Second sheds: exploring the edges of Australian smart home households

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

Abstract

Considerable attention has been paid to the benefits and uses of smart home technologies. Less scholarship has focused on the ways these devices are transforming the domestic spaces within and around the home, and the leisures and labours taking place within them. This paper follows Bell and Dourish’s (2007) call to use the lens of the quintessential Australian shed to think about the digital home’s ‘edges rather than its centers’. We draw on findings from a three year ethnographic project conducted with early-adopting Australian households who self-identify as living in smart homes or using related devices. Focusing on the mostly male instigators, installers and troubleshooters of smart homes, we identify and discuss the ‘second sheds’ these men set up and manage. No longer confined to the backyard, second sheds encompass home offices; cable cupboards, basements and walls; bedside projects; and control rooms, where the ‘back end’ maintenance, tinkering and sometimes creation of the smart home takes place. We argue that the masculine, improvisational and creative characteristics of these ‘sheds’ are bleeding into traditionally feminised domains inside the home - and also being pushed into the home’s other ‘edges’, like basements, attics and garages. We conclude by speculating on how the spaces and activities of these second sheds are being negotiated in smart home households as legitimate (or illegitimate) forms of work and play, and what this might mean for changing household dynamics.

Authors

• Yolande Strengers, RMIT University

• Larissa Nicholls, RMIT University

• Jenny Kennedy, RMIT University