The fundamentalist urge in contemporary ceramics
‘The fundamentalist urge in contemporary ceramics’ Red Deer College, Canada Keynote address Consequence of Material conference (2004) The Cave The Cave by Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago is a Kafkaesque tale worthy of much thought. The story is about a ceramist whose work is increasingly marginalised by a force simply called ‘the Centre’. The Centre is [...]
Magicians of the South
It seems these days we are blessed, or cursed, by long-term incumbent governments. Yet despite their seeming inexorable hold on power, we know that eventually, as night follows day, the UK will eventually be Tory and Australia will be Labor. For Hegel, the popular understanding of the dialectic is expressed in the phrase, ‘Live and [...]
Review of Design through Making
Design Through Making edited by Bob Sheil, Wiley-Academy Vol 75 No. 4 July/August 2005 Design Through Making promises a fresh take on the role of construction in architecture and related design practices. The principal argument of the publication is that new technology enables greater involvement of architects in the construction process. Software such as CAD [...]
A Common Project: Where Craft and Design Meet in a Democratic World
Part One – The March of Democracy At the end of the eighteenth century, King George III had a lot on his plate. He particularly prized the gifts from India—certainly the precious diamonds from Bengal—which contributed to the splendour of the British crown. But it wasn’t only jewels that King George needed. The loss of [...]
Where North meets South
Notes for the keynote – ‘Where North Meets South: The Promise of Transnational Law as a Platform for Creative Collaborations’ University of Melbourne South of International Law symposium, July 2010 (2010) In 1538, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator created his first world map. This ‘double cordiform’ is a romantic design arranging the northern and southern [...]
A Proposal for a Re‑authoring Therapy: Rose’s Revisioning of her Life and a Commentary
David Epston, Michael White and Kevin Murray ‘A proposal for re-authoring therapy’ Therapy as Social Construction In S. McNamee & K.J. Gergen(ed.) London: Sage (1992) In the social sciences at least, it is now generally recognized that it is not possible for persons to have direct knowledge of the world; that an objective description of [...]
The Construction of Identity in the Narratives of Romance and Comedy
Kevin Murray ‘The construction of identity in the narratives of romance and comedy’ Texts of Identity In J.Shotter & K.Gergen (eds.) London: Sage (1988) The business of this chapter is to explore the thesis that both personal and social identity are constructed by finding stories to tell about the self. Harré’s theory of personal being [...]
Literary Pathfinding: The Work of Popular Life Constructors
Kevin Murray ‘Finding literary paths: The work of popular life constructors’ In T.R. Sarbin (ed.) Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct New York: Praeger (1986) Social actors often need a past to satisfy the requirements of many different dramatic situations. These situations can vary from the extraordinary ‑ the television show “This Is [...]
Narrative Partitioning: The ins and outs of identity construction
Kevin Murray ‘Narrative Partitioning: The ins and outs of identity construction’ in Rethinking Psychology: Volume 1 – Conceptual Foundations (ed J. Smith, R. Harre & Luk van Langenhove) Sage (1995) Introduction Narrative psychology is one of the many new fields of research that extend the narratological study of how stories work (Prince, 1982) into extra-literary [...]
Craft Unbound introduction
CRAFT UNBOUND: MAKE THE COMMON PRECIOUS (Melbourne: Thames & Hudson, 2005) By Kevin Murray Introduction There was once a familiar order to things. On one side was the supermarket and on the other was the art gallery. There was the world of common things to be used up and discarded, and the realm of precious [...]
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