This article applies narrative methods to an analysis of the meaning of British domestic culture. The data are from an exploratory study investigating how and why people displayed objects in their homes. Although mantelpiece displays were the principal focus, other display areas were considered, and interview respondents were invited to tell stories about the provenance and meaning of objects. Analysing such narratives as social performances demonstrates the extent to which the apparently 'private' experiences of the self are manifested by means of display objects and domestic artefacts. Narratives and objects inhabit the intersection of the personal and the social. An analysis of four narratives that two women related during interviews in their homes shows how people account for themselves in recounting stories of their home possessions. In conclusion, a research strategy combining narrative accounts with an interpretation of photographic data is suggested. KEY WORDSconsumption / home / identity / interview / material culture / narrative Narrating Materials and Reading Roomshis is a discussion of material culture in the home. It explores the display of material culture as an everyday practice. The construction of narratives around objects displayed in the home is the focus of the article. This process is examined through a detailed analysis of informants' accounts. Rather than conceptualizing the meaning of objects as inherent and fixed, this 717 Sociology

This article discusses how emergent sensory and multimodal methodologies can work in interaction to produce innovative social enquiry. A juxtaposition of two research projects -an ethnography of corridors and a mixed methods study of multimodal authoring and 'reading' practices -opened up this encounter. Sensory ethnography within social research methods aims to create empathetic, experiential ways of knowing participants' and researchers' worlds. The linguistic field of multimodality offers a rather different framework for research attending to the visual, material and acoustic textures of participants' interactions. While both these approaches address the multidimensional character of social worlds, the 'sensory turn' centres the sensuous, bodied person -participant, researcher and audience/reader -as the 'place' for intimate, affective forms of knowing. In contrast, multimodal knowledge production is premised on multiple analytic gaps -between modes and media, participants and materials, recording and representation. Eliciting the tensions between sensorial closeness and modal distances offers a new space for reflexive research practice and multiple ways of knowing social worlds.

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This article reflects upon the collection and presentation of photographic data. The problem of representing the visual as more than illustrative of written research findings is the methodological focus. An empirical study in Cardiff explored practices of cultural display in the home, focusing on the living room mantelpiece. First, I discuss the methodological debate concerning the `crisis of representation' of visual data in social research. Following a brief discussion of a year-long autophotographic project by informants, the debate centres on photographs taken at the time of the interview. I show how the `crisis of representation' in social enquiry can be illuminated by recognizing both domestic display and presentation of data as cultural practices/methods of researching and remembering. Finally, I argue that multi-modal representations of these mediated frames of experience can illuminate complexities of `doing' home cultures and enquiry into the domestic interior.

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of corridors in a large university building, originally built to house local government in the early 20 th century. By attending to their huge physical presence in the everyday culture of an institution, the paper shows how corridors matter. Too often invoked as iconic, intangible metaphors, the presence of corridors as cultural materials can be forgotten. Conversely, as incidental -or even detrimental -remnants of past design trends, they are perceived parts of a divisive, hierarchical organisation of space. As the open-plan office, indoor street, forum and atrium displace them in a new design for 'openness', the study focuses on the mobilisation of corridors in the daily, sometimes momentary re-arrangements of meaning in an organisation. In conclusion, I discuss how the new architecture of 'openness' might be reconfigured through mobile understandings of everyday 'openings' and 'closings'.