Cosmologies of Bungalow Preservation: Identity, Lifestyle, and Civic Virtue

Lawrence-Zúñiga, Denise

doi:10.1111/j.1548-744x.2010.01040.x

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Rather, the placement of the new object is one aspect of how secondary agency is cultivated through adding to, and re‐arranging as a result, an assemblage or collection in a house. To provide a context for understanding domestic variations in material agency, we can look at an ethnographic example drawn from my own research to explore why and how people buy older houses and restore them to their “original” glory (Lawrence‐Zúñiga ). This contemporary popular movement in historic preservation is bourgeois in character and is argued by some proponents to be a protest against (or resistance to) the rapidly increasing commodification of urban life while also producing its own commodities as it redefines subject–object relations.…”

Section: Restoring the Historic Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Some Thoughts on Material Agency, Urban Practices, and Collecting Strategies

Lawrence-Zúñiga

2014

Museum Anthropology

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The concept of material agency can and should apply to museum collection strategies. Drawing on studies of preservationist homeowners who, in restoring their homes, discover the agency of previous builders and occupants in shaping the house's material qualities, this study proposes a broad concept of "habitability" to guide collecting and for actualizing the agency of older objects. A second area of inquiry examines domestic technologies designed to help humans with daily tasks. Some of these include "smart appliances" and robotics that become increasingly "normalized" through habitual use. [domestic consumption, preservation, smart appliances, designer intention, object assemblage]In pursuing questions of how museum policy ought to be shaped to deal with collections in the rapidly evolving commercial and digital world, Alison Clarke (this volume) has provided us with a deft overview of theories of material agency and their application to objects as the carriers of meaning. Drawing on anthropological and philosophical roots, and recent anthropological developments in the study of material culture, she observes that the idea that things could be more than passive carriers or props-that they, like people, could have gender, names, biographies, or influence-is increasingly activated and displayed in contemporary consumption behavior. Clarke cites anthropologists Daniel Miller (2005Miller ( , 2008 and Alfred Gell (1998) in her discussion of material agency, the former for his extensive work on consumption and material culture, and the latter for his contributions to the study of art. Miller's concept of agency, drawing on Bruno Latour, argues that "material forms have consequences for people that are autonomous from human agency" (2005:11), but Gell (1998:16) focuses on the distributed agency of the artist in creating the artifact, where the artist's agency, or intention, invested in the making of art influences the viewer, and material agency is secondary.As Clarke notes, however, some scholars like Tim Dant (2005) are significantly less confident that material agency can ever equal that of humans. Clarke describes Dant's approach as emphasizing the "everyday, practical interactions between people and things, subjects and objects" (Dant 2005:6) in which humans transfer their own agency to objects. In response to these provocative ideas, Clarke acquaints us with emerging shopping trends and examples of contemporary objects that may find their way into future collections by emphasizing the new social contexts and rules by which materials are consumed. She suggests that as academic discourse problematizes objects in terms of their agency, a reframing of materiality and consumption may be underway. She notes how performance artists reflexively and self-consciously explore how objects make up the urban subject, while ordinary urbanites engage in decluttering, purifying themselves of their codependency with objects. She observes in the thriving culture of eBay, with collectibles constituting the "heart and soul" ...

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Section: Restoring the Historic Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Some Thoughts on Material Agency, Urban Practices, and Collecting Strategies

Lawrence-Zúñiga

2014

Museum Anthropology

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“…Whilst houses may represent "the social relations of those who inhabit them" (Carsten 2004, 37), there is a need to account for the ways in which houses or properties reflect and facilitate complex interpersonal connections between migrants, kin and place. Houses, I argue, are not simply a reflective site and source of memories (Carsten 2004;Lawrence-Zúñiga 2010). As a key site of intimacy, they provide insights into a range of past, present and potential connections between migrants, kin and a range of localities and nation-states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobility, subjectivity and interpersonal relationships: older, Western migrants and retirees in Malaysia and Indonesia

Green

2015

Asian Anthropology

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Studies of Western retirees, amenity migrants and working expatriates have proliferated in recent years, yet insufficient attention has been given to the role of interpersonal relationships in shaping migrant experience and spatial mobility practices in transnational social spaces. Drawing on ethnographic research with older, Western migrants and retirees living in Penang, Malaysia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia this article explores the relational dimensions of affect through three intersecting sites of intimacy -couple relationships, transnational kinship ties and property. Through an analysis of emergent, enduring and dissolving landscapes of kin ties I highlight the role of interpersonal relationships in shaping migrant subjectivity and experience across both space and time. By treating self and others as porous entities I illustrate the extent to which migrant subjectivity is constituted through complex, multi-layered experiences of mobility, belonging and equally porous yet relational connections to one's past, present and potential futures.

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“… For a fuller discussion of the preservation‐oriented homeowners' “attachment” to and practices devoted to restoring early‐20th‐century domestic architecture in southern California communities, see Lawrence‐Zúñiga ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Residential Design Guidelines, Aesthetic Governmentality, and Contested Notions of Southern California Suburban Places

Lawrence-Zúñiga

2015

Economic Anthropology

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Since the 1970s, San Gabriel Valley suburban cities have become a desirable destination for thousands of immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asia, but their remaking of existing residential landscapes has provoked controversy and opposition. At play are two contrasting real estate value regimes: a regional or transnational perspective held by most immigrants and a traditional or preservationist view advocated by long-term, mostly white residents. This study explores the role of urban planners' use of residential design guidelines to limit and shape home construction practices in four cities. The delineation of common components of "aesthetic governmentality," including episteme, identities, visibility, techne, and ethos, framed the examination of the guidelines and design review procedures. Analysis reveals the challenges planners and design review boards face implementing regulations based on expert understandings of visual architectural forms. Although initially resistant to such design requirements, immigrants finally complied by hiring design professionals in the same way long-term residents do.

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Cosmologies of Bungalow Preservation: Identity, Lifestyle, and Civic Virtue

Cited by 7 publications

References 23 publications

Some Thoughts on Material Agency, Urban Practices, and Collecting Strategies

Some Thoughts on Material Agency, Urban Practices, and Collecting Strategies

Mobility, subjectivity and interpersonal relationships: older, Western migrants and retirees in Malaysia and Indonesia

Residential Design Guidelines, Aesthetic Governmentality, and Contested Notions of Southern California Suburban Places

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