American plastic : a cultural history / Jeffrey L. Meikle.
Material type: TextPublisher: New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, [1995]Copyright date: ©1995Description: xiv, 403 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 27 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 081352234X
- 9780813522340
- 0813522358
- 9780813522357
- 303.483 20
- TP1117 .M45 1995
Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | City Campus City Campus Main Collection | 303.483 MEI (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | A146325B |
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303.483 MAT Technology and social theory / | 303.483 MAU Techniques, technology and civilisation / | 303.483 MCK Enough : staying human in an engineered age / | 303.483 MEI American plastic : a cultural history / | 303.483 MIT Me++ : the cyborg self and the networked city / | 303.483 MOD Modernity and technology / | 303.483 MUR The Enlightenment cyborg : a history of communications and control in the human machine, 1660-1830 / |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-380) and index.
List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction: A Matter of Definition -- 1. Celluloid: From Imitation to Innovation -- 2. Bakelite: Defining an Artificial Material -- 3. Vision and Reality in the Plastic Age -- 4. An Industry Takes Shape -- 5. Nylon: Domesticating a New Synthetic -- 6. Growing Pains: The Conversion to Postwar -- 7. Design in Plastic: From Durable to Disposable -- 8. Material Doubts and Plastic Fallout -- 9. Beyond Plastic: The Culture of Synthesis -- Acknowledgments -- Sources -- Notes -- Index.
Jeffrey Meikle traces Americans' ambivalent involvement with plastic from Bakelite radios and nylon stockings to Tupperware and polyester suits. He moves easily from the rise of the plastics industry to plastic's symbolic hold on style and the popular imagination. Meikle shows how America's enthusiasm for everything plastic has been complicated by environmental doubts and by the plasticity of postmodern existence. Throughout this witty, compelling history of material and metaphor, Meikle raises crucial issues in science and technology, manufacturing and marketing, design and architecture, and American consumer culture. A provocative conclusion suggests that plastic, endlessly malleable in the face of material desire, merges into the immaterial reality of future electronic media.
Machine converted from AACR2 source record.
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