Hoarding and the Substance of Kinship

ABSTRACT:While much has been written in popular media about the apparent antisociality of hoarders, many people with parents who exhibit hoarding tendencies describe intense (though not always positive or desirable) forms of kin relationality that grow in and around domestic hoards. Based on fieldwork with hoarding intervention specialists, interviews with people who identify as "Adult Children of Hoarders" (ACoHs), and a review of recent memoirs on the topic, this article examines how domestic hoards enable and restrict the interactions, habits, and movements of those who live within them, and in turn, how kin relations get made and troubled in relation to the hoard. I consider the hoard as kinship substance in its own right, and in doing so, reflect upon both the variable meanings of—and the analytic work performed by—the term "substance" in kinship studies over the past four decades. In showing how familial relationships come to be shaped and mediated by the hoard (hoard-as-substance), and even beyond this, how the hoard may itself come to be imagined as kin (hoard-as-kin), this article offers a counterpoint to studies that overemphasize the positive aspects and affects of kinship and relatedness.