Continuity through change: navigating temporalities through heirloom rejuvenation

Abstract

This study explores how heirlooms, usually regarded as objects of family identity and stability, can also become objects of evolving personal identities and change. Our approach is based on the role of materiality (as well as meanings) and multitemporality in heirloom consumption. The data generated through interviews, visual sources, and media documents reveal three rejuvenation processes that, given particular boundary conditions, renew heirlooms: uncovering, refreshing, and reconciliation. Our study also distinguishes three types of heirloom essence that can survive the heirloom's material and compositional transformations. Rejuvenation reintegrates the heirloom into the heir's life trajectory by imbuing it with a zeitgeist value and the heir's presence, helping the heir to better navigate her imaginaries of the past, present, and future. Beyond the ritualistic consumption or curation of heirlooms, our findings reveal a creative, playful, and proactive relation with heirlooms, evocative of craftwork. Moreover, the market, within particular boundaries, can help authenticate heirloom objects and facilitate their inalienability rather than necessarily destroying their authenticity. Our study has implications for the role of heirloom consumption in consumers' negotiations of continuity and change, the interaction of the symbolic and the material in heirlooms, and the inalienability-market relation.