Material Culture Studies: a reactionary view. (original) (raw)

Handbook of Material Culture. Edited by Christopher Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, Book Review

Journal of Folklore Research Reviews, 2007

Try to imagine a person engaged in any activity. Now list the objects that are included in this scene. There are always things. The clothes we wear, the surfaces we touch, what we can see, our own body, the smells, the sounds. Even in philosophies that try to keep to only the bare essentials, let us say for example Zen Buddhism, a great concern with objects, in Zen the simplicity and crudeness of artifacts used for tea ceremony, has taken much attention and work. Material culture is everywhere, but not enough in academic work, say the authors of the volume reviewed here.

Material Culture (syllabus, 2025)

This graduate seminar provides an introduction to the study of material culture. This is an enormous topic that can be approached from many different angles. Over the course of the semester, we will sample a number of these options, dipping our toes here and there into a lively, multi-disciplinary conversation about the relationship between humans and the broader material world. We will engage with the work of historians, archaeologists, ethnographers, geographers, philosophers, political theorists, and more, all of them committed to the interrogation of specific case studies but many also seeking to break new theoretical ground or clarify the particular methodological challenges that one encounters when approaching the world of things. Our itinerary will include excursions into object biography, thing theory, new materialism, archaeologies of the contemporary, social memory, affect, cultural heritage conflict, the ethics of museum display, and recent efforts to more fully incorporate non-human living beings in the stories that we tell about the past and present. Throughout, our attention will be focused squarely on the historical dimension, that is, on the connection between material culture, the writing of history, and the politics of the past.

Moves and Approaches in Studies of Material Culture

Historically, anthropologists have looked to objects to tell the stories of the people who made them. Objects have been viewed as extensions of the human self and regarded as symbolic manifestations of culture. Since the early days of anthropology, material culture has provided a lens through which anthropologists have gained insights into the nature of humanity, often looking to objects from the past to form richer, more meaningful understandings of the present. New trends in contemporary anthropology have opened up diverse possibilities for material culture studies and have created intersections and overlaps between studies of material culture and other disciplines. These shifts have offered up new methodologies for investigating material culture as it relates to other aspects of human endeavor and thought while simultaneously critiquing the normative assumptions of the field.

State of the Field: Material Culture

History, 2021

This article surveys the state of the field of material culture within the discipline of history. The study of material culture-the myriad layers of cultural meaning embedded within objects-has been adopted by historians from colleagues in anthropology, archaeology and museum studies, and continues to thrive as an interdisciplinary field in tandem with art history and literary studies. As inventive digital and embodied methodologies within material culture begin to shape the future of the field, this article takes the opportunity to reflect upon the opportunities and impediments presented to scholars of material culture. It elucidates the diverse and often unfamiliar vernaculars of material objects, and reflects upon future directions in the study of material culture.