Abstract
•It is through the process of negotiating intersubjectivities between family members and their objects that the extended family identity is formed.•There are four key materiality capacities: catalysing, associating, dissociating, and bridging, that help extended families negotiate tensions in their relationships.•These materiality capacities cause tensions in extended family relationships by de-stabilising existing intersubjectivities between family members and their material possessions.•Materiality capacities also help re-constructing intersubjectivities, therefore, enabling the re-forming of a new extended family identity.
This paper examines the role of domestic materiality in the construction of extended family identity. It investigates how extended family members experience tensions during new family formation and the ways in which materiality contributes to the resolution of these tensions and the construction of a new family identity. Our findings suggest that the intersubjectivities centred on domestic material objects cause tensions in relationships. However, it is through a process of negotiation stimulated by these intersubjectivities that a new extended family identity emerges. We identify four materiality capacities in this process of negotiation: catalysing, associating, disassociating, and bridging. We posit that these negotiations are an essential part of the process of identity formation given that they motivate a new understanding of competing family discourses, changes to individual and collective status, and a restructuring of family, especially family structure, character, and intergenerational orientation.