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Reminder: CASCI reading group tomorrow!

For the next CASCI theory reading group meeting (10/21/14, 11:00 am,
Hornbake 2116) we will read:

Abrahamson, E. (2011). The iron cage: Ugly, uncool, and
unfashionable.*Organization
Studies*, 32(5), 615-629.

Abstract:
Historical studies reveal how organizational markets supplied artifacts
that became fashionable because they met not only consumers’ cultural
tastes, but also their technological preferences. This article calls such
artifacts cultural-technological fusions. The digital mode of production
tends to generate more types of fashionable fusions, which replace each
other at a growing rate, and travel increasingly swiftly across consumers
globally. These changes in fashion markets mandate a revised theory of
fashion bearing on the organizational production of digital
culture-technology fusions and on the characteristics of fusions so
produced. This article’s theory describes digital production processes
enabling fusion’s rapid visualization, creation, and awareness among global
consumers, production processes that create or reinforce three types of
fusions: ‘beautiful technologies’, that is technologies rendered aesthetic;
‘efficient beauties’, that is aesthetic artifacts rendered technologically
efficient; ‘concoctions’, that is new technologies fused with new cultural
tastes. Finally, the theory discusses the novel characteristics of the
market supply and consumption of fashionable fusions.


The discussion will be led by Ping Wang.

The article is available via the UMD Research Port here:
http://oss.sagepub.com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/content/32/5/615.short

Please join us!



-- 
Katie Shilton
Assistant Professor
College of Information Studies
University of Maryland, College Park
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