'House Beautiful': Style and Consumption in the Home

Author: Ruth Madigan & Moira Munro Year: 2006 (Intimus reprint of the article from Sociology, vol. 30, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41–57; © BSA Publications Ltd 1996 / © Ruth Madigan and Moira Munro; Intimus excerpts pp. 43–56 of the original; Intimus pp. 221–228) Source type: chapter (from Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader, eds. Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston, Wiley, 2006, pp. 221–228) Raw file: raw/chapters/madigan-munro-2006-house-beautiful.md

Summary

Madigan and Munro — a housing sociologist and a housing researcher at the University of Glasgow — report on two pieces of empirical work (a postal questionnaire with 382 respondents and twenty extended interviews, both carried out in 1991) with working-class and lower middle-class households, and find that design is not generally a way of "expressing and demonstrating 'good taste.'" "The broad movements of contemporary design: Art deco, Moderne, Scandinavian modern, Hi-tech, only partially reflect popular preferences"; mass-market consumers furnish for homeliness, warmth and a welcoming feel, choose by use-value (suitability for children, ease of keeping clean, probable life of the item), and are judged — and judge themselves — by respectability (standards of cleanliness and tidiness) rather than by style or Bourdieu's "sense of distinction." The essay is a double corrective: against the postmodern celebration of consumption as playful self-expression ("easily overdrawn") and against the crude victim-thesis of manipulative marketing (consumers are neither dupes nor free symbol-manipulators), it argues that "'Home' is an important expression of identity, yet it is an identity which is only partially achieved through appearances" — the domestic interior is "constantly renegotiated in order to resolve the tension between identity and social role," a renegotiation Bourdieu's habitus names and women disproportionately carry.

Key Claims

Technological determinants of the mass housing interior: "Twentieth-century changes in the technologies of heating, plumbing and refrigeration have had profound effects on the physical design of mass housing: the introduction of bathrooms, the disappearance of sculleries and the advent of the fitted kitchen" (p. 221, citing Dudley's Design of Dwellings, 1944).
The home as leisure centre: recent technological innovation targets the home as leisure centre rather than labour-saving device — "Deep-freezers, dishwashers and tumble dryers were first included in the General Household Survey in the 1970s, while video recorders, home computers and CD players were added in the 1980s, and wrought their impact primarily on the living-room or lounge" (p. 221); "The central focus of the modern living-room has switched from the fire-place to the television" (p. 221).
The gendered aesthetics of home electronics: televisions, "like radios… initially disguised to look like pieces of furniture housed in wooden cabinets, have graduated from brown plastic teak-effect to a more obviously technological black casing" — "The hi-tech look created a more masculine and industrial aesthetic. It is perhaps no coincidence that men rather than women were the target for home-based consumption in this area of leisure products, reflecting a gendered division of labour in which the home still functions as a place of rest, leisure and recuperation for men, but remains a place of work for women" (p. 221).
Popular taste's four styles: mass-market stores offer "either traditional cottagey (flowers and pine); country house (flowers and mahogany); modern, hi-tech (plain colours and black ash); and postmodern (pastel colours and beech)" (pp. 221–222) — "The broad movements of contemporary design: Art deco, Moderne, Scandinavian modern, Hi-tech, only partially reflect popular preferences" (p. 221).
Office design echoes in home design: via Adrian Forty, "different regimes of commercial management are reflected in different styles of office design" — hi-tech's industrial efficiency "was associated with Taylorist 'scientific' management regimes, only to be supplanted by a softer design (lighter colours and 'personal enclaves') to accompany the later human relations school of management"; home design repeats the sequence, "the starker contrasts of hi-tech… rapidly being replaced by pastel shades, lighter woods, and softer upholstery not unlike the 'customer friendly' refits which have transformed the public areas of building societies and banks" (p. 222).
Style hybridity and second-hand economies: "In practice, all these styles spill over into one another because few people buy all their furniture at the one time and because the styles themselves are hybrid. Lower income households are less likely to buy new furniture at all, relying on second hand purchases and hand-me-downs" (p. 222).
The plush rescue: mass-market hi-tech room displays "match… black ash units, black leather seating and plain floor coverings, with ruched bordello curtains and embossed velveteen wallpaper. It is these touches of plush which for most consumers rescues an otherwise sparse, Spartan style and imparts a feeling of comfort, luxury and indulgence which is important to many people's ideal of 'home,' but conflicts with a designer view of style, and no doubt 'good taste'" (p. 222); "One can see both Hollywood and the country house providing images of what constitutes luxury in popular taste" (p. 222).
The furniture industry's traditionalism: change has been "a product of changes in retailing and distribution rather than innovations in the production line" — batch production, power tools, standardisation — which "Ironically… has enabled producers to continue to describe their products as 'made by the finest craftsmen,' 'upholstered by hand'… when in fact most three-piece suites are constructed from the roughest of frames (hand made) and covered with foam and fabric using nothing more refined than a staple gun" (p. 222).
Craft claims as class iconography: "This claim to craftsmanship is important in the iconography of furniture. It reinforces the familial values which are central to ideas of 'home:' solidity, continuity and honesty. But it also has important class overtones" — Bourdieu's upper classes prefer antiques ("family continuity through inheritance," "investment"), the professional/managerial middle classes choose "reproduction furniture, old rather than antique, or real wood (the history of stripped pine would tell a tale), though the language of craft production is also used to promote even cheaper ranges of furniture" (pp. 222–223).
Retail transformation and the lifestyle-concept store: out-of-town stores with "mock-up interiors including suggested colour schemes and accessories," cafés and play areas as "leisure shopping"; DIY stores and flat-pack as "the biggest single innovation in furniture production and marketing"; "Few have followed the Habitat/IKEA route, selling a 'total life-style concept' though these stores have undoubtedly had an impact on taste beyond their immediate range of customers" (p. 223).
The empirical finding — no design vocabulary: "It was immediately striking in our interviews that there was not generally a strong involvement with design as a way of expressing and demonstrating 'good taste.' Our sample of working-class and lower middle-class households did not appear to share the vocabulary of design and style promoted so strongly in the design-conscious 1980s"; respondents "pragmatically went out and bought what was available" — Mrs N: "We just went to the shop. It was as simple as that. I didn't sit and plan it out or anything" (p. 223).
Familial ideology over style: asked what impression they hoped others would have of their home, respondents "typically expressed notions connected to familial ideology – homeliness, warmth and a welcoming feel" — Mrs G: "That you can come in at any time, it's nice and homely"; Mrs R: "You can come in and feel at ease, they don't have to feel that they have to watch what they are doing" (pp. 223–224).
The back-region thesis (their previous privacy work): "an important element of familial ideology was that the home should be a relaxed 'back-region' where material wealth and show is much less important than the human relationships sustained" (p. 224).
Respectability against taste: "the social standing of the household appears to be more strongly reflected in criteria of respectability, expressed as keeping up standards of cleanliness and tidiness, rather than overt striking for 'good taste' or a 'sense of distinction'" (p. 224); "the judgements that these respondents typically believe are made about their houses are not to do with visual presentation and style, but to do with respectability. Standards of cleanliness and the efficiency of domestic organisation carry heavy moral overtones. They are laden with judgements about social worth, as embodied in the division between the 'respectable' or decent poor and the 'feckless' or undeserving – though by no means confined to those who would consider themselves poor" (p. 225).
The postmodern consumption debate corrected: "The postmodern debate has rightly drawn attention to the pleasure people take in consumption. This is an important antidote to a rather one-sided view of consumers solely as 'victims' of aggressive marketing and manipulative advertising. However, the view of consumption as pleasurable leisure activity and a means of self-expression is easily overdrawn"; "'Home' is an important expression of identity, yet it is an identity which is only partially achieved through appearances (furnishings and decor) and overt consumption" — the social relations and 'etiquette' "within the household, and between the household and a wider public, are for most people much more important" (p. 224).
Cost and utility restrict lifestyle shopping: "participation in lifestyle shopping, careful co-ordination of style and detailed attention to 'taste' is severely restricted by considerations of cost and utility"; things "are acquired gradually and expected to last some time"; the operative criteria are functional — "suitability for children, ease of keeping clean and the probable life of the item. Use value is a concept which gets neglected in the whole debate about the playfulness of signs and symbols" (pp. 224–225).
Anxiety, not playfulness — and it is gendered: "These are issues which create anxiety not playfulness, particularly for women. Women typically take the responsibility for setting and maintaining standards of housekeeping and bear the brunt of unfavourable judgements"; the common reconciliation strategy — "it is impossible to be relaxed or comfortable in a house that does not meet the high standard of cleanliness and tidiness desired. This, of course, implies a burden of constant effort to maintain these standards" (p. 225).
Advertising's insecurities: "advertising is designed to play on insecurities about being a good housewife/mother, and an attractive/fashionable wife or worker"; shops and magazines display coordinated sets "as if they were an artful and individualistic assemblage, reflecting skill in interior design" — and respondents expressed "a considerable degree of anxiety about an inability to reproduce such a harmonious effect through serendipity," showing "a message that it is skill rather than money which achieves the effect is accepted" (p. 225).
The postmodern aesthetic is selling: "We cannot forget that 'commodities' are designed for sale at profit. The creation of a postmodern aesthetic is just as much about selling as the mass marketing associated with Fordist production, even if it presents apparently more differentiated customised products. Differentiation may meet specialised needs… but it is also about creating 'needs' and amplifying social divisions"; for poorer households heightened design consciousness "may not represent freedom to manipulate symbols and images in a way that enables self-expression, but may instead serve to re-emphasise their lack of resources" (p. 225).
Methodological candour — contradictions as data: self-reporting is conventional ("Everyone is scathing about the tactics used to sell double-glazing, but that does not mean they are immune to the hard sell"); "the apparent contradictions in an individual's responses are most revealing about the processes at work: the conflict between the home as a place to relax and make yourself comfortable, as against an ever-present sense that standards must be maintained; the idea that consumerism is something to be rejected and yet to be seen as out-of-date, or old-fashioned is a personal condemnation; the belief that things should be selected for utility and comfort competing with the desire for things which are new and look new" (p. 226).
Built-in symbolism constrains without determining: "Home and family are powerful concepts which shape not only the way in which we perceive our physical surroundings, but also the way in which we construct our surroundings"; yet "we must beware of simply 'reading off' meanings uncritically, without looking at how objects are used in practice. The 'family home' as presented by any of the major house-builders… carries important symbolic meanings which are built-in to the very design of the house. This constrains but it does not determine the way in which the house is used" (p. 226).
Habitus as the name of the interaction: "It is the complexity of this interaction between the physical and the intellectual, the objective and the subjective, which is emphasised in Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus'" (p. 226).
Style as constant renegotiation: "As with other aspects of social life, style in the home is the subject of constant renegotiation. It is an important aspect of self-presentation and a statement about the social roles to which individuals aspire. It is constrained and circumscribed by the dominant and conventional meanings attributed to different patterns of consumption, and the material resources available to the consumer" (p. 226).
The headnote (editors): "Ruth Madigan and Moira Munro's discussion of self-expression, personal style, and the constraints of social class and familial relations takes a social science approach to domestic consumption. Their qualitative interviews of working- and lower middle-class households suggest that 'good design' is not a condition of 'good taste'. Occupiers tended to reflect notions of homeliness, warmth and welcoming, in which consumer decisions are driven by use-value over style. For these consumers, judgements on their home are more concerned with respectability above style and visual presentation. Central to this work is a realisation that the domestic interior is constantly renegotiated in order to resolve the tension between identity and social role."

Connections

Concepts: consumerism, taste, style, domestic-interior, homeliness, respectability, use-value, comfort, privacy, gender-and-the-interior, separate-spheres, work-leisure-distinction, fashion, novelty, kitchen, manifest-and-latent-functions, habitus, symbolic-capital, practiced-place, interior-as-biography, everyday-life, self-fashioning

Authors: madigan-ruth, munro-moira, taylor-mark-preston-julieanna, bourdieu-pierre

Debates: theory-of-the-everyday — the consumer-agency register: neither "cultural dopes" (victims of manipulation) nor free players in a "playfulness of signs"

Related source notes: Social, Spatial and Temporal Factors (Lawrence 1987/2006) — the Veblen-lineage manifest/latent frame and the house as haven-and-credential, here given its interview-evidence; Woman's Domestic Body (Gordon 1996/2006) — the woman/interior conflation whose late-twentieth-century working-class continuation (women bearing the housekeeping judgment) this essay documents; Streamlining (Lupton & Miller 1992/2006) — the fitted-kitchen/bathroom technological history whose consumption side Madigan & Munro extend into the leisure-device era; Structures of Atmosphere (Baudrillard 1968/2006) — the sign-system analysis of the interior whose "playfulness of signs" register the essay corrects with use-value; Outline of a Theory of Practice and The Logic of Practice — the habitus and distinction theory the essay operationalizes in the home; Lawrence and Design and Order in Everyday Life (Csikszentmihalyi 1991) — the other empirical registers of domestic object-meaning; Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the taste/consumption alliance whose class-restricted actuality this essay supplies; From Wiener Kunst im Hause to the Wiener Werkstätte (Houze 2002/2006) — the 'total life-style concept' at its founding (the Werkstätte showroom-home), whose late-century mass-market form is the Habitat/IKEA route this essay describes.

Direct Quotes

"Ruth Madigan and Moira Munro's discussion of self-expression, personal style, and the constraints of social class and familial relations takes a social science approach to domestic consumption. Their qualitative interviews of working- and lower middle-class households suggest that 'good design' is not a condition of 'good taste'. Occupiers tended to reflect notions of homeliness, warmth and welcoming, in which consumer decisions are driven by use-value over style." (editors' headnote, p. 221)

"Twentieth-century changes in the technologies of heating, plumbing and refrigeration have had profound effects on the physical design of mass housing: the introduction of bathrooms, the disappearance of sculleries and the advent of the fitted kitchen." (p. 221)

"The central focus of the modern living-room has switched from the fire-place to the television." (p. 221)

"The hi-tech look created a more masculine and industrial aesthetic. It is perhaps no coincidence that men rather than women were the target for home-based consumption in this area of leisure products, reflecting a gendered division of labour in which the home still functions as a place of rest, leisure and recuperation for men, but remains a place of work for women." (p. 221)

"The broad movements of contemporary design: Art deco, Moderne, Scandinavian modern, Hi-tech, only partially reflect popular preferences." (p. 221)

"choices which might be described as either traditional cottagey (flowers and pine); country house (flowers and mahogany); modern, hi-tech (plain colours and black ash); and postmodern (pastel colours and beech)." (pp. 221–222)

"Office design has a real echo in home design where the starker contrasts of hi-tech are rapidly being replaced by pastel shades, lighter woods, and softer upholstery not unlike the 'customer friendly' refits which have transformed the public areas of building societies and banks over the last five years." (p. 222)

"In practice, all these styles spill over into one another because few people buy all their furniture at the one time and because the styles themselves are hybrid. Lower income households are less likely to buy new furniture at all, relying on second hand purchases and hand-me-downs." (p. 222)

"It is these touches of plush which for most consumers rescues an otherwise sparse, Spartan style and imparts a feeling of comfort, luxury and indulgence which is important to many people's ideal of 'home,' but conflicts with a designer view of style, and no doubt 'good taste.'" (p. 222)

"One can see both Hollywood and the country house providing images of what constitutes luxury in popular taste." (p. 222)

"Ironically it is this which has enabled producers to continue to describe their products as 'made by the finest craftsmen,' 'upholstered by hand' with all the connotations of luxury hand-made objects and skilled crafts, when in fact most three-piece suites are constructed from the roughest of frames (hand made) and covered with foam and fabric using nothing more refined than a staple gun." (p. 222)

"This claim to craftsmanship is important in the iconography of furniture. It reinforces the familial values which are central to ideas of 'home:' solidity, continuity and honesty. But it also has important class overtones." (p. 222)

"As Bourdieu notes, the upper classes have always had a preference for antique products which may directly represent family continuity through inheritance, and may also be seen as investment." (p. 222)

"Few have followed the Habitat/IKEA route, selling a 'total life-style concept' though these stores have undoubtedly had an impact on taste beyond their immediate range of customers." (p. 223)

"It was immediately striking in our interviews that there was not generally a strong involvement with design as a way of expressing and demonstrating 'good taste.' Our sample of working-class and lower middle-class households did not appear to share the vocabulary of design and style promoted so strongly in the design-conscious 1980s." (p. 223)

"We just went to the shop. It was as simple as that. I didn't sit and plan it out or anything" (p. 223 — Mrs N, aged 26, owner-occupier)

"When asked to describe what impression they hoped other people would have of their home, typically respondents expressed notions connected to familial ideology – homeliness, warmth and a welcoming feel." (p. 223)

"That you can come in at any time, it's nice and homely" (p. 224 — Mrs G, aged 28, owner-occupier)

"You can come in and feel at ease, they don't have to feel that they have to watch what they are doing" (p. 224 — Mrs R, aged 45, owner-occupier)

"We argued that an important element of familial ideology was that the home should be a relaxed 'back-region' where material wealth and show is much less important than the human relationships sustained." (p. 224)

"the social standing of the household appears to be more strongly reflected in criteria of respectability, expressed as keeping up standards of cleanliness and tidiness, rather than overt striking for 'good taste' or a 'sense of distinction.'" (p. 224)

"The postmodern debate has rightly drawn attention to the pleasure people take in consumption. This is an important antidote to a rather one-sided view of consumers solely as 'victims' of aggressive marketing and manipulative advertising. However, the view of consumption as pleasurable leisure activity and a means of self-expression is easily overdrawn." (p. 224)

"'Home' is an important expression of identity, yet it is an identity which is only partially achieved through appearances (furnishings and decor) and overt consumption. The social relations and 'etiquette' which dictate both relations within the household, and between the household and a wider public, are for most people much more important." (p. 224)

"There is no doubt that participation in lifestyle shopping, careful co-ordination of style and detailed attention to 'taste' is severely restricted by considerations of cost and utility." (p. 224)

"It was evident that an important criterion for choosing furnishings and décor was their functionality, variously expressed as suitability for children, ease of keeping clean and the probable life of the item. Use value is a concept which gets neglected in the whole debate about the playfulness of signs and symbols." (pp. 224–225)

"These are issues which create anxiety not playfulness, particularly for women. Women typically take the responsibility for setting and maintaining standards of housekeeping and bear the brunt of unfavourable judgements." (p. 225)

"A common strategy of dealing with the potential conflict between the notion of home as a place of comfort and relaxation and the high standards of housekeeping required, is to reconcile the two in the notion that it is impossible to be relaxed or comfortable in a house that does not meet the high standard of cleanliness and tidiness desired. This, of course, implies a burden of constant effort to maintain these standards." (p. 225)

"advertising is designed to play on insecurities about being a good housewife/mother, and an attractive/fashionable wife or worker." (p. 225)

"The current style is arguably to present such displays as if they were an artful and individualistic assemblage, reflecting skill in interior design." (p. 225)

"There was a considerable degree of anxiety expressed about an inability to reproduce such a harmonious effect through serendipity, suggesting both that people did feel it was important to achieve the right sort of look and also that a message that it is skill rather than money which achieves the effect is accepted." (p. 225)

"We cannot forget that 'commodities' are designed for sale at profit. The creation of a postmodern aesthetic is just as much about selling as the mass marketing associated with Fordist production, even if it presents apparently more differentiated customised products." (p. 225)

"For poorer households, this may not represent freedom to manipulate symbols and images in a way that enables self-expression, but may instead serve to re-emphasise their lack of resources." (p. 225)

"Everyone is scathing about the tactics used to sell double-glazing, but that does not mean they are immune to the hard sell. People can obviously be manipulated by advertising without realising, or despite their best intentions." (p. 226)

"the apparent contradictions in an individual's responses are most revealing about the processes at work: the conflict between the home as a place to relax and make yourself comfortable, as against an ever-present sense that standards must be maintained; the idea that consumerism is something to be rejected and yet to be seen as out-of-date, or old-fashioned is a personal condemnation; the belief that things should be selected for utility and comfort competing with the desire for things which are new and look new." (p. 226)

"Home and family are powerful concepts which shape not only the way in which we perceive our physical surroundings, but also the way in which we construct our surroundings. In some sense the physical can become an embodiment of these culturally dominant ideas." (p. 226)

"However, we must beware of simply 'reading off' meanings uncritically, without looking at how objects are used in practice." (p. 226)

"The 'family home' as presented by any of the major house-builders, for example, carries important symbolic meanings which are built-in to the very design of the house. This constrains but it does not determine the way in which the house is used, or the meanings which the consumers attribute to it." (p. 226)

"It is the complexity of this interaction between the physical and the intellectual, the objective and the subjective, which is emphasised in Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus.'" (p. 226)

"As with other aspects of social life, style in the home is the subject of constant renegotiation. It is an important aspect of self-presentation and a statement about the social roles to which individuals aspire. It is constrained and circumscribed by the dominant and conventional meanings attributed to different patterns of consumption, and the material resources available to the consumer." (p. 226)

Open Questions

The essay's central correction — "the view of consumption as pleasurable leisure activity and a means of self-expression is easily overdrawn" (p. 224) — is itself restricted to one class fraction ("households on relatively modest incomes"). Does the use-value/respectability account describe a class position within consumption, or a general limit of the playfulness-of-signs thesis that affluent taste cultures merely conceal? See consumerism, taste.
If "respectability" — cleanliness and tidiness "laden with judgements about social worth" (p. 225) — is the operative judgment on working-class homes, is it a weaker form of taste (a distinction within the same classificatory system) or a genuinely different moral economy that Bourdieu's distinction frame cannot absorb? See respectability, symbolic-capital.
The reconciliation strategy ("it is impossible to be relaxed or comfortable in a house that does not meet the high standard of cleanliness and tidiness desired," p. 225) folds comfort into housework's moral standard — comfort as the product of the very effort that exhausts the woman who produces it. Is this the domestic conflation's (Gordon's "woman's domestic body") unpaid-labour mechanism surviving into the 1990s? See comfort, gender-and-the-interior.
The "skill rather than money" message of coordinated design displays is "accepted" by respondents (p. 225) — the interior-design ideology that harmonious assemblage reflects skill, not resources. Does the professional ideology of the 'artful assemblage' (the designer view the plush furnishing "conflicts with") function as a class filter — teaching people to read style as competence rather than as capital? See taste, interior-as-biography.
The authors found "not generally a strong involvement with design as a way of expressing and demonstrating 'good taste'" in 1991; the design-conscious 1980s vocabulary they lacked has since become a mass-media vocabulary (property television, social media interiors). Does the essay describe a class difference in taste's penetration or a historical stage that has since closed? See fashion, style, instagrammability.
The excerpt is heavily elided ("(… p 47)", "(… p 56)"); the original Sociology article (pp. 41–57) contains, between the excerpted pp. 43–56, the fuller questionnaire findings, the twenty interviews' demographic spread, and the sections on privacy the closing argument leans on ("our previous work" = Munro & Madigan, "Privacy in the private sphere," Housing Studies 8.1, 1993). What falls in the gaps — and what would the omitted interview material add to the respectability argument?