TY - JOUR

T1 - Condensing practices

T2 - Ways of living with a freezer

AU - Hand, Martin

AU - Shove, Elizabeth

PY - 2007/12/1

Y1 - 2007/12/1

N2 - In the UK, the majority of households have a freezer and by most criteria it would be fair to say that home freezing and frozen food provisioning reached sociotechnical 'closure' some 20 years ago or more. Detailed examination of how people actually live with freezers suggests, by contrast, that associated consumption practices and processes are varied, unstable and subject to change. Interviews with representatives of 40 households provide new insight into the ways in which discursive, material and temporal aspects of daily life condense around the freezer. In analysing these experiences, we suggest that freezing is persistently dynamic because the freezer figures as an orchestrating node around which multiple aspects of consumption and provision converge.We show how different ways of living with a freezer are negotiated and maintained and we discuss the relation between household practices and the systems of provision with which they intersect.We suggest that concepts like those of 'domestication' and 'normalization' fail to capture the persistently dynamic status of material objects in daily life, or their constitutive role in systems of social order. In response, we argue for an analysis of 'normalization' as an ongoing achievement, and for an interpretation of freezing as a surprisingly performative process involving the active integration of materials, ideologies and skills.

AB - In the UK, the majority of households have a freezer and by most criteria it would be fair to say that home freezing and frozen food provisioning reached sociotechnical 'closure' some 20 years ago or more. Detailed examination of how people actually live with freezers suggests, by contrast, that associated consumption practices and processes are varied, unstable and subject to change. Interviews with representatives of 40 households provide new insight into the ways in which discursive, material and temporal aspects of daily life condense around the freezer. In analysing these experiences, we suggest that freezing is persistently dynamic because the freezer figures as an orchestrating node around which multiple aspects of consumption and provision converge.We show how different ways of living with a freezer are negotiated and maintained and we discuss the relation between household practices and the systems of provision with which they intersect.We suggest that concepts like those of 'domestication' and 'normalization' fail to capture the persistently dynamic status of material objects in daily life, or their constitutive role in systems of social order. In response, we argue for an analysis of 'normalization' as an ongoing achievement, and for an interpretation of freezing as a surprisingly performative process involving the active integration of materials, ideologies and skills.

KW - Closure

KW - Competence

KW - Domestication

KW - Freezing

KW - Integration

KW - Ordering

KW - Provisioning

KW - Skills

U2 - 10.1177/1469540507073509

DO - 10.1177/1469540507073509

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:51249150295

VL - 7

SP - 79

EP - 104

JO - Journal of Consumer Culture

JF - Journal of Consumer Culture

SN - 1469-5405

IS - 1

ER -