| Material Memories: Design and Evocation Contributor(s): Aynsley, Jeremy (Editor), Miller, Daniel (Editor), Breward, Christopher (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1859732526 ISBN-13: 9781859732526 Publisher: Berg Publishers OUR PRICE: $46.48 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 1999 Annotation: This book examines the way that objects 'speak' to us through the memories that we associate with them. Instead of viewing the meaning of particular designs as fixed and given, by looking at the process of evocation it finds an open and continuing dialogue between things, their makers and their consumers. This is not, however, to diminish the role of design in shaping human consciousness. The contributors do not view objects as blank carriers onto which humans project prior psychic dramas, but rather, place crucial importance on the precise materials from which they are made, their social, economic and historic reasons for being, and the way that we interact with them through our senses. This book therefore studies the physical within the intellectual, directly testing the concept of material culture. With telling illustrations, and spanning the Renaissance to the present day, leading scholars converge across disciplines to explore the souvenir-value of jewellery, textiles, the home, the urban space, modernist design, photography, the museum and even the sunken wreck. Together they show how the sense of the past and of history, far from being a 'radical illusion' as some post-modernists claim, has been a deeply felt reality. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - General |
| Dewey: 306 |
| Lexile Measure: 1580 |
| Series: Materializing Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.55" H x 6.19" W x 9.23" (1.04 lbs) 256 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book examines the way that objects 'speak' to us through the memories that we associate with them. Instead of viewing the meaning of particular designs as fixed and given, by looking at the process of evocation it finds an open and continuing dialogue between things, their makers and their consumers. This is not, however, to diminish the role of design in shapinghuman consciousness. The contributors do not view objects as blank carriers onto which humans project prior psychic dramas, but rather, place crucial importance on the precise materials from which they are made, their social, economic and historic reasons for being, and the way that we interact with them through our senses. This book therefore studies the physical withinthe intellectual, directly testing the concept of material culture. With telling illustrations, and spanning the Renaissance to the present day, leading scholars converge across disciplines to explore the souvenir-value of jewellery, textiles, the home, the urban space, modernist design, photography, the museum and even the sunken wreck. Together they show howthe sense of the past and of history, far from being a 'radical illusion' as some post-modernists claim, has been a deeply felt reality. |
Contributor Bio(s): Kwint, Marius: - Edited by Marius Kwint, University of Oxford.Aynsley, Jeremy: - Jeremy Aynsley is Professor of History of Design at the Royal College of Art, London and author of Graphic Design in Germany 1890-1945 and Designing Modern Germany.Miller, Daniel: - Daniel Miller Professor of Anthropology, University College London. Recent books include "A Theory of Shopping," "The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach" (with Don Slater) and Ed. "Car Cultures."Breward, Christopher: - Christopher Breward is Professor in Historical and Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion, UK.Gilroy, Paul: - Paul Gilroy is at the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. |