What do things mean? What does the life of everyday objects after the check-out reveal about people and their material worlds? Has the quest for 'the real thing' become so important because the high tech world of total virtuality threatens to engulf us?

This pioneering book bridges design theory and anthropology to offer a new and challenging way of understanding the changing meanings of contemporary human-object relations. The act of consumption is only the starting point in objects' 'lives'. Thereafter they are transformed and invested with new meanings that reflect and assert who...

What do things mean? What does the life of everyday objects after the check-out reveal about people and their material worlds? Has the quest for 'the real thing' become so important because the high tech world of total virtuality threatens to engulf us?

This pioneering book bridges design theory and anthropology to offer a new and challenging way of understanding the changing meanings of contemporary human-object relations. The act of consumption is only the starting point in objects' 'lives'. Thereafter they are transformed and invested with new meanings that reflect and assert who...

An essential overview as well as a theoretical critique for all students of design history. Walker studies the intellectual discipline of Design History and the issues that confront scholars writing histories of design. Taking his approach from a range of related fields, he discusses the problems of defining design and writing history. He considers the different methods that leading scholars have used in the absence of a theoretical framework, and looks critically at a number of histories of design and architecture.