Fragile (Hi)stories: Materialities of Care in Everyday Life

Kinship Ties and Caring Narratives

We first focus on the curatorial practices that individuals use to demonstrate ‘caring for’ kin, particularly through the development, maintenance and sharing of familial (hi)stories in connection with valued objects. We then consider instances where these stories or narratives are either missing or deemed unhelpful/negative and explore how such complexities affect both the value ascribed to objects and individuals’ actions towards them. Here, Clare tells a story about her great-grandfather:

My great-grandfather was gassed in the trenches and then taken prisoner of war . . . The family thought that he was dead, and they got written to . . . and then he popped back up after the war. So, it’s all [there] . . . that documentation that my grandfather kept . . . there’s a letter that got written to the family to tell them that he died, and the letter written when they found him . . . Every now and then, we like to get it out and have a good look through it . . . going through the photos and remembering him as a person and telling stories and remembering all the stories he used to tell us. (Clare, 30, Female, Consumer)

Clare refers to a collection of objects – letters, documentation, photographs – that supports family reminiscing and storytelling. The extract reveals the interplay of Tronto’s (2013) caring phases and ethical qualities, as caring for the dead grandfather(s) is embedded in various rituals involving the curated items. Caring for the items includes taking responsibility for ensuring their safe storage and maintenance as a collection (making sense as a whole). Various rituals illustrate how Clare cares about the items and her family’s past. Such practices – getting the items out, sharing (hi)stories –require attentiveness. In ensuring the longevity of curatorial practices initiated by her ancestor, these also provide important relational practices for the doing of family (Morgan, 2011). Clare’s usage of ‘we’ and ‘us’ demonstrates the relational importance of these curatorial practices initiated by her grandfather and further inscribes items with symbolic value. Curating items and (re)telling stories facilitate material affinities, allowing her ancestors’ memories to live on.

Similarly, participants often interlinked ‘caring for’ the family past with ‘caring about’ preserving a set of items. Here, such items provide insights into an ancestor’s life as an entertainer:

My great, great-grandad was a[n] . . . entertainer, and we’ve got a folder full of material related to his act . . . We’ve taken posters from the 1850s, and they’re all presented in a folder collected and annotated. It’s going to be passed on to the next generation definitely. (Dominic, 58, Male, Trader)

Dominic emphasises these items as a collection, with importance placed on continuing cycles of within-family care. His approach to ‘caring for’ includes practices beyond maintaining and displaying inherited posters. Supplementary materials (e.g. annotations) are created, and these inform additional value and meanings, shaping how future generations perceive their ancestors; both the items and care practices become ‘incorporated into something larger’ (Graeber, 2005: 451). These actions highlight Dominic’s care and attention towards preserving the objects and his family’s past, but also his competence, a quality that develops as he expands his curatorial responsibilities to involve documenting/interpretation practices. A care lens sheds light on how distinct ‘doing family’ practices – such as using/displaying items (Finch, 2007; Holmes, 2019), documenting (Zadeh et al., 2022) and developing interpretations of family history (Bottero, 2015) – can be understood as interconnected caregiving and curatorial practices and are crucial for shaping objects’ value. Dominic’s posters might be understood as valueless items, but, as a collection with clear family connections and accompanied by annotations and the articulation of (hi)stories, they accumulate symbolic value. Curatorial practices inform objects’ functions as conduits through which family members demonstrate caring for deceased relations.

Although we have emphasised elements of ‘caring for’ deceased relatives through the curated items, notions of ‘caring with’ others to achieve ‘collective and self-interests in the long run’ (Tronto, 2013: xii) are also inherent in the above examples. Inherited items are often collectively owned, and families work together to preserve their family past through the passage of items and caretaking responsibilities to kin, who are then trusted to care about and continue the maintenance of family (hi)stories. When objects are the care recipients, a competent caretaker assesses how caregiving practices will continue in the future and takes on the responsibility to identify those to ‘care with’, illustrated by Dominic’s intention to pass items ‘to the next generation’ implying reciprocal obligations to preserve associated family (hi)stories.

We now turn to considering where (hi)stories associated with objects could negatively affect or complicate their value. Margret is Irish-born and owns a range of objects, including her grandmother’s Jesus statue (Figure 1). Although these items are clearly meaningful to Margret, and their value is bolstered by wider religious associations, there is concern that these connotations will negatively affect her son’s willingness to continue this caring cycle:

These were my rosary beads when I was six. My grandfather got me this when I made my first communion . . . I keep all those things because they mean something, you know, they were important . . . I’m a practising Catholic, which is unusual these days in England . . . I like them because my grandfather bought them for me . . . and I also have a medal. Funny I have all my son’s medals, and my mother had all of ours, but those are big things in your faith, so you keep them. Hopefully . . . they will mean something to my son, and if not, they will mean something to my . . . younger cousins they all like old [things] and collect them, and they like it even better if it’s got a history and if it’s connected to the family . . . It’s nice to keep things and pass them on from generation to generation. (Margret, 56, Female, Consumer)

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Figure 1.

Margret’s statue.

For Margret, these items are valued as personal/familial artefacts. Important memories of holy communions (her own and her son’s) and other rituals are embedded in various objects (e.g. rosary beads, communion medals). This emplaced element to (hi)stories is further emphasised when she reflects on her son’s disinterest given his lack of faith. Margret’s concerns about passing on these objects to an uncaring recipient highlight concerns about whether her son has the necessary competency to act as caretaker, demonstrating the potential for contamination whereby the sacred becomes profane. Objects risk being devalued and uncared for, not because of their familial associations but because of more powerful religious/cultural narratives that surpass, and potentially undermine, kinship ties. Margret carefully considers who might ‘care with’ her and preserve this element of her family’s past, demonstrating an awareness of the relevance of personal values and their influence on assessments of items’ value – familial connections may be insufficient for those who do not share wider (e.g. religious) values.

The examples discussed thus far concern the passing on of items with compelling familial narratives. However, sometimes objects are inherited without such (hi)stories. Even when objects are commercially valuable, without familial narratives, they can become perceived as valueless from a material affinities perspective. During the fieldwork, an interview with Mark, a trader, was paused while he spoke to a couple who had approached him with an old hand-carved mirror (Figure 2):

The couple asked if he would be interested in purchasing it. They were clearing the house of a recently deceased family member who ‘used to go to antique fairs and buy these things’. They seemed detached from the item and confessed not knowing anything about the mirror. They were very relieved when Mark expressed an interest; he bought the mirror for £50. (Fieldnotes)

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Figure 2.

Mark’s mirror.

The sale of inherited items is a common way in which objects are acquired by vintage traders. Although this mirror belonged to a family member, it did not have the embedded memories and narratives that inscribe it with the necessary symbolic value to elicit care. The sense of relief referred to in the fieldnotes could link with the potential burden of caring and associated feelings of guilt. The couple frame the object as just a ‘thing’ picked up at an antiques fair, and the monetary value may provide them with permission to pass on the object, relieving them of the associated caring/curatorial burden.

Collective Caring and Preserving Societal Histories

We now turn to the interplay of value(s) in shaping curation outside the family setting in situations where individuals care for items without familial links. We highlight how objects embedded with societal (hi)stories support individuals’ expressions of wider values; in this case, ‘care’ involves collaborations with non-kin and institutions.

Joan, a trader, demonstrates how the value she ascribes to particular objects (given their associated histories) goes beyond any monetary gain she could realise through their sale. Her decision to acquire and preserve items related to women’s history (e.g. what she terms ‘Florence Nightingale memorabilia’) reflects her values:

I’m very interested in women’s history, so I wouldn’t sell stuff that was to do with women’s history because I want to leave that to the Glasgow Women’s Library or something like that . . . I would never sell that because it’s a really neglected area. It’s only just now that . . . we’re being slotted back into history . . . there’s a big movement now to get equal representation of women in history in general. (Joan, 63, Female, Trader)

Feelings of compassion and benevolence are implicit in Joan’s extract. These stem from her recognition of the injustices faced by women and the inequalities of curatorial practices, which lead to gaps in historical knowledge. Such concerns help shape her need to care, with the ethical quality of responsibility fuelling caregiving practices (e.g. collecting items), and her assessment of how best to ensure their continuation. She positions her curation and donations as means ‘to balance things out’ and is unwilling to gain financially from items. Such actions allow her to contribute to ‘something larger than’ herself (Graeber, 2005: 451). Particularly given her role as a trader, Joan’s sacrifice of potential monetary value demonstrates her values and commitment to women’s histories; she maintains items’ symbolic value and illustrates how caring is both a disposition and action-oriented (Tronto, 1993).

Echoing our findings in a familial context, a competent caretaker exhibits responsibility for ensuring the object’s future preservation, which involves trusting that the recipient will continue to appreciate the object and possess the necessary competence for ongoing care. These themes are also present for Jason, a reenactor, who brought his ‘original’ Second World War items to display at a fair:

Don’t forget people died . . . so we could have the future we have . . . my uncle was in a prison war camp . . . If it survived the war, we look after it. We’re like the keeper of the items for the next generation to keep. This will be sold to somebody else in the future . . . I mean, if I die today, my daughter will get it all, but she won’t keep it. She would sell it to someone else who does want to do the same thing. This is how we’ve got it . . . we’ve bought it from somebody else . . . or they might be throwing it out in a rubbish tip. We managed to keep it and then look after it . . . for other people to look after and keep. Some of those things could just go into recycling, and they don’t really look at the history behind it . . . we are saving history . . . for the future. (Jason, 50, Male, Consumer, Ethnographic interview)

Jason’s account captures the subjectivities of objects’ value and their links to values and historical narratives of collective suffering. Such values promote the need to care, and attentiveness to commemorating the sacrifices of ancestors and veterans through curated items. Jason positions his caring practices as ‘saving history’ from the ‘rubbish tip’, recognising objects’ vulnerabilities given potentially differing assessments of their worth. Yet he acknowledges his own fragility compared with objects’ potentially longer biographies and considers the competency and willingness of others to act as their future caretakers. Jason envisages the future sale of objects (by his daughter seeking monetary value) will support the continuing care cycle.

Joan’s and Jason’s accounts demonstrate the role of benevolence when caring about/for old objects for the benefit of others. They highlight felt responsibility and attentiveness towards preserving items and the importance of identifying appropriate others to ‘care with’ to ensure continuation of the care process. In contrast to Joan, who puts her trust in the competency of professional curatorial institutions (with shared values), Jason envisages the marketplace’s role as a medium for identifying suitable caretakers who share his interests. This is also seen within Dominic’s reflection on a box-lot he purchased:

I realised that some of it had a commercial value, some of it had historical value to enthusiasts or collectors, but most of it was just pages torn out of toy soldier magazines for reference and this is not the sort of stuff people are going to buy . . . I found he was a member of a model soldier society, so I just got in touch with them and said, ‘Do you want this stuff to be redistributed . . . maybe you’ve got younger members who would benefit?’ I just passed the box . . . back to them, and they said, ‘Oh yes, we knew this chap . . . he’d died recently, and somebody had obviously just cleared out his attic and put it all to auction’ . . . I’d rather somebody take that . . . and pass it on to somebody else . . . I can’t sell it, I don’t particularly want to sell it, it’s personal to him. (Dominic, 58, Male, Trader)

Dominic captures the subjectivities of objects’ value assessments. He recognises the ‘commercial’ and ‘historical’ value of certain items, implying that items’ historicity is mainly valued by niche collectors rather than mainstream consumers. The torn pages might be perceived as ‘rubbish’ – items of no value to be discarded – and such objects often linger in ‘a valueless and timeless limbo’ waiting to be re-discovered and re-valuated (Thompson, 2017: 10). Although not personally valuing the pages, Dominic recognises their subjective value and demonstrates benevolence towards, and solidarity with, strangers, facilitating re-discovery and re-valuation by passing them to enthusiasts who would care for them. He balances his own goals (e.g. monetary/preserving historical value) with empathy and care for strangers and these subjective variations in value.

Our findings identified a range of situations where consumption facilitated individuals’ caring with and for others. This could also happen in cases where there are no direct links or surrounding knowledge. Clare collects pre-1970s wedding images, which she often finds ‘in dusty little boxes’ that are ‘always a bit bashed up and unloved and a bit uncared for’. The photographs’ fragility and their links to weddings inform Clare’s feelings and care practices:

I just . . . look after them and . . . preserve them . . . share them. It’s like preserving history, preserving family memories, preserving people’s [weddings]. I feel like more as a custodian than a collector because this isn’t my family history. This is somebody else’s, but it’s important to keep hold of it because otherwise it just gets lost forever, which I think is really sad. (Clare, 30, Female, Consumer)

The threat of images and associated memories being lost elicits a range of emotions in Clare. She exhibits benevolence and solidarity with others, and her caring practices are ‘grounded in a sense of loss, or potential loss’ (Rhys and Baveystock, 2014: 15) reflecting personal values and heightened by her experience as a caretaker of her own family’s past. Despite owning the objects, she portrays herself as ‘a custodian’, which she hopes is a temporary role: ‘I’m a caretaker of them . . . until the rightful people can be found to give them back to.’ While Clare’s values and caregiving practices (i.e. purchasing, preserving, sharing/displaying) assign previously ‘unloved’ and ‘uncared for’ images with new value and meaning, for her, familial ties indicate competence and the potential for renewed caring cycles. Clare’s caregiving extends to creating a social media page to display and share her collection alongside any historical details she can identify to accompany her displayed items, which again illustrates the importance of documentation practices. Occasionally, her efforts result in photographs being reunited with their ‘rightful’ owners (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Clare reuniting images with ‘rightful’ owners.

In addition to breathing new life into these photographs through display, Clare has developed a community where followers contribute their ancestors’ images. Here, she reflects on this process of creating shared (hi)stories:

Quite a lot of people send me photos of their families . . . Some people look really miserable, some people look really happy . . . and it’s those stories behind the photos that I think people are always really interested in . . . They will send me a picture and a little paragraph about who it is . . . they got married on [date] they’re dead now, but they had a really happy life together and that kind of thing . . . People that are following my page . . . they are interested in social history . . . so they always want to know a bit more about the life behind the photos. (Clare, 30, Female, Consumer)

Technology digitises the past, making it accessible to wider audiences and broadening the scope for individuals to take on active preservation roles, developing and conveying their own interpretations and narratives (Giaccardi, 2012). Some of Clare’s followers entrust her with preserving their own family images and (hi)stories, thus recognising her benevolence and competence as a ‘custodian’. Technology can mediate solidarity and caring collaborations with others, facilitating the development of affinities among kin and non-kin with shared values and interests. This kind of collective caring includes collaborations with non-kin to memorialise ancestors and provides an important means to safeguard broader (hi)stories of ordinary people and marginalised groups.

Caring through Surrogate Objects

The above sections establish that objects act as mediators for people to demonstrate their values through caring for and with others. We now consider situations when objects are purchased according to their resemblance to other items; these objects then serve as surrogates (or replacements) through which individuals express their values and need to care. In these cases, consumption and associated caring practices provide an alternative route to maintaining affinities with ancestors and other important (hi)stories:

When people are walking around here, you hear them say: ‘Oh, my grandma had one of those . . . my auntie had one of those’, and it’s a trip down memory lane for them if they don’t possess anything like that. There’s kind of a nostalgic feel about it, and quite often . . . they recognise it as being a throwback to their family and what their family possessed. So, it becomes part of the psyche . . . say your grandmother had a mirror like that on her dressing table and . . . you saw that mirror. You’d be instantly reminded of the fact that your grandma owned a mirror like that, and you might look at it and think, ‘I might buy that, as a memoir of my grandmother’s life.’ (Kathy, 69, Female, Trader)

Kathy highlights everyday objects’ materialities and their potential to elicit associations, fond memories and care. This ‘material’ effect is fuelled by the item’s resemblance to past objects or memories, and individuals then inscribe purchased items with symbolic value to memorialise family connections. Such value assessments may reflect individuals’ nostalgia, a ‘longing for what is lacking’ in the present (Pickering and Keightley, 2006: 920), and also individuals’ values and what they care about. This suggests the value of old objects does not necessarily reside in their previous ownership or ‘authentic’ materiality, but rather in the stories and meanings developed around them. This is further illustrated by John:

Because all these films have been brought out now about the World War II [like] . . . Dunkirk. That brings back a lot of nostalgia for people, and then they start tracing up the family history and perhaps their grandfather served in Dunkirk, but he never left the family his hat behind, [a] beret. So, people start searching around for that . . . to keep in the family, you know, with a picture of their grandad . . . It all ties [them] in together . . . nostalgia. (John, 60, Male, Trader)

John demonstrates how wider historical understandings, such as media narratives, can inform objects’ interpretations and spark individuals’ nostalgic reflections and care. These prompts inform individuals’ needs to care about their family’s past and further curatorial practices, such as researching family history. The extract also draws attention to preserving such familial history through finding and caring for surrogate items. Emergent narratives about the past are utilised to construct an identity (Bottero, 2015), and acquiring and displaying surrogate artefacts provide important supplements for this identity-formation process. Displaying the purchased item alongside the ancestor’s image inscribes the object with new value and meanings, and a purchased historical artefact is transformed into a meaningful possession ‘to keep in the family’. Through curatorial practices, objects with certain material characteristics become plausible mediums for the development and conveying of narratives and nostalgic imaginaries of the past, promoting the maintenance of familial connections.

The appropriation and transformation of purchased items into surrogates is further illustrated in the following example, referring to a lost inherited item:

They’re always looking around saying, ‘Oh, my grandad had a beret with a badge on it, but we lost it when we moved house.’ So, they ask you if you’ve got a beret with a certain badge on it . . . just to hang near the medals really, just like a showpiece in the house. (John, 60, Male, Trader)

A cherished object is lost yet continues to carry affinities, remaining ‘connected to their previous owners through acts of remembrance and memorialisation’ (Holmes, 2024: 19). Finding and purchasing a replica speaks to the sense of responsibility associated with caring and helps salve feelings of loss, potentially helping to overcome guilt over one’s incompetence that led to an object’s loss. The purchase allows individuals or families to re-materialise affinities, illustrating how objects’ ‘authenticity is both culturally situated and firmly connected to their materiality’ (Holtorf, 2013: 440). Heidi’s example illustrates, even replicas for everyday objects can channel material affinities (Figure 4):

My nan died in 2012, and the last time I saw her, she was eating a piece of cake off this plate, but not this one. I said to my auntie when my nan died . . . please, will you save that plate for me . . . but then the plate got put in the skip when they were clearing the house, so I never got the actual plate that my nan had, but to kind of compensate for that, I bought myself one that somebody was selling online . . . It was exactly the same design because these were mass-produced for Woolworths . . . So, in a way, that isn’t the proper object, but it sort of reminds me of that. I just wanted it around . . . I literally have it as a display thing in the kitchen . . . but it definitely holds a really sentimental value for me, even though it’s not anything to do with me or my nan. (Heidi, 28, Female, Consumer)

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Figure 4.

Heidi’s plate.

For Heidi, the disposal of a plate initially deprived her of the opportunity to express care for her grandmother and memorialise certain familial practices. Heidi purchases an identical item to compensate for the loss of the original object and the resulting emotional effects. This ‘surrogate’ plate’s materiality enables Heidi to transfer original familial meanings, and curatorial practices strengthen the plate’s assigned sentimental value and (hi)stories, allowing her to initiate the care process. Such examples highlight that inherited items are not necessarily valued ‘in their own right’ but rather as conduits through which people exhibit what they care about (i.e. values). In the event of object loss, purchased items’ material qualities and iconic and indexical associations (e.g. a beret with a certain badge; a plate with a particular design) can enable the continuation of care for and about familial pasts. Curatorial practices (e.g. acquisition, displaying) further inscribe the purchased objects with new meanings and value, enabling consumers to use objects as supporting material evidence for the maintenance of narratives and resumption of the care process.

Surrogate objects were also sought by reenactors. In these situations, objects function as props to support the reenactment of historical events. Here, Kevin outlines inherent challenges:

We’ve got to remember in 1940, the average man was about 5’7 and probably weighed about 10 stone . . . they were a lot smaller people . . . For me and people . . . who are 6’2 and over average weight, you’re never going to get an original uniform to fit you, it won’t exist. (Kevin, 43, Male, Consumer)

Here, it is the object’s materiality (e.g. sizing issues) that presents a challenge. Another participant (Devon) refers to further issues: ‘to find an original pair of trousers that aren’t worn out is a trick in itself’. He further states: ‘you try and set as high a standard as you can. It’s never going to be perfect . . . you’ve got to accept that . . . [but] they made them [trousers] out of a very similar material.’ In this case, surrogate objects are deemed ‘good enough’ when they at least resemble original uniforms and are sufficient for carrying out caring (reenactment) practices. Kevin reflects on why he engages in reenactment, foregrounding elements of ethical caring (Noddings, 2013):

It’s something that we enjoy doing . . . and we’re doing something good as well. A lot of people forget about the World War II period, it’s something that’s going out of schools . . . we get to keep that alive. And some of the stuff we do for veterans as well, and there are not many of them left now. So, for us, it’s a bit of a laugh but also there’s a serious side to it. (Kevin, 43, Male, Consumer)

Surrogate objects, therefore, enable people to convey their care about societal issues and convey broader (hi)stories. Purchased objects’ materiality, alongside associated curatorial practices (e.g. usage/display), allow reenactors to have fun while attaining value from their actions (i.e. ‘doing something good’). Kevin positions reenactment as benevolently contributing to society, honouring the few living veterans and keeping the memory of the period ‘alive’, exhibiting a need to care and a responsibility to act. Surrogate objects are crucial components for the development and conveying of this broader narrative, as well as facilitators of care and values. Although curated objects are vital for the caring process, it is the (hi)stories – whether family or wider histories – that are cared about and preserved. Objects’ materialities can be valued not necessarily because of their ‘real’ associations or authenticity, but rather their ability to bind and mediate affinities, narratives and caring practices.