PANDEMIC STATE OF HOME: EVERYDAY PRACTICES, HOUSEHOLD RELATIONS AND TIME

Abstract

Pandemic has brought a radical change in the daily lives of the individuals. Distinction between work and home has disappeared for many professional groups, and as a result home has become “the space of action” of the new practices, in other words, the “space of everything”. Although the changes of activities in the public space and the age range restrictions directly affected the way and duration of the old/routines in the house, the extent of their reflection on the space and also on the household relations remains unknown. The aim of this study is to analyze the changing relationships within domestic environments in the context of everyday practices and household relationality, with their organic and dynamic structures. To provide an analysis, in-depth individual interviews were conducted in 2020-May with three women living in different cities, who continued their work in home-office setting over the three months of quarantine. Larger households were preferred in order to interpret household relations. Based on the the daily life narratives of the interviewees (1)practice/time and (2)movement diagrams were created, regarding both the pre-pandemic and the pandemic process. Practice/time diagrams makes visible how much time was spent on a daily basis on which practices. Movement diagrams, on the other hand, reveals which spaces were used in what way, household encounters, least/most used areas, and domestic boundaries. These diagrams are valuable for questioning the patterns of home and discourses such as “life fits into the home” and enables a multi- faceted evaluation of differences and similarities in lived and embodied experiences in the domestic environment.