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The Comfort of Things
In addition to The Antique Gift Shop, yesterday's Amazon haul contained Terry Jones' (yes, that Terry Jones) Who Murdered Chaucer? and Daniel Miller's The Comfort of Things. I read a couple of chapters of Jones' book in the bath, and it's using the conceit that Chaucer, who fades out of history with no word on his actual death, might have been murdered to look at the social life and politics that made up 14th century England. Fascinating so far.
But I've gotten much farther in The Comfort of Things, because I picked it up to read a bit right before bed and couldn't put the damn thing down until I was halfway through. It's a layperson's version of an ethnography of material culture. In other words, an examination of stuff and our relation to stuff and how we define who we are by stuff.*
I first heard about this book on a podcast I listened to a while back - while I was cleaning out my old apartment, actually - and the author was being interviewed about the work he and his students had done. Miller is a professor of anthropology at University College London, and this book is one of the results of a large ethnography focusing on one random street in London. (There's an appendix with the study protocols etc. if you're interested.) They interviewed about a hundred households about their lives and their selves and their stuff, to work out what role stuff has in our lives.
There's a sort of mythology about that people who focus on material objects tend to be poorer in relationships (if I'm expressing that clearly), but that turns out to be wrong.** What's important is not the amount of stuff you have, but how it's used to define yourself and mark your relationships. The objects we surround ourselves with become signifiers of personal history and connections with others.***
The book isn't a formal ethnography, but instead a collection of thirty character sketches, each delving into a single person or family and examining who they are and how they define themselves through the stuff they do and don't have. The two extremes occur at the beginning of the book with George, a man who owns almost nothing and who's led a strikingly emotionally impoverished life with few connections and almost no self-volition or self-responsibility, and the Clarkes, a couple who lord it benevolently over their extended family of relatives, friends, and astonished ethnographers in a house cluttered with Christmas ornaments, family photos, and huge amounts of other meaningful stuff.
So far, halfway through, it's been a fascinating peek into the lives of others. And I could see where writers, especially, who are interested in character and defining character through objects and relationships to objects would find this useful.
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* And pets. They use a broad definition of "stuff."
** They didn't meet any pathological hoarders, I believe, who are admittedly at one far end of the bell curve.
*** Which is probably why those "Clean up! Declutter! Get rid of everything!" shows sometimes annoy the hell out of me - like when you see someone with a huge collection of dolls and they make her pick five to keep, but she's crying over having to do that. LET HER HAVE A COLLECTION. This is when you dedicate a storage area to the collection items and talk to her about rotating out the ones on display every few weeks or so.
But I've gotten much farther in The Comfort of Things, because I picked it up to read a bit right before bed and couldn't put the damn thing down until I was halfway through. It's a layperson's version of an ethnography of material culture. In other words, an examination of stuff and our relation to stuff and how we define who we are by stuff.*
I first heard about this book on a podcast I listened to a while back - while I was cleaning out my old apartment, actually - and the author was being interviewed about the work he and his students had done. Miller is a professor of anthropology at University College London, and this book is one of the results of a large ethnography focusing on one random street in London. (There's an appendix with the study protocols etc. if you're interested.) They interviewed about a hundred households about their lives and their selves and their stuff, to work out what role stuff has in our lives.
There's a sort of mythology about that people who focus on material objects tend to be poorer in relationships (if I'm expressing that clearly), but that turns out to be wrong.** What's important is not the amount of stuff you have, but how it's used to define yourself and mark your relationships. The objects we surround ourselves with become signifiers of personal history and connections with others.***
The book isn't a formal ethnography, but instead a collection of thirty character sketches, each delving into a single person or family and examining who they are and how they define themselves through the stuff they do and don't have. The two extremes occur at the beginning of the book with George, a man who owns almost nothing and who's led a strikingly emotionally impoverished life with few connections and almost no self-volition or self-responsibility, and the Clarkes, a couple who lord it benevolently over their extended family of relatives, friends, and astonished ethnographers in a house cluttered with Christmas ornaments, family photos, and huge amounts of other meaningful stuff.
So far, halfway through, it's been a fascinating peek into the lives of others. And I could see where writers, especially, who are interested in character and defining character through objects and relationships to objects would find this useful.
---
* And pets. They use a broad definition of "stuff."
** They didn't meet any pathological hoarders, I believe, who are admittedly at one far end of the bell curve.
*** Which is probably why those "Clean up! Declutter! Get rid of everything!" shows sometimes annoy the hell out of me - like when you see someone with a huge collection of dolls and they make her pick five to keep, but she's crying over having to do that. LET HER HAVE A COLLECTION. This is when you dedicate a storage area to the collection items and talk to her about rotating out the ones on display every few weeks or so.
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*babbles*
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I think I actually saw that show. Or one of those unclutter your house shows,they were attacking a woman's sewing room and the lady said "Get rid of anything you haven't looked at in a month!". Shawn snorted and laughed and said "If we did that, we'd be spending a fortune on shit that we already had" Because he understands that I 'collect' supplies when they go on sale because I really do end up using it later. Like the black velvet I got on sale for 50 cents a yard 3 months ago. We just used it to line a charity art box, but when we went back to the store? It was $7 a yard. Not quite the same type of collection, but they also seem to think that having items you know you won't be using for a while is 'wrong' too.
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That's one of the things that drives me most nuts -- I think the more obsessive decluttering 'experts' don't believe that you should store anything, ever. If you don't have a concrete use for it this week, get rid of it! Which... no. Obviously you can swing too far into hoarding behavior, but -- well, we do have closets for a reason, and just because they can be abused doesn't mean they shouldn't ever be used.
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(Also, an inability to bear disorder... isn't that an illness, itself?)
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The premise of the shows seems to be that your house should always look like one of those realtor-staged places. And it's clear that the decluttering people on the shows don't read, or have skill-intensive hobbies like sewing, needlework, or woodwork. I can imagine them telling us to get rid of all the framed prints we're not hanging now---craft supplies and papers---outdoor gear---all things that we don't use often, difficult to customize and expensive to rent or buy anew.
There is a world of difference between stocking and hoarding!
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The ones that make me roll my eyes the most are the ones that say 'you don't need to keep books! tell me honestly, are you seriously going to reread these?' Because the answer for me is yes, I do reread, go back and reference things, and otherwise continue to use books once I've read them once. Sure, telling people not to hang onto books they read and didn't care for, or got as gifts and have no intention of reading, no problem. But the frequent flat disbelieve that anybody could actually use that many books is pretty short-sighted.
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Guess what book was directly disposed of right back on to the shelf?
* Like reading books about writing makes me want to write, reading about decluttering tends to make me want to declutter.
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Hah hah hah, I'd like to see one of those shows try to pull that on the average fan's books or DVDs. Watch them reach for a book and draw back a bloody stump.
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