Influenced by the study of environmental aesthetics and Japanese aesthetics, Yuiko Saito’s Everyday Aesthetics merges the two topics into one theoretical discipline. She looks at aesthetics as more than just the tastes of the art world, and refocuses our attention to small choices and preferences we make in daily life. Saito rightly notes that among most scholars of Western aesthetics and art, there is a bias against the non-art objects, which aestheticians often view as inferior (folklorists working with state arts agencies, no doubt will agree that this problem still exists). The author notes how the common daily aesthetic choices should be viewed independently from the art-centered paradigm, because the impact of these everyday inclinations, assumptions, and ideals are not lesser than art, but overlooked for their commonness. She writes that the goal of everyday aesthetics is to “illuminate the ordinarily neglected, but gem-like, aesthetic potentials hidden behind the trivial, mundane and commonplace façade” (50).

Throughout the work, the author ponders the obvious and teases new layers of meaning and consequences out of the seemingly mundane aspects of daily life. However, these exercises are rhetorical, as she has done little ethnographic field research. While she cites the work of others who are interested in the daily inclinations and choices that people make, she provides no in-depth case study or analysis. Instead, she surfs academic anecdotes developing and verifying her points. The author begins by describing the neglect of aesthetics in everyday life by scholars, and makes clear the significance and ramification of aesthetics choices. She notes that our daily preferences can often have major impact on our lives and our world. From our over-fertilized lush green lawns, bleached white clothes, and collective resistance to green building methods, it becomes apparent that our aesthetic choices have important and sometimes dire consequences for the environment and our quality of life.

As I read the book, it became apparent that the author was interested in the effect of everyday aesthetic choices on the environment and the impact of our collective choices on our quality of lives, which is important and worthy of greater analysis. However, the author approaches this enormous and sweeping topic without offering the specifics and details that an ethnographer would bring to the subject. The author had a much more ambitious aim for her book; she writes to motivate us, not to appreciate the everyday cultural expression but rather to understand its implications and to realign it with our “strategies for the project of world-making, to which all of us in some way participate sometimes quite consciously and some other times unwittingly” (244).

As a scholar interested in craft and material culture, I was excited to review Saito’s book; however, I realized after reading her text, it did not meet my expectations (or aesthetics) as a folklorist. Perhaps the mystique of the un-coloned title or the beautiful photograph of a Japanese pot on the cover lured me in. Nevertheless, I was dissatisfied with her methods and approach. Saito’s bibliography omits the works of folklorists, who have contributed so much to exploring this topic. While Saito mentions in passing the work of Arts and Craft scholars such as John Ruskin, William Morris, Yanagi Soetsu, and Bernard Leach, I question how she could not include such works as Henry Glassie’s Art and Life in Bangladesh, Michael Owen Jones’s Craftsman of the Cumberlands, Leslie Prosterman’s Ordinary Life, Festival Days, or Geraldine Niva Johnson’s Rag Rugs and Rug Makers of Western Maryland. The writer seems oblivious to our discipline’s attention to the aesthetics of expressive culture in everyday life. The book’s primary aim, the author claims, is to “unearth the fairly familiar and commonly shared dimensions of our lives that have been neglected in theoretical aesthetics and to appreciate their significance, aesthetic or otherwise” (4). While I share her interest in, as Warren Roberts would say, “looking at the overlooked,” I feel that the author does some overlooking herself. Perhaps this omission is in part because she addresses her text primarily to aestheticians in the fine arts world; her work is not written for folklorists, anthropologists, and historians who work with the aesthetics of material culture. Once I realized who her intended audience was, I became less critical of the book. Saito’s perception of aesthetic choices in everyday life is offered from a very specific vantage point, one of activism and change, rather than documentation and analysis.

In conclusion, I feel that Yuriko Saito’s Everyday Aesthetics contributes to the ongoing dialog in aesthetic theory. The author prods readers to think inclusively (and expansively) about their aesthetic sensibilities. However, I cannot recommend it as a book for the general JFRR reader; it will only frustrate the folklorist and material culturist, who will agree with her premise, but not her methods. A thoughtful book, just not the one I had hoped to review.

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[Review length: 807 words • Review posted on October 13, 2009]