Main entry:

Attfield, Judy, author.

Title & Author:

Wild things : the material culture of everyday life / Judy Attfield.

Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.

Description:

xxii, 242 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Series:

Radical thinkers in design

Notes:
Originally published: Oxford: Berg, 2000.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Meaning of design: things with attitude -- Meaning of things: design in the lower case -- Things and the dynamics of social change -- Continuity: authenticity and the paradoxical nature of reproduction -- Change: the ephemeral materiality of identity -- Containment: the ecology of personal possessions -- Space: where things take place -- Time: bringing things to life -- Body: the threshold between nature and culture.

Summary:

What do things mean? What does the life of everyday objects after the check-out reveal about people and their material worlds? Has the quest for the real thing become so important because the high tech world of total virtuality threatens to engulf us? This pioneering book bridges design theory and anthropology to offer a new and challenging way of understanding the changing meanings of contemporary human-object relations. The act of consumption is only the starting point in objects lives. Thereafter they are transformed and invested with new meanings that reflect and assert who we are. Defining design as things with attitude differentiates the highly visible fashionable object from ordinary artefacts that are taken for granted. Through case studies ranging from reproduction furniture to fashion and textiles to clutter, the author traces the connection between objects and authenticity, ephemerality and self-identity. But beyond this, she shows the materiality of the everyday in terms of space, time and the body and suggests a transition with the passing of time from embodiment to disembodiment.

ISBN:

9781350072299 hardcover
135007229X hardcover
9781350070714 paperback
1350070718 paperback
eBook
9781350070721
ePDF
9781350070738

Subject:

Material culture.
Culture matérielle.
material culture (discipline)

Holdings:

Location: Library main 308787
Call No.: BIB 254118
Status: Available