Garvey, Pauline (2003) How to Have a 'Good Home' The Practical Aesthetic and Normativity in Norway. Journal of Design History, 16. pp. 241-251. ISSN 0952-4649

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Abstract

This article presents an exploration of home decoration and domestic aesthetics in the Norwegian town of Skien. The analysis of everyday domestic aesthetics is derived from original ethnographic research in which a normative social reference point such as practicality is investigated in the organization of material culture and decorative order. I analyse domestic aesthetics in terms of Campbell's discussion of need or desire-based rhetoric as forming the basis of consumer choices. I discuss this position through an analysis of 'the practical' (praktiskj as it pertains to ideas of the 'good home' in Norway. I suggest that practicality can be described as an idiom through which an aaeptable image of individual priorities is projected. The articulation of socially legitimate objectives also allows a certain disjuncture between words and actions and underpins one expression of the normative home.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	anthropology; home decoration; normativity; Norway; practical aesthetics;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	8372
Depositing User:	Dr Pauline Garvey
Date Deposited:	27 Jun 2017 12:46
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Design History
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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