‘Alexa, dinner time’: Exploring how connected devices shape domestic atmospheres, intimacy, and power

Abstract

This paper explores how people use smart home technologies in home-making practices. Employing the concept of atmospheres, we examine how smart home technologies contribute to producing the feeling of home and give texture to everyday activities. The concept of atmosphere denotes shared feelings and moods in a particular space or environment that are produced and experienced among different configurations of objects, technologies, and (human and non-human) bodies. The article is based on in-depth interviews with 12 people living with smart home technologies in Norway. The analysis shows different ways people use the technology to make the home feel right through setting different moods and scenes, engaging in playful improvisations and renegotiating the felt boundaries of the home. At the same time, employing Internet-connected technologies for these tasks has gendered and privacy implications, as they are mostly controlled by one (male) household member and collect data from users and the domestic sphere in which they are situated. The paper contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how everyday processes of home-making, shaped by smart home technologies, may mask their role in reinforcing traditional domestic gender dynamics and the traditional Western image of the home as an enclosed and private space – despite this image being strongly challenged by the political economy within which smart homes are situated.