ABSTRACT
Materiality is a prominent feature of everyday life. In this article, perceptions of materiality will be linked to the notion of the (post-)migratory society and its consequences for understanding space. Therefore, in the first section, we will introduce a short empirical example before we go on to discuss two specific phenomenological concepts of social space as practically produced and perceived entities, based on Henri Lefebvre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (sect. 3). In the following, we will highlight how the spatial, social, and cultural ‘backgrounds’ of material culture matter, and show how these complexes and referential constellations constitute the material and the social everyday world.
In a final step, we will look at how (post-)migratory or transcultural contexts affect the constitution of houses and homes, and at ways of producing domestic space, with regard to contexts and shifting orders, tactics, and practices of inhabiting space. Thus, this chapter intends to present a more differentiated picture of (post-)migratory society based on day-to-day experiences beyond exoticism or a notion of fixed identities. In order to do so, the contingent and ‘wayward’ character of the empirical findings will be an important issue, which contributes to developing an advanced understanding of material culture. We shall thus avoid the problematic approach of ‘isolat[ing] an object’; rather, we intend to do this by ‘grasping moving… complexit[ies]’ (Lefebvre, 2004, p. 21).
