The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behavior and Communication

In this ground-breaking work, the distinguished anthropological theorist, Michael Brian Schiffer, demonstrates how theories of behavior and communication have too often ignored the fundamental importance of objects in human life.

In The Material Life of Human Beings, the author builds upon the premise that the most important feature of human life is not symbolic language but the incessant and diverse transactions that take place between people and myriad artifacts. The author shows that artifacts are involved in all modes of human communication -- be they visual, auditory or tactile. By creatively folding elements of postmodernist thought into a scientific framework, he creates new concepts and models for understanding and analyzing communication and behavior.