Materials with materiality?

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Knappett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Study Materials ◽  
The Social

Many scholars working in the domain of material culture will welcome this forceful statement from Ingold, sharing his frustration with the seemingly immaterial materiality emergent in the material-culture literature, the singular focus on things already made rather than their processes of becoming, and the apparent lack of contribution from those who do study materials in depth (e.g. archaeologists) to questions of materiality and material culture. His intervention is a timely one, although the message has been expressed before, albeit in more muted tones (e.g. Ingold 2000, 53). But while Ingold may be justified in bemoaning the lack of definition and clarity in ‘materiality’, is there scope for stepping back from the polemic and finding a middle ground? I would argue that materiality may still be a useful way of understanding the conjunction or intersection of the social and the material, without the former swallowing the latter.

The Society of Devotees

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gil Ben-Herut
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Social Diversity ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
The Social

The book’s third chapter examines the devotees’ society as it is described in the saints’ stories against the background of the tradition’s ideal of egalitarianism. The Kannada Śivabhakti tradition is famed for its uncompromising resistance to the Brahminical ideology of social supremacy, and the Ragaḷegaḷu stories exhibit different aspects of this resistance, one of which is the social diversity of the Śaiva protagonists. But it is exactly this diversity that distinguishes the social terrain of devotees in the stories from modern notions about egalitarianism. After noting Harihara’s apparent lack of interest in social issues having to do with the greater society beyond the Śaiva community, I consider how, by addressing in complicated ways specific social areas such as work, wealth, and the roles of women, the Ragaḷegaḷu stories qualify certain features of the egalitarian ideal.

Hong Kong's Eurasian “Web” Viewed through the Lens of Inter-Asian Studies: Comments on Engseng Ho's “Inter-Asian Concepts for Mobile Societies”

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-951
Author(s):  
Emma Teng
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Intermediate Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Static Models ◽  
China Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shed Light

Engseng Ho proposes that “the study of Asia, thought of as an Inter-Asian space, and smaller than the whole globe, can provide tractable concepts for a new round of research to shed light on the social shapes of societies that are mobile, spatially expansive, and interactive with one other.” Moving us away from more static models of China studies, Japan studies, etc., the concept of “inter-Asian”—where I take the “inter” to stand for inter-national, inter-regional, inter-faith, inter-racial, and inter-ethnic—offers a productive framework for examining histories that have been previously marginalized in dominant historical narratives: for example, the history of colonial Hong Kong's Eurasian community. In such a case, where the scope of inquiry is neither fully global in scale nor strictly local, the inter-Asian framework provides a middle ground and intermediate scale that brings this history into focus.

scholarly journals Non-discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Budden ◽  
Joanna Sofaer
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Differential Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article explores the relationship between the making of things and the making of people at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary. Focusing on potters and potting, we explore how the performance of non-discursive knowledge was critical to the construction of social categories. Potters literally came into being as potters through repeated bodily enactment of potting skills. Potters also gained their identity in the social sphere through the connection between their potting performance and their audience. We trace degrees of skill in the ceramic record to reveal the material articulation of non-discursive knowledge and consider the ramifications of the differential acquisition of non-discursive knowledge for the expression of different kinds of potter's identities. The creation of potters as a social category was essential to the ongoing creation of specific forms of material culture. We examine the implications of altered potters' performances and the role of non-discursive knowledge in the construction of social models of the Bronze Age.

scholarly journals Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1566) ◽  
pp. 785-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Kendal ◽  
Jamshid J. Tehrani ◽  
John Odling-Smee
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Niche Construction ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Genetic Inheritance ◽  
Selection Pressures ◽  
Ecological Inheritance ◽  
Human Niche Construction ◽  
The Social

Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution, reciprocal to the causal process of natural selection. It works by adding ecological inheritance , comprising the inheritance of natural selection pressures previously modified by niche construction, to genetic inheritance in evolution. Human niche construction modifies selection pressures in environments in ways that affect both human evolution, and the evolution of other species. Human ecological inheritance is exceptionally potent because it includes the social transmission and inheritance of cultural knowledge, and material culture. Human genetic inheritance in combination with human cultural inheritance thus provides a basis for gene–culture coevolution, and multivariate dynamics in cultural evolution. Niche construction theory potentially integrates the biological and social aspects of the human sciences. We elaborate on these processes, and provide brief introductions to each of the papers published in this theme issue.

scholarly journals Imaginários sociais sobre as favelas cariocas: o turismo-cultural do museu de favela e seus modos de ativação digital

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Mônica Machado
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Cultural Tourism ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Theoretical Frame ◽  
Cultural Contradictions ◽  
The Relationship

Esse artigo objetiva refletir sobre as representações sociais das favelas cariocas em registros midiáticos ao longo os últimos anos, o crescente movimento do Favela-tour e seus paradoxos, bem como as suas implicações conceituais. Em seguida reflete sobre as experiências do turismo cultural do Museu de Favela, com destaque para o processo de criação do hotsite Museu de Favela Tour como dispositivo que faz circular o capital cultural comunitário. Todas essas noções associam-se aos pressupostos teóricos da cultura material, como um campo da antropologia que estuda as correlações entre objetos e inventários socioculturais e avança para o estudo da sub-linha da pesquisa da antropologia digital, onde as relações entre sujeitos sociais e tecnologias são imaginadas como reelaborações da sociabilidade que precedem a essa tradição e se predispõem a revelar as contradições sociais já dispostas na cultura.Social narratives about slum in Rio:the cultural-tourism in favela museum and digital activismAbstract This article aims to analyse favelas in Rio and also the media records about this issue, arguing that the Favela-tour concept can be seen as paradoxal process. Then will be debated Favela Museum’s cultural tourism heritage, highlighting the process of creating the Favela Museum Tour’s hotsite as a way of spread the favela’s legacy. All these notions are associated with the theoretical frame of material culture as a field of anthropology and links between socio-cultural objects and inventories. This research is called digital anthropology where the relationship between social and technology subject are imagined as re-workings of sociability that precedes this tradition, where the digital technologies are predisposed to share the social-cultural contradictions.

Yavi-Chicha and the Inka expansion: a petrographic approach

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (342) ◽  
pp. 1261-1274 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Beatriz Cremonte
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Central Andes ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Petrographic Analysis ◽  
The South ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
South Central ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
The Social

The social complexities underlying imperial control are manifest in the material culture of everyday life encountered at archaeological sites. The Yavi-Chicha pottery style of the south-central Andes illustrates how local identities continued to be expressed in practices of pottery manufacture during the process of Inka expansion. The Yavi-Chicha style itself masks a number of distinct production processes that can be traced through petrographic analysis and that relate to the different communities by whom it was produced and consumed. The dispersion of pottery fabric types in this region may partly be attributable to the Inka practice of mitmaqkuna, the displacement and relocation of entire subject populations.

scholarly journals The Evolutionary Approach to History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Blute ◽  
Fiona M. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Evolutionary Approach ◽  
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Phylogenetic Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociocultural Evolution

There are three forms of modern Darwinian evolutionism in the social sciences and humanities: the gene-based biological, the social learning-based sociocultural, and gene–culture coevolution dealing with their interaction. This chapter focuses on cultural or sociocultural evolution. It begins with a discussion of the Darwinian-inspired evolutionary approach to history. It then outlines modern evolutionary phylogenetic methods borrowed from biology but now used extensively in the social sciences and humanities. The chapter provides examples of how language trees may be inferred; phylogenetic comparative methods that use language trees to answer questions about aspects of geographical, social, political, cultural, or economic organization; and phylogenetic investigations of material culture and traditions. It is concluded that culture does indeed “descend with modification.”

Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa A. Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Great Book ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Food Material ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Accounts ◽  
The City

Latini’s masterpiece of Baroque cooking and household management was the first book to publish recipes using tomatoes and chilli peppers. This first complete English translation presents the text with contextual introduction and notes to aid the reader’s understanding. The Modern Steward was published in Naples in 1692-94, when the city was a major cultural centre. It includes a wealth of recipes, plus discussions of the kitchen and serving staff, setting the table, menus, protocol, entertainment, and wines. There are also sections on health, accounts of specific banquets, and even a description of an eruption of Vesuvius. It is the last great book of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque cooking tradition. Latini was also interested in local ingredients and customs, and open to new French trends. The book will interest historians of early modern Italy, food, material culture, and the social and cultural life of the European elites, as well as connoisseurs of fine dining, and cooks.

Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica Childhoods

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Health Conditions ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm

Research on pre-Columbian childhood refers to all those studies that consider the different evidence and expressions of children in Mesoamerica, prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Archaeology, understandably by its very focus, has been one of the most prolific disciplines that has approached this subject of study. Currently, archaeological research focuses on highlighting the different social experiences of the past (or multi-vocality) of social identities, such as gender and childhood, and its relationship with material culture. In addition, archaeologists recognize a modern stereotype that considers children as passive or dependent beings and therefore biases childhood research in the past. Consequently, it is necessary to critically evaluate the cultural specificity of past childhood since each culture has its own way of considering that stage of the life cycle. Another problem, in the archaeological study of childhood, is to consider that children are not socially important individuals. It has been said that their activities are not significant for the economy or the social realm of communities and societies of the past. From archaeology, there exists a general perception that children are virtually unrecognizable from the archaeological record because their behavior leaves few material traces, apart from child burials. It has been since feminist critiques within the discipline that the study of childhood became of vital importance in archaeology to understand the process of gender acquisition through enculturation. This process refers to the way children learn about their gender identity through the material world that surrounds them and the various rituals that prepare them to become persons. Thus, the intent of recent studies on childhood has been to call upon archaeologists to consider children as social actors capable of making meaningful decisions on their own behalf and that they make substantial contributions to their families and their communities. In this sense, studies on pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures have focused at the most basic sense on identifying the presence of children in the archaeological record or ethnohistoric sources. Its aim has been to document the different social ages that make up childhood, the ritual importance of Mesoamerican children, funerary practices, and health conditions marked in children’s bones as well as the different material and identity expressions of childhood through art and its associated material culture.

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