“Blackboxing Whiteness”

Abstract

This paper examines the home as networked and relational. These arrangements of spaceand place were investigated through a digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis ofdomestically focused posts by 50 Facebook users. This data was supplemented by interviews,and in-situ observations drawn from the broader sample. Facebook has opened up the privatespace of the home, allowing domestic space, place, and practice to gain visibility, which, whenanalysed in conjunction with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), illustrates the networked and relationalquality of the home. The home, and the relationships between actants, reflects discoursesand hierarchy. Women remain tightly bound to the home, and to postfeminist discourses ofdomesticity and domestopia. This paper reveals that whiteness, and in particular madamhood,is blackboxed within middle-class homes. Domestic workers employed by these households,on the other hand, were largely absent from such narratives and conversations, and weremarginalised within networks.