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Dear Matt - following uop the general drift of your mail - I suggest that "domain of concern" gets around most of the field/discipline problems - it doesn't get around the thorny stuff about canons by fault/default/despise. F R Leavis is not a bad start towards understandingn the different that a posture can bring. A problem is a thing positioned, the question is always posed, sometimes with poise etc. I don't mind the cultural circle stuff except that I know how to start and stop the bus - the bus doesn't have a clue. keith russell communication and media arts uni of newcastle -OZ Matt Soar wrote: > Greetings one and all. > > I've just subscribed to the list after hearing about it via an email Ken > Friedman sent out to another list - so thanks to him for that. I've also > trawled through the most recent posts in the archive, and am fascinated by > the ongoing debate about design canons and 'design doctors.' Please excuse > me if the following observations are obvious or off-topic: > > I'm a graphic designer and PhD candidate in Communication, with a primary > research interest in the political and cultural significance of designers > and ad creatives (treated as key members of the "new cultural > intermediaries", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term). Communication itself is > most often understood - at least by its theorists - as a field rather than > a discipline, not least because of its relative newness. Further, in my > adoption (cooptation? bastardization?) of various epistemologies, primarily > cultural studies (but also media studies and mass communication theory) I > find the discussion about canons on this list especially resonant. Cultural > studies is, of course, aggressively anti-canonical, with its specifically > British roots in what Stuart Hall has called the "crisis in the > humanities", and fueled by a conscious move away from/against the Leavisite > tradition of perpetuating a very particular (Anglocentric) literary canon. > > Based on this here (inadequate) gloss, I'm wondering out loud if an > emergent design studies might be best understood/treated - initially at > least - as a field, or even, to take cultural studies' cue, as specifically > anti-canonical. (Of course, criticisms can be levelled at cultural studies > for being nothing but canonical; that to deny the presence of key ideas and > concepts - however surreptitiously they insinuate themselves - is > ultimately self-defeating, if not impossible. > > Finally, my own bias is to press for an approach that can accommodate (but > not necessarily address simultaneously) all points on what Richard Johnson > has called the 'circuit of culture': production, the text, reception, and > "lived cultures and social relations more generally." (Perhaps this is a > no-brainer for list members?) > > Best wishes, > > Matt Soar > > Matthew Soar > [log in to unmask] > > Director of Publications & Design > Media Education Foundation > www.mediaed.org > 413.584.8500 > > Doctoral Candidate > Department of Communication > University of Massachusetts Amherst > www.umass.edu/communication %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%