The restless kitchen: possession, performance and renewal

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Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL

The restless kitchen: possession, performance and

renewal

Elizabeth Shove (Lancaster University, England)

Martin Hand (Queen's University, Canada)

Abstract

The seemingly relentless pursuit of novelty is central to consumer society. In explaining how

and why needs and wants develop as they do, theories of consumption tend to focus on the

cultural and symbolic at the expense of the practical and the material. Meanwhile, scholars

from science and technology studies have demonstrated that artifacts frequently configure the

routines and aspirations of actual and potential users and consumers. Drawing upon both

traditions and on the responses of forty householders interviewed about the arrangement,

design and use of their kitchens, we suggest that people modify and replace in an attempt to

synchronise or manage gaps between contemporary possessions and images of future

performance. In analysing the always precarious relation between possession and

performance we bring the material, cultural and symbolic dynamics of consumption together

in a single conceptual model.

Key words: possession, performance, consumption, kitchen renewal

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 2

Introduction

The notion that people buy consumer goods because they need them is more common in

daily life than in contemporary theories of consumption and material culture. Put baldly such

ideas smack of a primitive kind of functionalism that denies the social construction of desire

and bypasses all that has been written about the symbolic complexities of the world of goods

(Douglas and Isherwood 1996). On the other hand, and despite the retrospective

rationalisation that is almost certainly involved, such explanations allow that things are

consumed not for their own sake but for what they make possible. However simplistically,

consumers' representations of need routinely foreground the complex relation between

people, things (non-human actors), and practices.

We begin by suggesting that these practical relationships have been overlain and to some

extent overlooked by more abstract theories of what Campbell refers to as consumers'

'continuing desire for the new' (1992: 48). Efforts to explain seemingly insatiable patterns of

demand make much of the fact that consumer goods function as signifiers of identity and

carriers of meaning and cultural capital. But this is not all they do. There is a physical aspect

to material culture and as authors like Latour (1992) and Rekwitz (2000) make clear, things,

people and practices interact in ways that are mutually constitutive. These relationships have

been analysed by scholars interested in processes of sociotechnical change and innovation

and in how material artifacts configure their users. Woolgar, for example, writes about the

ways in which configurations of hardware permit and prevent different courses of action, and

about how practices are co-produced by technologies and those who use them (1991). This

way of thinking introduces the possibility that consumers' actions and aspirations are

somehow structured by the objects with which they share their lives. In other words, there

might be a material or at least a sociotechnical dimension to the desire for the new.

In taking these ideas forward, we explore the possibility of bringing theories of consumption,

technology and practice together in a single conceptual framework. By working through

descriptions and explanations of acquisition and renewal we elaborate on the relation

between possession (having) and performance (doing) and on what this means for the

appropriation of consumer goods. Social theories of practice provide an important point of

reference when figuring out how objects and consumers interact. However, we need to

understand how this interaction is located in space and time if we are to make sense of the

ways in which present practices are structured both by the past and by an image (or images)

of the future. In what follows we develop a scheme that acknowledges the material, practice-

based dynamic of consumption, that recognises the future orientation of present practice and

that admits both the variety and the structuring of domestic life.

We do so with reference to a recent study of kitchen renewal in the UK. Over the last century,

kitchens and their contents have changed dramatically. New appliances and technologies

have arrived and old ones become obsolete. While freezers are now common (in the UK,

44% have a freezer and 46% a combined fridge-freezer Mintel (2001)), larders and pantries

have become rare. In 2001, only 22% of UK households had a dishwasher (Mintel 2001), but

their popularity is increasing fast. Other developments include the proliferation of kitchen

gadgets, tools and small appliances. Just as important, ideas about what the kitchen is for

are on the move. No longer a back-region devoted to the preparation of food, kitchens are

promoted and represented as places of sociability - in the words of a recent advertisement the

kitchen should be ‘somewhere you want to spend time, where you feel comfortable, where

you can simply live your life’ (Good Housekeeping January 2002: 2). The fact that sales of

kitchen furniture were £50 million more in 2000 than in 1990 (Freeman 2004: 55) provides

further evidence that the kitchen is an important site of consumer investment.

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 3

Explaining kitchen renewal - theories of consumption and practice

What is going on? Why are kitchens being renewed and replaced in this way and at this rate?

The paragraphs below outline four different but not mutually exclusive accounts, the first of

which has to do with the pursuit of the new.

Colin Campbell identifies three interpretations of new: new as freshly created, new as

improved or innovative and new as unfamiliar or novel. These distinctions are important for

his more general project of understanding why people 'prefer the new to the familiar and

hence desire new products' (1992: 48). The first sense justifies the replacement of items that

are deemed worn out. The second is useful in explaining the acquisition of goods that

promise additional functionality, though as Campbell points out, innovators often have to

persuade consumers that they 'need' things they have not had before. Finally, consumers

may simply crave the unfamiliar. All three are potentially useful in understanding kitchen

renovation.

A second family of explanations revolves around the observation that homes are sites of

identity and self-expression (Cieraad 1999; Young 2004). Taking these ideas forward,

replacement and renovation have to do with positioning oneself with respect to changing

genres and conventions of symbolic significance. Exemplifying this approach, Clarke

concludes that 'the house objectifies the vision the occupants have of themselves in the eyes

of others and as such it becomes an entity and process to live up to, give time to, show off to'

(2001: 42). In reality, occupants may not have time to reproduce the ways of life associated

with the things they own. This is not necessarily a problem. As Sullivan and Gershuny (2004)

suggest, there may be some satisfaction in knowing one has the equipment needed to

engage in imagined projects that have yet to be, and that may never be, realised. Lifestyle

identification apparently 'works' as a mechanism of consumption even when the lifestyle itself

is deferred. Other commentators argue that style is important not in its own right but for how

it relates to valued cultural standards and orientations like those of respectability (Southerton

2001, Madigan and Munro 1996). By implication, kitchen tastes and kitchen transformations

are caught up in and reproductive of the tides and eddies of social and cultural distinction

(Bourdieu 1984, Holt 1997). In so far as the kitchen is a site in which tensions between

economic and cultural capital are played out, and in which cultural knowledge and

judgements of competent social practice are materialised, so consumers are propelled toward

certain forms of acquisition. In a word, the restlessness of society is manifested in the details

of kitchen design and décor.

A third set of arguments focus more specifically on the kitchen as a trace or record of the

social, political and economic ordering of domestic life (Conran 1977). Design historians like

Johnson and Lloyd (2004), Freeman (2004), Sparke (1995) and Cieraad (2002) follow

gendered divisions of labour and leisure, tracking the emergence of the modern housewife

through careful readings of furniture, floor plans and appliance design (Parr 1999; Nickles

2002). Patterns of acquisition and transformation are believed to reflect and embody

changing methods of provisioning and household management. These are in turn understood

as expressions of macro-social developments in relations between men and women, in

patterns of employment and in the economy as a whole.

A fourth proposition is that 'practices, rather than individual desires… create wants' and that

'consumption occurs as items are appropriated in the course of engaging in particular

practices' (Warde 2003). This approach places the burden of explanation on changing

practices rather than on consumers or on the symbolic qualities of what they buy. By

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 4

implication, consumers need new kitchens and new types of equipment in order to

accomplish new kitchen-based practices. These might be eating and cooking but they might

also include socialising, playing with children or formal entertaining.

It is worth elaborating on this idea and on the relation between materials and practices.

Reckwitz defines practice as 'a routinised type of behaviour which consists of several

elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities,

'things' and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how states

of emotion and motivational knowledge' (2002: 249). It is important to distinguish between

practice-as-performance, this being what people do, and practice-as-entity, this being

routinised types of behaviour that are reproduced through 'doings'. We use the term

'performance' as shorthand for practice-as-performance and the term 'practice' to refer to

practice-as-entity. Accepting these definitions, materials, tools and technologies are

themselves implicated in the reproduction and development of practices and associated forms

of consumption.

There are different ways of conceptualising this relationship. Miller suggests that his Victorian

home demands repair and décor in a way that he finds difficult to refuse. He is, as he puts it,

'possessed' and haunted by his property - or at least by a strong feeling of property-related

propriety. Scholars from science and technology studies have less to say about the

emotional aspects of human and non-human interaction (Illmonen 2004). By articulating the

parts that artifacts (for instance, key fobs, photovoltaic kit, or even kitchen units) play in the

conduct of action, authors like Akrich (1992) and Latour (1992) suggest that possession

(having) and performance (doing) are really very closely intertwined. The terminology of

'scripting' provides a vocabulary with which to analyse these interdependencies, object by

object. Other concepts like those of sociotechnical 'regime' or 'landscape' help make sense of

how complexes of interdependent artifacts work together. As we have argued elsewhere,

appliances like freezers and washing machines have multiple consequences for how systems

of food provisioning and clothing care are organized, and for what it means to do them well

(Southerton and Shove, 2000; Shove 2003). Technologies do not simply generate new habits

and conventions but the point that social and technical systems co-evolve (Bijker 1997; Rip

and Kemp 1998) is an important corrective to overly social understandings of practice.

Together, these four approaches generate an impressive array of possible reasons why

people might invest in a new kitchen and why they might pick certain designs, styles and

appliances. Though not exclusive there are significant differences of emphasis and

orientation. The first two deal with novelty and taste in ways that are largely unrelated to the

specific objects involved. A new oven is thus as new as a new freezer. In both the first two

accounts, the meaning of ownership matters more than the hardware itself. By contrast, the

third and fourth positions attend to the materiality of consumption and the relationship

between individual objects and the particular practices of which they are a part.

In the rest of the paper we develop a conceptual framework that allows us to draw these

threads together. We build this scheme up from an analysis of householders' accounts of

what they have done to their kitchens and what they would like to do next.

Respondents' explanations of kitchen renewal

Members of forty households were interviewed as part of an ESRC funded study of

sustainable domestic technologies. The sample was designed to include people living in

terraced, semi-detached and new town houses. In each household we identified and

interviewed one 'primary' respondent, including other members of the household if they

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 5

wanted to join in. As indicated in Table 1, primary respondents' material and domestic

circumstances differed widely.

Table 1: Profile of primary respondents

Number of households in each category

House type Terrace:

Semi-detatched:

Town House:

Respondents' Age

Under 30:

Age 31-45:

Age 46-60:

Over 60:

Resident children None:

One:

Two:

2+:

Interviewees were invited to describe the qualities and characteristics of their current and

previous kitchens and to explain what changes they had already made or would like to make

to the present arrangement. As their comments make clear, there is no single kitchen and no

shared model of domesticity to which people aspire. We comment later on differences within

the sample but begin by noticing that investments in new appliances and in kitchen

makeovers were commonly desired, anticipated or justified as a means of bridging between

the dissatisfactions of the present and an image of a better, more appropriate future. Having

requisite tools and materials was not in itself sufficient for it was also important to live up to

the images and ideals associated with them. In effect it was the relation between possession

and performance that counted.

The following sub-sections illustrate three ideal typical formulations: one in which possessions

are missing, one in which performance and possession are in balance and another in which

respondents claim that it is the performance that is deficient. In presenting the interview data

in this way, we set the scene for a more detailed discussion of consumption and practice and

of how both are simultaneously structured by past experience and by an image (or images) of

the future.

a) Missing possessions

In describing the inadequacies of their current kitchens, respondents from all three house

types identified constraints and limitations that prevented them doing things they deemed

important, or from doing them as well as they would have liked. They explained, sometimes

stoically, sometimes with a quiet sense of satisfaction, how they made do, how they got by

and what compromises they had to make.

One of the most frequent complaints was about insufficient space. This constitutes a problem

when people are unable to accommodate objects they want and could otherwise have. In

describing her wish for a kitchen table, Jane lists the ways in which it would be useful.

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We quite like the idea of having a bit of a table in there for breakfast and lunch like

when there's just a couple of us in. It makes it more of a living room …you see

there's nowhere in there to sit at all at the moment… if we had a table that would be

much easier for doing things like painting ….if we had a little cheap table in there they

(the children) could use it for things like things like that, just a bit of company in the

kitchen as well as eating, having breakfast….

Jane could afford a table but had no room for one in her kitchen. Most of the terrace houses

included in our sample had two small rooms upstairs and two down. In these properties,

there was no place for a dining table either in the kitchen or in the living room.

'we were talking about families eating together .. if you have a three piece suite in

those little houses, you ain't got room for a table so they don't sit down to a meal at

the table'

Whether the lack of a table matters or not is a question of orientation. In the cases cited

above, much depends upon how people value the idea of eating together or of having

company in the kitchen, and upon whether the present state of affairs is 'normal', temporary

or has arisen because of a change in circumstances. Our respondents conceptualised 'lack

of space' - and hence lack of desired artifacts and appliances - in one of three ways. For

some it was a source of dismay and disappointment.

Divorce, unemployment or loss of a second income prompted respondents like Caroline to

downsize and in her case move from a substantial semi-detached house to a much smaller

terrace. In the following extract, she explained how she has been affected by the consequent

loss of space and hence of a dishwasher as well.

Even a small dishwasher takes up quite a lot of space, there’s just not enough

space…. [in her previous house, she could] put dirty things into the dishwasher. It’s

just I liked I just liked that sort of it’s calmness for me, tidiness equals calmness and

you can't do it the same in a small kitchen

Caroline's kitchen-related problems would be resolved at a stroke if only she had a bigger

house. Though sometimes unrealistic, wish lists of material arrangements were typically well

articulated. Should the missing ingredients ever materialise, respondents had no doubt about

how they would be used.

The depth of current discontent related to respondents' perception of the present as a

permanent or temporary state of affairs. The promise of future improvement made it easier to

cope with the limitations of the present. On this basis Sandra spent years putting up with what

she viewed as a defective kitchen.

they've all [kitchen units] got a bit worn so I started from scratch.

Interviewer: but that was some years after moving in, how did you manage in the mean

time?

It was a bit hard but I managed, you just put up don't you

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Orientation was also important. While some suffered, others positively valued 'making do'.

Heather is, for instance, proud of her ability to maintain standards and achieve desired results

with seemingly inadequate resources and materials. In the following extract she reports on

recent changes in her home. Instead of upgrading the kitchen, this family has installed a

range of appliances in the garage.

The kitchen per se hasn’t been affected. However, because it's so damn

small, we essentially utilised part of the garage as part of the kitchen.

Interviewer: so what’s in the garage then?

some units, fridge, freezer and an oven.

Cooking in the garage is awkward but it is a solution that allows Heather to prepare and

produce the sorts of meals she wants. This is a rather unusual situation, but respondents

from all house types described what is best characterised as a continual negotiation between

'need' and thrift, illustrated here by Lesley's approach to her kitchen worktop.

the worktop is now very aged and showing its age and could do with

changing. I'm no so poor that I can't afford to do that, but if it's not broke why

fix it?

In most of the cases considered above the gap between possession and performance

constitutes a kind of 'itch' or source of restless unease. For whatever reason, something is

not quite right. These personal experiences relate to more general trends in convention and

expectation. Caroline is, for example, missing a dishwasher because she had become used

to having one around. That the lack of a kitchen table constitutes a source of dissatisfaction

tells us something about changing ideas of what kitchens are for. Although living in the

present, Jane and others like her are constrained by kitchen arrangements that embody past

understandings of home and family life. Disequilibria of this kind were common, but

especially so for respondents struggling to fit a contemporary way of life into the unforgivingly

inflexible form of a Victorian terrace house.

b) Possession and performance in balance

In this section we consider the responses of people who had all the material possessions they

wanted and who used these in reproducing practices in accordance with their own ideals and

aspirations. New arrangements would probably be required at some point in the future but for

the time being, possession and performance were perfectly aligned.

The relation between possession and performance is not simply determined by affluence yet

those living in larger semi-detached houses were on the whole more likely to describe

arrangements that were temporarily in balance. Some kept pace with changing needs and

expectations by altering the material environment. Robert described just such a process of

active adaptation.

we took the pantry out ..to get more stuff in, cabinets and things like that.

Interviewer: Why did you get rid of the hatch?

because we couldn't put any cabinets on that kitchen wall. Before we didn't

have as much stuff

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John and Alison also had complete confidence in their ability to realise and materialise new

ways of life. In their words, they had more money than they knew what to do with and were

therefore able to acquire and replace domestic appliances without hesitation. Now their

children have grown up, they plan to move to a slightly smaller house. There is no question

that they will be able to so, and no doubt that they will arrange this new home to suit their new

requirements. These people acquire and dispose of material artifacts as their routines and

practices evolve. In this way they keep possession and performance in balance even when

circumstances change.

For others, equilibrium was the outcome of stability rather than constant adaptation. This is

how Joan described her cupboards:

I've always wanted enough storage space, which I think we've got

..and how Margaret represented her breakfast kitchen.

I'd always fancied a big breakfast kitchen. This does not fulfil it to that degree

but it is decent and people do congregate there when I'm cooking. The idea

of a breakfast kitchen where you might even have a settee as well as a big

farmhouse table and chairs in.. so very much the social centre as well as the

cooking centre. Those two things for me go hand in hand. That is a part of

my core family value really

Sometimes possession and performance just happened to match. More often, this was the

result of deliberate forward planning. In 1984, Harriet and Geoff set out to design a future-

proof kitchen. They took every possible precaution to ensure that this long-term investment

would be durable yet flexible enough to meet their needs for years to come.

we had a completely new kitchen [in 1984].. We got some professional

people in to get the best out of the space that is in there. It’s a German,

imported [kitchen] quite expensive, but it still serves its purpose.

when we had the kitchen designed we tried to look ahead into the

future into what you'd expect to find in a kitchen of that standard and

that involves obviously you would have needed a microwave, we have

an oven in there and dishwasher…We were quite ahead of the game.

Interviewer have you got any ideas about changing it now?

well we haven’t thought because structurally it is such a good kitchen, and

the units are really, really good

Whether through foresight, a relatively stable lifestyle or an ability to re-configure in response

to changing needs, these people managed to minimise or stave off moments of mismatch

between what they aspired to, what they have, and what they do. As others acknowledged,

all forms of 'balance' are precarious. Joanne, who is planning a family, mentally

reconstructed her home in anticipation of that event. When she has a baby she will:

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definitely have a table in the kitchen - I wouldn't necessarily have a dining

room I'd probably have this as a playroom, or possibly our lounge is quite big,

possibly a lounge diner.

Meanwhile, Jackie wondered about how to fix things so that her family could eat together, not

now but in the future.

we just eat off trays in front of the telly, which is fine and has suited us for the

lifestyle we've got but when the children are older I'd like us to all sit down for

a family meal of an evening'

For this to happen, Jackie will need a table. But a table alone is not enough. As discussed in

the next section, her family must also adjust to a new routine.

c) Deficient performance

The third scenario is one in which people have all the hardware they need but find that

possession and performance are still out of synch. Such situations are familiar. Sheds,

garages and kitchen cupboards are full of objects acquired by people who intended to

become campers, cyclists or home bread-makers but who have not got round to putting these

ambitions into practice. In discussing this form of consumption, Sullivan and Gershuny (2004)

suggest that ownership can be symbolically important even when goods are stored away or

rarely used. This may be so for some. However, most of our respondents were quite keenly

interested in making things 'work' and in configuring material arrangements so as to foster or

script particular forms of family life. Mick and Barbara re-organized their kitchen fittings and

furniture with the aim of changing patterns of social interaction. The result was not entirely

what they wanted.

we’ve completely revamped it, put a brand new kitchen in, we’ve extended partly into

the garage to make it bigger, …well, there’s a TV in there [kitchen]. We haven’t got a

TV in here, in the sitting room, so we don’t…[we wanted to] have a nice room without

a TV. And of course we never use it [the sitting room] because the TV’s not here.

Rather than spending time in the 'nice' sitting room, everyone gathered round the television in

the kitchen. Having planned their home improvements around a different model this couple

was disappointed: they had failed to live up to their own ideals. In thinking about what their

new kitchen should be like, Tom and Rhona negotiated between contrasting pictures of

domestic order. Were they really going to be tucking into bowls of hearty home made soup, or

should they plan for muddy shoes and dripping laundry? Around which image should they

organize their home?

when we were doing up the drawings we had a lot of discussion over whether to have

the utility room separate or knock it in to one enormous big kitchen. I wanted the

utility room and my husband wanted the bigger kitchen … he kind of had these sort of

ideas …home made bread and hearty soups and things you know things like that, but

I said it was better - I’d prefer to have something a bit more functional for washing, I

wanted somewhere to leave things to dry, dirty shoes, wet coats things like that.

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In both cases, kitchen design represents a template for action shaped by future-oriented

images of family life. Discontent sets in when these images are not realised in practice.

Similar disjunctions arise when individuals fail to meet their own standards or those that

others (including non-human others) expect of them. A number of respondents talked about

the challenge of keeping their possessions under control. As they explained, there is

something of a tension between accumulating 'stuff' and keeping it tidy or at least out of sight.

Ronnie: I've got far too much kitchen equipment I keep throwing it out and throwing it

out, I mean if I part with my kitchen bowl I am parting with half my life, ..but

the only thing is now that a lot of them [objects] are getting a bit more difficult

to reach.

Sarah: I'm a messy, cluttery person so I have to try and cover up my faults as much

as I can

Fiona: I've got to be ruthless now and throw the bulk of it away.. I'm going to halve

the number of pans that I need, I'm really going to be ruthless.. I don't need

three fruit bowls.

These extracts point to an aesthetic of order. For Ronnie, Sarah and Fiona (but not for

everyone), a nice kitchen is not cluttered nor does it have 'stuff' stuck all over the doors. As

mentioned above, expectations and aspirations vary widely: there is no shared image of

family life or of an ideal kitchen. Even so, concepts of rational organisation provide a

common point of reference and one that is particularly important in structuring ideas about

what domestic technologies are for and how they should be used. Sarah, for one, found it

difficult to shop and cook in ways that her freezer, or her mother's interpretation of her freezer,

required.

It was…it was already there, and we hardly ever used it…ice cubes…seriously…I

suppose I’ve never really got in to…this is why I’m trying to now, because my mum

says `you’ve got this lovely freezer, and you could freeze lots of food and its really

going to save you lots of time, and you don’t have to go to the shops every day after

work and, you can just take something out of the freezer, why don’t you make life

easier for yourself’.

she can’t understand that we’ve got this freezer, this big freezer and it’s empty…I

mean it isn’t now, because she’s changing us, she’s making us like Simon will now

buy ice cream just to put something in the freezer so when mum comes round she

can’t give us a hard time.

Domestic appliances are not inherently demanding but they can become so if defined as

machines with which to increase efficiency. Six-burner industrial scale hobs need not induce

guilt but again they are likely to do so if associated expectations of exotic entertaining fail to

materialise. Again we conclude that restlessness has to do with the relation between

possession and performance and with the framing of both in terms of more or less precisely

specified visions of how things should be.

To summarise, those who have yet to match image with performance strive to achieve a state

of affairs that lies just beyond their reach. Somehow the kitchen and the family life it contains

have yet to live up to the promises and expectations of the showroom, the traditional

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farmhouse or whatever the point of reference might be. This generates what seems to be

endemic dissatisfaction. Paradoxically, the restlessness of those who lack requisite

possessions appears more bounded. Often limited by pragmatism and realism, the sense that

things are missing is frequently tempered by a positive interpretation of the value of making

do.

Possession and performance: implications and conclusions

Respondents often described all three formulations but there was some pattern to their

experience. Those living in terrace and town houses were more likely to report missing

possessions than those in semi-detached homes who were, in turn, more likely to describe

deficiencies of performance. As might be expected, experiences also related to the life

course with younger people being more likely to talk about temporary arrangements and

holding patterns than older more 'balanced' members of the sample. In addition, critical

moments like moving into a new house, having a child, having children who leave home, etc.

had a bearing on interpretations of what family life should be like and what was needed to

accomplish it.

There is more that could be said about the combinations of possession and performance

described above, but for the present we highlight three general conclusions. The first

concerns the co-constitutive relation between objects (possessions) and practice (both as

performance and as entity). Certain kinds of possession demand and give shape to certain

kinds of performance. This works at the level of individual appliances and for the kitchen as a

whole. We found people consuming in certain ways in order to induce new practices, for

instance, designing kitchens in order to engender habits to which they aspire. More

abstractly, product developments and design innovations have implications for what people

expect and for how they conceptualise what is normal and necessary.

On the other hand, appliances and kitchens are not so tightly scripted that the behaviours

inscribed in them are sure to work out in practice. Failure to live up to material possessions

and the imagined futures associated with them is itself an important source of restlessness.

Identical possessions are incorporated into significantly different repertoires of performance

each associated with significantly different visions of family life. A second but somewhat

related point is that some such images can be realised and performances accomplished with

apparently inappropriate or inadequate tools and materials. While most sought to close the

gap between possession and performance, a number were proud of making do and doing

without. For them, thrift, ingenuity and skill were positive cultural values.

Campbell writes about the significance of imaginative pleasures for consumers and

advertisers alike. He identifies a cycle of 'day-dreaming, longing, desire for the new,

consumption, disillusionment and renewed desire which is entirely inner-directed and does

not depend on processes of imitation and emulation' (1992: 61). Our interviews confirm the

latter point and underline the extent to which present practices are structured by images of

the future. However respondents were not abstractly dreaming about consumer goods they

might one day own. Nor were they content with merely owning things which symbolised an

'imaginary future' (Sullivan and Gershuny 2004: 88). They were contemplating quite specific

practices realisation of which required the effective combination of possession and

performance.

Figure 1 draws these points together and summarises what we have learned from our

analysis of kitchen renewal.

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Figure 1. Possession, performance and modes of restlessness

A present practice

B future practice

1 new or not yet acquired possessions required for imagined

performance

2 possession and performance in balance, now and for the

immediate future

Present FuturePast

Image of

possession

possess

erform

Image of

performance

New

performance

New

ossession

A B

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 13

Some explanation is in order.

The circle marked ('A') represents current practice. It stands for what goes on in each

respondent's kitchen today. As indicated, ('A') is where possession and performance

intersect.

The shaded area to the left reminds us that current practice ('A') is organized by existing

possessions (kitchens, washing machines, etc.) and by prior performance (forms of know-

how, traditions, skills etc.).

('B') represents future practice - it is the conjunction of future possession and future

performance. ('B') is what people imagine themselves doing. There are three routes by which

persons might move from ('A') to ('B').

Route 1 in which achieving ('B'), or realising the future image demands the acquisition

of new possessions (This engenders possession-type restlessness )

Route 2 in which ('B') will simply transpire. In this case, ('A') and ('B') are pretty much

the same.

Route 3 In which achieving ('B') does not require the acquisition of any more

possessions (appliances, kitchens etc.) but does involve making different use

of what already exists, and it does involve doing things differently.

Future images both of possession and performance bear down on current practice. In

addition, and as indicated by the arrows moving off to the right of ('B'), cycles of restlessness

repeat. Like ('A'), ('B') is shaped both by the past and by anticipations and expectations of the

future.

This rather complicated scheme has a number of distinctive qualities. In emphasising the

relation between having and doing it provides an implicit critique of those whose analyses of

consumer culture focus exclusively on the symbolic surfaces of taste. In the cases considered

here, acquisition is not only about the signification of difference or the pursuit of the new. As

the figure suggests, consumption is organized in terms of past, present and future practice.

At least in the kitchen, things are acquired, discarded and re-arranged with reference to

culturally and temporally specific expectations of doing and of having - not of having alone.

Second, it allows that there are several ways in which possession and performance

interdepend. Preda writes that 'objects... bind human actors and participate in developing

specific forms of social order because they allow for common practices to develop, stabilize

and structure time' (1991: 353). Although they use different words, the respondents we have

quoted underline this point time and again. It is not just that consumer goods are implicated in

the construction of performance, that freezers demand certain forms of shopping and cooking,

or that bread-makers make people make bread. The more diffuse but in a way more

pervasive point is that kitchen practices are organised by, through, and around a physical

landscape of material possibilities. It is in this sense that we observe an enduring connection

between 'doing' and the appropriation of specific artifacts and of kitchen spaces as a whole.

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 14

Third, it makes the point that kitchen transformation has to do with the ways in which future

images of performance are materialised today. New appliances, new designs and new

layouts are required because they allow or engender desired practices. People look ahead.

While some can and do buy things in preparation for a life they are not yet living, this is not

the only way of proceeding. As we have seen, there are different types of balance and

imbalance between having and doing: when faced with disjunction between the two,

acquisition is one response but adaptation, resignation and making do are others.

More abstractly, our analysis of performance and possession bridges between theories of

consumption and arguments developed within science and technology studies. It does so by

putting concepts of practice centre stage. This is a useful move but social theories of practice

as developed by Giddens (1984), Pred (1981) or Bhaskar (1979) are predominantly

concerned with the ways in which forms of order are stabilised, sustained and reproduced.

There is more that could be said about why this is the case. For the time being, it is enough

to notice that in analysing kitchen renovation we emphasise the future orientation of present

practice, and its anchoring in the past. In so doing we provide a way of thinking about novelty

and renewal that takes due account of the temporality as well as the mutual construction of

having and doing.

This far, we have said little about specific sources of restlessness or about what drives and

animates kitchen renovation. Some disjunctions are undoubtedly generated by changes and

challenges that arise as people move through the life course. Others relate to seemingly

generic trends, for example in food provisioning (hence the need for the freezer), in concepts

of family life (hence re-defining the kitchen as living room), and in the development of new

sociotechnical configurations. The idea that units should match and appliances conform to a

single stylistic order was, for example, critical in making it possible (and sometimes

necessary) to conceptualise and to buy and sell 'the kitchen' as a singular commodity.

Commercial interests are clearly important and many actors have a stake in promoting and

standardising what they hope will become the conventions of the future.

All the same, there is no single kitchen to which people aspire. The details of design,

acquisition and use remain varied, contested and always localised. This is partly because

ambitions and aspirations are bound up with different understandings of normal and ordinary

practice and anchored in different each variously anchored in the past, present and future. In

writing about the acquisition and use of televisions, computers and videos, Silverstone (1993)

makes a very similar point, arguing that households have dominant orientations 'to either

past, present or future' and that this makes a difference to what they buy and to how

consumer goods are, and are not, appropriated. Silverstone goes on to suggest that a family's

moral economy 'defines a basis for its own sense of integrity, distinctiveness and ability to

manage in a world of public goods, meanings and values' (1993: 286). While each household

has its own way of operating, certain aspects are shared with others. To quote Silverstone

again, 'the particular character of a household's moral economy, and its strength or weakness

relative to the structures and behaviours of the formal economy and the public sphere, will

depend on a number of factors. Class and culture are clearly paramount. The availability and

nature of economic and symbolic capital provide a powerful matrix for understanding

differences between households and their capacity to forge a culture of their own.' (1993:

287). Tying these observations back to our own argument, the critical point is that a

household's moral economy is as important for what its members do as it is for the taste-

based judgements and lifestyle identifications embodied in what they own.

If we are to understand why kitchens are on average renewed every seven years or so, we

need to understand the types of restlessness that lie behind contemporary patterns of

consumption. Since moral economies are associated with distinctive orientations to having

Department of Sociology at Lancaster University 15

and doing they are likely to engender systematically different forms of restlessness or

equilibrium.

Acknowledgement: This paper is based on research undertaken as part of the 'Sustainable

Domestic Technologies: Changing practice, technology and convention' project funded by the

ESRC as part of the Sustainable Technologies Programme, Award number 332 25 007. Dale

Southerton, Alan Warde and Helen Watkins (Manchester University) are also involved in this

project.

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