Thing Politics and Life-Worlds: On the Dynamics of Materiality (2019) (original) (raw)
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AH 466 Material Worlds: Topics in Material Culture Studies
Things, artifacts, objects... These are our intimate companions as we live in and make sense of the world. We tend to categorize them as fetishes, souvenirs, heirlooms, tools, knick knacks, voodoo dolls, marionettes, toys, furniture, relics, object d’art, rocks, fossils, buildings, landscapes, amounting to what we cumulatively call “material culture”. Art historians, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists and ethnohistorians among others have attempted to make sense of the past (and the present) through the material residues, artifacts, remnants of human practices. Things, fetishized or not, become protagonists in our reconstructions of the past, as we increasingly believe that societies construct their world through the making of things, their use, circulation, discard. However, are things happy about such instrumentalization, categorization and secondary positioning as inanimate and silent members of the world? The recent interest in the academia on materiality has brought about a new age of things, the so-called “material turn,” revisiting old theories of materialism and asking fresh questions about alternative, object-oriented ontologies. In this course we will explore new work on thing theory, materials and materiality, the social life and the cultural biography of objects, their ability to configure social realities, human subjectivities, and cultural identities.
In this paper we will attempt to give a social interpretation of material culture through the comprehension of the symbolic nature of artefacts and the meanings of things in cultural process. It is shown that cultural things are objects by which people tried to affect and influence their immediate environment. Such things, which acquired a social sense through becoming a focus of human activity and included in symbolic activity, began to play a cultural role as an important means of overcoming of social conflicts. Authors consider the different aspects of existence of things in culture by the material patterns and in the limits of current theoretical knowledge. It is distinguished such concepts as thing, object, subject and artefact in cognitive analysis of material culture. Moreover it is necessary not only to distinguish thing as object, but also to show thing as sign and symbol of human relations. The sense of thing is wider than self-thing as one is not only matter, but also thing is that we are thinking about it, how using it and how understand it. An anthropological approach to interpretation of material objects enables to explain the thing as carrier and image of human qualities, i.e. personages of culture. The data show that things as important means of cultural changes must be carefully considered in context of urgent tasks and challenges of globalizing culture.
Material civilization: things and society
British Journal of Sociology, 2006
This paper argues that although classical sociology has largely overlooked the importance of social relations with the material world in shaping the form of society, Braudel's concept of ‘material civilization’ is a useful way to begin to understand the sociological significance of this relationship. The limitations of Braudel's historical and general concept can be partially overcome with Elias's analysis of the connection between ‘technization’ and ‘civilization’ that allows for both a civilizing and a de-civilizing impact of emergent forms of material relation that both lengthen and shorten the chains of interdependence between the members of a society. It is suggested that the concept of the ‘morality of things’ employed by a number of commentators is useful in summarizing the civilizing effects of material objects and addressing their sociological significance. From the sociology of consumption the idea of materiality as a sign of social relationships can be drawn, and from the sociology of technology the idea of socio-technical systems and actor-networks can contribute to the understanding of material civilization. It is argued that the concept of ‘material capital’ can usefully summarize the variable social value of objects but to understand the complexity of material civilization as it unfolds in everyday life, an analysis of ‘material interaction’ is needed. Finally the paper suggests some initial themes and issues apparent in contemporary society that the sociological study of material civilization might address; the increased volume, functional complexity and material specificity of objects and the increased social complexity, autonomy and substitutability that is entailed. A theory of ‘material civilization’ is the first step in establishing a sociology of objects.
Stud. Ethnol. Croat. vol. 36: 239–266., 2024
The article aims to provide an insight into the analytical approach that has emerged over the last four decades, known as new material culture studies. The first section, drawing primarily on the overviews by Miller (1994a) and Buchli (2002a), delineates the most important stages and turns of the interest of social sciences in material culture. The second section enumerates some of the distinguishing features characterizing (most of) the research projects that adopt this analytical approach, with a special focus on material agency (how do things construct subjects?), objectification, as well as the perspectives of things-in-motion and things-in-process (Domańska 2006). The third section highlights some of the main directions of the problem sensitivity that is at the heart of new material culture studies (concentrating, among other issues, on the nature of the boundary between subjects and things, the social constructions of authenticity, the politics of style, taste, and aesthetics, as well as the complex relationship between things and memory). Finally, the last section describes how the biographical method has gained such popularity in recent decades among researchers committed to this analytical approach and reveals the reasons for its explanatory power.
Matter(s) of material culture - 2020
What is striking in equal measure, reaching towards the end this volume, are the diversity and the coherence of its contributions. The 'fieldworks' or 'terrains' explored by the authors reach far and wide, both geographically and thematically. Besides France (and Switzerland), they range from North and Sub-Saharan Africa to the Indian sub-continent and the islands of the Far East, and from the lingering odours surrounding municipal divers and waste managers to the rarefied atmosphere of Parisian museums, from the transmission of skills among Swiss watchmakers to the swapping of shirts among suburban teenagers. Inbetween we encounter, weavers of spirited fabrics, wearers of charismatic silks, dressers of altar deities and upholders of royal powers. In a broad spectrum spanning from behaviourism to phenomenology, the contributions we have just read, and more generally the Matière à Penser (MaP) approach they exemplify, are all situated far closer to the latter pole. To be sure, a range of 'objective' measures are at hand, epistemologically and methodologically speaking, including field enquiries, participant observation, pseudonymised interviews and apprenticeship immersion, as variously attested in the chapters by Céline Rosselin-Bareille, Marie-Pierre Julien, Urmila Mohan, Hervé Munz or Geoffrey Gowlland. Granted that, these are quite manifestly subjects-and more specifically subjects-in-becoming, acting, with and on their bodies, with and on things-that occupy here pride of place. Put otherwise, the chapters across this volume convey a diversified and stimulating array of material culture-aided introspections, whereby subjects-be they scavengers, believers, craftspeople or dressed-up kids (and grown-ups)-performatively incorporate the material world into their beings. Alongside Marcel Mauss' famous homme total, fleshed out already in the inter-war years as a fusion of physiological, psychological and social realms (as recalled in the introductory chapter by Laurence Douny and Urmila Mohan), the thread linking most contributions together resides in their phenomenological reliance, so to speak, on material culture, lived and thought-with. Rather than being reduced to the mere provision of 13 9781350077362_voucher_proofs.indb 199 18/09/20 9:59 PM
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.