Description
Book Synopsis Hoarding has largely been approached from a psychological and universal perspective, and decluttering from an aesthetic and ecological one, while little work has been done to think about the cultural and global economic aspects of these phenomena. Of Hoarding and Housekeeping provides an anthropological, global, and comparative angle to the understanding of hoarding and decluttering using cases from a variety of countries including US, Japan, India, Cameroon, and Argentina. Focusing on the house, with careful attention to material flows in and out, this book examines practices of accumulation, storage, decluttering, and waste as practices of kinship and the objects themselves as material kin.
Trade Review “This is an exciting endeavor … linked to some of the most pressing issues in the field of anthropology today. The scholarship is excellent, and ethnographic research represents a diverse breadth of geographical areas and analytical perspectives.” • Anne Allison,Duke University
“The collection provides a timely discussion of a topic that up to now has been marginal to anthropological writing, and yet is clearly critical to domestic practice on a global scale.” • Pauline Garvey, Maynooth University
Table of Contents Illustrations
Introduction: House/Keeping
Sasha Newell
Part I: Food Storage and Family Values
Chapter 1. Food Storage and the Making of Potato Kin in Andean Houses
Olivia Angé
Chapter 2. Making Space for Onions: Material Production and Social Reproduction in Rural India
Tanya Matthan
Part II: Domestic Accumulation and Disorder
Chapter 3. The “Stuffing” of Kinship: Containing Clutter and Expanding Relatedness in U.S. Homes
Sasha Newell
Chapter 4. Topoanalysis: Hoarding, Memory, and the Materialization of Kinship
Katie Kilroy-Marac
Chapter 5. Locating Hoarding: How Spatial Concepts Shape Disorders in Japan and the Anglophone World
Fabio Gygi
Part III: Decluttering and Minimalist Aesthetics
Chapter 6. Decluttering the House, Purify Yourself: Women Discarding Objects andSpiritualizing Everyday Lifein Buenos Aires (Argentina)
María Florencia BlancoEsmoris
Chapter 7. The American Garage Sale: Liberating Space and Creating Kin
Gretchen M. Herrmann
Chapter 8. Minimalist Mortality: Decluttering as a Practice of Death Acceptance
Hannah Gould
Part IV: Holding on to Rubbish: Trash and Transmutation
Chapter 9. “It’s Not Waste, It’s Diamonds!”: Recovery Practices and Public Waste Management in Garoua and Maroua (Cameroon)
Émilie Guitard
Chapter 10. Where Would We be Without Rubbish?
Michael Thompson
Conclusion: The Shape of Things to Come
Daniel Miller
Index
