EBOOK: Materiality and Society

EBOOK: Materiality and Society PDF Author: Tim Dant
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335224733
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the relationships between society andmaterial culture: the interaction between people and things.Tim Dant argues that the traditional approach to materialculture has focused on the symbolic meanings of objects,largely overlooking the material impact that objects have oneveryday life in late modernity. Dant resists the now well-establishedmodel of consumption as the principal relationshipwith ‘things’ in our lives. Using the motor car as a recurringtheme, he shows how we confront our society through materialinteraction with the objects that surround us. Materiality and Society draws on debates with historical,philosophical and theoretical discourses that address materiality,from Braudel and Merleau-Ponty to Heidegger and Latour. Thebook opens up new lines of enquiry and makes a convincingcase for the closer study of the interaction between people andthings. This book is key reading for students and researchers in a varietyof disciplines concerned with social relationships with things –including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, andtechnology studies.

EBOOK: Materiality and Society

EBOOK: Materiality and Society PDF Author: Tim Dant
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335224733
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the relationships between society andmaterial culture: the interaction between people and things.Tim Dant argues that the traditional approach to materialculture has focused on the symbolic meanings of objects,largely overlooking the material impact that objects have oneveryday life in late modernity. Dant resists the now well-establishedmodel of consumption as the principal relationshipwith ‘things’ in our lives. Using the motor car as a recurringtheme, he shows how we confront our society through materialinteraction with the objects that surround us. Materiality and Society draws on debates with historical,philosophical and theoretical discourses that address materiality,from Braudel and Merleau-Ponty to Heidegger and Latour. Thebook opens up new lines of enquiry and makes a convincingcase for the closer study of the interaction between people andthings. This book is key reading for students and researchers in a varietyof disciplines concerned with social relationships with things –including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, andtechnology studies.

Materiality And Society

Materiality And Society PDF Author: Dant, Tim
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 033520855X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the relationships between society and material culture: the interaction between people and things. Tim Dant argues that the traditional approach to material culture has focused on the symbolic meanings of objects, largely overlooking the material impact that objects have on everyday life in late modernity.

Practicing Materiality

Practicing Materiality PDF Author: Ruth M. Van Dyke
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816531277
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
It is little wonder that relationships between things and humans are front-and-center in the contemporary social sciences, given the presence of technologies in every conceivable aspect of our lives. From Bruno Latour to Ian Hodder, anthropologists and archaeologists are embracing “thing theory” and the “ontological turn.” In Practicing Materiality, Ruth M. Van Dyke cautions that as anthropologists turn toward animals and things, they run the risk of turning away from people and intentional actions. Practicing Materiality focuses on the practical job of applying materiality to anthropological investigations, but with the firm retention of anthropocentrism. The philosophical discussions that run through the nine chapters develop practical applications for material studies, including Heideggerian phenomenology, Gellian secondary agency, object life histories, and bundling. Seven case studies are flanked by an introduction and a discussion chapter. The case studies represent a wide range of archaeological and anthropological contexts, from contemporary New York City and Turkey to fifteenth-century Portugal, the ancient southwest United States, and the ancient Andes. Authors in every chapter argue for the rejection of subject/object dualism, regarding material things as actively involved in the negotiation of power within human social relationships. Practicing Materiality demonstrates that it is possible to focus on the entangled lives of things without losing sight of their political and social implications.

The Social Life of Materials

The Social Life of Materials PDF Author: Adam Drazin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000183149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Materials play a central role in society. Beyond the physical and chemical properties of materials, their cultural properties have often been overlooked in anthropological studies: finished products have been perceived as ‘social’ yet the materials which comprise them are considered ‘raw’ or natural’. The Social Life of Materials proposes a new perspective in this interdisciplinary field. Diverting attention from the consumption of objects, the book looks towards the properties of materials and how these exist through many transformations in a variety of cultural contexts.Human societies have always worked with materials. However, the customs and traditions surrounding this differ according to the place, the time and the material itself. Whether or not the material is man-made, materials are defined by social intervention. Today, these constitute one of the most exciting areas of global scientific research and innovation, harboring the potential to act as key vehicles of change in the world. But this ‘materials revolution’ has complex social implications. Smart materials are designed to anticipate our actions and needs, yet we are increasingly unable to apprehend the composite materials which comprise new products.Bringing together ethnographic studies of cultures from around the world, this collection explores the significance of materials by moving beyond questions of what may be created from them. Instead, the text argues that the materials themselves represent a shifting ground around which relationships, identities and powers are constantly formed and dissolved in the act of making and remaking.

Experiencing Materiality

Experiencing Materiality PDF Author: Valentina Gamberi
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800730357
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Get Book Here

Book Description
Representing a cutting-edge study of the junction between theoretical anthropology, material culture studies, religious studies and museum anthropology, this study examines the interaction between the human and the nonhuman in a museum setting usually defined as ‘non-Western’, ‘non-scientific’ and ‘religious.’ Combining an on-site analysis of exhibitive spaces with archival research and interviews with museum curators, the chapters highlight contradictions of museum practices, and suggests that museum practitioners use museum spaces and artefacts as a way of formulating new theoretical stances in material culture studies, thus viewing museums as producers of theories together with affective engagements.

The Materiality of Mourning

The Materiality of Mourning PDF Author: Zahra Newby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351127640
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tangible remains play an important role in our relationships with the dead; they are pivotal to how we remember, mourn and grieve. The chapters in this volume analyse a diverse range of objects and their role in the processes of grief and mourning, with contributions by scholars in anthropology, history, fashion, thanatology, religious studies, archaeology, classics, sociology, and political science. The book brings together consideration of emotions, memory and material agency to inform a deeper understanding of the specific roles played by objects in funerary contexts across historical and contemporary societies.

Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture

Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture PDF Author: Paul Graves-Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135107998
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture offers a new approach to the study of contemporary objects, to give the reader a new understanding of the relationship between people and their material world. It asks how the very stuff of our world has shaped our societies by addressing a broad array of questions including: * why do Berliners have such strange door keys? * should the Isle of Wight pop festival be preserved? * could aliens tell a snail shell from a waste paper basket * why did Victorian England make so much of death and burial?

Government of Paper

Government of Paper PDF Author: Matthew S. Hull
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520272145
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Drawing inspiration from actor-network theory, science studies, and semiotics, this brilliant book makes us completely rethink the workings of bureaucracy as analyzed by Max Weber and James Scott. Matthew Hull demonstrates convincingly how the materiality of signs truly matters for understanding the projects of ‘the state.’” - Katherine Verdery, author of What was Socialism, and What Comes Next? “We are used to studies of roads and rails as central material infrastructure for the making of modern states. But what of records, the reams and reams of paper that inscribe the state-in-making? This brilliant book inquires into the materiality of information in colonial and postcolonial Pakistan. This is a work of signal importance for our understanding of the everyday graphic artifacts of authority.” - Bill Maurer, author of Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason "This is an excellent and truly exceptional ethnography. Hull presents a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich reading that will be an invaluable resource to scholars in the field of Anthropology and South Asian studies. The author’s focus on bureaucracy, “corruption," writing systems and urban studies (Islamabad) in a post-colonial context makes for a unique ethnographic engagement with contemporary Pakistan. In addition, Hull’s study is a refreshing voice that breaks the mold of current representation of Pakistan through the security studies paradigm." - Kamran Asdar Ali, Director, South Asia Institute, University of Texas

Materiality and Social Practice

Materiality and Social Practice PDF Author: Joseph Maran
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN: 9781782975410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Materiality and Social Practice investigates the transformative potential arising from the interplay between material forms, social practices and intercultural relations. Such a focus necessitates an approach that takes a transcultural perspective as a fundamental methodology and, then a broader understanding of the inter-relationship between humans and objects. Adopting a transcultural approach forces us to change archaeology's approach towards items coming from the outside. By using them mostly for reconstructing systems of exchange or for chronology, archaeology has for a long time reduced them to their properties as objects and as being foreign. This volume explores the notion that the significance of such items does not derive from the transfer from one place to another as such but, rather, from the ways in which they were used and contextualised. The main question is how, through their integration into discourses and practices, new frameworks of meaning were created conforming neither with what had existed in the receiving society nor in the area of origin of the objects.

Architecture, Materiality and Society

Architecture, Materiality and Society PDF Author: Anna-Lisa Müller
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137461136
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the extent to which the insights of STS can be used to analyse the role of architecture in and for social life. The contributions examine the question of whether architecture and thus materiality as a whole has agency. The book also proposes a theoretical and methodological approach on how to research architecture's agency.