Decorating the New House: The Material Culture of Social Mobility

Abstract

Although the two concepts are normally conflated into one, a house does not necessarily imply the existence of a home (Blunt and Dowling 2006). In fact, making a home often involves large amounts of “symbolic labor” expended on the house over a lengthy period of time. Home is therefore not just an idea or a space but an active cultural process (Miller 2001). Home-making practices, then, are all those by means of which dwellers ground personal and social meanings in the new residence, thus making a house into their home (Blunt and Dowling 2006). When making a home, families appropriate the new residence and make it part of their lives (Miller 1997). This chapter analyses how people deal with household possessions and decoration when moving home. By doing so, it explores the practice of decoration and arrangement of household possessions as a space in which social mobility and class cultures are assembled in contemporary Chile. Concretely, it is argued that the arrangement of possessions in the new house involves the production of individual narratives of social mobility and the performing of owner’s new social position. Home possessions are described, thus, not only as material elements that mark class cultures, but also as a central dimension in the production of class cultures as such.