At Home with Someone Nonhuman

Abstract

This article explores some new theoretical ground to reveal the many intentions at play within the home. Specifically, I am interested in intentions that are not always reducible to the human agency of the people that dwell there. Whilst we may imaginatively think that we are safe and in charge of the things surrounding us at home, all sorts of forces may be at work there, obscured, in part, by both academic and non-academic considerations. This article traces some elements of a science-studies approach to the network of many different jostling actors in the home space. Through reconsidering the natural scientist's approach to agency and the capacity of entities to object to what we say about them, it is possible to enliven a currently prevalent anthropological stance on home material cultures. From this vantage, we can productively expand the notion of home lives and reveal how things in the domestic are always less than fully domesticated.