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Journal of Design History 2003 16(3):241-251; doi:10.1093/jdh/16.3.241
© 2003 by Design History Society
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How to Have a ‘Good Home’: The Practical Aesthetic and Normativity in Norway

Pauline Garvey

University of Brighton


  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’ (praktisk)as a pertains to ideas of the ‘good home’ in Norway. I suggest that practicality can be described as an idiom through which an acceptable 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.

Key Words: anthropology • home decoration • normativity • Norway • practical aesthetics


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[Abstract] [PDF]


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