Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines the special relationship between politics and design in Sweden, revealing in particular the cultural meanings this relationship holds for Swedish...
Trade ReviewFor anyone who has taught the history of 20th-century design and had a student ask, 'How can a chair be political?' this book will help answer that question. It is not a typical design history text—there are no large color images of landmark chairs or textiles and no evolutionary account of historically significant designers. Instead, Murphy (anthropology, UC Irvine) draws out how ordinary objects within the built environment embody Sweden's social democratic ideology: that is, the way Swedes use design to structure the everyday world they live and move about in.
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Swedish Design: An Ethnography will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in anthropology, sociology, design studies, and the history of design as well as scholars engaged in design research. Murphy provides the reader with an approach to carrying out anthropology of design, outlining thematic areas for consideration; insodoing, heoffers an invaluable resource for researchers and students with interests in design and its wider social political relations, interaction analysis, and anthropological approaches to understanding the relation between the political, design processes and practices.
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Keith M. Murphy is an anthropology professor at the University of California, Irvine, and if his field seems far removed from Scandinavian furniture, he apporaches the subject in relation to Swedish social welfare programs and democratic socialist ideals. The lamps and tables furnishing our homes and owrkplaces, in other words, are a 'means for managing well-being in everyday life.'
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Table of ContentsIntroduction: Disentangling Swedish Design1. The Diagram of Swedish Design2. Building the Beautiful Home3. In the Design World4. In the Studio5. Displays of ForceConclusion: Designing a Social CosmologyNotes
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