The Home

Question 1

The home is a …

Answer 1

matrix of social relations.

Question 2

A home is a place often idealized but, it is…

Answer 2

not ideal for everyone

Question 3

Home as a place

Answer 3

• Gendered place
• Increasingly a place of work
• Sites of domestic violence, oppression, conflict, resistance
• Place of consumption

Question 4

A home is often seen as

Answer 4

Safe Space
Comforting
Positive
Supportive
A “nest”

… but not always the case.

Question 5

Defining a home (7)

Answer 5

HOME AS…

Shelter 
Hearth
Heart
Privacy
Root
Abode 
Paradise

Question 6

Home as SHELTER

Answer 6

(minimum we expect of a home), physical security

Question 7

Home as HEARTH

Answer 7

comfort, warmth, relaxation

Question 8

Home as PRIVACY

Answer 8

boundary between dweller and the world

Question 9

Home as ROOT

Answer 9

Place, identity, meaning, legacy, ancestry, origin

Question 10

Home as ABODE

Answer 10

a cold notion of home, a place you stay at that isn’t really a ‘home’, not all residences can be homes to people.

Question 11

Home as PARADISE

Answer 11

ideal form of the household

Question 12

Home as HEART

Answer 12

center of an individual’s life, family, love, affection, support

Question 13

What is gendered in a home?

Answer 13

Tasks (optionally, but sometmes to a point of contention)

The notion of housewife

Portrayed as an ideal life for women, but was not

The external life that a woman may carry out is diminished.

This is to such an extent that the entire structures of city were/are still gendered.

Imprisonment: Women often didn’t have the time to pick up the kids and drop them off and be home in time AND go to the city.

Question 14

Housewives felt…

Answer 14

Women felt isolated
Depressed
High rates of suicide
Felt useless
Felt unproductive

Question 15

“A home is a woman’s _ and a man’s _”

Answer 15

A home is a woman’s place and a man’s castle.

He rules over the household, everyone else is his servant

Question 16

Locus of women and men in the 60’s

Answer 16

Women lived in the suburbs

Shopping centres were in suburbia

Question 17

How did the notion of home imprison women?

Answer 17

Women often didn’t have the time to pick up the kids and drop them off and be home in time AND go to the city.

Question 18

Betty Friedan talks about…

Answer 18

50’s suburban America and housewives

Question 19

Homes as places of consumption

Answer 19

• Build it
• Buy it
• Appliances/Furniture
• Our financial existence = social existence
• Decoration
• Cultural ideal of living in a large home

Question 20

“The existence of the entire economy depends on your ___________________”

Answer 20

“The existence of the entire economy depends on you spending more than your can afford.”

Question 21

Silverstone Hirsch - “the household is a part of the moral economy”

Answer 21

in that it is ‘part of a transactional system, dynamically involved in the public world of the production and exchange of commodities and meanings’

Question 22

According to silverstone, the home is a

Answer 22

Social-cultural economic unit actively engaged in the consumption of objects.

Question 23

Stages of integration of objects into a household

Answer 23

Appropriation
Incorporation
Objectification (objects are objectified)
Conversion (objects are converted)

Question 24

Stages of integration into a household:

APPROPRIATION

Answer 24

• Acquiring the object
• Negotiation, purchased, gifted, found
• As items are appropriated, relationships in homes are altered.
• Object takes on new meaning in a household

Question 25

Stages of integration into a household:

INCORPORATION

Answer 25

Object becomes incorporated into the daily routine of the household

Negotiation around the physical place of that object.

(Who decides?)

Question 26

Stages of integration into a household:

OBJECTIFICATION

Answer 26

• Object takes on deeper meanings
• Signifiers of identities, symbols and meanings.
• The way in which the objects see that item as signifying parts of ourselves (books, art)

Question 27

Stages of integration into a household:

CONVERSION

Answer 27

• The way in which there is public discourse around objects that impact on external relationships and our personal identities.
• Items can be used to construct social capital.