Searching

As we now start searching through a flood of things for our big party, it is interesting to think of what the task of looking really does. So Via Boing Boing is Swedish ethnologist Erik Ottoson of Uppsala University whose work focuses on people shopping and searching for things.

The people in the study are not just looking for certain things – they are also seeking to come to terms with what they are actually looking for. Ideals of what is beautiful, useful and reasonable materialise in conjunction with the experience of what is available and what is absent or out of reach. It is suggested that this mode of looking for goods is not only about purchase deliberations, but more importantly is a specific way of interacting with the world and making places meaningful. It can be viewed as a way of creating and moderating anticipation, and thereby cultivating affect. Searching for things thus becomes an experiential horizon