Ethnic Objects in Domestic Interiors: Space, Atmosphere and the Making of Home

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores how a number of white, urban, upper middle-class American women describe their use of ethnic objects to decorate their homes. Showing how the particular value of these objects derives from their potential for creating what is described as “atmosphere” in my informants' domestic spaces, I explore this notion of atmosphere, which so far has received limited attention in anthropological studies of the home. Drawing on Gernot Böhme's ideas on atmosphere as “the relation between environmental qualities and human states” (Böhme 1993: 114), I demonstrate how my informants use the term atmosphere to designate homes or interiors that they find particularly compelling. Moreover, my informants' explanation of atmosphere, their contrastive comparison of “white,” “anonymous,” and “institutional” spaces with homes “full” of atmosphere and “life,” illustrates how their use of the term aligns such sensory perception with normative notions of home as dwelling, thus privileging sociality over taste and the material environment in defining domesticity. The material and visual qualities of ethnic objects are valued for their ability, in constellation with other elements of the domestic environment, to create a sense of animation, suggestive of dwelling and sociality.