The Comfort of Things (ePub)

What do we know about ordinary people in our towns and cities,
about what really matters to them and how they organize their lives
today? This book visits an ordinary street and looks into thirty
households. It reveals the aspirations and frustrations, the
tragedies and accomplishments that are played out behind the doors.
It focuses on the things that matter to these people, which quite
often turn out to be material things - their house, the dog,
their music, the Christmas decorations. These are the means by
which they express who they have become, and relationships to
objects turn out to be central to their relationships with other
people - children, lovers, brothers and friends.

If this is a typical street in a modern city like London, then
what kind of society is this? It's not a community, nor a
neighbourhood, nor is it a collection of isolated individuals. It
isn't dominated by the family. We assume that social life is
corrupted by materialism, made superficial and individualistic by a
surfeit of consumer goods, but this is misleading. If the street
isn't any of these things, then what is it?

This brilliant and revealing portrayal of a street in modern
London, written by one the most prominent anthropologists, shows
how much is to be gained when we stop lamenting what we think we
used to be and focus instead on what we are now becoming. It
reveals the forms by which ordinary people make sense of their
lives, and the ways in which objects become our companions in the
daily struggle to make life meaningful.