In this article we introduce both the book and the research perspective in which
it is included. Even though the cultural and design fields are different areas of study, research, and action, they intersect each other, both at the level of concepts and at the level
of practices. As anthropologists, we mainly focus on the concept of culture and discuss its
intersections with the field of design. On the one hand, understanding culture as an active
and disputed process of construction of meanings (Wright 2007), we consider design, in
its different dimensions and manifestations (designs of products, spaces, performing arts, audio-visual arts, communication strategies, etc.), as a field of disputes over perspectives
and practices. Moreover, any design is always developed in a sociocultural framework. On
the other hand, we can analyse the objects, practices and cultural representations considering the design that shapes them, the valuations those designs recreate, modify or sustain,
and the policies that shape them.