Design & cultura material: outros olhares

Abstract

This book aims to discuss the concept of material culture and problematize design research strategies, seeking to value all the people involved in the various stages of design, in the materiality of artifacts and in the construction of meanings. Here, in a critical way, we return to the idea so dear to Daniel Miller that the things we build, use, discard, end up, in some way, constituting us as subjects. Avoiding the vision of a design bounded to positions of technological determinism, it chooses to underline people's agency, cultural differences and exchanges, resistance and negotiations in the face of power relations and hegemonic structures. New interpretations and approaches to the history of design are sought, highlighting collective actions, daily practices, subjectivities intertwined in narratives, lived experiences, memories of knowledge and practices, daily negotiations of construction processes, material options, symbolic aspects, disputes over representations of gender, race and ethnicity, class, generations. It seeks to understand how everyday instances are recreated in memory, standardized by decoration magazines, tensioned and reinvented by male and female workers. The book approaches different perspectives about collections and registration of techniques; social networks and virtual spaces; the urban space and the social, cultural intersections, between media and visual communication; the interior design, the domestic arrangements and the decoration magazines as media of lifestyles.