Doing Research in Design presents new ways of thinking about the relationship between design and research by positioning design as a social as well as a material practice. This approach emphasises the social consequences of design decisions as well as the importance of the efficient functioning of a design. Doing Research in Design argues that design promotes social change and that, in order to understand that change, designers must turn to social science research methods. The book outlines the relationships between thinking and doing in design - and makes explicit links between design, research, philosophy and sociology - and then examines four central social research methodologies in practice. The aim of Doing Research in Design is to provide anyone involved in the field of design with the knowledge and understanding of the best methods to plan and conduct their research.

This book examines three overarching themes: Chinese modernity's (sometimes ambivalent) relationship to tradition at the start of the twentieth century, the processes of economic reform started in the 1980s and their importance to both the eradication and rescue of traditional practices, and the ideological issue of cosmopolitanism and how it frames the older academic generation's attitudes to globalisation. It is important to grasp the importance of these points as they have been an important part of the discourse surrounding contemporary Chinese visual culture. As readers progress through this book, it will become clear that the debates surrounding visual culture are not purely based on aesthetics--an understanding of the ideological issues surrounding the appearance of things as well as an understanding of the social circumstances that result in the making of traditional artifacts are as important as the way a traditional object may look. Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture is an important book for all collections dealing with Asian studies, art, popular culture, and interdisciplinary studies.

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that examine the subjective experiences of the moulding of creativity, for good or bad, by institutional values. It is essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a glimpse into the circumstances that surround the creative individual in our current globalising world. With chapters ranging in scope from the function of the internet in building creative social spaces to an examination of the dreaming of their history by the Zpara Amazonian people, this book will introduce the reader to critical analyses of the many differing creative spaces we have made for ourselves across the world. In a radical break from the traditional academic practice of keeping specialists and disciplines separate, this collection brings international scholars and practitioners together from many disciplines all of whom have the shared intention of understanding creative self empowerment in the new conditions of what the sociologist Ulrich Beck calls Second Modernity. An innovative text that illuminates the contemporary global cultural space in which multiple histories and traditions are intersecting and slowly rupturing the certainties of the first modernity of colonialism, nationalism and industrialisation, this collection presents essays that had their origins as papers in the Subjectivity, Creativity, and the Institution Conference that was convened by the Chinese Australian Studies Research Centre at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China and held at the John Curtin Gallery, in Perth, Australia. It includes the keynote presentation by the distinguished Australian sociologist Professor Raewyn Connell.

This text summarizes and contextualizes the ideas that have formed visual arts practices in the 20th century. Art, design and architecture are located in their social and political contexts, and the ideas of modernism are traced from the development of industrialized Europe at the turn of the century to the post-industrial, post-colonial present. The complex relationship between modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts is examined and the book concludes with a review of the global impact of the new technologies on art and design production.