Provocative Plastics: Their Value in Design and Material Culture
- Submitting institution
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Arts University Bournemouth, the
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Lambert_32102 Plastics
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- ISBN
- 978-3-030-55881-9
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2021
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Lambert convened the international two day conference, Provocative plastics: design in plastics from the practical to the philosophical, held at the Arts University in 2015. It had 23 speakers who addressed six themes. It was her decision to narrow the focus of the conference publication, Provocative plastics: their value in design and material culture, to the single theme of how plastics have been valued over time, investigated from two perspectives: plastics as a medium for making and in societal use. She was solely responsible for selecting and commissioning the 14 authors drawn from five countries, some of whom have hands-on experience of working with plastics and others of whom have researched their subject from specific theoretical standpoints, giving the book its distinctive interdisciplinary approach. She was also the book’s sole editor.
Her introductory chapter (10,000 words approx) sets the book’s subject in the wider context of value studies through discussion of the work of economists, philosophers, and anthropologists with particular reference to Jane Bennett, Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour and Daniel Miller. It also explores how its broadly cultural approach sets it apart from the many texts on plastics’ capabilities, the conservation problems they raise, and their politicised place in our globalised world while addressing their environmental impact and how plastics can and must be part of the solution. Additionally, the chapters by the contributing authors are located within their specific frame of reference and in relation to wider narratives of how plastics have changed our world for better and for worse.
The book is unique in its presentation of evidence-based discourses on attitudes to plastics from the positive to the negative. It acts thus as a counterpoint to much of the recent plastics literature.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
