The space between commerce and culture: design as social agency (original) (raw)

2015, South African Journal of Art History

Design occupies a position of ambivalence bestriding the concerns of culture and capital, yet it accounts for a great deal of personal and economic meaning. In The Culture of Design, Guy Julier introduces design culture as a ubiquitous signifier of modernity: defining it as the study of the shifting interrelationships between producers, designers and consumers. When exploring how these agents interrelate both a material and symbolic understanding of the world of consumption becomes apparent. Design begins to account for more than economic markets, including the more intangible production of values and ideas. According to Bourdieu, producing, designing and consuming, pivots on competition. Bourdieu's sociological field model when applied to this study suggests that design culture can be allocated to two symbolic fields of competitive struggle located in cultural and commercial hierarchies. Design is problematised by the criticisms of Theodor Adorno and Hal Foster, who believe tha...

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