La famille et le monde des choses: Culture matérielle domestique dans la Toscane d'aujourd'hui

This paper is grounded on a research carried out in some Tuscan towns, concerning the material domestic culture of popular and middle class families. The main issues addressed are the links between persons and things, and the use of objects to build and strengthen family lineage and alliance relationships, the processes of keeping, collecting and exposing objects and material goods as forms of cultural memory. The paper also discusses the permanence of a clear gap between "bourgeois" and "popular" tastes. The paper argues that ordinary objects of everyday life are often "dense", "singularized" and meaningful, far beyond their commodity status stressed by traditional critical theories of consumerism.