Sex shop stories: shifting disciplines in design research
- Submitting institution
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Ravensbourne University London
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- FC01
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Researching Sex and Sexualities
- Publisher
- Zed
- ISBN
- 978-1-78699-320-5
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This book chapter is an invited contribution to a book which examines and theorises sex research from across disciplinary boundaries. It develops a paper presented to an international, interdisciplinary conference on Researching Sex and Sexualities at the University of Sussex in 2015.
The chapter brings the topic of women’s relationship with designed objects to the field of sexuality studies while also introducing the subject of women's lived experience of sexuality, an area unexplored in design research, to the attention of Material Culture.
It outlines the process and challenges of using interview as a research method to investigate women’s relationship with the objects and spaces of sexual consumption. Given the lack of a model for empirical research focusing on sexuality within the field of Design and Material Culture it focuses on the issue of using and adapting an analysis model derived from the social sciences to understand research data concerning women’s relationship with ‘things’ rather than people’s relationships with people.
The chapter offers researchers in the field of Sexuality Studies a new perspective from which to interrogate female sexuality - the designed object and space - as well as a guide to the practical challenges of carrying out such research. Moreover, it is useful to established researchers and students of Design and Material Culture in both opening up a new area of enquiry and offering a transparent and reflective account of research methods new to the discipline.
The output draws on research and analysis methods used during PhD research around women’s sex shopping, the outcome of which forms the basis of another REF submission.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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