Based on his forthcoming book under this title, Harvey Molotch will try to show how, in precise and concrete ways, art and utility, frivolity and seriousness, form and function, do not conflict, but work together as part of any creative enterprise. His goal is to explain connections among large-scale issues like economy, society, and expressivity in terms of intensely familiar goods, like paper clips, toasters, bathtubs and VCRs. The ordinary goods of life contain the human universe of aesthetic, economic, and social processes; the whole world is in the toaster or garlic press -- a version of which will be on display. Appreciating goods in this way can help foster more benign mechanisms, especially ecological, for their production, consumption, and disposal.

Harvey Molotch is Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor of Metropolitan Studies and Sociology, New York University. He is the author of Where Stuff Comes From: Forces that Shape the Products of Everyday Life (Routledge, forthcoming 2003), and the coauthor of Building Rules: How Local Controls Shape Community, Environments and Economies, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place, The Effects of Urban Growth: A Population Impact Analysis.

All interested faculty and students are welcome.
Feel free to bring your lunch; the IHC will supply refreshments and the cookies.