Material Culture

1
Material Culture

• Key terms and definitions

2
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

3
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
• How is socialization is required to
  use/understand objects properly?

4
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

5
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 shapes meaning

• What are some different ideologies behind the
  American taboo against wearing the same clothes
  day after day?
• How are these ideas related to stuff and
  consumption?

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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.)

8
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

9
Objectification

• In Empire of things pg. 20, Myers discusses
  Daniel Millers theory of objectification
• In objectification, cultural objects externalize
  values and meanings embedded in social processes,
  making them available, visible, or negotiable for
  further action by subjects.

10
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.
• Empire of Things focuses on what happens when
  different regimes of value come into contact (is
  it art or trash?)

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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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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

13
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.

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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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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)
• ephemerality what is designed to have passing
  value? e.g. fashion
• containment idea that through design, objects
  can dictate how they will be used.