Session 3. Our logos
Consumption cans
In order to better grasp what is at stake in the practice of packaging and the growing importance it has assumed, the third session of the seminar starts from the premise that the container is not a neutral parameter in our relationship to objects. Not only does the box mediate the first contact with an artifact, it is also at the heart of the affective, economic and social relationships we forge through the consumption or conservation of things. Taking a historical and comparative anthropological approach, we will follow this hypothesis through three themes. The first concerns marriage: from Renaissance cassoni to jewelry boxes and dowry caskets, we’ll be looking at how such containers have come to embody family alliances, domestic relationships and intergenerational transmissions. A second theme will focus on food and medical packaging, and how their materiality and decoration may have conveyed industrial, colonial and, now, ecological imaginations. A third theme will focus on design and fashion, from Vuitton’s travel trunks to the optimized cases used in pastry shops.
In order to better grasp what is at stake in the practice of packaging and the growing importance it has assumed, the third session of the seminar starts from the premise that the container is not a neutral parameter in our relationship to objects. Not only does the box mediate the first contact with an artifact, it is also at the heart of the affective, economic and social relationships we forge through the consumption or conservation of things. Taking a historical and comparative anthropological approach, we will follow this hypothesis through three themes. The first concerns marriage: from Renaissance cassoni to jewelry boxes and dowry caskets, we’ll be looking at how such containers have come to embody family alliances, domestic relationships and intergenerational transmissions. A second theme will focus on food and medical packaging, and how their materiality and decoration may have conveyed industrial, colonial and, now, ecological imaginations. A third theme will focus on design and fashion, from Vuitton’s travel trunks to the optimized cases used in pastry shops.