Decorating A Home

Housing decoration consumption is one of the ways for social members to demonstrate their market status and cultural appreciation,and is also one of the ways for them to practice their ideal life.Taking the theoretical perspective of sociology of consumption,this paper attempts to answer such a research question: For urban middle class families in China,what is their ideal "home" and what kind of decoration and consumption actions they will take to build their ideal home.First of all,this paper reviews the series of studies carried out by the sociological community on residential space and finds that there are two mainly analytical perspectives.The first one is to study the plural form of residential space from a macro perspective,mainly discussing the issue of residential class and residential culture.The second one is to study the singular form of residential space from a microscopic perspective.The main concern is the connection between the house and the daily life of the family,as well as the symbolic and emotional significance of the house.This paper chooses the microscopic research perspective.Next,the paper also combs the literature on consumption and social stratification,and finds that there is a theoretical competition between consumption-hierarchy homology and consumption-hierarchy heterogeneity,which will be the crucial theoretical discussion of this paper.This study decomposes the concept of “home” into three dimensions,namely material-dimension home,taste-dimension home,and relational-dimension home.The analysis found that for the middle class families in the city,the material-dimension home is strongly related to the family's economic capital.From the geographical location and hardware facilities of the community to home interior decoration materials and household equipment,the standard of the ideal life of the middle class is highlighted.These standards include physical comfort,convenience,cleanliness,technology,and psychological security,privacy,order,belonging,and so on.The taste-dimension home is highly correlated with the professional status and educational capital of the house owner.These two qualities will shape the meaning world of people,and housing decoration is an important way to make the meaning world become a reality.Professional traits and educational background will be projected into decoration consumption through the application of life style and life aesthetics..For those middle-class people whose cultural capital is relatively scarce,they tend to seek the agent's aesthetics in order to meet the standard of middle-class taste.The relational-dimension home reflects the expectation of the middle class of a standard middle-class family relationship.On the one hand,the middle class,as the most cautious and disciplined group,tends to follow the gender norms of social construction and carefully control the growth environment of children in decoration.On the other hand,the middle class will also try to avoid inequality in the traditional gender order,avoid excessive discipline in parent-child relationship,they tend to build a democratic family relationship.