Bean, Jonathan Yorke
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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Consuming Hygge at Home: Perception, Representation, Practice Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d79b4kf Author Bean, Jonathan Yorke Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Consuming Hygge at Home: Perception, Representation, Practice by Jonathan Yorke Bean A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Galen Cranz, Chair Professor Margaret Crawford Professor Nancy Van House Professor Russell Belk Fall 2011 Consuming Hygge at Home: Perception, Representation, Practice Copyright 2011 Jonathan Yorke Bean Abstract Consuming Hygge at Home: Perception, Representation, Practice by Jonathan Yorke Bean Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture University of California, Berkeley Professor Galen Cranz, Chair Comparative research on the relationship between everyday spaces of consumption and cultural metaconcepts offers insight into how consumers experience and construct meaning through the use of space. In practice theory, metaconcepts, the “structuring structures” of consumer meaning and emotion, are understood to operate at the individual, group, and cultural level. Consumers engage cultural metaconcepts — in this case, the Danish concept of hygge and coziness, its typical American translation —!through banal acts, such as making morning coffee, and exceptional consumption, such as remodeling one’s home. Likewise, metaconcepts act across social scale. The emotional experience of hygge can be experienced alone or in a group, but the concept is also strongly linked to Danish identity and to the home. Therefore, the ideal of hygge influences the everyday purchases that constitute the majority of middle-class consumption. Through everyday consumption, hygge has a strong relationship to the material arrangement and use of the home. Hygge influences everything from the size and shape of the dining table to the relationship of the living room to the front door. These material arrangements shape both social relationships and consumption, reinforcing cultural ideals and norms. Previous research on hygge, homeyness, and atmosphere, however, has lacked a comparative perspective, making it difficult to identify cultural differences in the metaconcepts that drive much normal, routine, and habitual consumption. From a review of literature from fields including cultural geography, anthropology, sociology, and architecture, I identify seven concepts that typify scholarly approaches to the home. I then conduct a two-part analysis for understanding the intangible, multivalent, and fleeting concepts of hygge and coziness in a sample of seventeen everyday domestic settings near Copenhagen, Denmark and Portland, Oregon. First is a comparative research video ethnographic method designed to invoke wide-ranging discussion and involve participants in the creation of research representations. Second is a historical survey of representations of hygge and coziness in 1 popular media, including the Danish magazine Bo Bedre, the American magazine Sunset, and the book The Not So Big House by American author and architect Sarah Susanka. This research offers a contribution to interdisciplinary theory in marketing research and studies of domestic space along with concrete findings applicable to the marketing of domestic goods, homes, restaurants, bars, and other products and services. It also offers a rapid ethnographic method of use to scholars and market research professionals alike. 2 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Literature Review 5 Seven Ways of Thinking About the Home 5 1. The Self 5 2. Status and Signification 6 3. Consumer Choice 7 4. Appropriation 7 5. Material Culture 8 6. Practice 9 7. Integrative Approaches: Consumer Culture Theory; Science and Technology Studies 11 The Study of Hygge, Atmosphere, and Homeyness 12 Hygge 12 Atmosphere (Gezelligheid) 17 Homeyness 19 The Diminutive Property 20 The Variable Property 20 The Embracing Property 21 The Engaging Property 21 The Mnemonic Property 21 The Authentic Property 22 The Informal Property 22 The Situating Property 22 Pragmatic Qualities of Homeyness 23 Homeyness and Status 23 Aligning Homeyness and Pleasantness 25 Homeyness and Modernity 26 Method 28 A Comparative Approach: Copenhagen, Denmark and Portland, Oregon 28 Participant Ethnography 28 Representations of Coziness in Popular Media 29 Findings: Ethnographic Interviews 33 Participant Profiles 33 Pair 1: Rob and Per 35 Rob 35 Per 50 Pair 1: Doing Coziness and Hygge 61 Pair 2: Matt and Dora, Poul and Karen 63 Matt and Dora 64 i Poul and Karin 96 Pair 2 Summary: Material Anchors 124 Pair 3: Al and Peg; Ann 126 Al and Peg 126 Ann 150 Pair 3: Status and Comfort 168 Pair 4: Chris and Ditte, Rebecca and Garth 170 Chris and Ditte 171 Rebecca and Garth 189 Pair 4 Summary: Creating Hygge and Homeyness 202 Hygge in Bo Bedre 204 Applying Practice Theory to the study of Bo Bedre 205 Three Regimes of Hygge 205 Collective/Functional Hygge 206 Familial/Antique Hygge 208 Individualist/Luxury Hygge 213 Overlapping Regimes 214 Homeyness in Sunset 215 Embracing 216 Authentic 220 Diminutive 222 Variable 224 Informal 226 Engaging 227 Mnemonic 230 Situating 234 Findings: The Not So Big House 237 The Not So Big House: An Overview 237 Critiques of The Not So Big House 243 Who Reads The Not So Big House? 244 “Not So Big” Meaning and Modern Subjectivity 245 Is Homeyness “Not So Big?” 249 The Diminutive Property 250 The Variable Property 251 The Embracing Property 251 The Engaging Property 252 The Mnemonic Property 253 The Authentic Property 254 The Informal Property 254 The Situating Property 255 Discussion 257 Perception 259 Engagement 260 Pairing 262 ii Representation 274 Projective Space 274 Instrumentalization of the Material 283 Containment 288 Practice 291 Gender 291 Coziness, Hygge, and Homeyness Considered as Scripts 295 Modernist Homey 298 Conclusion 305 Theoretical Contributions 305 Areas for Future Research 305 Rethinking Meaning and Space in Studies of Consumption 306 Participatory Ethnographic Method 306 Homeyness Outside the Home 306 Yards and Gardens 307 The White-collar Workplace 309 The Blue-collar Workplace 310 Retail Commercial Settings 312 Hotels, Dormitories, and other Congregate Dwellings 313 City, Regional, and National Parks 315 Conclusion: Aim and Purpose 316 References 318 iii Dedication Many, many people have helped me along the way. Karen Møller, my Danish teacher, suggested hygge might be worthy of study. She was right. I would also like to thank: Hanne Pico Larsen for her insight and direction; the Domestic Design and Technology Research group at Intel, including Genvieve Bell, Francoise Bourdonnec, Jay Hasbrouck, Daria Loi, Jay Melican, Sue Faulkner, and Alex Zafiroglu; Jennifer Aaker for helping to make the connection to Intel; Michele Chang, Christian Madsbjerg, and everyone at ReD Associates in Denmark who helped me enter the scene; Sarah Wilner, who introduced me to Consumer Culture Theory; and Zeynep Arsel, whose leadership on a parallel project was a source of education and inspiration. My qualifying exam committee and the committee for this dissertation helped shape my direction and sharpen my contributions. Paul Groth, Hanne Pico Larsen, Nancy Van House, Andy Shanken, Margaret Crawford, Russ Belk, and Galen Cranz, you have my deepest gratitude. iv The unkindest thing one respondent could say about interior furnishings was to call them “Scandinavian.” Respondents complained that modern design made the home cold and unforgiving. (45) —Grant McCracken, “Homeyness: A Cultural Account of One Constellation of Consumer Goods and Meanings.” 1986 (1992). Introduction Coziness may seem too banal a concept for a dissertation, but it offers a unique view into the world of consumer meaning. For one thing, it is often taken for granted as an ideal part of the normal home. In Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg- Halton’s classic study of the home, the quality expressed as “comfortable,” “cozy,” or “relaxing” was most often mentioned by participants in the research; 41 percent described their own house this way (1981, p. 127). But what is coziness exactly? How do different people experience the feeling of coziness? What is the role of domestic space in coziness? Why have these mundane but important questions so often been overlooked in academic fields from market research to design studies? Feminist design historian Penny Sparke attributes the lack to a gendered split intrinsic to Modernism wherein anything associated with domesticity and comfort is coded as feminine—and necessarily inferior (1995). Others, most recently geographer Richard Harris, have noted the dismissive, stereotyped attitude academics tend to display toward the suburban home. Harris attributes this attitude—which he notes has also been mentioned by J.B. Jackson and Dell Upton, among others—to the crushing legacy of Cheeveresque stereotypes summed up in the folk song “Little Boxes.” In song and in the academy, the suburban homes of the upwardly mobile masses have long been represented as cheap, fake, or tacky (2008). Likewise, Daniel Miller argues that UK suburbs have been stereotyped and understudied, yet are full of coherent meaning: Who was the Le Corbusier of suburbia? Who rallied the population and told them to build barricades