Hello Everyone - can anyone recommend any key texts for studying material culture that you feel are indispensable or useful? Very much appreciated...

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Which of the following aspects of material culture are you most interested in?

  • functional
  • curatorial
  • “social life of objects"

Hi Logan,

I liked Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennett very much.

Of course, it depends on how you'd like to approach material culture (materiality as symbolic objects, Latourian or Deleuzian approaches, marxist perspectives, ...).

The Journal of Material Culture might be useful. I have an article forthcoming in it (but it might take a while before it gets published), 'Brazilian brokers, boundaries and buildings: a material culture of politics'. If you're interested, I can send you a copy.

Good luck with it.

Best,

Martijn Koster

uu.academia.edu/MartijnKoster 

Hi, I agree that the Journal of Material Culture is a good place to look. So is the Material World Blog. My favourites are Daniel Miller's "Material Culture and Mass Consumption" (1987) and also his book on modernity. I've also just published a book, released today in fact, called "Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform Their Lives" (AltaMira). Best of luck!

Dear Juan, Erin and Martijn, thank you so much. These are all very helpful!

Mathew, that is a good question. What I am working on is a general introduction to material culture, so many different angles can be of help, or introductions.

Logan Sparks said:

Mathew, that is a good question. What I am working on is a general introduction to material culture, so many different angles can be of help, or introductions.

Here are a couple of which I am quite fond. Mind you that I am a bit of a gentleman of the old school. :–)

Boas, Franz. “Decorative designs of Alaskan needlecases: a study in the history of conventional designs, based on materials in the U. S. National Museum.” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 34, no. 1616 (1908): 321–44, 16 figs., 9 pls. http://hdl.handle.net/10088/14065.
Bronner, Simon J. “Concepts in the study of material aspects of American folk culture.” Folklore Forum 12, no. 2/3 (1979): 133–72. http://hdl.handle.net/2022/1703.
Jacknis, Ira. “The ethnographic object and the object of ethnology in the early career of Franz Boas.” In Volkgeist as method and ethic: essays on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition, edited by George W. Stocking, Jr., 185–214. Vol. 8 in History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Lemonnier, Pierre. “The study of material culture today: toward an anthropology of technical systems.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 5, no. 2 (June 1986): 147–86. Reprinted in Ethnography, edited by Alan Bryman, 3: Issues in ethnography:219–53. Sage benchmarks in social research methods. London: Sage, 2001.

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