| Summary: | This thesis explores the ever-ongoing process of home-making in contemporary Shanghai, China. Based on fieldwork conducted from November 2019 to May 2021, it examines a diverse array of cases—from apartment refurbishments to everyday aesthetic engagements with materiality and design of homes. The thesis draws attention to the idea of considering the home as a process which is dynamic, adaptive, and in a perpetual state of flux. It is through the making, remaking, and even unmaking of the home within specific circumstances that individuals construct their own personal meanings associated with it. This thesis also emphasises the co-constitutive relationships between people and the material or immaterial environment of their domestic space. People not only create functional and aesthetic spaces but also construct themselves¬—their sense of self, identity, and individuality through their decisions about home regarding location, relationships, enskilment, design and curation, the use of digital technology, atmosphere of space, and personal possessions. The final section of the thesis revisits some of these key themes against the backdrop of pandemic lockdowns, which profoundly reshaped individuals’ living experiences within their homes and prompted a revaluation of the home’s significance within the larger framework of the nation and the city. I draw my research participants’ experiences together to argue that the process of home-making is one of prioritising and assembling one’s relationships, experiences, aspirations, aesthetics, and navigating uncertainty. My observations of homes in Shanghai, including my own, seek to depict what goes on behind the closed doors of urban Chinese spaces, both in mundane everyday circumstances and in a time of crisis. They also reveal how a home is a place where the past is remembered, the present is experienced, and the future is imagined.
|
|---|