The Importance Of Material Culture

Material culture is a method that is essential to answering my research question, how did homeownership and the renovation/restoration process create place identity? I define material culture as the material representation of the culture (Culture, 2007; Schlereth, 1982; Glassie, 1999). The definition I use for place identity is how the house is a reflection of a resident’s ideologies (Droseltis & Vignoles, 2010). These two ideas come together in the field of material culture studies. Materials culture studies embody the work of scholars and researchers that examine human behavior through the lens of objects using a variety of approaches. Taking five pieces of scholarship I identify a source each researcher used, and how they used material culture.

Martin used the physical home remains and images to examine home construction in understanding the social relationships in a community. The changes in construction and craftsmanship signify changes in the culture, and social relationships, and ideology (Martin, 1984). In my research I will use the house and images to discover the changes and investigate why these changes were occurring and what connection these changes had with their social relationships and

Hayden uses the scholarship from influential feminists to contradict their views on housing structure to that of the patriarchal ideology visible in the housing structure. It is through the scholarship of feminists that Hayden examines how housing represented a patriarchal ideology, but with changes, it could reflect a woman’s freedom from the house and the required housework (Hayden, 1982). Examining the renovations/restorations that the homeowners conducted can be symbolic of breaking away from what was socially acceptable for a women and how they made their space work to fit their lifestyle and