By Learning Site
Copenhagen: Learning Site, 2008
Pages: 60 bound, 1 loose insert
Dimensions: 6" x 8.25"
Cover: soft
Binding: staple
Process: offset
Color: full color
Edition size: unknown
ISBN: 978-87-92065-00-1

This book is Learning Site's third. It was made in conjunction with the large scale public exhibition 48 degrees celsius in New Dehli in 2008. The book includes images of their stunning construction, Poster Dwelling, which is made of paper mache. It mimics another, nearby dome that is a ventilation shaft for a large market that is under the ground. The book looks at the extremely complicated intersection of land use, public space, development and special economic zones. The book has several essays by Vandana Shiva, outspoken activist around food, land use, and human rights.

The back of the book reads:

[Learning Book #003] has been developed in relation to issues suggested by the spaces and social activity related to the Palika Bazaar market, the economic zoning system and the green city plan for Delhi, 2008.

The papier mache dome of the Poster Dwelling connects the marketplace to broader themes of ecology, markets, food supply and the economy of land. The Poster Dwelling is constructed from recycled paper from Delhi’s ‘office zone’, and its surface will be covered with images and texts that explore the tension between work, land and economy, and the role of markets in social and cultural organization.

The orthodox economics that prevails in ‘Market Economies’ suggests that all social and cultural relations are the result of market forces. Conversely, historians, anthropologists and sociologists suggest that markets are, in fact, deeply embedded in cultural practices, social conventions and local traditions. Often, ‘real markets’ rub shoulders with an ‘ideology of Markets’. Real markets operate within the social, cultural and legal constraints of particular localities and customs. But increasingly they co-exist with ‘conceptual’ Markets. In Special Economic Zones for example, local traditions, customs and laws are suspended. In their place, the ‘society’, ‘culture’ and ‘law’ of ‘The Market’ reigns. Between ‘real markets’ and the ‘ideology of the Market’ lie complex issues of labor, access to land and knowledge, ecology, politics and power. The surface of Poster Dwelling explores these interrelations and their relevance for the environment.

The publication includes texts by Jaime Stapleton, Vandana Shiva and Arunava Dasgupta, some of the drawings from the [Poster Dwelling; Land, Market and Economy] and other things.