Gendered Orientations around Domestic Objects; A Study of Home Truths: Gender, Domestic Objects and Everyday Life

Abstract

When Daniel Miller asked ‘Why some things matter?’, it became critical to question why they matter differently for various genders. This paper is an attempt to analyze how ‘orientations’ around objects play out differently for the female gender in Sarah Pink’s (2004) Home Truths: Gender, Domestic and Everyday Life. The domestic space of research informants in England and Spain is taken up to explore not only how orientations are different for the female genders, but how they also go on to reinforce gender roles. Thus works of foundational thing theorists like Bill Brown, Bruno Latour and Daniel Miller’s ideas of subject-object relations are critiqued and revealed to be inadequate until gender is factored in. Additionally, the paper also reveals how bodies then purposely attempt to break out of gender roles by molding their subject-object relations. Ultimately, things end up shaping our mind more than we can fathom.