Place, Technology, and Representation

Three challenges of intellectual, political, and moral significance confront our discipline in the new millennium. First, a thorough understanding of sense of place must be harnessed in the service of ecolate dwelling. Second, our inquiry into materiality must expand to encompass the numinous dimension of technology. Finally, we must resolve the crisis of representation that limits our ability to express the insights we achieve in our research into consumer behavior. In this essay, these challenges are framed and responses imagined in light of a set of literatures from disciplines contiguous to our own. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.