Abstract
design has been a longstanding concern in anthropology with a formative tradition of thought reaching back to the 18th century historian and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (2002 [1778]). Herder’s theory of sculpture pointed to the poetic nature of communication, shared by both language and repetitive actions of the body, and the relation between this poetic element of communication and the emotional pull of the resulting product. These ideas were famously developed by Franz Boas (1927) into a concept of ‘virtuosity’ — understood as the pleasures of practice which are given substance in basket making, pottery making, or Northwest Coast wood carving — as well as by Marcel Mauss (1934), who drew attention to highly developed body actions that embody aspects of a given culture. More recently, this notion of the algorithmic and relational nature of technical action was taken forward by Gregory Bateson (1973) in his theory of ‘style, grace, and information’, by Fred Myers (1999) in his analysis of the prototypicality of Aboriginal painting, and by Alfred Gell (1998) in his theory of the indexical logic of manufactured artifacts. Design distinguishes itself from mere things, in the words of David Freedberg (1991), by the ‘inherence’ of intellectual expectations in the work itself, and anthropology’s contribution has been in unraveling the intersubjective nature of thought made concrete in design.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Addington, D., M. Daniel, and L. Schodek. 2004. Smart Materials and Technologies in Architecture Burlington: Architectural Press.
Antonelli, P. 1995. Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Ashby, M. and K. Johnson. 2002. Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Askeland, D. and P. Pradeep. 2002. The Science and Engineering of Materials. Salt Lake City: Thomson Engineering.
Ball, P. 1997. Made to Measure: New Materials for the21st Century. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Barth, F. 1990. Cosmologies in the Making: A Generative Approach to Cultural Variation in Inner New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bateson, G. 1958. Naven: A Survey of the Problems suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of New Guinea tribe drawn from three Points of View. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bateson, G. 1973. Style, Grace, Information in Primitive Society. In A. Forge (Ed.), Art in Primitive Society: 78–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bensaude-Vincent, B. and M. Newmann (Eds.). 2007. The Artificial and the Natural: An evolving polarity. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Benyus, J. 1997. Biomimicry. New York: Perennial.
Beylerian, G. and A. Dent. 2005. Material Connexion: The Global Resource of New and Innovative Materials for Architects, Artists and Designers, A. Moryadas (Ed.). New York: Wiley & Sons.
Biersack, A. 1982. The logic of misplaced concreteness: Paiela body counting and the nature of the primitive mind. American Anthropologist 84(4), 811–829.
Boas, F. 1955. Primitive Art. New York: Dover Publications.
Bois, Y. A. and R. Krauss. 1997. Formless: A User Guide. New York: Zone Books.
Bolton, L. 2001. Classifying the Material: Food, Textiles, and Status in North Vanuatu. Journal of Material Culture 6(3), 251–268.
Colchester, C. (Ed.). 2003. Clothing the Pacific. Oxford: Berg. Conkey, M. 2006. Style, Design and Function. In Chris Tilley et al. (Eds.), Hand book of Material Culture: 355–373. London: Sage.
Freedberg, D. 1991. The Power of Images: The study of the nature of response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Damon, F. H. 2004. On the ideas of a boat: from forest patches to cybernetic structures in the outrigger sailing craft of the eastern ‘kula’ ring, Papua New Guinea. In C. Sather and T. Kaartinen (Eds.), Beyond the horizon: essays on myth, history, travel and society: 123–144. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.
Daston, L. (Ed.) 2004. Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. NewYork: Zone Books.
Gay, D. V., H. Suong, and S. Tsai. 2002. Composite Materials: Design and Application. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hansen, M. 2000. Embodying Technesis: Technology Beyond Writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Herder, J. G. 2002 [1778]. Sculpture: Some observations on shape and form from Pygmalion’s Creative Dream, J. Gaiger (Trans. and Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hongu, T. and G.O. Philips. 1997. New Fibers. Cambridge: Technomic Publishing Company.
Hauser-Schaublin, E. 1996. The thrill of the line, the string and the frond, or why the Abelam are anon-cloth culture. Oceania 67(2), 81–106.
Küchler, S. 2008. Technological Materiality: Beyond the Dualist Paradigm. Theory, Culture and Society 25(1), 101–120.
Küchler, S. and A. Eimke. 2009. Tivaivai: The Social Fabric of the Cook Islands. London: British Museum Press.
Latour, B. 1992. Where are the Missing Masses: The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Socio-Technical Change: 225–258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Latour, B. 1996. Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. 2001. Das Parlament der Dinge. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Latour, B. and S. Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Social Facts. London: Sage Publications.
Mauss, M. 1934. Les Techniques du corps. Journal de Psychologie 32(3–4), 271–293. Reprinted in Mauss, M. 1936. Sociologie et anthropologie. Paris: PUF.
McDonough, W. and M. Braungart. 2009. Cradle to Cradle. London: Vintage.
Meikle, J. L. 1995. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Miller, D. (Ed.). 2005. Materiality. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mori, T. 2002. Immaterial/Ultramaterial: Architecture, Design and Materials. New York: Braziller.
Mossmann, S. and R. Smith. 2008. Fantastic Plastic: Product Design and Consumer Culture. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Myers, F. 1999. Aesthetics and Practice: A local art history of Pintupi Painting. In H. Morphy and M. Smith Bowles (Eds.), Artfrom the Land: 218–261. Charlottesville: University of Virginia.
Reckwitz, A. 2002. The Status of the ‘Material’ in Theories of Culture: From’ social Structure’ to ‘Artefacts’. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32(2), 195–217.
Rübel, D. and S. Hackenschmidt. 2008. Formless Furniture. Frankfurt: Hatje Cantz.
Silberglitt, R. (ed.). 2001. The Global Technological Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015. Santa Monica: Rand.
Satas, D. A. and A. Tracton. 2000. Coatings Technology Handbook. New York: Marcel Dekker.
Schiebinger, L. and C. Swan. 2005. Colonial Botany, Science, Commerce and Politics in Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Siikala, J. 1991. Akatokamava: Myth, History and Society in the Southern Cook Islands. Auckland/Helsinki: The Polynesian Society in Association with the Finnish Anthropological Society.
Smith, P. and P. Findlen (Eds.). 2002. Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe. London & New York: Routledge.
Stattmann, N. 2003. Ultra Light — Super Strong: A New Generation of Design Materials. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Starthern, M. 1986. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Strathern, M. 1999. Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things. London: Athlone Press.
Thomas, N. 1999. The Case of the Misplaced Ponchos — Speculations Concerning the History of Cloth in Polynesia. Journal of Material Culture 4(1), 5–21.
Wagner, M. 2001. Das Material in der Kunst: Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne. Munich: H. C. Beck.
Wessel, J. 2004. The Handbook of Advanced Materials: Enabling New Design. New York: Wiley- Interscience.
Whitehead, A. N. 1979 [1927]. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag/Wien
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Küchler, S. (2011). Materials and Design. In: Clarke, A.J. (eds) Design Anthropology. Edition Angewandte. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0234-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0234-3_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-0233-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-0234-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)