Miller, D. (2008). The comfort of things. Cambridge, Polity.
This book is a study of thirty people, almost from a single street in South London that the author calls Stuart Street. The book is arranged as a series of 'portraits' which each focus on one individual, the material culture of their homes, and on their relationships with objects and with other people. This 'single street' method of studying a particular area is shared with Attlee's* Isolarion and Hall's* Mile of Mixed Blessings. The thirty people were selected from one hundred individuals and households that were studied over seventeen months by two anthropologists for an investigation of the way material culture helps people deal with loss and change. This book emerged from this wider research project through a desire to show that the humanity of the people on the street could be revealed by their material possessions. The book is also an exploration of London as a place and 'Londoners' as comprising a wide range of identities. Through this focus, the book implicitly addresses ideas of community, particularly communities of place. However, the author states that 'these contemporary London households bear little relation to the assumed objects of social science. This is not a society or culture, a neighbourhood or community' (p. 6). Instead, the author argues that the focus is on people's ability to form relationships and the nature of these relationships, both between people and between persons and things. Despite the author's rejection of the term 'community' in framing the larger context of the study, the idea of community is evoked in several of the portraits, for example in terms of community spirit, the ideal of community, and general references to the wider community within which people live.