Social Object

The Social Object uses the methods of design history, material culture studies and the social construction of technology to analyse the domestic spaces and objects in the homes of the middle class in India. The book describes how people make meaning of the objects they buy, own, and gift. This is a book about the biography of projects andobjects. The projects in the book serve as bookends to a detailed and affectionate account of thebiographies of objects within the homes of the notso rich. The aim of the author has been to silencethe voice of the designer to allow the accounts ofobjects to emerge as periodic irruptions that reveala hidden maelstrom of passion, ideas and failedprojects. The book opens with the biography of aproject dealing with waste, leading the reader to avery particular kind of object, the bads. This objectis illicit, handled by criminals and in the writing bythe author serves to invert the dominant discourseof objects as commodities. This book makes thecase that the program of design is better seen as ademocratic community, where the householders,the zietgiest, technology and all manner of hiddenagents collide to allow unforseen periodic objectsto emerge. Varadarajan argues against a simplistic universalaccount off the way we think about how objectsare designed. As an enterprise, the book was ajourney to assemble the evidence - of places andobjects - and observe the enactment of practiceswith the objects. It was also a project ofspeculation upon the possible ways in whichobjects come to be, as local collaborations ofaction.