CRASSH

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN THE ARTS,
SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • iTunes U
  • RSS Feeds
  • About
  • What's On
  • People
  • Research
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • Media
  • You are here:
  • Home
  • Media
  • Video
  • Reading Institutional and Domestic Things

Reading Institutional and Domestic Things

8 October 2014


Description

Dr Jane Hamlett Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London) 
Dr Alastair Owens (School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London) 

Abstracts 

Dr Jane Hamlett 
Institutional Things: Material Culture and Patient Experience at Bethlem, 1870-1910 

This paper draws on research for the ESRC At Home in the Institution Project -- a cross-institutional study of space and material culture in lunatic asylums (as they were known to contemporaries), schools and lodging houses in Victorian and Edwardian England. Built en masse in the nineteenth century, institutions created new material worlds that their inmates had to try and negotiate. The paper will examine interior decoration, furnishing and provision of goods within asylums. Taking Bethlem Hospital, then based in Lambeth, as a case study, I will explore the efforts made to domesticate this establishment through home-like décor. However, the main focus will be patients' responses to and engagement with material culture. The paper will draw on a unique collection of hundreds of letters preserved in Bethlem's case books, which offer an unparalleled record of inmates' reactions to their environments and the things they thought were most important. In a highly controlled material world, small goods, the portable and peripheral, became vital to patients as they attempted to maintain identity and agency within institutional walls. 

Dr Alastair Owens 
People and things on the move: domestic material culture, poverty and mobility in Victorian London 

The development of what Alan Mayne and Susan Lawrence (1999) termed ‘ethnographic’ approaches to studying nineteenth-century households and urban communities has gathered momentum in recent years. Building on critiques of such approaches, this paper examines the material culture of poor households in Victorian London. Drawing upon a study of Victorian archaeological remains excavated from a site in Limehouse in London’s East End, and inspired by the theoretical insights provided by the ‘new mobilities paradigm’, it aims to place ‘mobility’ as a central and enabling intellectual framework for understanding the relationships between people, place and poverty. While historians and archaeologists have tended to regard mobility as an obstacle to understanding the lives of the poor, here I want to show how by examining the temporal routines and geographical movements of people and things across a variety of time frames and spatial scales, we can perhaps better grasp the struggles and uncertainties of life in Victorian London’s most socially deprived communities. I conclude that as historians of material culture, we need to be more open to the restlessness and dynamism of people and objects. 

 

Related Events


  • Household Things
  • Explosive Things
  • Collected Things
  • Printing Things


Blog

  • Online Translators Are Sexist – Here’s How We Gave Them a Little Gender Sensitivity Training
    Stefanie Ullmann, Thursday 22 April 2021
  • Bridging Digital Divides: Proud Partners of the Cambridge Social Data School 2021
    Hugo Leal, Monday 19 April 2021
  • 20 Years CRASSH: Global Conversations
    CRASSH News, Wednesday 31 March 2021
  • Beyond Beliefs – Listening to Cultural Voices in Psychological Therapy
    CRASSH News, Thursday 25 March 2021
  • ‘Queering Authoritarianisms’: A Queer Rethinking of Social Justice and Global Politics
    CRASSH News, Tuesday 16 March 2021

Media

  • Bias in Data: How Technology Reinforces Social Stereotypes
    Videos, Monday 19 April 2021
  • Archives of Sound: Syrian Cassette Archives
    Videos, Thursday 1 April 2021
  • Frank Pasquale and Evan Selinger: New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
    Videos, Thursday 1 April 2021
  • Investigating Female Ageing Through Creative Practice: In Conversation
    Videos, Wednesday 31 March 2021
  • How could blockchain disrupt the democratic landscape?
    Videos, Friday 26 March 2021

Explore CRASSH

  • CRASSH Intranet
  • Equality and Diversity
  • Contact CRASSH
  • Find CRASSH
  • Vacancies
  • Funding Opportunities

Stay Informed

If you would like to be kept up-to-date with the events we hold at the Centre and around Cambridge, please join our mailing list

Signup now

Follow us

@CRASSHlive

Copyright © 2021 Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT

Tel: +44 1223 766886 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

CRASSH

  • Accessibility
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy and Cookie Policy
  • RSS Feeds
  • Sitemap
  • Web Design by Chameleon