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24 - Domestic Matters

IKEA Catalogues, the Good Home and the Changing Aspirations of Urban Chinese

from Part VII - Design and Planning Strategies for Changing Senses of Place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2021

By
Gladys Pak ,
Lei Chong  and
Yiu Fai Chow
Edited by
Christopher M. Raymond ,
Lynne C. Manzo ,
Daniel R. Williams ,
Andrés Di Masso  and
Timo von Wirth
Christopher M. Raymond
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki, Finland
Lynne C. Manzo
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle
Daniel R. Williams
Affiliation:
USDA Forest Service, Colorado
Andrés Di Masso
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona
Timo von Wirth
Affiliation:
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
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Summary

Taking IKEA catalogues from 2010 to 2017 as the objects of analysis, this chapter examines how this global furniture retailer constructs the ideal homes that offer Chinese consumers aspirations for good homes and good lives, and their cultural implications. We argue that IKEA’s popularity in China is attributed to a ‘cultural odourlessness’, which, for its ease in travelling globally, has also become an odour in itself in the Chinese context. In its global circulation, IKEA’s transcultural odourlessness attracts – rather than rejects – diverse translocal experiences of different places and therefore powerfully enriches and pluralises senses of place. IKEA exemplifies how transcultural flows de-territorialise and re-territorialise home, endlessly pluralising senses of home.

Keywords

IKEAtranscultural odourlessnessaspirationssenses of placeurban Chinese
Type
Chapter
Information
Changing Senses of Place
Navigating Global Challenges
 , pp. 313 - 328
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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