Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631172857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the very nature of interpretation itself: how we 'read' artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the complex relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.
Reading Material Culture
Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631172857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the very nature of interpretation itself: how we 'read' artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the complex relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631172857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the very nature of interpretation itself: how we 'read' artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the complex relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.
Reading Matter
Author: Arthur Asa Berger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351494732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
To be civilized involves, among other things, making, using, and buying objects. Although speculation on the significance of objects often tends to be casual, there are professionals--anthropologists, historians, semioticians, Marxists, sociologists, and psychologists--who analyze material culture in a systematic way and attempt to elicit from it reliable information about people, societies, and cultures. One reason that analyzing objects has been problematical for scholars is the lack of a sound methodology governing multidisciplinary research. Reading Matter addresses this problem by defining a comprehensive set of methodological approaches that can be used to analyze and interpret material culture and relate it to personality and society.Berger offers discussions of the main concepts found in semiotic, historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and sociological analysis. He provides practical descriptions of the working methods of each discipline and demarcates their special areas of investigation. Berger's lively discussions include a wealth of illustrative examples that help to clarify the complex and often difficult theories that underlie interpretations of material culture. In the second part of his analysis, Berger uses these disciplines to investigate one subject--fashion and an important aspect of fashion, blue jeans, and what the author calls the denimization phenomenon. Here he shows how different methods of reading material culture end up with different perspectives on things--even when they are dealing with the same topic.The author's focus is on the material culture of post-literate societies and cultures, both contemporary and historical. This comparative approach enables the reader to trace the evolution of objects from past to present or to see how American artifacts spread to different cultures, acquiring a wholly new meaning in the process. Reading Matter is an important contribution to the study of popula
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351494732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
To be civilized involves, among other things, making, using, and buying objects. Although speculation on the significance of objects often tends to be casual, there are professionals--anthropologists, historians, semioticians, Marxists, sociologists, and psychologists--who analyze material culture in a systematic way and attempt to elicit from it reliable information about people, societies, and cultures. One reason that analyzing objects has been problematical for scholars is the lack of a sound methodology governing multidisciplinary research. Reading Matter addresses this problem by defining a comprehensive set of methodological approaches that can be used to analyze and interpret material culture and relate it to personality and society.Berger offers discussions of the main concepts found in semiotic, historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and sociological analysis. He provides practical descriptions of the working methods of each discipline and demarcates their special areas of investigation. Berger's lively discussions include a wealth of illustrative examples that help to clarify the complex and often difficult theories that underlie interpretations of material culture. In the second part of his analysis, Berger uses these disciplines to investigate one subject--fashion and an important aspect of fashion, blue jeans, and what the author calls the denimization phenomenon. Here he shows how different methods of reading material culture end up with different perspectives on things--even when they are dealing with the same topic.The author's focus is on the material culture of post-literate societies and cultures, both contemporary and historical. This comparative approach enables the reader to trace the evolution of objects from past to present or to see how American artifacts spread to different cultures, acquiring a wholly new meaning in the process. Reading Matter is an important contribution to the study of popula
Language and Material Culture
Author: Allison Paige Burkette
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027267944
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
This innovative and provocative work introduces complexity theory and its application to both the study of language and the study of material culture. The book begins with a wide-ranging theoretical background, covering the areas of dialect geography, the anthropological study of material culture, and a general introduction to the study of complex adaptive systems. Following this general introduction, the principles of complexity theory are demonstrated in data drawn from linguistics and material culture studies. Language and Material Culture further highlights the principles of complexity through a series of case studies, using data from the Linguistic Atlas, colonial American inventories and the Historic American Building Survey. LMC shows that language and material culture are intertwined as they interact within the same cultural complex system. The book is designed for students in courses that focus on language variation, American English and material culture, in addition to general courses on applications of complex systems.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027267944
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
This innovative and provocative work introduces complexity theory and its application to both the study of language and the study of material culture. The book begins with a wide-ranging theoretical background, covering the areas of dialect geography, the anthropological study of material culture, and a general introduction to the study of complex adaptive systems. Following this general introduction, the principles of complexity theory are demonstrated in data drawn from linguistics and material culture studies. Language and Material Culture further highlights the principles of complexity through a series of case studies, using data from the Linguistic Atlas, colonial American inventories and the Historic American Building Survey. LMC shows that language and material culture are intertwined as they interact within the same cultural complex system. The book is designed for students in courses that focus on language variation, American English and material culture, in addition to general courses on applications of complex systems.
Reading Home Cultures Through Books
Author: Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000538982
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Book Description
This wide-ranging, comparative, and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of everyday life of individuals, in communities, and in society. The complex relationship of books, reading, and home is explored through American and European case studies both in bourgeois and middle-class homes, and in working-class and immigrant families and communities with limited possibilities for reading. The volume combines the conceptions and representations of domesticity, the materiality of reading, and library as a place, drawing on book history and material culture studies as well as anthropology and sociology of the home.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000538982
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Book Description
This wide-ranging, comparative, and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of everyday life of individuals, in communities, and in society. The complex relationship of books, reading, and home is explored through American and European case studies both in bourgeois and middle-class homes, and in working-class and immigrant families and communities with limited possibilities for reading. The volume combines the conceptions and representations of domesticity, the materiality of reading, and library as a place, drawing on book history and material culture studies as well as anthropology and sociology of the home.
Handbook of Material Culture
Author: Christopher Y. Tilley
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9781412900393
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 588
Book Description
Provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. This handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes a fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human.
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9781412900393
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 588
Book Description
Provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. This handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes a fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human.
The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture
Author: Ivan Gaskell
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199341761
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 679
Book Description
Most historians rely principally on written sources. Yet there are other traces of the past available to historians: the material things that people have chosen, made, and used. This book examines how material culture can enhance historians' understanding of the past, both worldwide and across time. Deploying material culture to discover the pasts of constituencies who have left few traces in written record, the authors present familiar historical problems in new ways. This volume offers case studies arranged thematically in six sections that address the relationship of history and material culture to cognition, technology, the symbolic, social distinction, and memory.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199341761
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 679
Book Description
Most historians rely principally on written sources. Yet there are other traces of the past available to historians: the material things that people have chosen, made, and used. This book examines how material culture can enhance historians' understanding of the past, both worldwide and across time. Deploying material culture to discover the pasts of constituencies who have left few traces in written record, the authors present familiar historical problems in new ways. This volume offers case studies arranged thematically in six sections that address the relationship of history and material culture to cognition, technology, the symbolic, social distinction, and memory.
Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects
Author: Evanghelia Stead
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319538322
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward. An introduction substantiates methods and approaches, ten chapters follow along media lines: from manuscripts to prints, printed books, and e-readers. Eleven contributors from six countries challenge the idea of a unified field, revealing the role of books and prints in transformation and circulation between varying cultural trends, ‘high’ and ‘low’. Mostly Europe-based, the collection offers book and print professionals, academics and graduates, models for future research, imaginatively combining material culture with archival data, cultural and reading theories with historical patterns.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319538322
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward. An introduction substantiates methods and approaches, ten chapters follow along media lines: from manuscripts to prints, printed books, and e-readers. Eleven contributors from six countries challenge the idea of a unified field, revealing the role of books and prints in transformation and circulation between varying cultural trends, ‘high’ and ‘low’. Mostly Europe-based, the collection offers book and print professionals, academics and graduates, models for future research, imaginatively combining material culture with archival data, cultural and reading theories with historical patterns.
The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies
Author: Dan Hicks
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199218714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 794
Book Description
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.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199218714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 794
Book Description
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.
Material Culture in America
Author: Helen Sheumaker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576076482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 588
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576076482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 588
Book Description
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.
Reading Matter
Author: Arthur Asa Berger
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412832713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
To be civilized involves, among other things, making, using, and buying objects. Although speculation on the significance of objects often tends to be casual, there are professionals--anthropologists, historians, semioticians, Marxists, sociologists, and psychologists--who analyze material culture in a systematic way and attempt to elicit from it reliable information about people, societies, and cultures. One reason that analyzing objects has been problematical for scholars is the lack of a sound methodology governing multidisciplinary research. Reading Matter addresses this problem by defining a comprehensive set of methodological approaches that can be used to analyze and interpret material culture and relate it to personality and society. Berger offers discussions of the main concepts found in semiotic, historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and sociological analysis. He provides practical descriptions of the working methods of each discipline and demarcates their special areas of investigation. Berger's lively discussions include a wealth of illustrative examples that help to clarify the complex and often difficult theories that underlie interpretations of material culture. In the second part of his analysis, Berger uses these disciplines to investigate one subject--fashion and an important aspect of fashion, blue jeans, and what the author calls the "denimization" phenomenon. Here he shows how different methods of "reading" material culture end up with different perspectives on things--even when they are dealing with the same topic. The author's focus is on the material culture of post-literate societies and cultures, both contemporary and historical. This comparative approach enables the reader to trace the evolution of objects from past to present or to see how American artifacts spread to different cultures, acquiring a wholly new meaning in the process. Reading Matter is an important contribution to the study of popular culture and social history. It will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural historians. Arthur Asa Berger is professor emeritus of broadcast and electronic communication arts at San Francisco State University and series editor of Transaction's Communication and Mass Culture and Humor Studies series. He is the author of many books including Manufacturing Desire and Agitpop.
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412832713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
To be civilized involves, among other things, making, using, and buying objects. Although speculation on the significance of objects often tends to be casual, there are professionals--anthropologists, historians, semioticians, Marxists, sociologists, and psychologists--who analyze material culture in a systematic way and attempt to elicit from it reliable information about people, societies, and cultures. One reason that analyzing objects has been problematical for scholars is the lack of a sound methodology governing multidisciplinary research. Reading Matter addresses this problem by defining a comprehensive set of methodological approaches that can be used to analyze and interpret material culture and relate it to personality and society. Berger offers discussions of the main concepts found in semiotic, historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and sociological analysis. He provides practical descriptions of the working methods of each discipline and demarcates their special areas of investigation. Berger's lively discussions include a wealth of illustrative examples that help to clarify the complex and often difficult theories that underlie interpretations of material culture. In the second part of his analysis, Berger uses these disciplines to investigate one subject--fashion and an important aspect of fashion, blue jeans, and what the author calls the "denimization" phenomenon. Here he shows how different methods of "reading" material culture end up with different perspectives on things--even when they are dealing with the same topic. The author's focus is on the material culture of post-literate societies and cultures, both contemporary and historical. This comparative approach enables the reader to trace the evolution of objects from past to present or to see how American artifacts spread to different cultures, acquiring a wholly new meaning in the process. Reading Matter is an important contribution to the study of popular culture and social history. It will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural historians. Arthur Asa Berger is professor emeritus of broadcast and electronic communication arts at San Francisco State University and series editor of Transaction's Communication and Mass Culture and Humor Studies series. He is the author of many books including Manufacturing Desire and Agitpop.