Download or read book Place as Material Culture written by Dragoş Gheorghiu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book explores the complexity of the past, by analysing the relationships between place, territory, the material value of objects and landscapes, time and ritual, during archaeological investigations. It presents the archaeology of place as a series of interconnecting and interactive relationships. It is clear that things and places do not emerge without some form of agency, usually through the concept of material manipulation, coupled with elaboration, innovation and time. Depending on the raw material used and the process of manipulation and its relationship with the environment, materiality gains value. How do we as modern humans work within the complexity of place, materiality, time, and ritual? Traditional in archaeological discourse is the need to describe place, albeit in an empiricist and banal way. Discourse is sometimes followed by a more fruitful and interpretive account. However, these accounts tend to ignore human emotion that is bound-up in place, for example the ritualized and symbolic meanings that place holds. This book explores the significance of geography, place and the materiality that place holds, and challenges many of the tradition norms that in the past have trivialized landscape archaeology. The book is divided into 14 thought-provoking and crafted chapters and will be an ideal companion to anyone involved in the social sciences.
Download or read book Craft Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics 19th 20th Century written by Janice Helland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Craft practice has a rich history and remains vibrant, sustaining communities while negotiating cultures within local or international contexts. More than two centuries of industrialization have not extinguished handmade goods; rather, the broader force of industrialization has redefined and continues to define the context of creation, deployment and use of craft objects. With object study at the core, this book brings together a collection of essays that address the past and present of craft production, its use and meaning within a range of community settings from the Huron Wendat of colonial Quebec to the Girls? Friendly Society of twentieth-century England. The making of handcrafted objects has and continues to flourish despite the powerful juggernaut of global industrialization, whether inspired by a calculated refutation of industrial sameness, an essential means to sustain a cultural community under threat, or a rejection of the imposed definitions by a dominant culture. The broader effects of urbanizing, imperial and globalizing projects shape the multiple contexts of interaction and resistance that can define craft ventures through place and time. By attending to the political histories of craft objects and their makers, over the last few centuries, these essays reveal the creative persistence of various hand mediums and the material debates they represented.
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.
Download or read book Building the British Atlantic World written by Daniel Maudlin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the North Atlantic rim from Canada to Scotland, and from the Caribbean to the coast of West Africa, the British Atlantic world is deeply interconnected across its regions. In this groundbreaking study, thirteen leading scholars explore the idea of transatlanticism--or a shared "Atlantic world" experience--through the lens of architecture, built spaces, and landscapes in the British Atlantic from the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. Examining town planning, churches, forts, merchants' stores, state houses, and farm houses, this collection shows how the powerful visual language of architecture and design allowed the people of this era to maintain common cultural experiences across different landscapes while still forming their individuality. By studying the interplay between physical construction and social themes that include identity, gender, taste, domesticity, politics, and race, the authors interpret material culture in a way that particularly emphasizes the people who built, occupied, and used the spaces and reflects the complex cultural exchanges between Britain and the New World.
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.
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.
Download or read book Elusive Archives written by Martin Brückner and published by Material Culture Perspectives. This book was released on 2021-08-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elusive Archives asks how historians, librarians, and museum professionals can bring together scattered, lost, or otherwise forgotten objects into a provisional collection, an elusive archive. Addressing a wide range of objects, the authors' diverse approaches, varying formats, and broad scope of inquiries describe a new conceptual territory at the intersection of archival studies and material culture studies.
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.
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.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies written by Lu Ann De Cunzo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 932 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material culture studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the relationships between people and their things: the production, history, preservation, and interpretation of objects. It draws on theory and practice from disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, such as anthropology, archaeology, history, and museum studies. Written by leading international scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive view of developments, methodologies and theories. It is divided into five broad themes, embracing both classic and emerging areas of research in the field. Chapters outline transformative moments in material culture scholarship, and present research from around the world, focusing on multiple material and digital media that show the scope and breadth of this exciting field. Written in an easy-to-read style, it is essential reading for students, researchers and professionals with an interest in material culture.
Download or read book Modern Material Culture written by Richard A. Gould and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Material Culture
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.
Download or read book History and Material Culture written by Karen Harvey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sources are the raw material of history, but where the written word has traditionally been seen as the principal source, today historians are increasingly recognizing the value of sources beyond text. In History and Material Culture, Karen Harvey embarks upon a discussion about material culture – considering objects, often those found surrounding us in day to day life, as sources, which can help historians develop new interpretations and new knowledge about the past. Across ten chapters, different historians look at a variety of material sources from around the globe and across centuries to assess how such sources can be used to study history. While the sources are discussed from ‘interdisciplinary’ perspectives, each contributor examines how material culture can be approached from an historical viewpoint, and each chapter addresses its theme or approach in a way accessible to readers without expertise in the area. In her introduction, Karen Harvey discusses some of the key issues raised when historians use material culture, and suggests some basic steps for those new to these kinds of sources. Opening up the discipline of history to new approaches, and introducing those working in other disciplines to historical approaches, this book is the ideal introduction to the opportunities and challenges of researching material culture.
Download or read book History and Material Culture written by Karen Harvey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sources are the raw material of History, but whereas the written word has traditionally been seen as the principal source, historians now recognize the value of sources beyond text. In this new edition of History and Material Culture, contributors consider a range of objects – from an eighteenth-century bed curtain to a twenty-first-century shopping trolley – which can help historians develop new interpretations and new knowledge about the past. Containing two new chapters on healing objects in East Africa and the shopping trolley in the social world, this book examines a variety of material sources from around the globe and across centuries to assess how such sources can be used to study the distant and the recent past. In a revised introduction, Karen Harvey discusses some of the principal issues raised when historians use material culture, particularly in the context of 'the material turn', and suggests some initial steps for those unfamiliar with these kinds of sources. While the sources are discussed from interdisciplinary perspectives, the emphasis of the book is on what historians stand to gain from using material culture, as well as what historians have to offer the broader study of material culture. Clearly written and accessible, this book is the ideal introduction to the opportunities and challenges of researching material culture, and is essential reading for all students of historical theory and method.
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.
Download or read book Sensitive Objects written by Jonas Frykman and published by Nordic Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some objects seem especially personal and important to us - be it a quickly packed suitcase, an inherited vase, or a photograph. In Sensitive Objects the authors discuss when, how, and why particular objects appear as 'sensitive'. They do so by analyzing the objects' affective charging in the context of historically embedded practices. Sensitive Objects is a contribution to the upcoming field of 'affect research' that has so far been dominated by psychology and cultural studies, and the authors examine the potential for epistemic gain by connecting the studies of affect with the studies of material culture. The contributors, predominantly ethnologists and anthropologists, use fieldwork to examine how people project affects onto material objects and explore how objects embody or trigger affects and produce affective atmospheres.
Download or read book The Body as Material Culture written by Joanna R. Sofaer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-16 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the two distinct approaches taken when examining archaeological remains, one based on science, the other on social theory.
