Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 30

LIVING SPACE AND THINGS IN A PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT: A STUDY OF GARDENERS’ HOUSES IN BAMBERG

Julia Buchatskaya

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Universitetskaya Emb., St Petersburg, Russia
julia.butschatskaja()yahoo.de

Abstract: The focus of this article are the things in professional gardeners’ houses in Bamberg (“Bamberger Gartner”) and their relationship with group identity. The identity of gardeners is multidimensional, it includes professional, confessional, and local aspects. The professional aspect of identity is the most important because of the rareness of this disappearing form of employment. The purpose of this article is to trace the objectification of professional identity in decorative things, and to find out what interlocutors say about these things and their relationship to the professional context. Gardeners’ houses are anthropologically interesting because they unite private and work rooms, living and professional space. Therefore, the concept of “ethnography of living rooms” can be applied to their analysis. The concept is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories about social distinction, as well as the semiotic approaches, such as Jean Baudrillard’s concept of things, and also Tatjana Shchepanskaya’s approach in her analysis of professional space and the symbolic function of the objects in it.

Living rooms, halls, and house shops have a representative function because they are indented for visitors, but at the same time, are private rooms of the internal sphere of a family. In these rooms, groups of objects such as photos, religious objects, various documents and texts, the reduced copies of traditional instruments, small figures and souvenir products symbolic of the profession, ancient craft products and works of art were analysed.

The author’s conclusion is that decorative objects in representational rooms represent the owner’s identity outward, and at the same time, create the internal atmosphere expressed in a special national phenomenon of “German cosiness”. Because of the author’s special interest in gardeners of Bamberg as a professional group, informants commented on all things in a professional context.

Keywords: living room, living space, things, decorative objects, profession, identity, gardeners of Bamberg.

To cite: Buchatskaya Yu., 'Interer i veshchi v kontekste professii. Nablyudeniya v domakh gorodskikh ovoshchevodov Bamberga' [Living Space and Things in a Professional Context: A Study of Gardeners’ Houses in Bamberg], Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 30, pp. 175–214.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/030/buchatskaya.pdf