from Intumus: Interior Design Reader Edited by Mark Taylor and Juleanna Preston 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Roderick J Lawrence

Housing and health expert Roderick Lawrence uses a historiographic and ethnographic method of inquiry to examine social variables relative to ordering domestic space, with particular emphasis on rooms for eating and preparing food in Australian and English households. Lawrence points out that although modernism brought aesthetic resolution to the kitchen and dining room, it failed to address a need for these rooms adapting to demographic shifts in family constitution and population. His text reminds us that while houses and their internal activities are ordered by long-standing habits in building and living patterns, they remain responsive to social influences in ways that have the potential to remake and reform them outside of a static framework of living standards. When such issues are considered within ecological reflection, house and housing designs that are attuned to the dynamic processes that occur within them may be produced.

Households possess a range of domestic and personal objects which serve a range of manifest, intentional and latent unintended functions in the sense used by Velben.¹ Any object may be attributed multiple functions, and a specific function may be fulfilled by different objects. A number of studies including Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, Douglas and Isherwood, Furby, Kron, Laumann and House, Lawrence, Pratt and Weisner and Weibel, show that, by themselves, manifest functions do not fully account for the prevailing pattern of domestic consumption, or the decoration and equipment of homes.² These studies therefore confirm Velben's statement that 'we must go on to consider the latent functions of acquisition, accumulation and consumption,' which are 'remote from manifest functions.'³

Many possessions do not serve only utilitarian purposes but are a means of communication with oneself, between members of the same household and with the public, including both friends and strangers. Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, for example, conclude from their study of 315 persons, who live in the metropolitan area of Chicago, that the respondents cherished personal possessions not only for monetary or use values, or the material comfort they provide, but primarily because they convey

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information about themselves and their relationships with other people.⁴ In this respect, expected standards of living assume an important role as cues for non-verbal communication as Kron states:

The furnishings of a home, the style of a house, and its landscape, are all part of a system – a system of symbols. And every item in the system has meaning. Some objects have personal meanings, some have social meanings which change over time! People understand this instinctively and they desire things, not for some mindless greed, but because things are necessary to communicate with … And what is truly remarkable is that we are able to comprehend and manipulate all the elements in this rich symbol system.⁵

House forms, interior decoration and personal possessions are mediums enabling people to articulate their interpretation of their identity, how they relate to others in the same household and to friends and strangers. They are a means of self-expression, of role relationships, and also of the unequal power of individuals to attribute symbolic meanings to domestic space and objects, in order to express both private/personal and public/shared domains as shown by Bernard and Jambu, Hansen and Altman and Pratt.⁶ Simultaneously, the house is attributed personal and social functions; as a haven for withdrawal from society and as a credential for esteem and the respect of others.

This discussion raises important questions about the meaning and use of personal possessions, home decoration and dwelling practices, of different socio-economic groups of people in the same society, as well as comparisons between people in different societies and cultures. Comparative studies of the cultural, social and psychological definitions of domestic objects and processes are overdue, because there is still a scarcity of research that identifies those objects which are more highly valued than others, by different groups of people in the same location, at the same or different times. In this respect, affluence is not merely an indicator that the wealthy own more possessions than the poor; it also implies that the former have a relatively greater degree of control and choice that can reflect and reinforce personal preferences and identity. Beyond the recognition of the pertinence of these questions there is still no comprehensive understanding of the functions of status claims. Moreover, what indicators enable us to measure these functions, and are there penalties for possessing household objects that are attributed contradictory social values? Such questions warrant extensive research in the immediate future. (… p 118)

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Notes

1 T Velben, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Macmillan (New York), 1912.

2 M Csikszentmihalyi and E Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge University Press (New York), 1981; M Douglas and B Isherwood, The World of Goods, Basic Books (New York), 1979; L Furby, 'Possessions: Towards a Theory of their Meaning and Function Throughout the Life-cycle', P Baltes (ed), Lifespan Development and Behavior, Academic Press (New York), 1978 pp 297–336; J Kron, Home-Psych: The Social Psychology of Home and Decoration, Clarkson and Potter (New York), 1983; E Laumann and J House, 'Living Room Styles and Social Attributes: The Patterning of Material Artifacts in a Modern Urban Community', Sociology and Social Research, vol 54 no 3, 1970, pp 321–42; R Lawrence, 'A More Humane History of Homes: Research Method and Application', I Altman and C Werner (eds), Home Environments: Human Behavior and Environments, Advances in Theory and Research, vol 8, Plenum Press (New York), 1985 pp 113–32; G Pratt, 'The House as an Expression of Social Worlds', J Duncan (ed), Housing and Identity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Croom Helm (London), 1981; and T Weisner and J Weibel, 'Home Environments and Family Lifestyles in California', Environment and Behavior, vol 13 no 4, 1981.

3 Velben, Theory of the Leisure Class, p 25.

4 Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, Meaning of Things.

5 Kron, Home-Psych, pp 19–20.

6 Y Bernard and M Jambu, 'Espace habité et modèles culturels', Ethnologie française, vol 8 no 1, 1978, pp 7–20; W Hansen and I Altman, 'Decorating Personal Places: A Descriptive Analysis', Environment and Behavior, vol 8 no 4, 1976, pp 491–504; and Pratt, 'The House as an Expression of Social Worlds', Duncan, Housing and Identity.

Roderick J Lawrence, Housing, Dwellings and Homes: Design Theory, Research and Practice, John Wiley and Sons (Chichester), 1987.

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Social, Spatial and Temporal Factors

Notes