Lecture Notes on Home and Consumption (PDF)

# Lecture 8: Home - We do up our homes to create spaces to build relationships. - We raise families, have parties, friends around in the home. - Buying a home as a consumer product and doing it up with consumer products allows us to create a space for communication and sociality. - Home and where i...

# Lecture 8: Home - We do up our homes to create spaces to build relationships. - We raise families, have parties, friends around in the home. - Buying a home as a consumer product and doing it up with consumer products allows us to create a space for communication and sociality. - Home and where it belongs is located is part of the many signs that enable people to classify and make assumptions about each other. - This also enables people to see inequality in terms of social class which can be expressed in the home in terms of a lack of material things; in terms of lifestyle and in terms of taste and distinction. ## Housing Consumption and Home Décor - Buying a home is an exercise in distinction and taste. - Housing consumption highlights the relationship between lifestyles and desires. - Housing consumption and décor is also an experience of identity and how you see yourself and how you want others to see you. ## Home Values - Home can provide expressions of identity, social standing and personal values- (Dittmar, 1992:3). - The process of home making can be emotional and physical work (decorating, cleaning, designing). - Home is a building, a thing but it is also a meaning. ## Habitus - Habitus is ingrained habits and understandings. - Habitus is the way that people understand their social world and react to it. - This includes individuals and how they perceive the world around them. - Habitus refers to the norms, values, attitudes and behaviors of a particular social group or social class. - The habitus is learned through socialization. - The home is one place in which we learn our habitus and it becomes inscribed within us. **Simple Definition:** The way a person of a certain social class perceives the world # Lecture 9: Home - Stores also give mock up kitchens and other rooms to show and help shoppers imagine the furniture in their own homes (1999:48) ## The Diderot Effect - The Diderot effect is an argument in which introduction of a new possession that is different or more extravagant can result in a process of spiraling consumption. - The term was named after Denis Diderot (1713-1784) who first described the effect in an essay *Regrets on parting with my old dressing gown*. - In the essay, he describes how the gift of an extravagant red dressing gown made his other, older, less extravagant things seem worthless which made him want to get more extravagant items to replace them, making him go into debt. - Juliet Schor (1992) argues that it is the Diderot effect which makes us buy goods we do not need. ## Influences on the Home - How we decorate our homes is heavily influenced by outside influences. - This can be expanded to magazines, programs, advertising campaigns, etc. - The influence of family and friends shouldn’t be underestimated when we, as sociologists think about the way that people make decisions about how their home is presented. - It is not easy to stop ourselves from imagining how outsiders may perceive us (from Chapman and Hockey 1999). ## Influences on the Home - Designs and ideas are sold to us through advertising as consumer products. - The placing of objects in the home is also a means of expressing the self, for example: - A study by Divia Tolia-Kelly (2004) shows how British Asians use ornaments, souvenirs and sacred objects to recreate parts of the memory of the homes they left behind into their new homes. - The placing of objects in the home is also an expression of identity. ## Consumption: Selling the Home **Book:** *Ideal Homes? Social Change and the Experience of the Home (1999)* **Edited by:** Tony Chapman, Jenny Hockey **Chapter 1:** - This chapter is concerned with new homes in Britain and they look to explore how design reflects, and to some extent, shapes the expectations of home life. - According to Chapman and Hockey (1999) since 1908, London has hosted the “ideal home exhibition”. - From a sociological perspective, the ideal home exhibition provides interesting insights into the way that big companies try to persuade the show visitors to subscribe to a certain model of the ideal home. **Chapter 4:** - Tony Chapman (1999) also argues that new houses and estates will at least provide decorated show homes. - Contemporary show homes provide models of domestic life as lived by their imaginary home owners. They quite literally “show buyers their ideal home”. ## Consumption and the Home - Consumption and the home itself is also linked to social class, distinction, status and taste. - **Book:** *Bourdieu - Distinction 1984* - Bourdieu analyses how various consumer goods, a way of presenting food and eating meals, home furnishings and interior decorations are used by socio-economic classes to market themselves off, to differentiate their distinctive ways of living. - Bourdieu claims that how someone chooses to present themselves and their taste to the world depicts their status and positions them in society. - Through our consumption patterns in the home, we express ourselves - our sense of identity and how we want our homes to look and feel. - This is heavily influenced by the media, family, social class etc. - However, it is not all about being manipulated by the media or showing off a certain aesthetic; the home also has other meanings. # Lecture 10: Home - Home: Self Identity and Being - The house itself, the interior design, the decorations and use of space all reflect the occupant’s sense of self (Despres, 1991). - Ginsburg (1998:31) argues that human beings are homemakers. - He stated that how we function as a person is linked to how we make ourselves at home. - Our residence is where we live, but our home is how we live. ## Home as a Stage for the Expression of Identity - How we define our homes through decoration is also a way of defining ourselves. - It is argued that identity is fluid; we can make and remake our identities when we redecorate our homes. - We can shape a new part of our fluid identities. - According to Susan Clayton, our homes are a part of how we exhibit ourselves to the world. - She says that the act of decorating homes and creating a sense of self through the home is an act of creativity. - But more importantly, there’s a social aspect. The act of sharing it with others, when we look at the interior of the home. - It can be seen that meanings shift and slide based on social and family relationships. - Domestic interior spaces are spaces of family and friendship-based interactions. - The meaning of the home changes over time and between different o. - On the one hand, it is a space for consumption and aesthetic expression. - But on the other hand, home is also a place for relaxation, intimacy, and emotion.