Why do we keep gifts that we don’t want, or can’t currently use? What role do these play in our relationships with others, with time, and perhaps even our future selves? Sophie Woodward discusses the richly creative research project that took her into strangers’ homes, drawers and cupboards, and led her to consider the gifts that lie “dormant” in our homes. Such items might appear “meaningless” or inactive, Sophie shows, but are far from dead or unimportant: “stuff” matters.
Via examples of gifts ranging from inconveniently big plastic toys to alcohol repeatedly gifted by relatives, Sophie explains how, beyond theories of gifts from thinkers like Marcel Mauss on the function of exchange, or Theodor Adorno on the perfect gift, it’s worth a deeper focus on the recipient – people, she observes, have an obligation not just to receive gifts but also to keep them, at least for a certain amount of time.
Plus, we ask: is it ok for recipients to pre-empt and refuse gifts before they’re given, or is gifting the prerogative of the giver? What can we do to reduce material overwhelm? We also celebrate Jane Bennett, who considers the powers of things, beyond the meanings we attribute to them.
A thoughtful and exploratory conversation, crucial in a time of climate emergency, waste, and cost-of-living crises.
Guest: Sophie Woodward; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker
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Episode Resources
By Sophie Woodward
- Dormant Gifts: Animating the Imagined and Narrated Pasts and Futures of Gifts (2025)
- Live methods and live things: Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday (2025)
- Clutter in domestic spaces: Material vibrancy, and competing moralities (2021)
- Object interviews, material imaginings and ‘unsettling’ methods: interdisciplinary approaches to understanding materials and material culture (2015)
- Sophie’s profile at The University of Manchester and the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives
From the Sociological Review Foundation
- New Materialism – Nick J. Fox (2020)
- Shrinking domesticity – Mel Nowicki, Tim White, Ella Harris (2022)
- Discover our lesson plans for use in the classroom!
Further resources
- “The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies” – Marcel Mauss
- The Opposite of Forgetfulness: Adorno on Gift-Giving – from Stuart Jeffries’ “Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School”
- “Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things” – Jane Bennett
Read more about Jane Bennett.
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