Review of Murphy, Keith M., Swedish Design: An Ethnography
Review of Murphy, Keith M., Swedish Design: An Ethnography. H-SAE, H-Net, Reviews. September, 2016.
4 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2016
Date Written: September 1, 2016
Abstract
Keith M. Murphy’s ethnography of Swedish design is not an easy read and requires commitment and concentration of the reader to engage with a research inquiry that spans over ten years involving long term ethnographic fieldwork and dedicated scholarship. The monograph contributes to a growing body of literature in critical anthropologies of design. Murphy gives focus to, what constitutes the political aspects of Swedish design and design work, the effects of the political upon social relations between people and designed things and how meanings are made through these relations. An important contribution of this ethnography to existing research in this field is the author’s attempt to challenge the ways anthropologists conceptualize the relation between form and matter towards different ways of thinking about the meaning of things within socio-political systems. He does so by combining in depth analysis of cultural phenomena with detailed ethnographic studies of designers’ design practices and things made. In so doing, he proposes a semiotics of material production, which aims to build partial connections between performative aspects of language in use with ideologies underpinning and framing assumptions of the politics of Swedish design.
Keywords: design, politics, relations, Swedish Design, meaning of things
JEL Classification: D02, D10, D91, E21, E23, I28, L68, N74, P23,P41, Z18
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