ID522 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CONSUMPTION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
| Course Code: | 1250522 |
| METU Credit (Theoretical-Laboratory hours/week): | 3 (3.00 - 0.00) |
| ECTS Credit: | 8.0 |
| Department: | Industrial Design |
| Language of Instruction: | English |
| Level of Study: | Graduate |
| Course Coordinator: | Lecturer FİGEN IŞIK |
| Offered Semester: | Fall Semesters. |
Course Objectives
This course aims to introduce students (especially the graduate industrial design students) to the material culture and consumption literature sociologically. Tha main aim is to help them construct the relatinship between the focus of their profession and its sociological account and aspects.
Course Description
Drawing from its historical course, design profession, more specifically industrial design/product design, has been positioned discursively in relation to political economy of production and technological systems and in relation to symbolic and representational schemes of aesthetics and communication, always with reference to the workings of individual and social value system(s). Definitions of design and designing -with or without an emphasis on its industrial and/or product aspect-, accordingly what and how designer does have changed almost invariably over the course of time, thus positioning the profession inherently ever at a discursive perpetuation. Not unexpectedly, as part of the quest for understanding the role of designer and that of the meaning and value of designed object, which lead to “ideas about the status of objects and hence about the kinds of value that designers add” (Shove et.al 2007, The Design of Everyday Life, New York: Berg Publications, pp.: 119), this was reflected on the profession’s methodological workings.
Directed, basically, towards meeting the needs of users, designer is defined as the creator and agency of value of an object on which the essential relation between user and object is based. However, as Shove et. al. (2007) point out “Whilst the ambition of meeting need has helped sustain the status and identity of the design profession as a whole, it embodies and reproduces an essentialist view of demand and value that is at odds with the more constructivist approaches of much contemporary social science. Ironically, designers’ efforts to understand the user have been framed in such a way that they obscure the crucial point that rather than simply meeting needs, artefacts are actively implicated in creating new practices and with them new patterns of demands.” (9-10)
Thus, based on the idea that “Ordinary objects are extraordinarily important in sustaining and transforming the details and the design of everyday life” (Shove et. al. 2007, 2) and “that designers and designed artefacts contribute to the emergence of collective conventions and shared practices” (Shove et. al. 2007, 133-134), hence the design and use of ordinary objects are inherently social, this course –as a seminar course- aims to introduce students to a sociological and anthropological perspective on the objects/products of everyday life. Therefore, it aims to focus on current paradigms in material culture and consumption studies. Central to the course is to come to grips with the socio-cultural significance of the consumption and using patterns of products of everyday life.
Thus, topics to cover throughout the course are basically
consumption and material culture
foundations
theoretical approaches
disciplinary approaches
everyday life/practice
exemplary works on consumption and material culture
Course Content
Current paradigms in material culture, consumption and everyday life studies. Introducing the ethnography of everyday life. A short fieldwork/socio-ethnographic case study to understand the meaning of products which is embedded in everyday life practices, and to analyze certain lifestyle understandings. Central to the course is to come to grips with the socio-cultural significance of the consumpyion and using patterns of products in everyday life.
Course Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course students are expected to
1. get acquainted with the basic literature of material culture and consumption
2. be able to think about, analyze and write about the relationship between objetcs/products and users within the framework of the related literature that is supplied by the course.
Program Outcomes Matrix
| Level of Contribution | |||||
| # | Program Outcomes | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 1 | Identifying research areas in distinct and contemporary topics and formulating research problems; | ✔ | |||
| 2 | Being competent in the research process, process planning, managing, analyzing data, and correctly interpreting findings; | ✔ | |||
| 3 | Transforming knowledge in the field and research results into strategies, politics, methods and/or decisions; | ✔ | |||
| 4 | Transferring research findings into design education and practice; | ✔ | |||
| 5 | Disseminating generated knowledge, making publications and presenting them; | ✔ | |||
| 6 | Having general knowledge in the field of design, having covered the literature and developing expertise in specific topics; | ✔ | |||
| 7 | Having responsibility towards own research, respecting and practicing research ethics; | ✔ | |||
| 8 | Having work discipline and skills in time planning; | ✔ | |||
| 9 | Having skills in oral, written and visual communication; | ✔ | |||
| 10 | Open to continuous education and self-development, having high professional motivation; | ✔ | |||
| 11 | Open and willing to share knowledge and skills with stakeholders; | ✔ | |||
| 12 | Being critical, able to make self-criticism, reflecting objective and unprejudiced thinking into their own work; | ✔ | |||
| 13 | Synthesising knowledge from different disciplines to use in one?s own field and using it for generating new knowledge. | ✔ | |||
0: No Contribution 1: Little Contribution 2: Partial Contribution 3: Full Contribution