Social aesthetics and plastic flowers in home-making processes

Resumo

This article proposes a discussion, from an anthropological perspective, about social aesthetics in relation to plastic flowers – objects that Romanian Roma/ Gypsy women use to embellish their homes in Spain. In the first part, the paper introduces social aesthetics and everyday aesthetics as notions which shed light on understandings of aesthetics beyond the parameters of paradigmatic art and which value the experiences relegated to the sphere of the trivial. This section traces some connections between aesthetics and notions of identity, habitus and power. In the second part, based on an ethnographic field research in Romania and Spain, the paper discusses the proposed concepts in relation to the role of objects like plastic flowers in processes of migration, of home-making and of contesting hegemonic narratives that subject Roma/Gypsy people to a domain of otherness.