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Assembling Mass Observation Archive material with historiographies of family, house and nation from ancient-Greece to present-day Europe, China and America, this book contributes to current debates on identity, belonging, memory and material culture by exploring how power works in the small spaces of home.

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Introduction: Dismantling Mantelpieces PART I: PASTS: HISTORY, ARCHIVE AND MEMORY 1. Histories of Domestic Fire 2. Mass Observation Mantelpiece 3. Materialising Memory PART II: PRESENTS - ORDERING IDENTITIES , THINGS AND HOME 4. Telling Identities 5. Relating the Gift 6. Focal Points PART III: CULTURES OF ´HOME´ - OTHER WAYS OF LOOKING 7. Defamiliarising Home 8. Genealogies of Difference Conclusion: Culture, Clutter, Contemplation Epilogue: Encounter

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Rachel Hurdley on Woman´s Hour

it! If you have read it, read it again!" - David Morgan, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester UK

"Renovates everyday life ananlysis ... a tour de force." - David Inglis, Professor of Sociology, University of Aberdeen, UK

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Rachel Hurdley is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, UK. Her research focuses on everyday relations between people, things, space and time, examining how identity, power and culture happen as small processes.

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