Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to Be as They Are (Spanish edition)
01 Jan 2017-
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a survey of the literature on Lash-Ups: Goods and Bads, Inside Stuff: How Professionals Do It, Form and Function, Venues and Middlemen, and Moral Rules: New for Old.
Abstract: Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Lash-Ups: Goods and Bads 2. Inside Stuff: How Professionals Do It 3. Form and Function 4. Changing Goods 5. Venues and Middlemen 6. Place in Product 7. Corporate Organization and the Design Big Thing 8. Moral Rules: New for Old
Citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that Nordic walking, a form of speed walking with two sticks, arise through the active and ongoing integration of images, artifacts and forms of competence, a process in which both consumers and producers are involved.
Abstract: The idea that artifacts are acquired and used in the course of accomplishing social practices has important implications for theories of consumption and innovation. From this point of view, it is not enough to show that goods are symbolically and materially positioned, mediated and filtered through existing cultures and conventions. Twisting the problem around, the further challenge is to explain how practices change and with what consequence for the forms of consumption they entail. In this article, we suggest that new practices like Nordic walking, a form of ‘speed walking’ with two sticks, arise through the active and ongoing integration of images, artifacts and forms of competence, a process in which both consumers and producers are involved. While it makes sense to see Nordic walking as a situated social practice, such a view makes it difficult to explain its growing popularity in countries as varied as Japan, Norway and the USA. In addressing this issue, we conclude that practices and associated cultures of consumption are always ‘homegrown’. Necessary and sometimes novel ingredients (including images and artifacts) may circulate widely, but they are always pieced together in a manner that is informed by previous and related practice. What looks like the diffusion of Nordic walking is therefore better understood as its successive, but necessarily localized, (re)invention. In developing this argument, we explore some of the consequences of conceptualizing consumption and consumer culture as the outcome of meaningful social practice.
840 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review suggests how consumption bridges economic and cultural institutions, large-scale changes in social structure, and discourses of the self, while individual men and women experience consumption as a project of forming, and expressing, identity.
Abstract: Consumption is a social, cultural, and economic process of choosing goods, and this process reflects the opportunities and constraints of modernity. Viewing consumption as an “institutional field,” the review suggests how consumption bridges economic and cultural institutions, large-scale changes in social structure, and discourses of the self. New technologies, ideologies, and delivery systems create consumption spaces in an institutional framework shaped by key social groups, while individual men and women experience consumption as a project of forming, and expressing, identity. Studying the institutional field requires research on consumer products, industries, and sites; on the role of consumption in constructing both the consuming subject and collective identity; and on historical transitions to a consumer society. Ethnography, interviews, and historical analysis show a global consumer culture fostered by media and marketing professionals yet subject to different local interpretations.
400 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop a practice-based framework of taste through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a popular home design blog, interviews with blog participants, and participant observation, and demonstrate how aesthetics is linked to practical knowledge and becomes materialized through everyday consumption.
Abstract: Taste has been conceptualized as a boundary-making mechanism, yet there is limited theory on how it enters into daily practice. In this article, the authors develop a practice-based framework of taste through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a popular home design blog, interviews with blog participants, and participant observation. First, a taste regime is defined as a discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates practice in an aesthetically oriented culture of consumption. Taste regimes are perpetuated by marketplace institutions such as magazines, websites, and transmedia brands. Second, the authors show how a taste regime regulates practice through continuous engagement. By integrating three dispersed practices—problematization, ritualization, and instrumentalization—a taste regime shapes preferences for objects, the doings performed with objects, and what meanings are associated with objects. This study demonstrates how aesthetics is linked to practical knowledge and becomes materialized through everyday consumption.
320 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conclude that urban theory needs a better understanding of urban choice behaviours and especially the effects of bundling, the limits to preference substitutions and the relationship between past and present preferences, in order to become fully effective in explaining urban resurgence and urban emergence.
Abstract: Summary. The resurgence of big, old cities and their regions is real, but it is merely a part of a broader pattern of urban change in the developed countries, whose broadest tendency is urban emergence, including suburbanisation, and movements of population to certain ‘Sunbelt’ regions. The problem is that it is difficult to accommodate explanation of both resurgence and emergence using the main explanations in the field today. These include: theories of the knowledge or creative economy, urban amenities, diversity and tolerance, and urban beauty. In most of their common specifications, they do well for either resurgent or emergent cities, but not for both at the same time. This suggests that these ideas, interesting as they are, require much greater specification and, in some cases, overhaul, in order to offer satisfactory responses to the diversity of patterns of urban growth. By examining some of these deficiencies, we conclude that urban theory needs a better understanding of urban choice behaviours and especially the effects of bundling, the limits to preference substitutions and the relationship between past and present preferences, in order to become fully effective in explaining urban resurgence and urban emergence. When these aspects of choice and preference are better integrated into urban theory, then the ‘exogenous’ causes of urbanisation can be made more endogenous and, in addition, they can be applied better to both emergence and resurgence. Urban research can, by so doing, also potentially become more policy-relevant.
301 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that a shift is taking place in the fabric of capitalism as a result of a change in how the business of invention is understood, using theoretical approaches that rely on the notion that capitalism increasingly tries to draw in the whole intellect.
Abstract: This paper argues that a shift is taking place in the fabric of capitalism as a result of a change in how the business of invention is understood. Using theoretical approaches that rely on the notion that capitalism increasingly tries to draw in the whole intellect, in the first part of the paper I argue that the new understanding of innovation currently shows up as three associated developments: as the mobilization of forethought, as the deepening of the lure of the commodity through the co-creation of commodities with consumers, and as the construction of different kinds of apparently more innovative space suffused with information technology. The second part of the paper then argues that these disclosures are leading to new forms of value, based on generating moments of rightness. There is a brief conclusion.
295 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that Nordic walking, a form of speed walking with two sticks, arise through the active and ongoing integration of images, artifacts and forms of competence, a process in which both consumers and producers are involved.
Abstract: The idea that artifacts are acquired and used in the course of accomplishing social practices has important implications for theories of consumption and innovation. From this point of view, it is not enough to show that goods are symbolically and materially positioned, mediated and filtered through existing cultures and conventions. Twisting the problem around, the further challenge is to explain how practices change and with what consequence for the forms of consumption they entail. In this article, we suggest that new practices like Nordic walking, a form of ‘speed walking’ with two sticks, arise through the active and ongoing integration of images, artifacts and forms of competence, a process in which both consumers and producers are involved. While it makes sense to see Nordic walking as a situated social practice, such a view makes it difficult to explain its growing popularity in countries as varied as Japan, Norway and the USA. In addressing this issue, we conclude that practices and associated cultures of consumption are always ‘homegrown’. Necessary and sometimes novel ingredients (including images and artifacts) may circulate widely, but they are always pieced together in a manner that is informed by previous and related practice. What looks like the diffusion of Nordic walking is therefore better understood as its successive, but necessarily localized, (re)invention. In developing this argument, we explore some of the consequences of conceptualizing consumption and consumer culture as the outcome of meaningful social practice.
840 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review suggests how consumption bridges economic and cultural institutions, large-scale changes in social structure, and discourses of the self, while individual men and women experience consumption as a project of forming, and expressing, identity.
Abstract: Consumption is a social, cultural, and economic process of choosing goods, and this process reflects the opportunities and constraints of modernity. Viewing consumption as an “institutional field,” the review suggests how consumption bridges economic and cultural institutions, large-scale changes in social structure, and discourses of the self. New technologies, ideologies, and delivery systems create consumption spaces in an institutional framework shaped by key social groups, while individual men and women experience consumption as a project of forming, and expressing, identity. Studying the institutional field requires research on consumer products, industries, and sites; on the role of consumption in constructing both the consuming subject and collective identity; and on historical transitions to a consumer society. Ethnography, interviews, and historical analysis show a global consumer culture fostered by media and marketing professionals yet subject to different local interpretations.
400 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop a practice-based framework of taste through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a popular home design blog, interviews with blog participants, and participant observation, and demonstrate how aesthetics is linked to practical knowledge and becomes materialized through everyday consumption.
Abstract: Taste has been conceptualized as a boundary-making mechanism, yet there is limited theory on how it enters into daily practice. In this article, the authors develop a practice-based framework of taste through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a popular home design blog, interviews with blog participants, and participant observation. First, a taste regime is defined as a discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates practice in an aesthetically oriented culture of consumption. Taste regimes are perpetuated by marketplace institutions such as magazines, websites, and transmedia brands. Second, the authors show how a taste regime regulates practice through continuous engagement. By integrating three dispersed practices—problematization, ritualization, and instrumentalization—a taste regime shapes preferences for objects, the doings performed with objects, and what meanings are associated with objects. This study demonstrates how aesthetics is linked to practical knowledge and becomes materialized through everyday consumption.
320 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conclude that urban theory needs a better understanding of urban choice behaviours and especially the effects of bundling, the limits to preference substitutions and the relationship between past and present preferences, in order to become fully effective in explaining urban resurgence and urban emergence.
Abstract: Summary. The resurgence of big, old cities and their regions is real, but it is merely a part of a broader pattern of urban change in the developed countries, whose broadest tendency is urban emergence, including suburbanisation, and movements of population to certain ‘Sunbelt’ regions. The problem is that it is difficult to accommodate explanation of both resurgence and emergence using the main explanations in the field today. These include: theories of the knowledge or creative economy, urban amenities, diversity and tolerance, and urban beauty. In most of their common specifications, they do well for either resurgent or emergent cities, but not for both at the same time. This suggests that these ideas, interesting as they are, require much greater specification and, in some cases, overhaul, in order to offer satisfactory responses to the diversity of patterns of urban growth. By examining some of these deficiencies, we conclude that urban theory needs a better understanding of urban choice behaviours and especially the effects of bundling, the limits to preference substitutions and the relationship between past and present preferences, in order to become fully effective in explaining urban resurgence and urban emergence. When these aspects of choice and preference are better integrated into urban theory, then the ‘exogenous’ causes of urbanisation can be made more endogenous and, in addition, they can be applied better to both emergence and resurgence. Urban research can, by so doing, also potentially become more policy-relevant.
301 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that a shift is taking place in the fabric of capitalism as a result of a change in how the business of invention is understood, using theoretical approaches that rely on the notion that capitalism increasingly tries to draw in the whole intellect.
Abstract: This paper argues that a shift is taking place in the fabric of capitalism as a result of a change in how the business of invention is understood. Using theoretical approaches that rely on the notion that capitalism increasingly tries to draw in the whole intellect, in the first part of the paper I argue that the new understanding of innovation currently shows up as three associated developments: as the mobilization of forethought, as the deepening of the lure of the commodity through the co-creation of commodities with consumers, and as the construction of different kinds of apparently more innovative space suffused with information technology. The second part of the paper then argues that these disclosures are leading to new forms of value, based on generating moments of rightness. There is a brief conclusion.
295 citations