A history of household engineering

• In Event: Smart Homes in Everyday Life: Gender, Nation, Intimacy and Expertise

Abstract

How did home-makers learn to operate the first wave of industrial technology? Who were the pioneers of domestic science? This paper takes an historical approach to unpack the intellectual and industrial foundations for today’s smart home. A popular lens is needed to find this history – a mix of gender, cultural studies and STS methods. I consult the considerable tradition of housekeeping manuals by women to build a critical framework for the productivity practices that continue in domestic space today. A selection of published materials and industry artifacts will be used to illustrate how homes became subject to specialist knowledge and complex infrastructures that were women’s obligation to run. Home economics involved taking the domestic sphere seriously as an enterprise, complete with managers and employees whose roles and responsibilities included the appropriate adoption of new technologies. My discussion will consider the lasting influence of home economics and those who instituted the focus on domestic life as a science. Ellen Richards, Christine Frederick and Lillian Gilbreth all wrote books and industry guidelines that became the basis for popular practices of ‘household engineering.’ These women are the little known precursors to the industry ethnographers of technology companies today. Their example shows what is at stake as the smart home industry seeks solutions for longstanding efficiency problems while remaining oblivious to the changing activities of women over the course of a century.

Author

• Melissa Gregg, Intel