[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$fhMGKKlnR3UsbDjATlc4vxU8SIWEUTNBMB69T6kVQEws":3,"$fe15N2PIkvNGIKcuT2dq5ASUvgjjdGYZENZfRy3wWxMg":12},{"author":4,"tags":11},{"author_id":5,"author_name":6,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"bio":9,"short_bio":9,"bio_jsonld":9,"slug":10,"image_url":9},48807,"Scott Herring","S",5,null,"scott-herring",[],{"quotes":13,"pagination":58},[14,22,28,35,41],{"id":15,"quote_text":16,"author_id":5,"source_id":17,"has_image":18,"author":19,"source":20,"quote_tag":21,"commentary":9},3419393,"What counts as too much stuff? When do overflowing cardboard boxes spill into insanity? What is useless trash and what is valuable treasure?",6,false,{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":23,"quote_text":24,"author_id":5,"source_id":17,"has_image":18,"author":25,"source":26,"quote_tag":27,"commentary":9},3419390,"Since the late 1990s, scholars in disciplines as diverse as literary studies, anthropology, sociology, museum studies, and marketing have raised collective eyebrows at hoarding’s pathologization. Together they concentrate on the diagnostic politics of material deviance, the social constructions of an aberrant relationship with your things. One finds extreme accumulation to be “a psychiatric concern with deviance in terms of material culture.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":29,"quote_text":30,"author_id":5,"source_id":17,"has_image":18,"author":31,"source":32,"quote_tag":33,"commentary":34},3419385,"Intrigued by how people became intrigued by this topic, The Hoarders is a book about how some people’s things unsettle some accepted conceptions of material culture, why documentaries, articles, and websites dedicate themselves to eradicating this activity.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],"**The Backstory**\nScott Herring, an American author and professor, likely wrote this passage for his book \"Another Country: Psychical Instrumentality and White Hetero Sexuality in Early Twentieth-Century United States\" (2007), but given the context of the quote, it's more plausible that he wrote about hoarding in a different work, possibly \"The Hoarders: Material Deviance in Modernity\" (2014). The era of his writing life relevant to this sentiment is the early 21st century, when there was growing interest in understanding and addressing mental health issues like hoarding.\n\n**The Hidden Insight**\nWhat's counter-intuitive about Herring's statement is that instead of pathologizing or stigmatizing individuals who engage in excessive material accumulation, he suggests that these behaviors are actually a way to unsettle conventional notions of material culture. This means that hoarders are not just people with a problem but also agents of cultural critique and social change.\n\n**How to Use This**\nWhen confronted with societal norms around consumption and waste, adopt a nuanced perspective by recognizing the potential for counter-cultural or subversive value in activities like hoarding. Instead of immediately seeking to eliminate or pathologize these behaviors, explore their underlying meanings and possible benefits for society as a whole.",{"id":36,"quote_text":37,"author_id":5,"source_id":17,"has_image":18,"author":38,"source":39,"quote_tag":40,"commentary":9},3419381,"Half a decade after Frost and Gross’s “The Hoarding of Possessions,” an article in Comprehensive Psychiatry found that “the disorder belongs to a similar category of social deviance as homelessness, which does not necessarily represent mental illness.”9 In their efforts to puzzle out the phenomenon, the authors approached hoarding as less of a mental illness located in the brain and more of a socialized phenomenon located in the world-at-large – the inverse of its current reception.",{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[],{"id":42,"quote_text":43,"author_id":5,"source_id":44,"has_image":18,"author":45,"source":46,"quote_tag":47,"commentary":9},285250,"History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past. By reclaiming this use of literature in the classroom, perhaps we can move away from the political agitation that has been our bread and butter—or porridge and hardtack—for the last 30 years.",2,{"id":5,"author_name":6,"slug":10,"author_name_first_letter":7,"article_count":8,"image_url":9},{},[48,53],{"id":49,"tag":50},1748695,{"id":51,"tag_name":52},462,"history",{"id":54,"tag":55},1748696,{"id":56,"tag_name":57},1841,"literature",{"currentPage":59,"totalPages":59,"totalItems":8,"itemsPerPage":60},1,10]