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.
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