Presenting and creating home: The influence of popular and building trade print media in the construction of home

Abstract

In this paper we examine the ways New Zealanders connect with global and local discourses about the home, and in turn interpret and create their houses and homes, by engaging with print media such as lifestyle magazines and associated building trade literature. The paper is influenced by recent calls for more finely grained and nuanced interpretations of the interplay between the global and the local in the constitution of the everyday lived experiences of urban dwellers. In this meta-theoretical context, house and home are central sites for the construction of identity and meaning. Our argument is that New Zealanders' sense of home is constructed in a dialectic between household members, who negotiate the meaning, creation and use of houses amongst themselves, and the media, comprising image- and taste-makers, who draw on local and global frameworks to both reflect and shape taste and thus create normative images and ideals about what constitutes a 'home'. The paper begins by situating the study in a discussion of the media as a shaper of taste and consumption patterns. This is followed by an analysis of data drawn from a survey of house and home related print media and intensive interviews of a sample of householders in Christchurch, New Zealand. The results of the analysis are presented around a set of key themes which include: product choice, functionality, aesthetics and identity; technology and simplicity of design; rooms and other indoor/outdoor spaces; and gender. The final section examines the links between the media and the ways people interpret and create their homes. The study shows that home-making is an ongoing and contingent activity in which both local and global influences are present but they are mediated through the lives and experiences of the homemakers.