Future and Furniture: A Study of a New Economy Firm's Powers of Persuasion

The article is an empirical analysis of how a Scandinavian new economy firm was able to persuade a number of business journalists that it represented `the future'. It analyses how visitors to the firm were met with a specific and persuasive combination of rhetorical and material ressources. It suggests that the persuasive power of the firm was based on its ability to evoke and articulate a series of pointed contrasts between the attractive working life within the firm and the ordinary and problematic work life elsewhere. The article suggests that this strategy of drawing contrasts together differs from the mode of persuasion usually described by STS. Keywords: Sociology of expectations, Sociology of futures, Sociology of anticipation, New Economy, dot-com, persuasion, power, actor-network theory, materialised contrast argument.