Key Terms:

1
Key Terms

• Modernity

2
Attfield What is authentic?

• originality is key
• an antique spinning wheel, not a copy
• realness is key
• the spinning wheel was used in the past
• provenance (proof of origins) is key
• grandmas spinning wheel, not just one you find
  at a barn sale
• ideologies linked to a stable, happier past are
  key
• authentic ice cream, made the old-fashioned way

3
Ephemerality (ef-em-er-AL-ity)

• What are some signs that an item is designed with
  ephemeral value in mind?
• How is the aesthetic of ephemerality related to
  ideas about waste, what kinds of uses of
  objects are considered wasteful, and what are
  normal?

4
Containment

• Have you ever encountered an object whose use you
  didnt recognize?
• How does the design of objects help us use them
  correctly?
• How does culture help us use objects correctly?

5
McCracken notes

• The consumer revolution is now seen to have
  changed Western concepts of time, space, society,
  the individual, the family, and the state. pg. 3

6
The Great Transformation

• Rapid rise of modern consumerism in the 18th
  century
• Karl Polanyi argued that in a market society,
  everything is for sale, and everything can be
  treated that way
• Why do you need a consumer revolution to make the
  Industrial Revolution work?

7
The Consumer Revolution

• What are some features or stages of consumerism
  that McCracken relates to the consumer
  revolution?
• 16th/17th century patina and corporate
  consumption
• 18th century novelty and obsolescence driving
  fashion
• 19th making consumption public expressive
  power of goods as seen in consumer lifestyles

8
What is modernity?

• Modernity can be defined in many ways, but should
  not be confused with the aesthetic movement of
  modernism in literature and art in the first half
  of the 20th century.
• Generally, modernity means having the features
  of a capitalist society in the modern period
  usually considered later than the 18th century,
  and in particular, the 19th and 20th centuries

9
Frederic Jameson stages of capitalism

• market capitalism 18th 19th centuries
  emphasis on production of goods
• monopoly capitalism late 19th to mid-20th
  centuries emphasis on consolidation of
  industries
• consumer capitalism (post-modernity or late
  capitalism) current phase emphasis on
  marketing, not production

10
What is modernity all about?

• rationality and order rejection of non-objective
  (non-scientific or magical) worldviews
• reproducibility in goods, scientific results,
  etc.
• binary oppositions that separate a modern us
  from pre-modern societies (e.g. order/disorder
  logical/magical science/superstition
  government/kinship)
• organization and control of knowledge is
  essential to modernity

11
Where is modernity NOT?

• Whats in a name?
• pre-modern
• traditional

12
Post-modernity

• Much of what we read in this class has a
  post-modern twist to it, even if it isnt
  pure postmodern theory.
• Post-modern approaches reject the idea that
  knowledge is self-evident and objectively
  knowable instead it recognizes that science
  is also a belief system. Postmodern theory asks
  us to think about how people/groups construct
  their own realities using particular cultural
  tools. Postmodernism also pays attention to how
  power influences or controls perceptions of
  possibilities or reality

13
Sara Baartman film

• The first modern museums were cabinets with
  curiosities in them how does the display of
  the Hottentot Venus fit into this?
• What was the role of freaks in the early 19th
  century, as mentioned in the film?
• How have things changed in late modernityor
  have they?

14
Money is No Object Keane article

• alienable can be removed from you, given a
  price, turned into a commodity
• inalienable cant be removed/taken from you
  shouldnt or cant have a price. (We say that you
  can sell your soul, but can you?)

15
Objectification of parts

• What parts of Baartmans body were preserved and
  why?
• Are body parts alienable in Keanes definition?

16
Whats going on on Sumba?

• link between money and materialism
• local people contrast traditional
  subsistence/ceremonial exchange economy, and
  modern age of money

17

• natural meaning condition of objects tells us
  something about them (a torn cloth)
• non-natural meaning social intentions and
  meanings we encode into objects and their
  features (cloth was torn, or given in torn
  condition, as an insult)

18
Money vs. ceremonial exchange

• Why does Keane say that most scholars see money
  and ceremonial exchange as being in direct
  opposition to one another?
• What examples does he give of how money has been
  incorporated into ceremonial exchange to question
  this opposition?

19
Money as an instrument of alienation

• Keane, pp. 79-82
• Money is often seen as making true alienation
  possible buying and selling snap the links of
  people to their property
• Money circulates promiscuously, without
  respecting persons or things.

20
Traditional vs Modern exchange?

• How is traditional exchange on Sumba different
  from money-based (modern) exchanges?
• Do you believe in modernity?
• Were you convinced by the historical perspective
  offered by McCracken and the scholars he cites in
  his chapter? How would this process of
  modernization translate to other cultural
  contexts (or would it?)

21
Alienability and value

• Does refusing to give something a price limit or
  alter its value? Can objects without prices
  really circulate? Think of an example.