Vital Signs 2: Paper Session 2a
Researching home and memory
Tuesday 7 September, 4 - 5.30pm
'Inadvertent (re)collections: forgotten spaces / remembered objects' - Alyssa Grossman (University of Manchester)
Household collections and the material arrangements of private space are often studied for their relationship to practices and discourses of recollection. Yet as Bachelard (1958) observed, domestic interiors are not only carriers of memory, but also containers for things that have been forgotten. Lofts, cupboards, closets, and spaces under the bed may hold artefacts that have gathered over the course of many years, or that have been neglected for long periods of time.
My research has focused on remembrance work in post-socialist Bucharest, analysing how its inhabitants are evaluating the past, present, and future through everyday interactions and material practices. Rather than considering the deliberately commemorative properties of collected objects, I highlight their function as inadvertent accumulations that provoke unexpected recollections at particular moments in time.
This paper discusses three settings where I asked individuals to revisit the contents of private storage areas, to rummage through disused possessions, and to share with me the thoughts, reminiscences, and narratives that emerged through such encounters. I explore these neglected objects as points of rupture, sparking moments of Benjaminian “historical awakening,” and providing insights into contemporary perceptions of the past and future. While people’s memories often resonated with broader, collective experiences, they were also linked to individualised and idiosyncratic histories, dream-worlds, and imaginations. They contained more nuanced articulations than those conveyed by dominant memory discourses in Romania’s public sphere, highlighting the multiple, inconclusive, and inconsistent ways in which people are currently remembering the past.
'Migrant Homescapes' - John Watters (National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, NUI, Maynooth)
Home is the site where some of the most intimate facets of our identities and relationships are performed. It is not surprising then that this can be one of the most difficult research sites for social scientists to penetrate. Perhaps this is why Mona Domosh lamented, in 1998, that we as researchers have “barely begun to open the door and look inside” (Domosh, 1998, 281). However this has been changing, a shift reflected in the empirical basis for this discussion - my current study of migrant families in Ireland. This is a geographical exploration of the ways in which the migration process can renegotiate migrant’s lived experience, and individual understanding of family. Engaging with participant generated photographs of family and home, this project understands the lived reality of migrant families through a multitude of sites or scapes, rather than more traditional hierarchical scales. The current paper will attempt to map one such constellation of spaces – homescapes – as a means of demonstrating one possible approach to generating a theoretical understanding that resonates with migrant’s lived reality of home in Ireland. Underpinning this discussion will be the epistemological question: how can we know the home?
'Material Possesions and the Identity research' - Anna Pechurina (University of Manchester)
The presentation discusses the ideas surrounding the study of material possessions in the context of every-day personal life. Based on my research on the homes of Russian migrants in the UK, the paper examines the meanings of material possessions and the connection between those meanings and personal identity and culture. Taking the example of Russian migrants’ homes I will focus on the group of objects such as souvenirs and craft, which stereotypically represent Russia. Although these objects can often be seen in Russian homes, it does not indicate that have been chosen to symbolise/manifest Russia. In many instances the owners did not consider these items to be especially important, and often could not remember why they had them, as if they had come into the house ‘by themselves’. Thus, these possessions occupied a “marginal position” in the domestic space since they did not have any functional or personal meaning; their only function was as a term of reference. Some migrants accumulated whole collections of these objects making a home look like an exhibition of a “Russian kitsch”. Although useless, these “culturally impoverished” items were a culturally significant phenomenon. Even recognising the items as useless and tasteless and thinking that they do not really need them, Russians could not bring themselves to throw them away as if there was a sort of underlying cultural obligation.
In my presentation I will explore the relationship between the meanings and the practices around the creation and maintaining of these symbols and obligations. Back to Vital Signs 2 Programme | Back to Vital Signs 2 homepage