MATERIAL OBJECTS AND EVERYDAY NATIONALISM IN DESIGN: THE ELECTRIC TURKISH COFFEE MAKER, ITS DESIGN AND CONSUMPTION HARUN KAYGAN A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2012 The University of Brighton Abstract This thesis provides an account of material objects which are related to the nation in their design and consumption. Addressing a major gap both in design literature and in theories of everyday nationalism, the study focuses on the processes of design and consumption in which material objects are nationalised, rather than on objects as representative of nations. For this purpose, a material-semiotic theoretical framework is developed, contributing to current debates on the use of STS-based approaches in design research. Accordingly, design and consumption are viewed as two sociotechnical settings where a variety of actors—engineers, designers, users, other objects as well as nations—are brought together. In application of this framework, design and consumption of a nationally charged kitchen appliance, the electric Turkish coffee maker, was investigated for the ways in which Turkish nation is evoked in discourse and practice by the actors involved. To this end, interviews were conducted with the managers, designers and engineers involved in the development of electric Turkish coffee makers. Together with the documents collected, the data is used to piece together the processes of product development and design. These were complemented and contrasted with interviews, focus groups and participant observation sessions, organised with users of the product. The analysis shows that electric Turkish coffee makers are conceived as a national project, which translates Turkish coffee to national tradition, and global commercial success via its mechanisation to national responsibility and pride. Accordingly, design practice attempts to produce and maintain the products as objectifications of national cultural authenticity. In the analysed consumption setting, however, users appropriate the products not as authentic replacements of, but as convenient supplements to the ‘authentic’, which they instead utilise to improve sociability. The study suggests and illustrates that a comprehensive understanding of everyday nationalism in particular, and politics in general, requires taking seriously the material agency of objects— conceptualised as symbolic and material assemblages with politically substantial meanings and affordances. It thus emphasises the significance of designed objects as nodes in and around which relations of power are shaped and stored, and the political role of design practices in assembling these objects by mediating such relations. 2 Table of contents Abstract............................................................................................................2 Table of contents................................................................................................3 List of tables......................................................................................................7 List of figures.....................................................................................................8 Acknowledgements.............................................................................................9 Author’s declaration..........................................................................................10 Chapter 1. Introduction.....................................................................................11 Part 1. Design and politics of the nation: a framework...........................................17 Chapter 2. Cultural production and ideological struggle .........................................17 2.1. The mythical object: Barthes and Baudrillard.........................................18 2.1.1. The question of function...........................................................19 2.1.2. Limitations of semiological analysis............................................21 2.2. Cultural studies and the Marxist politics of cultural practice......................22 2.2.1. The base-superstructure model and its shortcomings ..................23 2.2.2. Hegemony and ideological struggle............................................24 2.2.3. Materiality of cultural practice...................................................26 2.3. Moments and circuits..........................................................................28 2.3.1. Stuart Hall: encoding and decoding moments..............................28 2.3.2. Richard Johnson: the dual circuit...............................................29 2.3.3. Design practice in the circuit of culture.......................................31 2.4. Concluding discussion: The Italian scooter.............................................34 Chapter 3. Material cultures and materialities.......................................................37 3.1. Daniel Miller: Material culture as objectification......................................37 3.1.1. Objectification and habitus........................................................38 3.1.2. Consumption as recontextualisation...........................................39 3.2. Social life of things and regimes of value...............................................43 3.3. Materiality of material culture..............................................................45 3.3.1. Promiscuity of material objects..................................................47 3.3.2. Agency of material objects........................................................49 3.3.3. Affordances of material objects.................................................50 3.4. Concluding points...............................................................................54 3 Chapter 4. Material-semiotic analysis of design....................................................56 4.1. Technology studies and actor-network theory.........................................56 4.1.1. Social construction of technology: relevant social groups..............58 4.1.2. Actor-network theory: interests and translation...........................60 4.1.3. Agency of material objects in ANT..............................................62 4.2. Design as network-building and long-distance control.............................63 4.2.1. Strategies of long-distance control.............................................64 4.2.2. The insides and the outside of material objects...........................66 4.2.3. The problem of managerialism and the question of fluidity............70 4.3. Concluding discussion: writing on material objects ................................73 Chapter 5. Nation, material objects and design ....................................................75 5.1. Terms: nation, nationalism, national identity..........................................75 5.2. Theories of nationalism.......................................................................76 5.2.1. Primordialism .........................................................................78 5.2.2. Modernism..............................................................................79 5.2.3. Ethno-symbolism.....................................................................82 5.3. Approaches to everyday nationalism ....................................................86 5.3.1. Ideology and banal nationalism ................................................86 5.3.2. Discursive construction of nations .............................................88 5.3.3. National habiti and embodied nations.........................................92 5.4. Material objects and everyday nationalism.............................................96 5.4.1. Official state products: money and stamps..................................97 5.4.2. National cuisines and gastronationalism ...................................100 5.4.3. Branding and commercial construction of nations.......................103 5.5. Nations in design literature ...............................................................105 5.5.1. The history of nation and design .............................................105 5.5.2. Design historical common sense..............................................111 5.6. Concluding discussion: material semiotics of nationally charged objects..112 Part 2. Electric Turkish coffee makers and the nation...........................................115 Chapter 6. Research design and methods ..........................................................115 6.1. Researching electric Turkish coffee makers..........................................116 6.2. Researching the design setting ..........................................................118 6.3. Researching the consumption setting .................................................121 6.3.1. Core sessions .......................................................................121 4 6.3.2. Complementary interviews......................................................124 6.4. A note on gender issues....................................................................125 6.5. A note on mediation .........................................................................126 Chapter 7. Everyday nationalism and design in Turkey.........................................128 7.1. Constructing the Turkish nation: the historical context .........................128 7.1.1. The Republican project of nationalisation .................................128 7.1.2. Revival of interest in alternative definitions of the nation