisciplinary, international team of 16 researchers and more than 25 partner organisations to explore the role of heritage and heritage-like practices in building future worlds. Engaging broad themes such as diversity, transformation, profusion and uncertainty, Heritage Futures aims to understand how a range of conservation and preservation practices across a number of countries assemble and resource different kinds of futures, and the possibilities that emerge from such collaborative research for alternative approaches to heritage in the Anthropocene. Case studies include the cryopreservation of endangered DNA in frozen zoos, nuclear waste management, seed biobanking, landscape rewilding, social history collecting, space messaging, endangered language documentation, built and natural heritage management, domestic keeping and discarding practices, and world heritage site management.
... Die Problematik mehrfacher, zum Teil gegensätzlicher Deutungen gilt auch für die »Wohnzimmerstudie«, die in den letzten Jahren wahrscheinlich die größte Resonanz erlangt hat. Es geht um Daniel Millers beschreibenden Essay über eine Reihe von Wohnzimmern im Londoner Ostend (Miller 2010 (Arnold et al. 2012). Im Lichte ihrer Ergebnisse ist es nicht zulässig, alle Dinge in einer Wohnung als gleichermaßen bedeutungsvoll anzusehen. ...
Dass Migration die Ausnahme sei, Sesshaftigkeit hingegen der Normalfall, ist ein weitverbreiteter Irrtum. Gegen diese Auffassung von Gesellschaft richtet sich der vorliegende Band. Die Beitragenden nehmen die Wohnverhältnisse, den Haushalt
sowie den Sachbesitz von Migranten in den Blick und damit die Diversität gesellschaftlicher und kultureller Bezüge. Vielfältige Alltagspraktiken
und unterschiedliche Bewertungen des Wohnens machen deutlich, dass pauschale Kategorien oder statische Schemata für eine angemessene Beschreibung der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft nicht geeignet sind.
... It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life" (1936, p. 5-6). The findings are reflected in research regarding the negative impact of cluttered homes on subjective wellbeing (Roster et al. 2016), decreased performance and increased stress as a result of the attentional effects of clutter (McMains and Kastner 2011), and a link between clutter and high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol (Arnold et al. 2012). These findings also align with research indicating that cluttered homes and classrooms may be detrimental to attention, cognition, and learning (Fisher et al. 2014;Hanley et al. 2017;Tomalski et al. 2017). ...
Minimalism is an increasingly popular low-consumption lifestyle whereby people deliberately live with fewer possessions. Proponents of minimalism claim the lifestyle offers a myriad of wellbeing benefits, including happiness, life satisfaction, meaning, and improved personal relationships, however, to date there has been no scientific study examining these claims. The current study aims to take a step towards rectifying this, by exploring the experiences of people living a minimalistic lifestyle. Ten people who identify as minimalists participated in semi-structured interviews to discuss their experience of minimalism and wellbeing. The data was collected and analysed using grounded theory methods. All participants reported that minimalism provided various wellbeing benefits. Five key themes were identified in the study: autonomy, competence, mental space, awareness, and positive emotions. Findings align with previous research examining voluntary simplicity, pro-ecological behaviours, and materialism, and offer new insights into the benefits of low-consumption lifestyles. The results have multidisciplinary implications, from positive psychology to education, business, marketing, economics, conservation and sustainability, with the potential to impact future research, policy, and practice.
... The material environment is full of such things that perhaps might evoke events or habits of the past, but that have long since lost their meanings in everyday life. Modern households are regularly stuck with such things that their owners do not use any more and simultaneously are unable to get rid of (Arnold et al. 2012). It is a typical feature of things that their meanings and relevance change. ...
Je mehr man außer sich ist, desto besser beschaut man das Objekt
Kant ([1772] 1923, 664) As pointed out in the introduction, incidentalness is a challenge for the study of culture. This applies not only to anthropological and archaeological approaches, but to any discipline that produces descriptions of cultures. As I will explain in more detail, in the framework of more detailed empirical studies dealing with things, the challenge is not only one of ‘method’, but also in terms of ‘research artefacts’, such as the tendency to overestimate meaning. Basically, this is about the question of how cultures should be described and what role everyday things play in cultural change. In this comment, I shall develop the hypothesis that the place of the individual in a society and in his or her material environment as part of everyday culture is adequately described only when incidentalness has a prominent role. Furthermore, I argue that incidentalness is a condition that is unstable, if not transient and ephemeral in terms of temporality. Innovation and cultural change are often related to this specific form of instability in time. Things are eclipsed from incidentalness and, at a certain historical moment, may become central vehicles of meaning in a society, or vice versa : things are shifted to the status of casualness, and the collective awareness shifts to other fields.
... We started by looking at statistics from "the American time use" survey provided by the Bureau of Labor [6]. We looked at the work presented by a UCLA team on the book "Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors" [7] to define a planning strategy for the dwelling. An analysis of architectural precedent composed of residential design measuring between 400 square feet and 2000 square feet was stablished to provide case studies for the different interior and exterior elements of the dwelling. ...
... Two of the three of us live in them, and we all grew up in them. Living in a detached single-family home is a perfectly acceptable private choice, albeit one with real social and environmental costs (Arnold, Graesch, Ragazzini, & Ochs, 2012;Norman, MacLean, & Kennedy, 2006). But it is not a choice that warrants public protection. ...
Local planning in the United States is unique in the amount of land it reserves for detached single-family homes. This privileging of single-family homes, normally called R1 zoning, exacerbates inequality and undermines efficiency. R1’s origins are unpleasant: Stained by explicitly classist and implicitly racist motivations, R1 today continues to promote exclusion. It makes it harder for people to access high-opportunity places, and in expensive regions it contributes to shortages of housing, thereby benefiting homeowners at the expense of renters and forcing many housing consumers to spend more on housing. Stacked against these drawbacks, moreover, are a series of only weak arguments in R1’s favor about preferences, aesthetics, and a single-family way of life. We demonstrate that these pro-R1 concerns are either specious, or can be addressed in ways less socially harmful than R1. Given the strong arguments against R1 and the weak arguments for it, we contend planners should work to abolish R1 single-family zoning.
... Zunino 2013) and explore everyday life (Arnold and Graesch 2002;Arnold et. al 2012). Nonetheless, this knowledge provides a wider view into other relationships still unexplored. Overall, social memory, literature narratives, photography, codexes, decolonial narratives, all represent a different way of objectivising one flexible and mouldable past, in which the home/the house, becomes through memories, stories, photogra ...
This thesis explore the wide and complex definition of the space named as house in an indigenous community, the Nahuas, located in the Zongolica Mountain Range, Mexico. It will draw on ethnographic research to show how Nahuas relate to the corporeal world (objects and environment) and, through processes of struggle and negotiation, use them to produce this physical space, called house. In doing so, it will uncover a different historical narrative. By examining the “house”, and the materials used to produce it, as a space that is lived and built (the house) but also perceived, dreamt and remembered (a home), this thesis highlights interconnections between the study of the physical world (materiality) and the study of social processes (social structure and social relations). For, it is through the rhythms of the Nahua’s everyday life including material acts of remembrance and spatial practices of memory, that these physical spaces (their houses) can be better understood.
Throughout this thesis I will argue that Nahua delimitation and definition of their houses is continuously changing. This because Nahuas modify their space though their traditions (even those spaces that haven’t been explored such as caves and other ones, are modified through their tales and beliefs). These living traditions transfer meaning and orientate both the objects and the environment. Therefore, their objects and the environment (Materiality) is built upon cultural patterns and values that are constantly being modified. Regardless of any processes of subordination, dominance or interrelationship between other groups, Nahuas materiality do not disappear, because it is fluid and dynamic, these becomes modified or reinterpreted. Nahuas Materiality permeates through memory, imagination, traditions, as I will explore through this thesis.
Therefore, rather than beginning with a define idea of what a house is –size, architecture, social structure-, this thesis addresses them as complex physical spaces that encapsulates history, religion folklore and knowledge, both materially, spatially and through the oral traditions and storytelling of the communities that produce them, and in turn produced through them. This continuous movement that builds these space-places allow us to uncover the fluid rhythms that built these places. Therefore, this thesis will present the houses as complex spaces that are fluid, rather than walls and intimate spaces, houses are presented as built spaces in constant change with a never clear present; rather, there is an experience based on the past and the projection to the future. By presenting the materiality of the houses that connects people with their environment (to which Nahuas had to adapt) an agentic and meaningful space was built, one that includes the memory of adaptation that construct their Nahua-ness when producing their home Tocha (as they name it), and the projection of this Nahua-ness into the future. Houses then remain in the memory of the Elders and become agents in the construction and consolidation of subjectivities through the knowledge and the rhythms of repetition that constitue their everyday life.
... Elle propose notamment de se débarrasser des grands salons formels et salles à manger qui sont sous-utilisés, voire carrément non utilisés. L'étude d' Arnold et al. (2012) auprès de 32 ménages a effectivement démontré que sur 1000 pieds carrés du rez-de-chaussée d'une maison, environ 400 pieds carrés ne sont pas ou peu utilisés (voir figure 1) ...
This article presents the tiny house movement in Québec. It begins with the historical development of the movement in North America, then summarizes the discussions held during the First Québec Colloquium on the Future of Tiny Houses, hosted in Sherbrooke on June 16th, 2017. This document, inspired by recent scientific research and by ideas shared during the Colloquium, synthetizes the issues, presents the advantages and opportunities and outlines the limits and obstacles related to tiny houses. It then presents the current situation and recent projects before concluding with closing remarks on the future of tiny houses and the important role that the professionnals from urbanism, the planning community and territority development actors could play.
In light of the reflections shared during the Colloquium and of the research gathered for this article, l’Arpent recognizes that tiny houses hold great potential for sustainable and socially responsible urban development. Nevertheless, the relevance of tiny houses depends on their capacity to be integrated in the existing urban fabric and in their contribution to a more sustainable urban form.
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Cet article résume l’évolution du mouvement des mini-maisons au Québec. Il propose d’abord un historique du développement des mini-maisons en Amérique du Nord et synthétise les propos tenus lors du premier colloque québécois sur l’avenir de la mini et micro habitation, ayant eu lieu le 16 juin 2017 à Sherbrooke. Il dresse ensuite un bilan des enjeux liés aux mini-maisons inspiré des recherches scientifiques et des réflexions qui ont émergé lors du colloque, en présentant les bénéfices et les opportunités, ainsi que les limites et les obstacles aux mini-maisons. L’article se clôt avec un bilan de la situation actuelle en regard des projets récents, puis présente quelques remarques sur les perspectives futures et sur la contribution des professionnel(le)s de l’urbanisme et de l’aménagement au mouvement.
À la lumière des réflexions soulevées lors du colloque et des recherches recensées pour cet article, l’Arpent estime que la mini-maison détient le potentiel de s’inscrire dans un développement urbain durable et socialement responsable. Néanmoins, l’insertion de ces petites habitations doit être réfléchie en fonction du tissu urbain existant, de la forme urbaine et de l’aménagement du territoire.
... En effet, plusieurs chercheur(e)s et architectes font le constat que la maison unifamiliale conventionnelle ne répond plus aux besoins et aux aspirations changeantes des populations (Bernstein 2005;Liebig et al. 2006;Duff 2012;Lauster 2016). On souligne notamment que de nombreuses caractéristiques de la maison unifamiliale datent de plusieurs décennies et que la maison typique de banlieue a été conçue pour répondre aux besoins en espace d'une famille nucléaire comprenant en moyenne deux enfants (Susanka et Obolensky 1998;Arnold et al. 2012;Schenk 2015). Dans un contexte de vieillissement de la population, de diminution de la taille des ménages et de crise environnementale, les grandes maisons unifamiliales détachées ne répondent plus adéquatement aux besoins et aspirations des populations et nécessitent une certaine forme d'adaptation (Duff 2012). ...
La première partie de cette publication introduit les unités d’habitation accessoires (UHA) par le biais d’une mise en contexte historique, socioculturelle et réglementaire. Elle vise aussi à établir une nomenclature standardisée basée sur une revue de littérature approfondie tant au Québec, qu’au Canada et aux États-Unis.
La deuxième partie de cette publication aborde les enjeux relatifs aux unités d’habitation accessoires (UHA), qu’ils soient d’ordre urbanistique (étalement urbain, réglementation, dépendance à l’automobile, etc), économique (accès à la propriété, croissance des valeurs foncières, etc.) ou socioculturel (vieillissement démographique, besoins changeants des ménages, etc). En regard de ces enjeux, les UHA représentent un outil de densification douce et de diversification des types de logements, qui s’inscrit plus largement dans une stratégie de consolidation territoriale.
The accumulation, display, and use of objects have long been recognized as a means through which individuals construct social position and the self. Consumption can thus be thought of as investment, with seemingly infinite payoff as more status items are consumed. However, in the context of overaccumulation, privileged individuals with “cluttered” homes are disposing of their still-valuable possessions. This article uses narrative and content analyses of a critical case, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, a Netflix program designed to help families with cluttered homes sort through their things, to explore the meanings associated with accumulating “too much”: namely, uncontrolled, unactualized selves; class transgression; and failed gender and parental roles. Discarding items, regardless of their value, reduces the clutter, which eliminates the problems symbolized by having too much. Thus, divestment is framed as a means through which individuals can invest in the self, particularly in class position, gender and parental roles, and agency.
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly recognised as a means to address critical urban sustainability problems such as heatwaves, flooding and biodiversity loss. Accordingly, cities around the world have committed to ambitious targets for urban greening. Meeting these targets will require large areas of land to be converted from existing uses to green space. However, finding this land is difficult in established urban areas, where space is already strongly contested. Here we show an approach by which cities can make substantial progress towards a range of sustainability targets: by converting redundant street parking into biodiverse green space. Significant areas of public land in dense cities are currently allocated to street parking, while off-street parking garages in urban areas are typically abundant and have high rates of vacancy. We demonstrate that vacancy in off-street garages is so substantial that up to half of street parking in our case study municipality (The City of Melbourne, Australia) could be accommodated in garages within 200 m, freeing up large areas for conversion to green space. Our modelling shows this would have significant benefits in terms of tree canopy cover, stormwater treatment and ecological connectivity in the city. These benefits would represent strong progress towards – and even meet – a number of the city’s ambitious NBS targets. As many cities allocate extensive areas to both street parking and off-street garages, this approach to freeing up space for nature in cities is widely applicable. Our findings indicate this is a practical means for municipalities with the required political will and public support to deliver their sustainability goals.
Academic disciplines are shape-shifting zones of inquiry yet notably bounded by regimes of training, truth, genre, and aesthetics. This article journeys into liminal zones in between disciplines as an existential space to ponder matters that beg for release from disciplinary syllabi. Can one thrive or even survive in the academy while dwelling in intervals between scholarly footprints? I lay bare a life of thinking in between anthropology, linguistics, and psychology for the reader to pursue and complicate this question. Try as I might to steer clear of folly, I have thrown caution to the winds to suggest affordances that nourish transgressive thinking in ways that expand and reassemble thinkable objects of inquiry.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 51 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Welche Rolle spielen alltägliche und persönliche Dinge im Alter, zum Beispiel wenn ihre Besitzerinnen und Besitzer wohnbezogene Übergangssituationen durchlaufen und aus ihren Wohnungen und Häusern in institutionalisierte (Pflege-)Einrichtungen ziehen? In diesem Beitrag werden zunächst die klassischen Zugangsweisen zu alltäglichen und persönlichen Dingen, wie sie üblicherweise in Haushalten zu finden sind, seitens der Gerontologie und seitens der Material Culture Studies besprochen. Anschließend werden zwei objektzentrierte Studien, die im Kontext von Alter(n) stehen, hinsichtlich ihrer Fragestellungen und Methoden skizziert und an ausgewählten Objekten aus dem Forschungsmaterial dieser beiden Studien veranschaulicht, welchen Erkenntnisgewinn die Gerontologie aus einer kulturwissenschaftlich operierenden, objekt- und personennahen Forschungsweise ziehen kann. Es wird diskutiert, wie die Befunde konkret gerontologische Felder, so beispielsweise die ökologische Gerontologie, erweitern oder Handlungsanweisungen für die Praxis ergänzen können. Anknüpfungspunkte und Desiderate der Verbindung von objektzentrierter Kulturanthropologie mit gerontologischer Forschung (als Beitrag zu einer Material Gerontology) sind in einem abschließenden Ausblick formuliert. Ziel ist es, das Potenzial aufzuzeigen, welches die personennahe und objektzentrierte kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungsweise für die Gerontologie mitbringt, um Fragen nach der Rolle alltäglicher Dinge im Alter zu beantworten.
Studies on intergenerational play around video games suggest that not many parents play video games with their children. In this chapter, I argue that when intentionally designed to support intergenerational play, video games can provide opportunities for parents and children to connect and learn in new and powerful ways, especially during adolescence—a time when family relations undergo major transformation. To this end, I share research findings from a design-based research project that aims to engage parents and children (ages 9–13) in intergenerational play around immersive video games. Specifically, I discuss the design iterations of the Family Quest project over a 3-year period and the lessons learned around how to create opportunities for productive and collaborative intergenerational play experiences for families. Implications for designing immersive video games for families and future directions are discussed.
Seru production system is a flexible, cost-effective, workforce competence-oriented manufacturing management system that provides the opportunity to respond quickly to customer demand. As in parallel to technology and physical improvements, customer demands are also effective for development of production systems. The impact of change in demand has been seen on changeover from job shop to mass production, flexible, and lean manufacturing systems. Seru production system is more appropriate for targeting work both cost-effectively like mass production and maximum diversification like job shop production. This chapter clarifies the Seru production system and explain its use and benefits in the clothing industry. In the application, a shirt production is illustrated according to the principles of mass production, lean production, and Seru production. Thus, different types of production systems have been benchmarked. There will be potential study areas for proving the efficiency of Seru soon.
Sustainability is becoming a major objective of factories worldwide in an effort to eliminate or reduce the use of toxic materials and greenhouse emissions, extend the life of products, reuse waste, and conserve energy, not only for meeting the needs of consumers, but also the multi-stakeholders from both within and beyond the supply chain. The increasing global demand for scarce natural resources is posing a great challenge for producing companies. In recent years, the advent of new technologies and the changes in demography and working conditions as well as the desire for individualized products has added greater complexity to manufacturing. In this context, this chapter provides an overview of the main issues affecting the industrial sector on the way ahead towards sustainability, including contemporary trends triggering the requirements for factories of the future as well as the main research and innovation lines necessary to answer such requirements.
Although an overabundance of possessions—called “clutter”—is both pervasive and maladaptive, understanding how possessions can accumulate remains understudied. In the present research, we suggest that our prior interactions with possessions—namely, a prior decision to forgo consumption—can reduce future usage intentions. Six studies demonstrate that forgoing using an item can make it seem more special, particularly when forgoing is attributed to waiting for a later occasion. As specialness increases, the item is restricted from future usage: it becomes less likely to be used in ordinary occasions and more likely to be reserved for a narrower set of extraordinary occasions. By transforming ordinary items into (perceived) treasures, we suggest that nonconsumption can encourage consumers to retain possessions indefinitely, waiting for future usage occasions that may never arise—ultimately, fueling the accumulation of clutter. These findings extend work on nonconsumption and special possessions and illuminate a novel driver of clutter. © 2021 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved.
Cities have a large supply of garages that could be converted into affordable housing in single-family neighborhoods, but minimum parking requirements prevent converting most of these garages into apartments. We examine how cities can relax off-street parking requirements for houses with converted garages. In Residential Parking Permit Districts, cities can limit the number of on-street parking permits allowed at any address with a second unit. This policy can remove on-street parking congestion as a reason for neighbors to oppose garage conversions, double the potential number of housing units in single-family neighborhoods, and increase the supply of safe, affordable housing.
This article explores how white US Christians’ home displays, including their decorative presentation of paintings, small sculptures, and other memorabilia of foreign travel, play a critical role in representing imperial geographies. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic research on the current aid partnership between Lutherans in the US and Madagascar, which stems from American Lutheran mission work in southern Madagascar (1888–2004), the article studies the relationship of contemporary white Minnesotans’ home displays about Madagascar with more historically-established projects of colonial knowledge production. The visual dimensions of materiality have been significant for building traces and imaginaries of far-flung places for home or metropole audiences in Christian colonization. Thus, by placing theories of Christian souvenirs and devotional objects in dialogue with work on Christian colonialism, the author examines home displays as a lesser-considered aspect of the colonial project in the metropole and considers the problems they raise for contemporary efforts to decolonize Christianity.
Les objets ordinaires présents dans nos maisons peuvent être étudiés en tant qu’expression de catégories culturelles fondamentales : les relations familiales de filiation et de mariage, les formes de la distinction sociale et la construction d’identités sociales. On peut aussi voir dans ces objets l’engagement et le dévouement aux valeurs « sacrées » et aux « thèmes ultimes », au sens de ces termes dans la théorie de la « religion invisible » de Thomas Luckmann. Cet article propose de fusionner cette théorie avec les « new material culture studies » (« nouvelles tendances de la recherche en culture matérielle »), en analysant la « singularisation » (Igor Kopytoff) ou la « densification » (Annette Weiner) des objets ordinaires de la culture de masse. Plus précisément, certains résultats d’une recherche ethnographique menée dans des foyers de la classe moyenne et de familles populaires de certaines villes de Toscane sont discutés. En particulier, l’analyse se concentre sur les « objets d’affection » ou « reliques personnelles », sur les « archives de la mémoire » et sur les différentes manières dont les photographies sont présentées dans l’environnement domestique.
Within cognitive and developmental psychology, it is commonly argued that perception is the basis for object concepts. According to this view, sensory experiences would translate into concepts thanks to the recognition, correlation and integration of physical attributes. Once attributes are integrated into general patterns, subjects would become able to parse objects into categories. In this article, we critically review the three epistemological perspectives according to which it can be claimed that object concepts depend on perception: state non-conceptualism, content non-conceptualism , and content conceptualism . We show that the three perspectives have problems that make perception inadequate as a conceptual basis. We suggest that the inquiry about the origin and development of object concepts can benefit from a pragmatic perspective that considers objects’ cultural functions as a conceptual foundation. We address this possibility from the theoretical framework of the pragmatics of the object , considering the importance of objects’ functional permanence .
Drawing upon Flyvbjerg's (1998) insight that planning is defined more by the political than the rational, we examine the experience of parking reform, as attempted by municipal officials, in Vancouver, British Columbia. The literature offers a broad consensus that minimum parking requirements represent a misguided and inefficient policy producing excess parking in the wrong places and reduced housing affordability. Yet minimum parking requirements remain a near-universal fixture in municipal regulations. We examine the stubborn disconnect between Vancouver’s parking standards and its strategic policies. Rather than reiterating normative debates, we consider how ideas and institutions could shape officials’ hesitation in reform. We reveal the compromise that ensues under planning's duality of designing credible, forward-looking strategy while managing the political constraints created by policy path dependence. We find that Vancouver’s laneway housing parking requirement represents a typology that could propagate across North America: a transitional parking requirement of political compromise, which, we suggest, has the potential to produce a workable reconciliation of theory and practice.
The objects we choose to throw away, and how we discard those objects, can reveal much about materiality and the material basis of capitalism in the twenty-first century. This chapter explores how analyses of the assemblages and locations of recent illegal dumping events illuminate tensions between structural forces, the ways we relate to our possessions, and the motivations prompting the severance of those relationships. Using data gathered during a faculty-student research project addressing contemporary surface assemblages, we also examine the emotive capacities of illegally discarded belongings. With an analytic emphasis on intact assemblages, we argue that acknowledging the emotional contours of unsanctioned discard not only complements methodologically rigorous, data-driven archaeologies of the contemporary but also provides a forum for grappling with fieldworkers’ affective responses to handling culturally familiar objects. Such responses, in turn, can help to cultivate deeper-seated empathy and respect for non-Western connections to objects, space, and place in other archaeological research contexts.
The internet-of-things (IoT) carries substantial costs by urging households to replace their possessions with new, internet connected versions of everyday objects. Beyond financial, these costs include waste, work to arrange and orchestrate objects to suit households, and that of acquiring new skills. Upcycling domestic objects could offer households greater discretion and control over these costs by supporting the ability to tailor IoT to the home. To understand how households might do this, we conducted a home study with 10 diverse American households over 7 days to surface the approaches families are likely to use when tailoring IoT to their existing possessions. We asked family members to enact their process using endowed sticker props---IoT Stickers---to modify objects in their home. We develop a framework of how families make light weight modifications of domestic possessions, summarize trends of their object modifications, and describe the burdens such a system could impose.
This essay analyzes the Marie Kondo brand as a set of neoliberal techniques for managing cultural anxieties around over-consumption, clutter and the family. Drawing from critical discussions of consumer culture and waste, as well as feminist scholarship on compulsory happiness and women's labor in the home, it argues that Marie Kondo's "joyful" approach to "tidying up" presents pared-down, curated consumption as a lifestyle choice that depends on women's work, even as it promises to mitigate the stresses of daily life and facilitate greater well-being.
Issu d’un partenariat entre l’Arpent et la Société canadienne d’hypothèques et de logement (SCHL), ce guide sur les unités d’habitation accessoires (UHA) est un document d’accompagnement ainsi qu’un support à la réflexion des municipalités qui s’intéressent à ce type d’habitation. Puisant à la fois dans l’expérience des villes canadiennes et étatsuniennes et dans une vaste revue des études scientifiques, ce guide vise à encourager les bonnes pratiques et à stimuler l’adoption de réglementations habilitantes concernant les UHA au Canada.
Tout d’abord sont présentés l’historique des UHA au Canada et les bénéfices qui leur sont associés. Dans la deuxième section sont réunis quelques grands principes qui font consensus au sujet des UHA relativement aux zones à prioriser pour leur développement, à leur design global, à leur insertion dans différents milieux ainsi que plusieurs enseignements réglementaires des villes canadiennes et étatsuniennes. Finalement, le guide se termine avec une étude de cas sur la consultation publique récemment menée par la Ville d’Ottawa préalablement à l’adoption de son cadre réglementaire habilitant pour les UHA. En consultant ce guide, le lecteur ou la lectrice sera mieux informé (e) des avantages et des principes de base relatifs aux UHA et sera mieux outillé (e) pour s’engager dans l’adoption d’une réglementation habilitante.
Social science theory has addressed itself broadly to consumption and consumerism as social processes. Additionally, scholarship on decluttering and anti-hoarding has appeared, but less attention has been paid to sight-unseen, stowed things that remain in costly but orderly possession. The United States self-storage industry is unique in scale and prevalence, and figures into both upward and downward mobility. It is a new industry, beginning with the development of sunbelt communities in the 1950s and 1960s and then diffusing outwards. Some storage rental stems from involuntary displacement, biographical disruption, or shifts in the size of living spaces. Other American users avail themselves of unit rentals out of a combination of convenience, conflict avoidance, norms surrounding use of residential space, and anxiety over what to do with this and where to put that. Users are often ambivalent about their continued reliance on them. Existing theorization should be extended to this particular, historically situated form of possession management. As part of a larger interview-based project on the social dimensions of self-storage unit use in the United States, I aim to develop theoretically-guided insight into the material culture that the self-storage industry both responds to and enables. “Limbo stuff” – things neither held close nor released – needs more specific attention.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.