Current Research Project: Unpacking IKEA Cultures: A Comparative Ethnography of IKEA consumers in Stockholm and Dublin.

This project features in the IRCHSS-produced volume to commemorate 10 years of funded research excellence.

http://www.irchss.ie/IRCHSS%2010%20Event%20Page/Mosaic%20(Dublin,%202010).pdf

 

2007-2008 (postponed for maternity leave)
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Research Fellowship.

2007-2008: The Swedish Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Unpacking IKEA Cultures: A Comparative Ethnography of IKEA consumers in Stockholm and Dublin.

IKEA encapsulates to an exaggerated level many of the icons of a truly modern transnational store. It is undoubtedly global: it was visited by over 565 million people in 2008 and has made its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, the head of a multi-billion empire. As a global organization, IKEA's success, we are told, lies not only in high-quality, low-cost sales pitch but on its insistence on centralized control, product standardization and homogeneous Scandinavian corporate culture. However unlike other many trans-national corporations and their products - the Coca Cola can, the Mc Donald's burger - it is not popularly iconic of cultural homogenization or corporate greed in quite the same way. Why?

This project focuses on local, contemporary versions of the world's largest furniture retailer. From the blue and yellow exteriors, to imported meatballs in cross-global cafes, the marketing image of the store links common icons of 'Swedishness' with a non-hierarchical, non-elitist modern solution for the purchasing masses. A recognizable theme runs through IKEA's 'vision' such as its claim to deliver democratic design at affordable prices. This vision may be experienced in contradictory ways however, espousing corporate values of rationalisation mass-production and efficiency on the one hand but given a laudable human face of Scandinavian lifestyles, Swedish modern living and practicality on the other. As shoppers labour under the inconsistencies of a particularising discourse experienced as flatpack rationisalisation, lengthy queues, maze-like stores and frustrating re-assembly, anthropological interviews firstly question the degree to which the cultural origin of the design process makes its way from the production floor to the everyday contexts of household living spaces. By comparing Stockholm with Dublin shoppers' experience of the first store in Ireland (opened 2009), research will secondly shed light on how trans-national products are situated within local diversity. More importantly, the materialization of contested frames (such as how to be modern) or socio-political ideals (such as democratic design) is critically analyzed.

Publications:
Forthcoming: 'Living Rooms' Invited chapter for International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home. Oxford: Elsevier.

Forthcoming: Exhibit Ireland: Ethnographic Collections in Ireland. Co-edited volume with Séamas O'Síocháin and Adam Drazin. Wordwell Press.

Forthcoming: with Adam Drazin and Séamas O'Síocháin: 'Introduction: Presencing Assemblages ' in Exhibit Ireland: Ethnographic Collections in Ireland. Co-edited with Séamas O'Síocháin and Adam Drazin. Wordwell Press.

2011: 'La mémoire en attente. Le musée ethnographique dans l'Irlande post-coloniale'. Ethnologie Française, 'IRLANDE: Après Arensberg et Ó Duilearga', avec Adam Drazin.

In English: 'Ireland's Ethnographic Horizons'. Invited paper for special edition of Ethnologie Francaise, entitled Ireland: after Arensberg and O Duilearga, edited by Diarmuid Ó Giolláin. With Adam Drazin.

In English: 'Ireland's Ethnographic Horizons'. Invited paper for special edition of Ethnologie Francaise, entitled Ireland: after Arensberg and O Duilearga, edited by Diarmuid Ó Giolláin. With Adam Drazin.

2010: 'Consuming IKEA and inspiration as material form', Design Anthropology edited by A. J. Clarke (ed) Wien, New York: Springer Verlag.

2010: Review of Nicky Gregson, 2006 Living with Things: Ridding, Accommodation, Dwelling, Sean Kingston Publishing, in Museum Anthropology Review, Vol 4, No 2.

2009: Anthropology, Design and Technology in Ireland, a special edition of Anthropology in Action and Irish Journal of Anthropology, edited with Adam Drazin.

2009: with Adam Drazin 'Design and Having Designs in Ireland': Introduction to Anthropology, Design and Technology in Ireland, a special edition of Anthropology in Action and Irish Journal of Anthropology, volume 16, number 1, pp. 4-18. edited with Adam Drazin.

2009: 'Culture Materialised: IKEA furniture and other evangelical objects' in J. Fenwick (ed) Lost and Found. Wordwell Press.

2008: 'The Norwegian country cabin and functionalism: A tale of two modernities'. Social Anthropology 16, 2 203-220.

2005: Domestic Boundaries: Privacy, Visibility and the Norwegian Window. Journal of Material Culture 10, (2): 157-176.

2005: 'Drunk and (Dis) Orderly in Norway: drinking parties in the home'. In T. Wilson (ed) Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and the Expression of Identity, Class and Nation. Oxford: Berg.

2003: 'How to have a 'good home': the practical aesthetic and normativity in Norway'. In Journal of Design History 16, (3): 241-251.

2003: Review of Victor Buchli (ed) 2002 'Material Culture Reader'. Journal of Consumer Culture 3 (3): 415-418, with Adam Drazin.

2001: 'Drinking, Driving and Daring in Norway'. In D. Miller (ed) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg.

2001: 'Organised Disorder: Moving furniture in Norwegian Homes'. In D. Miller (ed) Home Possessions: The Material Culture of the Home. Oxford: Berg.

Research Interests: Key words
Material culture, domesticity, crisis homes, consumption, furniture retail, design, IKEA.

Scandinavia: Domestic material culture, consumption, Swedish design, 'Democratic design'. Ethnography and design.

Museums, Irish assemblages and exhibitions.