Journal of Material Culture· 2026Q1
Thinking with material care
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
People actively care for their possessions, challenging consumerist narratives and highlighting material care's significance for wellbeing, according to object-centered dialogues in Finland.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Material care is proposed as a concept to interpret material relations contributing to overconsumption and waste.
- Empirical material from Finland, with its efficient waste management, illustrates how people practice material care in daily life.
- Objects themselves influence people's decisions regarding care, and avoiding care is also an ethical consideration.
- Affective, embodied relations, meaning-making, and creativity are key elements of material care.
- People's care for their things is linked to their wellbeing, a factor often overlooked in policy.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Engaging with care theories and perspectives arising from repair studies, this article proposes material care as a conceptual possibility to think with and to interpret material relations leading to overconsumption and wasting. We bring theoretical ideas on material care into conversation with empirical material from Finland, a country in which discarding is made easy with functioning waste management infrastructures. We use the material to gain understanding of what material care means in practice for people in their everyday life. With selected insights from the material gathered through object-centred dialogues, we reflect on care ethics in action, showing how material objects themselves influence people's choices on care and how avoiding care is part of the ethical considerations. We also discuss affective and embodied relations with things and meaning-making and creativity as crucial elements of material care. Our finding is that people do care about their things even though consumerism suggests otherwise, and we propose that this is because material care is significant to people's wellbeing in ways that are rarely addressed in present policy frameworks. The value of thinking with material care lies in the alternative visions for sustainability that it allows to nurture.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Material Culture, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Cultural Studies
Cultural StudiesSocial Sciences