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Whose Collection Is It Anyway? An Autoethnographic Account of `Dividing the Spoils' upon Divorce

University of Nottingham, jackie.goode{at}nottingham.ac.uk

This article examines competing meanings assigned to collections / collected objects when spouses divorce. An approach to material culture that privileges the mundane and sensual qualities of artefacts as well as their symbolic meanings enables the unpicking of the subtle connections with cultural lives and values that are objectified through such forms. The article illustrates both the way meanings assigned to collected objects can be multiple and shifting, and the ways in which they are constitutive of relationships: between collecting practices, collections, and collector; between `things' and `home'; and, as issues of ownership become contested upon divorce, between spouses. It suggests that, in this case at least, collected objects are also constitutive of class and gender relations. Barnard talked of a `his marriage' and a `her marriage'. This is a `herstor y' of the making, and keeping, of three collections, and of their significance in the parting of spouses and the reconstitution of home(s) post-divorce.

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