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- Convenors:
-
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
(University of Helsinki)
Silja Juopperi (University of Tampere)
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- Stream:
- Home
- Location:
- VG 3.104
- Start time:
- 27 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
The panel will explore the complex relationship between books and home. Today, digital technologies are changing the role of books. What are the books that people want to keep in their homes, and why? What new practices and rituals of reading can be observed in the 21st century?
Long Abstract:
The panel explores the complex relationship between books and home. Books have been an essential part of living-room interiors since the nineteenth century, and they have provided means for demonstrating class, education and ideology. Silent reading and reading aloud have also been a vital part of intimate family life. Today, digital technologies are changing the role of books and bookshelves. What are the books that people still want to keep in their homes, and why? What new practices and rituals of reading can be observed in the 21st century? How has the e-book affected the role of books and reading at home?
Voluntary or forced migrations give new meanings to books and reading. Migrants and refugees can most often take a minimal amount of material goods with them. Which books are carried in the luggage as symbols of home? What kinds of old and new reading practices can be observed in immigrant communities?
Libraries have served as "alternative homes" especially for workers and immigrants, who often have had limited means to buy books and limited possibilities for reading in peace. How are the domestic features of libraries experienced and discussed? How have librarians reacted to these expectations?
Reading practices and books as material objects interest scholars in the fields of ethnology, folklore studies, book history, linguistics and information studies. In our session, we are going to promote multi-disciplinary discussion on these questions.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Drawing on our research in the materiality of books within the context of centrally controlled production and reception we shall explore the position of home libraries and domestic reading in this environment by using evidences referring to the Czech part of former Czechoslovakia as a case study.
Paper long abstract:
Domesticity, family and private sphere under the so-called real socialism were analysed as a space for producing and reproducing social and cultural capital, as a shelter providing room for relative independence and satisfaction unavailable in the public, as well as space of resistance that unavoidably lead towards the political turnovers of 1989 (Možný, 1991, 1996; True 2003). The few Czech research projects conducted on reading habits during the 1970s concluded that some of the most influential factors determining what books people bought were personal recommendations generated from informal networks (friends - 70% of respondents), borrowing books from friends' personal libraries, and books in one's family library. According to available data of 1970s, 50% of the respondents claimed to have a library with more than 100 books. (Hepner, 1975).
We thus suggest that home libraries were among the few institutions that guaranteed the circulation of the genres, titles, and authors that there were shortages of under the centrally controlled system. As such, the bookshelves in living rooms served as a medium of literary, cultural, and intellectual continuity with the pre-communist era. But were these bookshelves a counter-reaction to official propaganda? Or were they a reflection of escapism from the centrally controlled public sphere? Or was the obsession with books a form of consumer counter-reaction to the shortage of desirable goods on the market; were readers just stocking up with books in expectation of a shortage, just as they would stock up on toilet paper and sanitary napkins - 'just in case'?
Paper short abstract:
The Swedish population has a high ranking in surveys of reading habits, and e-books sales numbers are small. How does this fit into the Scandinavian interior design ideal of a empty space? The epistemological functions of books as elements of home is related to issues of interior design ideals.
Paper long abstract:
In many Swedish homes of today, the IKEA catalogue is close to be the only bookish object present. Empty and white the home has been transformed to a neutral and impersonal space where nothing reveals anything about the people living there. Life seems to have moved to social media, leaving the physical room, the home, uninhabited.
Books may be regarded as a vital part of life, but they do not fit well into the Scandinavian hyper designed void. Have the books too been relocated to digital devices, the bookshelves transfigured into digital ones, filled with e-books?
The Swedish population has a high ranking in surveys of reading habits, and e-books sales numbers are very small. How does this fit into the interior design ideals? The paper looks into these issues while at the same time raising questions about the epistemological functions of books as elements of home. Contrasting the void as a Scandinavian design ideal with the horror vacui ideal of the late nineteenth century interior design and its eclectic styles, absence and presence will serve as themes for the exploration of the individual's relation to the surrounding world as it is being manifested by means of books.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will discuss books, e-books and materiality of reading at home from the viewpoint of ethnological studies of material culture. What makes books significant as material objects? How are e-books changing the material aspects of reading?
Paper long abstract:
Paper books are more than media for pieces of literature. They belong to many reading situations and home interiors as material and symbolic objects. Bookshelves and beautiful book covers are used as decorative elements, and the smell of books or feel and sounds of pages belong to reading rituals. Although readers are known to consider books as meaningful artifacts, cultural aspects behind the attached meanings are not often discussed. What is it about the smells, visual elements or touchable aspects of books that make them so significant?
The question relates also to digitalisation and e-book-reading. As digital books, services and reading devices are becoming increasingly popular, the roles of printed books might be changing in everyday lives. This presentation will discuss books and e-books from the viewpoint of reading at home. It will also view the concepts of materiality and immateriality of different reading forms. New reading habits raise new questions about the changing materiality of reading, and the perspectives of ethnological studies in material culture may help to understand the change from the viewpoint of readers and focus on the cultural processes they go through when choosing the form of books they read at home.
Paper short abstract:
The libraries are described common living rooms, “alternative homes”, in Finland. In this presentation I explore the significance of the recreational reading experiences, the role of the public libraries and also discuss how their roles have changed during the last decades.
Paper long abstract:
The libraries have a significant role as the inspiration for reading and to borrow books. Furthermore, the libraries serve as peaceful places to read. To some readers the library is the first place they look for when moving to a new locality in order to make them feel at home.
In my dissertation I study and analyse a written recollection of reading experiences collected by the Finnish Literature Society. The oldest informant was born in 1921, the youngest in 2006. The research material offers an opportunity to view the role of libraries and their significance to readers in different times and phases of life. The collection contains depictions of poor childhood of the countryside, whereupon the library at school was described as a treasury.
This presentation investigates the relationship between libraries and home: having the opportunity to take books home from the library, to find consolation or way to escape everyday life by reading books and spend time in a cosy, quiet and inviting atmosphere of the library close to home. Main attention is focused on the changes of these experiences during the last decades.
Paper short abstract:
The domestic sphere plays an important part in values promoted by independent bookshops in France in order to differentiate themselves from competition. This paper aims at understanding the imagery of the home that is inseparable from the independent bookshop rhetoric.
Paper long abstract:
The imagery of the home is central in the publishing field, as the term « publishing house » bears witness. The same holds true for independent bookshops, which form a dynamic but fragile part of the retailing industry in France. The research I have carried out in 2015-2016 shows that the domestic sphere and the home play an important part in the rhetoric and values promoted by independent bookshops in order to differentiate themselves from competition - mainly Amazon - while asserting a project with strong cultural and political undertones.
The paper draws on thirty semi-structured interviews carried out with medium-size independent booksellers created in the past 15 years in France, together with observation during special events and debates organized in bookshops. It shows that independent bookshop tend to blur the boundaries between domestic space and working space, between the intimate and the economic, following the precapitalist model of the oïkos. They put forward such characteristics as their being "local", "authentic" and "subjective", as opposed to the distant and dehumanised quality of online retailers. The aim is to recreate an "intimate atmosphere", akin to that of the home, a re-enchanted commercial space where friends and like-minded people can meet and exchange about books. The furnishing of the bookshop is therefore crucial in order to convey a sense of home (carpets, plants, sofas, music, paintings…). It is indeed a third place (Oldenburg, 1989) and an extension of the owners' private space, together with a refuge from the commodification and homogenization of culture.
Paper short abstract:
In nineteenth-century American domestic fiction, books are necessary in the middle-class home. In a country plagued by economic depressions, books offer stability to the class system as the ownership of books, rather than monetary assets, became synonymous with middle-class affiliation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will explore the function of books in American domestic fiction of the nineteenth century. Written primarily for middle-class readers, domestic fiction offers advice on how to create an ideal home and in these ideal homes the presence of books is necessary. In a time period characterized by a volatile national economy, with repeated depressions, economic means provided a fickle basis for class affiliation. In domestic fiction, however, books are offered as an alternative foundation for class status. As a result, rather than being based on monetary assets, which might lose value overnight and cause a plunge on the social ladder, in these tales, middle-class status transcends economic status as it becomes synonymous with the ownership and appreciation of books and the moral qualities books were expected to foster.
Paper short abstract:
A long history of services to immigrants through the New York Public Library programs from 1901 to date reveal a shape-shifting discourse and the assignation of the affects of belonging to books, libraries, and literacy to citizenship.
Paper long abstract:
For over a century, the New York Public Library (NYPL) has been a home for literacy and citizenship activities. Through the material culture of books, reading rooms, and liminal places of immigrant reading, the NYPL documents the process and produces the models of sanctioned versions of American citizenship and belonging. An official discourse around libraries "as alternative homes for immigrants" reflects the affects that shaped the idea of the library for immigrants as a liminal place for identity and identification. The longue durée structure of the emergence and the development of services to immigrants will draw on annual reports published in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library (1897-) that recorded the Traveling Library program from 1901, complemented by the documentation from archival scrapbooks, social photography, and testimonials. The genealogy of the shifting discourse of literacy will explore a range of artifacts of citizenship, from the early services that include an elusive and short-lived program at the Ellis Island (1909-1921) to the shaping of cosmopolitan identities reflected in the artifacts such as the "World Languages Collection." The services to immigrants were integral to early NYPL outreach programs designed for educational settings, prisons, businesses (e.g., messenger boys in telegraph companies) and the reading rooms on Manhattan rooftops. Amid tensions around the library institution as a place of redefining social categories, the record of a multi-modal and shape-shifting literacy included the discourse of immigrant literacy, citizenship, and the library as a place of belonging.
Paper short abstract:
The showcasing of books at home can be a reflection of the self. Through analysis of interviews with Scottish Americans, this paper investigates the self in the shelves Scottish Americans to determine what bookshelves say about identity and relationship to the Scottish home.
Paper long abstract:
The consumption and showcasing of certain books in the home can be a reflection of the self. Consumption has been identified by several researchers as a means by which individuals form and assert identity (Combes, Hogg and Varey 2011; Nancarrow, Tinson and Webber 2007; Arnould and Thompson 2005; Holt 1995), particularly in this postmodern era characterized by the re-grouping of communities that are electively and loosely bound by common behaviors and lifestyles (Maffesoli 1995). This paper investigates the self in the shelves Scottish Americans. Of particular interest in this research is how national identity is reflected in the types of books Scottish Americans not only consume but choose to display, and how their displayed books might be considered symbols and reminders of the Scottish homeland.
Based on the analysis of interviews with Scottish Americans, this paper explores the relationship between books, home, and identity in the lives of Scottish Americans. This paper builds upon the research results of a PhD thesis that discovered that some members of the Scottish diaspora use books as a way to personalize the homeland and reinterpret national myths, memories, symbols and traditions (Noorda 2016). Through this analysis, this paper determines what the bookshelves of Scottish Americans say about Scottish American identity and relationship to the Scottish "home".
Paper short abstract:
I will focus on one particular group of publications by Greek Americans, namely the “Community Books” (such as photo albums, yearbooks, commemorative journals etc.). These mostly ephemeral publications strengthen the feeling of belonging to the community, and aim to “keep the traditions”.
Paper long abstract:
The books immigrants chose to take with them demonstrate personal attachment, enliven memories, and can be symbols of home. Moreover, in their new home, immigrants produce, distribute and read books related to their country of origin; these literary practices mirror their desire to stay connected with their homeland. My paper investigates the book culture of Greek-American immigrants. As soon as Greeks began immigrating to the United States, Greek-American publishing houses—mostly family businesses—appeared in urban centers such as New York, Chicago, and Boston. Their broad repertoire of books and newspapers aimed to fulfill all the reading needs of Greek immigrants. I will focus on one particular group of publications, namely the "Community Books". Almost every Greek community in America has its own publishing agenda: a calendar or a yearbook, a community photo album, a journal, or so. All these, mostly ephemeral publications, were full of advertisements, and many conveyed folklore wisdom such as information about folk music and dance, religious or secular festivals, legends and myths etc. They are full with personal photos of the members of the community, thus, they can be a great source for family history as well. All these albums, advertisements and publications strengthened the feeling of belonging to the particular community. The subtitle of one advertisement reads: "Our primary aim is to keep our traditions" which demonstrates the ideological perspective and social role these communities and their publications played in the lives of immigrants.
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on books and documents which are a vital part of family and ethnic heritage for the third and fourth generation of Finnish immigrants. Books and documents were brought from Finland by immigrants, produced in immigrant communities, or sent from Finland during the later decades.
Paper long abstract:
Finnish immigrant book culture in North America served many purposes: first, the immigrants wanted to maintain contacts with Finland, keep up their language and teach it to their children; second, they needed to communicate with each other in distant immigrant communities; third, they wanted to reflect the immigrant experience.
In my paper, I will focus on books and printed or manuscript documents (letters, memory books, certificates), which are an important part of family and ethnic heritage for the third and fourth generation of Finnish immigrants. My paper is based on archival and field work during the years 2013-2016 in Rockport and Lanesville on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. The very large archival collections from this community are preserved at Finnish American Heritage Center (Hancock, Michigan). Finnish immigrants were recruited to the granite quarries on Cape Ann from the 1880s. The Finnish heritage is maintained in the community, even though most members of the Finnish immigrant community no more speak or read Finnish.
Books and documents were brought from Finland by the original immigrants, produced in immigrant communities, or sent from Finland during the later decades. They are now valued as material objects, and their illustrations and inscriptions are more important than the verbal content, which members of the later generations often cannot understand. In my paper I will present some case studies of these books and documents and family histories linked to them.