Understanding Material Culture

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Understanding Material Culture

Author : Ian Woodward
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 1848607261
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (486 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Material Culture by : Ian Woodward

Download or read book Understanding Material Culture written by Ian Woodward and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2007-05-09 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In his interdisciplinary review of material culture, Ian Woodward goes beyond synthesis to offer a theoretically innovative reconstruction of the field. It is filled with gems of conceptual insight and empirical discovery. A wonderful book." - Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University "A well-grounded and accessible survey of the burgeoning field of material culture studies for students in sociology and consumption studies. While situating the field within the history of intellectual thought in the broader social sciences, it offers detailed and accessible case studies. These are supplemented by very useful directions for further in-depth reading, making it an excellent undergraduate course companion." - Victor Buchli, University College London Why are i-pods and mobile phones fashion accessories? Why do people spend thousands remodelling their perfectly functional kitchen? Why do people crave shoes or handbags? Is our desire for objects unhealthy, or irrational? Objects have an inescapable hold over us, not just in consumer culture but increasingly in the disciplines that study social relations too. This book offers a systematic overview of the diverse ways of studying the material as culture. Surveying the field of material culture studies through an examination and synthesis of classical and contemporary scholarship on objects, commodities, consumption, and symbolization, this book: introduces the key concepts and approaches in the study of objects and their meanings presents the full sweep of core theory - from Marxist and critical approaches to structuralism and semiotics shows how and why people use objects to perform identity, achieve social status, and narrativize life experiences analyzes everyday domains in which objects are important shows why studying material culture is necessary for understanding the social. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, consumer behaviour studies, design and fashion studies.

Understanding Material Culture

Author : Ian Woodward
Publisher : SAGE Publications Limited
ISBN 13 : 9780761942269
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Material Culture by : Ian Woodward

Download or read book Understanding Material Culture written by Ian Woodward and published by SAGE Publications Limited. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are i-pods and mobile phones fashion accessories? Why do people spend thousands remodelling their perfectly functional kitchen? Why do people crave shoes or handbags? Is our desire for objects unhealthy, or irrational? Objects have an inescapable hold over us, not just in consumer culture but increasingly in the disciplines that study social relations too. This book offers a systematic overview of the diverse ways of studying the material as culture. Surveying the field of material culture studies through an examination and synthesis of classical and contemporary scholarship on objects, commodities, consumption, and symbolization, this book: " Introduces the key concepts and approaches in the study of objects and their meanings; " Presents the full sweep of core theory - from Marxist and critical approaches to structuralism and semiotics - to evaluate the frameworks for approaching the material world; " Shows how and why people use objects to perform identity, achieve social status, and narrativize life experiences; " Analyzes everyday domains in which objects are important: social status, identity, social performance and narrativization; " Shows why studying material culture is necessary for understanding the social. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, consumer behaviour studies, design and fashion studies.

Material Culture in America

Author : Helen Sheumaker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1576076482
Total Pages : 588 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (76 download)

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Book Synopsis Material Culture in America by : Helen Sheumaker

Download or read book Material Culture in America written by Helen Sheumaker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-07 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first encyclopedia to look at the study of material culture (objects, images, spaces technology, production, and consumption), and what it reveals about historical and contemporary life in the United States. Reaching back 400 years, Material Life in America: An Encyclopedia is the first reference showing what the study of material culture reveals about American society—revelations not accessible through traditional sources and methods. In nearly 200 entries, the encyclopedia traces the history of artifacts, concepts and ideas, industries, peoples and cultures, cultural productions, historical forces, periods and styles, religious and secular rituals and traditions, and much more. Everyone from researchers and curators to students and general readers will find example after example of how the objects and environments created or altered by humans reveal as much about American life as diaries, documents, and texts.

Material Cultures

Author : Daniel Miller
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226526003
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Material Cultures by : Daniel Miller

Download or read book Material Cultures written by Daniel Miller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of material culture, while historically well established, has recently enjoyed something of a renaissance. Methods once dominated by Marxist- and commodity-oriented analyses and by the study of objects as symbols are giving way to a more ethnographic approach to artifacts. This orientation is the cornerstone of the essays presented in Material Cultures. A collection of case studies which move from the domestic sphere to the global arena, the volume includes examinations of the soundscape produced by home radios, catalog shopping, the role of paper in the workplace, and the relationship between the production and consumption of Coca-Cola in Trinidad. The diversity of the essays is mediated by their common commitment to ethnography with a material focus. Rather than examine objects as mirages of media or language, Material Cultures emphasizes how the study of objects not only contributes to an understanding of artifacts but is also an effective means for studying social values and contradictions.

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture

Author : Miriam T. Stark
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 081654929X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Transmission and Material Culture by : Miriam T. Stark

Download or read book Cultural Transmission and Material Culture written by Miriam T. Stark and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why people develop, maintain, and change cultural boundaries through time are central issues in the social and behavioral sciences in generaland anthropological archaeology in particular. What factors influence people to imitate or deviate from the behaviors of other group members? How are social group boundaries produced, perpetuated, and altered by the cumulative outcomeof these decisions? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding cultural persistence and change. The chapters included in this stimulating, multifaceted book address these questions. Working in several subdisciplines, contributors report on research in the areas of cultural boundaries, cultural transmission, and the socially organized nature of learning. Boundaries are found not only within and between the societies in these studies but also within and between the communities of scholars who study them. To break down these boundaries, this volume includes scholars who use multiple theoretical perspectives, including practice theory and evolutionary traditions, which are sometimes complementary and occasionally clashing. Geographic coverage ranges from the indigenous Americas to Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, and the time frame extends from the prehistoric or precontact to colonial periods and up to the ethnographic present. Contributors include leading scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Together, they employ archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological,experimental, and simulation data to link micro-scale processes of cultural transmission to macro-scale processes of social group boundary formation, continuity, and change.

What Objects Mean

Author : Arthur Asa Berger
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315415844
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis What Objects Mean by : Arthur Asa Berger

Download or read book What Objects Mean written by Arthur Asa Berger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur Asa Berger, author of an array of texts in communication, popular culture, and social theory, is back with the second edition of his popular, user-friendly guide for students who want to understand the social meanings of objects. In this broadly interdisciplinary text, Berger takes the reader through half a dozen theoretical models that are commonly used to analyze objects. He then describes and analyzes eleven objects, many of them new to this edition—including smartphones, Facebook, hair dye, and the American flag—showing how they demonstrate concepts like globalization, identity, and nationalism. The book includes a series of exercises that allow students to analyse objects in their own environment. Brief and inexpensive, this introductory guide will be used in courses ranging from anthropology to art history, pop culture to psychology.

Handbook of Material Culture

Author : Chris Tilley
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 1446206432
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (462 download)

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Book Synopsis Handbook of Material Culture by : Chris Tilley

Download or read book Handbook of Material Culture written by Chris Tilley and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2006-01-05 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of material culture is concerned with the relationship between persons and things in the past and in the present, in urban and industrialized and in small-scale societies across the globe. The Handbook of Material Culture provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. It is cutting-edge: rather than simply reviewing the field as it currently exists. It also attempts to chart the future: the manner in which material culture studies may be extended and developed. The Handbook of Material Culture is divided into five sections. • Section I maps material culture studies as a theoretical and conceptual field. • Section II examines the relationship between material forms, the human body and the senses. • Section III focuses on subject-object relations. • Section IV considers things in terms of processes and transformations in terms of production, exchange and consumption, performance and the significance of things over the long-term. • Section V considers the contemporary politics and poetics of displaying, representing and conserving material and the manner in which this impacts on notions of heritage, tradition and identity. The Handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes an unique and fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human. It will be of interest to all who work in the social and historical sciences, from anthropologists and archaeologists to human geographers to scholars working in heritage, design and cultural studies.

Learning Things

Author : Doug Blandy
Publisher : Teachers College Press
ISBN 13 : 0807759198
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis Learning Things by : Doug Blandy

Download or read book Learning Things written by Doug Blandy and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2018-06-08 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing provided

Writing Material Culture History

Author : Anne Gerritsen
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350105244
Total Pages : 553 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing Material Culture History by : Anne Gerritsen

Download or read book Writing Material Culture History written by Anne Gerritsen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing Material Culture History 2e examines the methodologies used in the historical study of material culture. Looking at archaeology, anthropology, art history and literary studies, the book provides students with a fundamental understanding of the relationship between artefacts and historical narratives. The book addresses the role of museums, the impact of the digital age and the representations of objects in public history, bringing together students and specialists from around the world. This new edition includes: A new substantive introduction from the editors, providing a useful roadmap for students and specialists. A more balanced and easy-to-use structure, including methodological chapters and 'object in focus' chapters consisting of case studies for classroom discussion. New chapters showing greater engagement with 20th-century material culture, non-European artefacts and the definitions and limits of material culture as a discipline. Offers global coverage and discussion of both the early modern and modern periods. Writing Material Culture History 2e is an essential tool for students seeking to understand the potential of objects to re-cast established historical narratives in new and exciting ways.

Thinking Through Material Culture

Author : Carl Knappett
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 081220249X
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Thinking Through Material Culture by : Carl Knappett

Download or read book Thinking Through Material Culture written by Carl Knappett and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material culture surrounds us and yet is habitually overlooked. So integral is it to our everyday lives that we take it for granted. This attitude has also afflicted the academic analysis of material culture, although this is now beginning to change, with material culture recently emerging as a topic in its own right within the social sciences. Carl Knappett seeks to contribute to this emergent field by adopting a wide-ranging interdisciplinary approach that is rooted in archaeology and integrates anthropology, sociology, art history, semiotics, psychology, and cognitive science. His thesis is that humans both act and think through material culture; ways of knowing and ways of doing are ingrained within even the most mundane of objects. This requires that we adopt a relational perspective on material artifacts and human agents, as a means of characterizing their complex interdependencies. In order to illustrate the networks of meaning that result, Knappett discusses examples ranging from prehistoric Aegean ceramics to Zande hunting nets and contemporary art. Thinking Through Material Culture argues that, although material culture forms the bedrock of archaeology, the discipline has barely begun to address how fundamental artifacts are to human cognition and perception. This idea of codependency among mind, action, and matter opens the way for a novel and dynamic approach to all of material culture, both past and present.

The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies

Author : Dan Hicks
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0199218714
Total Pages : 794 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies by : Dan Hicks

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies written by Dan Hicks and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of experts, the Handbook makes accessible a full range of theoretical and applied approaches to the study of material culture, and the place of materiality in social theory, presenting current thinking about material culture from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies.

Understanding Material Culture

Author : Woodward Ian
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (969 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Material Culture by : Woodward Ian

Download or read book Understanding Material Culture written by Woodward Ian and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Asian Material Culture

Author : Marianne Hulsbosch
Publisher : Amsterdam University Press
ISBN 13 : 9089640908
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis Asian Material Culture by : Marianne Hulsbosch

Download or read book Asian Material Culture written by Marianne Hulsbosch and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This richly illustrated volume offers the reader unique insight into the materiality of Asian cultures and the ways in which objects and practices can simultaneously embody and exhibit aesthetic and functional characteristics, as well as everyday and spiritual aspirations. Though each chapter is representative, rather than exhaustive, in its portrayal of Asian material culture, together they clearly demonstrate that objects are entities that resonate with discourses of human relationships, personal and group identity formations, ethics, values, trade, and, above all, distinctive futures.

The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture

Author : Ivan Gaskell
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199341761
Total Pages : 679 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture by : Ivan Gaskell

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture written by Ivan Gaskell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The past has left a huge variety of traces in material form. If historians could figure out how to make use of them to create accounts of the past, a far greater range of histories would be available than if historians were to rely on written sources alone. People who do not appear in writings could come into focus; as could the concerns of people that have escaped writing but whose material things belie their desires and actions. This book explores various ways in which aspects of the past of peoples in many times and places otherwise inaccessible can come alive to the material culture historian. It is divided into five thematic sections that address history, material culture, and-respectively-cognition, technology, symbolism, social distinction, and memory. It does so by means of six individually authored case studies in each section that range from pins to pearls, Paleolithic to Punk"--

The Lives of Objects

Author : Maia Kotrosits
Publisher : Class 200: New Studies in Religion
ISBN 13 : 022670758X
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lives of Objects by : Maia Kotrosits

Download or read book The Lives of Objects written by Maia Kotrosits and published by Class 200: New Studies in Religion. This book was released on 2020 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Judaism and Christianity as condensed illustrations of how people across time struggle with the materiality of life and death. Speaking across many fields, including classics, history, anthropology, literary, gender, and queer studies, the book journeys through the ancient Mediterranean world by way of the myriad physical artifacts that punctuate the transnational history of early Christianity. By bringing a psychoanalytically inflected approach to bear upon her materialist studies of religious history, Kotrosits makes a contribution not only to our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity, but also our sense of how different disciplines construe historical knowledge, and how we as people and thinkers understand our own relation to our material and affective past"--

Objects of Translation

Author : Finbarr Barry Flood
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400833248
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Objects of Translation by : Finbarr Barry Flood

Download or read book Objects of Translation written by Finbarr Barry Flood and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objects of Translation offers a nuanced approach to the entanglements of medieval elites in the regions that today comprise Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India. The book--which ranges in time from the early eighth to the early thirteenth centuries--challenges existing narratives that cast the period as one of enduring hostility between monolithic "Hindu" and "Muslim" cultures. These narratives of conflict have generally depended upon premodern texts for their understanding of the past. By contrast, this book considers the role of material culture and highlights how objects such as coins, dress, monuments, paintings, and sculptures mediated diverse modes of encounter during a critical but neglected period in South Asian history. The book explores modes of circulation--among them looting, gifting, and trade--through which artisans and artifacts traveled, remapping cultural boundaries usually imagined as stable and static. It analyzes the relationship between mobility and practices of cultural translation, and the role of both in the emergence of complex transcultural identities. Among the subjects discussed are the rendering of Arabic sacred texts in Sanskrit on Indian coins, the adoption of Turko-Persian dress by Buddhist rulers, the work of Indian stone masons in Afghanistan, and the incorporation of carvings from Hindu and Jain temples in early Indian mosques. Objects of Translation draws upon contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism and globalization to argue for radically new approaches to the cultural geography of premodern South Asia and the Islamic world.

Sensible Objects

Author : Elizabeth Edwards
Publisher : Berg
ISBN 13 : 184788315X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (478 download)

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Book Synopsis Sensible Objects by : Elizabeth Edwards

Download or read book Sensible Objects written by Elizabeth Edwards and published by Berg. This book was released on 2006-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropologists of the senses have long argued that cultures differ in their sensory registers. This groundbreaking volume applies this idea to material culture and the social practices that endow objects with meanings in both colonial and postcolonial relationships. It challenges the privileged position of the sense of vision in the analysis of material culture. Contributors argue that vision can only be understood in relation to the other senses. In this they present another challenge to the assumed western five-sense model, and show how our understanding of material culture in both historical and contemporary contexts might be reconfigured if we consider the role of smell, taste, touch and sound, as well as sight, in making meanings about objects.