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Risk as a Window to Agency: A Case Study of Three Decorators
Author(s) -
Blossom Nancy H.,
Turpin John C.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of interior design
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.229
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1939-1668
pISSN - 1071-7641
DOI - 10.1111/j.1939-1668.2008.00003.x
Subject(s) - cognitive reframing , agency (philosophy) , framing (construction) , structure and agency , aesthetics , persona , sociology , social psychology , context (archaeology) , perception , taste , social constructionism , postmodernism , social environment , psychology , history , social science , art , literature , humanities , archaeology , neuroscience
This paper explores the idea of “risk” by examining the role of three women in interior design in the twentieth century (Elsie de Wolfe, 1865–1950; Dorothy Draper, 1888–1969; and Sister Parish, 1929–1994). Women’s roles as arbiters of taste were consistent with the social construction of the female gender at the turn of the century; that these roles involved risk—the perception of possible loss or injury—is, for the most part, overlooked by social historians. Our theoretical framework is built upon three keywords from the vocabularies of postmodern social history and women’s history: discourse, experience, and agency. These three terms represent the important recognition that the collective understanding of history is not static, but is dependent on the social constructs of the period, as well as (1) how individuals experienced, interpreted, and acted within these constructs and (2) how historians understand and interpret the individual actions in the context of the same constructs. These concepts suggest that individual characters have agency (i.e., power or choice) in framing or reframing an event, based on their unique view of the world. It is through agency that we explore unique qualities of de Wolfe, Draper, and Parish. The stories of de Wolfe, Draper, and Parish demonstrate that risk of traditional values, risk of public persona, and risk of financial security all influenced the ways that they navigated the social and economic circumstances that surrounded them. Each risk, whether imposed on or undertaken by our protagonists, was a seed of change that ultimately affected the social and professional construct of the field of interior design.