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always fluid environments of consumption, practices and meaning. (Shove
et al. 2007b 8)
I am inclined to add that the domestication of a product does not necessarily
come to an end even in less fluid, less changing environments. However, as
I have already noted, domestication can rapidly become successful when the
household quickly learns that, indeed, the product has survived the imaginary
and real trials, has been successfully curated and has become an established
part of a household’s understanding of itself and its identity.
As anyone who has ever had a difficult time making a decision in a department
store can testify, it is not always easy to envision those imaginary trials
correctly when it comes to one’s own household. The imaginative and respective
evaluation of design becomes all the more difficult when household is less
familiar to the evaluator. Not surprisingly, most of the interviewed households
pointed towards gifts that they had received when asked about the most hideous
items in their home. In a similar vein, although some households were
proudly dwelling with inherited items, most also told me about family furniture
hidden in the cellars. I admit that I did not quite know what to make
of that, or what the unwanted gifts and heirlooms meant to the interviewees
– no one was able to or interested in elaborating upon that point other than to
make a flat comment that the gifts could not be thrown away, or else they gave
a somewhat defensive account of why they had thrown the item away; thus,
I settle on drawing two simple notions about the role of gifts in households.
First, it seems that, if the traditional gift requires the exchange of further gifts
(Mauss 1923), the unwanted gift in a home is a double burden because, in addition
to the required exchange of gifts, the very presence of the unwanted gift in
the apartment can be seen as a gift given to the gift giver. Second, the unwanted
gifts and inherited items no doubt mediate those particular social, if not
aesthetic, values that the household wants to respect and take care of. In that
case, the design plays an important role in the moral economy of the household
because it mediates and even moulds the social relations of the household.
In addition to establishing and maintaining social relations, we may guess that
those rare givers who manage to find the types of items that the household
actually likes, gain some extra esteem since the feat is known to be difficult.
In the moral economy of the household, gifts and inherited items cause
tensions because they do not fit or contribute to the dwelling practices, but
they remain in the apartment nonetheless. Unwanted designs most easily turn
into clutter, but they are not the only source of clutter because, I am arguing,
any design that does not fit or no longer fit with practices of the hotel, gallery