The design culture reader / ed. by Ben Highmore.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Design is part of ordinary, everyday life, to be found in every room in every building in the world. While we may tend to think of design in terms of highly desirable objects, this book encourages us to think about design as ubiquitous (from plumbing to television) and as an agent of social change (from telephones to weapon systems).

The Design Culture Reader brings together an international array of writers whose work is of central importance for thinking about design culture in the past, present and future. Essays from philosophers, media and cultural theorists, historians of design, anthropologists, cultural historians, artists and literary critics all demonstrate the enormous potential of design studies for understanding the modern world.

Organised in thematic sections, The Design Culture Reader explores the social role of design by looking at the impact it has in a number of areas - especially globalisation, ecology, and the changing experiences of modern life. Particular essays focus on topics such as design and the senses, design and war and design and technology, while the editor's introduction to the collection provides a compelling argument for situating design studies at the very forefront of contemporary thought.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Section 1 Materials and Methods
• 1 'The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret'
• 2 'Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory'
• 3 'About the word Design'
• 4 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• 'Queers in (Single-Family) Space'
• 5 'Ecological Design: A New Critique'
• 6 'The ABCs of Contemporary Design'
• Section 2 Actors and Agents
• 7 'Techniques of the Body'
• 8 'Space, Knowledge, and Power'
• 9 'Introduction' to Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
• 10 'Women and the Telephone: the gendering of a communication technology'
• 11 'Power Tool for the Dining Room: The Electric Carving Knife'
• 12 'What can disability studies learn from the culture wars?'
• Section 3 Object Life
• 13 'The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare'
• 14 'Design and Order in Everyday Life'
• 15 'Gendered Spaces in Colonial Algiers'
• 16 'The Ins and Outs of the Hall: A Parisian Example'
• 17 'Immigrant Souvenirs'
• Section 4 Sense and Sensibilities
• 18 'Shop Windows'
• 19 From The Mezzanine
• 20 'The Memory of the Senses, Part 1: Marks of the Transitory'
• 21 'Marketing "Japan": Japanese Cultural Presence Under a Global Gaze'
• 22 'Hello'
• Section 5 Designing (in) the World
• 23 'An Ecological Overview'
• 24 'Designing for the City of Strangers'
• 25 'The Crystal Palace'
• 26 'From War to Warring'
• 27 'Design in India: The Experience of Transition'
• Section 6 Design Time
• 28 'Anonymous History'
• 29 'Social Position and the Art of Automobile Maintenance'
• 30 'The Past is No Longer Out-of-Date'
• 31 'The materiality of informatics: Audiotape and Its Cultural
• 32 'Chronotope of the Shoe'

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Ben Highmore is Reader in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Everyday Life and Cultural Theory, Cityscapes and editor of The Everyday Life Reader and is the reviews editor of New Formations.