Metaphor and Material Culture

Metaphor and Material Culture PDF Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
ISBN: 9780631192039
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book provides an innovative contribution to debates about the use of metaphor in the social sciences written by one of today's foremost archaeological theorists. Christopher Tilley combines theoretical interpretation with practical examples to show the significance of the concept of metaphor in the study and writing of material forms. The first part of the book provides an overview of the use and value of the notion of metaphor in its broadest sense. Tilley argues that without metaphor human communication would be almost impossible and he shows how metaphors provide the basis for an interpretative understanding of the world. He then presents three archaeological and ethnographic studies of metaphors chosen to demonstrate the richness of the concept for understanding texts, objects and artworks. Part III of the book examines metaphor more specifically in relation to the social construction of landscape and the meaning of place in the prehistoric past and the present. The author concludes by developing elements of a theory of material forms as "solid metaphor". The book will be of interest to all those examining metaphor in its various applications.

Metaphor and Material Culture

Metaphor and Material Culture PDF Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
ISBN: 9780631192039
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides an innovative contribution to debates about the use of metaphor in the social sciences written by one of today's foremost archaeological theorists. Christopher Tilley combines theoretical interpretation with practical examples to show the significance of the concept of metaphor in the study and writing of material forms. The first part of the book provides an overview of the use and value of the notion of metaphor in its broadest sense. Tilley argues that without metaphor human communication would be almost impossible and he shows how metaphors provide the basis for an interpretative understanding of the world. He then presents three archaeological and ethnographic studies of metaphors chosen to demonstrate the richness of the concept for understanding texts, objects and artworks. Part III of the book examines metaphor more specifically in relation to the social construction of landscape and the meaning of place in the prehistoric past and the present. The author concludes by developing elements of a theory of material forms as "solid metaphor". The book will be of interest to all those examining metaphor in its various applications.

Metaphor in Culture

Metaphor in Culture PDF Author: Zoltán Kövecses
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139444611
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
To what extent and in what ways is metaphorical thought relevant to an understanding of culture and society? More specifically: can the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor simultaneously explain both universality and diversity in metaphorical thought? Cognitive linguists have done important work on universal aspects of metaphor, but they have paid much less attention to why metaphors vary both interculturally and intraculturally as extensively as they do. In this book, Zoltán Kövecses proposes a new theory of metaphor variation. First, he identifies the major dimension of metaphor variation, that is, those social and cultural boundaries that signal discontinuities in human experience. Second, he describes which components, or aspects of conceptual metaphor are involved in metaphor variation, and how they are involved. Third, he isolates the main causes of metaphor variation. Fourth Professor Kövecses addresses the issue to the degree of cultural coherence in the interplay among conceptual metaphors, embodiment, and causes of metaphor variation.

Cultural Metaphors

Cultural Metaphors PDF Author: Martin J. Gannon
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761913375
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The often-overlooked views of political scientists and journalists who conceive of the world in terms of zero-sum games are explored, as are the issues of the symbolism associated with cultural metaphors. The book concludes with a description of specific uses of cultural metaphors or metaphorical applications."--BOOK JACKET.

Origins and Revolutions

Origins and Revolutions PDF Author: Clive Gamble
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462490
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
In this study Clive Gamble presents and questions two of the most famous descriptions of change in prehistory. The first is the 'human revolution', when evidence for art, music, religion and language first appears. The second is the economic and social revolution of the Neolithic period. Gamble identifies the historical agendas behind 'origins research' and presents a bold alternative to these established frameworks, relating the study of change to the material basis of human identity. He examines, through artefact proxies, how changing identities can be understood using embodied material metaphors and in two major case-studies charts the prehistory of innovations, asking, did agriculture really change the social world? This is an important and challenging book that will be essential reading for every student and scholar of prehistory.

The Material Culture Reader

The Material Culture Reader PDF Author: Victor Buchli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000180980
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Material culture has finally earned a central place within anthropology. Emerging from the pioneering work done at University College London, this reader brings together for the first time seminal articles that have helped shape the anthropological study of material culture. With topics ranging from the anthropology of art to architecture, landscape studies, archaeology, consumption studies and heritage management, this key text reflects the breadth of material culture studies today. The authors, who discuss field sites as distant as Vanuatu, New Ireland, Trinidad and Soviet Russia, show how material culture provides a new lens for viewing the world around us and effectively bridges the gap between theory and data. Providing the first-ever synthesis of these ground-breaking essays in an easily accessible volume, this book will serve as a comprehensive introduction to the subject and a valuable reference guide for anyone interested in material culture, anthropology, art and museum studies.

Metaphors We Live By

Metaphors We Live By PDF Author: George Lakoff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226470997
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

Materialising Exile

Materialising Exile PDF Author: Sandra H. Dudley
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845456405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Focusing on the highly diverse Karenni refugee population living in camps on the Thai-Burma border, this innovative book explores materiality, embodiment, memory, imagination, and identity among refugees, providing new and important ways of understanding how refugees make sense of experience, self, and other. It examines how and to what ends refugees perceive, represent, manipulate, use as metaphor, and otherwise engage with material objects and spaces, and includes a focus on the real and metaphorical journeys that bring about and perpetuate exile. The combined emphasis on both displacement and materiality, and the analysis of the cultural construction and intersections of exilic objects, spaces, and bodies, are unique in the study of both refugees and material culture. Drawing theoretical influences from phenomenology, aesthetics, and beyond, as well as from refugee studies and anthropology, the author addresses the current lack of theoretical analysis of the material, visual, spatial, and embodied aspects of forced migration, providing a fundamentally interlinked analysis of enforced exile and materiality.

Chinese Architecture and Metaphor

Chinese Architecture and Metaphor PDF Author: Jiren Feng
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824861167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Investigating the historical tradition of Chinese architectural writing from antiquity to the twelfth century, Chinese Architecture and Metaphor reveals significant and fascinating social and cultural phenomena in the most important primary text for the study of the Chinese building tradition. Unlike previous scholarship, which has reviewed this imperially commissioned architectural manual largely as a technical work, this volume considers the Yingzao fashi’s unique literary value and explores the rich cultural implications in and behind its technical content. Utilizing a philological approach, the author pays particular attention to the traditional and contemporary architectural terminology presented in the Yingzao fashi. In examining the semantic meaning of the architectural terms used in the manual, he uncovers a systematic architectural metaphor wherein bracketing elements are likened to flowers, flowering branches, and foliage: Thus pillars with bracketing above are compared to blossoming trees. More importantly, this intriguing imagery was shared by different social groups, in particular craftsmen and literati, and craftsmen themselves employed literary knowledge in naming architectural elements. Relating these phenomena to the unprecedented flourishing of literature, the literati’s greater admiration of technical knowledge, and the higher intellectual capacity of craftsmen during the Song, Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates how the learned and “unlearned” cultures entangled in the construction of architectural knowledge in premodern China. It convincingly shows that technical language served as a faithful carrier of contemporary popular culture and aesthetic concepts. Chinese Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates a high level of engagement with a broad spectrum of sophisticated Chinese sources. It will become a classic work for all students and scholars of East Asian architecture.

Thinking Through Material Culture

Thinking Through Material Culture PDF Author: Carl Knappett
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081220249X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
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.

Blood and Kinship

Blood and Kinship PDF Author: Christopher H. Johnson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857457500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.