Elisabeth Sri Unggul Ida Mulyani
HOME
Entering a private room, we are given a display of personality. How are things arranged, are there pictures, who are the people in the pictures displayed in the home, is the couch from fabrics or leather, which colors are the walls, are there plants or flowers, souvenirs from a far-away vacation: those are only a number of questions we can ask, from which the answers would generate a kind of hypothesis concerning the owner of the room. Anthropologist Daniel Miller stated that capitalism has made us create the objects that in turn create our understanding of who we can be. So, not only men make the objects, but the objects make the men. When we are used to some rooms, we can lose our critical eyes towards the rooms and the stuff in those spaces. Miller called this ‘the humility of things’, the fact that we do not ‘see’ the stuff anymore. He explained this as : "The less we are aware of them, the more powerfully they can determine our expectations by setting the scene and ensuring normative behavior, without being open to challenge."
