CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

The Joint Session for Material Culture Studies and Cultural Studies on the Technology in Use

Organisers: Ilkka Arminen and Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen

Valtonen, Anu (Helsinki School of Economics, Finland) NEW TECHNOLOGY, OLD MEANINGS: (RE)CONSTRUCTING FREE TIME BY CONSUMPTION RITUALS
This study examines consumption rituals by which we construct and reconstruct free time in the contemporary society. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas, the study views these rituals as a response to a tension between cultural order and disorder. Here, the tension appears in two ways and new technology relates to both of them. First, the use of new technology has partly caused current temporal disorder, overlap of work and free. However, it has also lead to creative reconstructions of the temporal order. Second, despite the likely reconstruction of free time, the very meaning of 'free' remains unchanged: it represents a positive utopia but also a threat requiring ritualistic protection. Both new and old products used in free time rituals carry this ambivalent meaning; both mobile phone and coffee relate to freedom and enslavement. The analysis of meanings of free time rituals is based on focus groups and advertisements.

Reimer, Suzanne (University of Hull, United Kingdom) CULTURES OF HOME FURNISHING DESIGN IN THE UK AND CANADA
Media accounts recently have argued that British design has achieved an increased prominence within popular culture. Consumers are said to have become more aware of design; retailers (and sometimes manufacturers) more innovative in product development; and designers more able to command authority within different sectors. Some concern also has been expressed about the 'loss' of prominent designers to manufacturing corporations based outside the UK. In Canada, promotion of design by the media and the national government has been more muted; however similar anxieties are expressed about the apparent inability of Canadian industry to sustain creative workers. The central aim of the paper is to compare the practice of design within the contemporary home furnishings industry in the UK and Canada. The paper considers how designers and designer-makers interact with retailers, manufacturers and consumers, drawing upon a broader study of power relations between key 'sites' in the home furnishings commodity chain.

Nieminen-Sundell, Riitta (University of Art and Design, Finland) MATERIAL FORMS AND CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER ­ THE CASE OF FAMILY P
Femininity and masculinity are constructed with support of material things in the everyday practices. This paper scrutinizes ways in which new digital technology participates in the gendering process in the Finnish everyday. Even if a thing has no such affordances or scripts that force the users into gendered patterns, users may organise material things in gendering ways. In case of family P, the computer is not easily available to women in the family. The discourses surrounding its usage shape it as a masculine tool, a game machine which is not meant for feminine uses, such as e-shopping. Thus social relations of the family are fixed with the help of material items and materially organised practices. It is the interplay between things, practices and discourses that construct the computer of family P into a strongly gendered thing.

Kotro, Tanja (National Consumer Research Centre, Finland) OBJECTS OF EXPERIENCE ­ RATIONALIZING WITH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
In my presentation I study relationships between material objects and action: how do they intertwine. I describe and analyze how personal experience in certain sports (adventure sports) or in a certain culture (design culture) becomes a reference of rationalizing in a product development process. I base my analysis to two case studies: Finnish Suunto wrist computers made for extreme sports, and Italian Alessi bowl made of ecological material. By rationalizing I mean ways of convincing other members of the team in product development to believe in certain "truths" of markets and users. In a more general level, the question is about translating personal experience (in sports and in design culture) into product development. Often personal experience becomes an argument when it enters an organization. Personal experience is rationalized from mystic and unattainable into realm of communication and concepts, different visual items and objects that are used during product development to build a common understanding of goals. Personal experience takes the shape of assumptions and arguments. As such, personal experience is parallel to other ways of justifying one's arguments and authority.