The things we keep – an ethnographic study of material possessions in New York City

Abstract

A home could be likened to a glimpse into our heads. The plaster and lath are the skin and bones, our skull of sorts, a container of all things, sitting, waiting to be observed. The things we keep silently, but visually tell a story of us. Is this why we keep them? So as not to erase our identity? This essay sets out to understand consumer culture through people’s most special things in their domestic spaces. With an ethnographic approach, influenced by The Meaning of Things, I conducted in-person interviews, surveys, and workshops with residents discussing their most special things. From these findings, I created Home Moves prompts to re-engage with our things, and a speculative Living Room Lobby to transform personal collections outside of the domestic space.

Keywords:

• Interiors
• objects
• collections
• home
• identity
• ethnography
• accumulation
• consumerism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 50% of the population identified as Hispanic in 2015. (King et al. 2015b, District 11: East Harlem, 3).

2 75% of the population identified as white in 2015. (King et al. 2015a, District 8: Upper East Side, 3).

3 49% of East Harlem’s residents are rent-burdened. (King et al. 2015b, District 11: East Harlem, 3).

4 As noted in 2015 (King et al. 2015b, District 11: East Harlem, 3).

5 All names residents’ names have been changed.

6 If prompted by the resident, I defined the word special as something that has some meaning, value, memories, importance, or feelings “attached” to it for the person.

7 Also known as “planned obsolescence.”

8 The entire set of prompts can be viewed at www.homemoves.space.

9 Participants were not connected with previous research in East Harlem.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sam Bennett

Sam Bennett is a designer, researcher, and educator with work focused on material culture in the domestic space through an ethnographic lens. With a proclivity towards slow research, Sam’s projects build through repetition and deliberation. She is co-founder of Clever/Slice, a space for creatives to share in-progress work, while evaluating critical feedback. She currently teaches textile design, interior design, and ethnography courses at Parsons, Pratt Institute, and New Jersey Institute of Technology, respectively. Sam has her MFA in Interior Design from Parsons School of Design and BFAs in Textile Design and Art History from the University of Kansas. She currently lives in New York City with her collection of typewriters. Email: [email protected], www.samiamido.com, www.thethingswekeep.org, www.homemoves.space, [email protected].