Paper short abstract:

Hoarding has come to increasing clinical and public prominence. This paper reports on research with 'hoarders' in England with whom social services intervened. Through what ontologies do they perceive ‘hoarding’ and what subject positions do they occupy?

Paper long abstract:

In contemporary clinical and media portrayals, the figure of the 'hoarder' encapsulates uncontrolled profusion of possessions and the disproportionate, or inappropriate, dominance of material things over personal experience and interpersonal relationships. From these perspectives, in late modern society where material abundance has become more prevalent among the population than ever before in history, hoarders are those who indulge in an 'excess of excess.' Hoarding television series, self-help books and internet resources draw on diagnostic modalities of truth which are overwhelmingly characterised by discourses of risk, misplaced priorities, pathology and deviant temporalities. Against the backdrop of growing clinical and public attention, limited attention has been paid to how 'hoarders' themselves articulate their experience. Through what ontologies do they perceive 'hoarding' and where do they draw boundaries of agency between individuals, relationships and objects?

This paper reports on research with carried out with individuals in England who received social services input as a result of their accumulation of objects in their home environment. As they reflected on their experiences of intervention, they challenged subject positions articulated for them in the language of neuropsychological deficits, genetic inheritance or cognitive distortions. Instead they proposed alternative regimes of value that refracted or challenged normative judgements of human-object relations. We ask how clutter, clearance and safety might be negotiated differently by all involved.