Key terms:

1
Key terms

• Material Culture

2
This week

• introduction to material culture studies
• Wild Things (Attfield) reading looking at
  objects in contemporary homes and the role of
  design in ideas about objects
• Friday group exercise based on Wild Things
  reading

3
Culture

• A system of knowledge and beliefs about the world
  and the way the world works. This system is
  shared by members and transmitted to new members
  through processes of
• Socialization
• Acculturation

4
Learning culture

• socialization process by which children/new
  members are taught how to behave appropriately in
  a culture
• acculturation process by which a person comes
  to share in the culture of a group

5
How is culture in Material Culture?

• Examples of how socialization is required to
  use/understand objects properly?
• Consider
• Clothing
• Housing (discussed in Schlereth)
• Food/utensils
• materials/objects

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Schlereth pg. 5

• Material culture is that segment of humankinds
  biosocial environment that has been purposefully
  shaped by people according to culturally dictated
  plans.

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Why material culture?

• As Buchli (pg 3) explains, material culture
  studies were originally used to place cultures on
  a scale from primitive to European
  (advanced)
• Categorizing material culture was part of a
  larger intellectual move to categorize and make
  sense of the world.

8
Cabinets

• Curio cabinets contained collections of unusual
  objects
• What counted as unusual?
• What is objectification?

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Objects represent

• Later, objects and styles of objects came to
  represent groups of people, particularly in the
  past
• These groups could then be linked up to groups
  the present this is the folkoric or ethnic
  approach to material culture

10
What does material culture offer?

• Schlereth argues
• evidential precedence (older)
• temporal tenacity (more durable over time)
• three-dimensionality (past experience made
  solid)
• wider representativeness (broader crossection of
  society)
• affective understanding (use the senses as well
  as the mind)

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Schlereth cautions(pg 14)

• recklessness of data survival
• difficulty of access/verification
• exaggeration of human efficacy
• penchant toward progressive determinism
• proclivity for synchronic interpretation

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Cultural Embeddedness

• Cultural embeddness refers to the way in which
  objects and practices are dependent on cultural
  context for their meaning.
• How are status symbol objects a good example of
  cultural embeddedness? Give an example from your
  own cultural subgroup

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Discussion questions

• How do the material (physical) characteristics of
  an object confine your interpretation of it?
• How do our cultural experiences shape or
  constrain the way we perceive and relate to
  objects?

14
Objects and Identity

• Buchli argues that in the 19th and early 20th
  centuries, a focus on objects representing
  technical achievements were part of building a
  new kind of identity focused on progress and
  change.
• Objects and associated technologies become part
  of the ideology of advancement for both the
  West and the other (Schlereths progressive
  determinism)

15
Some ideas on Ideology

• the process of production of meanings, signs, and
  values in social life
• a body of ideas characteristic of a particular
  social group or class
• that which offers a position for a subject/person
• action-oriented sets of beliefs
• From Terry Eagletons Ideology An Introduction

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Ideology and objects (examples)

• Buchli ideologies of social evolution
  influenced the interpretation of non-European
  artifacts
• Bourdieu class-specific ideologies about good
  taste influence evaluation of objects in the
  world (photos, bodies, etc.)

17
Relativism

• Relativism is an ideology of interpretation that
  attempts to acknowledge different systems of
  value, especially local system within which an
  object, ritual, or belief is produced.
• Example Interpretation of sexual images on a
  piece of pottery. Relativism will prioritize the
  local definition of these images over their
  interpretation (e.g. as pornographic) in an
  importing culture

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Objectification

• turning something into an object for
  examination/manipulation, esp. when it is not
  thought of in that way, e.g. when abstract ideas
  (love) are represented as objects (hearts) or
  when people (subjects) are treated as if they are
  not subjects, but just objects.

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Examples

• How do the following types of things objectify
  social relations and/or processes in the U.S.?
• engagement ring
• diet soda
• snowboard
• disposable toilet brushes
• others examples?

20
Objects and Identity

• Buchli argues that in the 19th and early 20th
  centuries, a focus on objects representing
  technological achievements were part of building
  a new kind of identity focused on progress and
  change.
• Objects and associated technologies become part
  of the ideology of advancement for both the
  West and the other (Schlereths progressive
  determinism)

21
Some ideas on Ideology

• the process of production of meanings, signs, and
  values in social life
• a body of ideas characteristic of a particular
  social group or class
• that which offers a position for a subject/person
• action-oriented sets of beliefs
• From Terry Eagletons Ideology An Introduction

22
Ideology and objects (examples)

• Buchli ideologies of social evolution
  influenced the interpretation of non-European
  artifacts
• Bourdieu class-specific ideologies about good
  taste influence evaluation of objects in the
  world (photos, bodies, etc.)

23
Relativism

• Relativism is an ideology of interpretation that
  attempts to acknowledge different systems of
  value, especially local system within which an
  object, ritual, or belief is produced.
• Example Interpretation of sexual images on a
  piece of pottery. Relativism will prioritize the
  local definition of these images over their
  interpretation (e.g. as pornographic) in an
  importing culture

24
Objectification

• turning something into an object for
  examination/manipulation, esp. when it is not
  thought of in that way, e.g. when abstract ideas
  (love) are represented as objects (hearts) or
  when people (subjects) are treated as if they are
  not subjects, but just objects.

25
Examples

• How do the following types of things objectify
  social relations and/or processes in the U.S.?
• engagement ring
• diet soda
• snowboard
• disposable toilet brushes
• others examples?

26
Ideology and objects (examples)

• Buchli ideologies of social evolution
  influenced the interpretation of non-European
  artifacts as representative of different stages
  of primitiveness
• Bourdieu class-specific ideologies about good
  taste influence evaluation of objects in the
  world (photos, bodies, etc.)

27
Whats a subject

• In contemporary cultural theory, a subject is
  someone who does something, who actively
  participates in cultural processes.
• This comes from the grammatical terminology
  subject and object as in He hit the ball.
  He subject ballobject

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Value is cultural

• One major theme in material culture studies is
  How do things acquire value within cultural
  systems? A few ways
• by circulating from person to person
• by being associated with other things/people/ideas
  
• through historical/personal memory
• in juxtaposition with other things

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Regimes of value

• A regime of value is basically a set of
  cultural values that determine the interpretation
  of an object in a particular setting.
• Crosscultural readings from this semester focus
  on what happens when different regimes of value
  come into contact (e.g. valuing homecooked over
  fast food)

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Regimes of value

• In the US cleanliness can be seen as a regime
  of value a lot of disconnected ideas come
  together to create a particular way of thinking
  about cleanliness
• clean is safe/healthy
• clean is not poor
• clean is attractive (although maybe not sexy)
• clean smells good

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Chapter from Wild Things

• it is necessary to diagnose features that give
  things value as vehicles of meaning through
  which people negotiate their relations with each
  other and the world at large. pg. 75
• Attfield is interested in how everyday objects
  become part of maintaining or changing social
  structures.

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the modern world

• made by human beings
• celebrating the creative individual
• change is progress everything is knowable
• mass production makes what is original or unique
  more valuable

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Attfield (Wild Things chapter)

• authenticity the legitimacy of an object or
  experience according to established principles
  of fundamental and unchallengeable truths in a
  culture (pg. 78) an authentic oriental rug
  heirloom
• ephemerality what is designed to have passing
  value? e.g. fashion disposables
• containment idea that through design, objects
  can dictate how they will be used.

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Object Analysis

• Describe and culturally situate a familiar object
• Think about how we classify or understand this
  object based on our own cultural knowledge of it
• Try to think beyond your expectations of the
  object, its features, and its use- what could it
  be if we didnt know what it was????