The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility

The Bureaucracy of Beauty, a wide-ranging work of cultural theory, connects architectural history with the past and present of empire. As his central focus, Dutta takes The Department of Science and Arts, detailing its influence on museums, design schools, and architecture throughout the British Empire. In an expansive analysis, Dutta explores the development of intellectual property laws, design pedagogy, the relation of colonial tutelage to economic policy, and competing philosophies of aesthetics. Ignited by engagements with Benjamin, Marx, Adam Smith, Kant, and Gandhi, this book offers a rich study in the history of ideas. From nineteenth-century Britain to twenty-first century America, The Bureaucracy of Beauty offers theory of how things-big things-change. Book jacket.

Arindam Dutta is an Associate Professor of Architectural History at MIT