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Viewing report
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Front Yard Machines. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, June 2008, Pages: 92
The front yard has long since ceased to be solely a functional object and has transcended through both personal and financial investment to become an object of expressive communication. Active agencies of society, technology and an ideology of consumption are ever present in this spatial structure, but it is not overly determined by just one factor. This book brings together seemly disparate fields in order to understand the front yard as a geo-social artefact. Through the coupling of landscape and human bodies, an ebb and flow of communication occurs and the space becomes an intentional or unintentional extension of homeowners or occupants. In a milieu of commodification, front yards impress upon others ideas and concepts of social standing and prestige. It is a means for surveillience; a window to aberration and abnormality in society. Preferred models do exist for constructing front yards. The text offers a new understanding of a cultural landscape often considered banal, and should be useful to Social Scientists and other professionals interested in understanding and exploring our complex social histories - narratives constructed and displayed in physical space.
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