Material Culture in the Social World : Values, Activities, Lifestyles

by Dant, Tim

• ISBN13: 9780335198214
• ISBN10: 033519821X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-01
• Publisher: Open Univ Pr

Summary

"This should become a core text for second year courses in sociology and cultural studies... it synthesizes a vast body of literature and a complex range of debates into a text which is at once accessible, engaging and stimulating... it will lead to students seeing and thinking about the material world in a totally new light and can be used as a way into key theoretical debates." Keith Tester, Professor of Social Theory, University of Portsmouth* In what ways do we interact with material things?* How do material objects affect the way we relate to each other?* What are the connections between material things and social processes like fashion, discourse, art and design?Through wearing clothes, keeping furniture, responding to the ring of the telephone, noticing the signature on a painting, holding a paperweight and in many other ways, we interact with objects in our everyday lives. These are not merely functional relationships with things but are connected to the way we relate to other people and the culture of the particular society we live in - they are social relations. This engaging book draws on established theoretical work, including that of Simmel, Marx, McLuhan, Barthes and Baudrillard as well as a range of contemporary empirical work from many humanities disciplines. It uses ideas drawn from this work to explore a variety of things - from stone cairns to denim jeans, televisions to penis rings, houses to works of art - to understand something of how we live with them.

Author Biography

Tim Dant is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: the cairn and the mini-strip	1	(16)
Consuming or living with things?	17	(23)
Fetishism and the social value of objects	40	(20)
Building and dwelling	60	(25)
Wearing it out: written and material clothing	85	(25)
Playing with things: interacting with a windsurfer	110	(20)
Objects in time: modernity and biography	130	(23)
Turn it on: objects that mediate	153	(23)
Who's what? People as objects	176	(20)
Conclusion	196	(6)
Further reading	202	(3)
Bibliography	205	(14)
Index	219