The thesis comprises ethnography of alternative provisioning in a range of households
on a street in North London. It considers the alternative (non-formal retail) means by
which goods are acquired and exchanged. The areas of inquiry include gift- giving, mail
order catalogues, network sales schemes, second-hand goods, nearly new 'jumble' sales
and self-provisioning. Challenging polarised models of the household and the market,
the gift and the commodity, the thesis reveals how alternative modes of consumption are
used to generate and contest value in everyday practice.
In particular, the study focuses on the activities of women and the ways in which social
networks are constituted around specific types of acquisition and material culture. These
activities include the swapping of second hand baby goods, the provisioning of
children's parties and gifts, the decorating of the home and the use of commercial
network sales schemes revolving around fashion, cosmetics and housewares. Aesthetic
practice and modes of acquisition are considered in the context of immediate social
relations and domestic settings.
As well as providing empirical data regarding a range of consumption practices in
contemporary Britain, the thesis goes on to argue that it is within these forms of
provisioning that the practice of normativity is most evident. While a major theoretical
pretext of anthropological enquiry is the question of how culture operates cohesively in
the context of modernity, what arises from this ethnography is the extent to which goods
and the values made around them, through exchange, are used in the making of the
normative. This thesis examines the role of everyday alternative provisioning in
constituting and contesting moral and social pressures to determine a basis of
conformity and having made these conditions, facilitate the relationships that depend
upon them