The Material‐Cultural Turn

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Cultural Turn

The terms ‘material culture’ and ‘material culture studies’ emerged, one after another, during the twentieth century in the disciplines of archaeology and socio-cultural anthropology, and especially in the place of intersection between the two: anthropological archaeology. The purpose of this article, however, is to excavate the idea of ‘material culture studies’, rather than to bury it. Excavation examines the remains of the past in the present and for the present. It proceeds down from the surface, but the archaeological convention is to reverse this sequence in writing: from the past to the present. In the discussion of the history of ideas and theories, a major risk of such a chronological framework is that new ideas are narrated progressively, as paradigm shifts. The main argument of the article relates to the distinctive form taken by the ‘cultural turn’ in British archaeology and anthropology during the 1980s and 1990s.

Stone Tools

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Old World ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of

The focus of this article is stone tools. The history of stone tool research is linked integrally to the history of archaeology and the study of the human past, and many of the early developments in archaeology were connected with the study of stone artefacts. The identification of stone tools as objects of prehistoric human manufacture was central to the development of nineteenth-century models of prehistoric change, and especially the Three Age system for Old World prehistory. This article draws on concepts derived from interdisciplinary material culture studies to consider the role of the artefact after being discarded. It suggests that it is impossible to understand the meaning or efficacy of stone tools without understanding their ‘afterlives’ following abandonment. This article aims to complement contemporary metrical studies of the identification of stone tools and the description of their production. A brief history of the stone tools is explained and this concludes the article.

Words or Things in American History?

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Steven Conn
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchstone to examine the history of the relationship between material culture and the study of the past. Material culture studies promised access both to the history of those who left no written records and to a different kind of cognitive insight than could be gained from traditional historical sources. While this was of a piece with the development of the “new social history” in the 1960s, the chapter looks back to the early twentieth century to put Kouwenhoven’s call for the study of material culture in a longer historical context, and it traces what happened to material culture studies over the last half-century. The chapter suggests that despite its many accomplishments, the use of material culture remains on the edges of most historical work, especially after historians took the linguistic turn, which refocused their attention on texts rather than things.

scholarly journals Animals in Saami Shamanism: Power Animals, Symbols of Art, and Offerings

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 256
Author(s):  
Tiina Äikäs ◽  
Trude Fonneland
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Northern Norway ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Combine Material

In this paper, we study the role of power animals in contemporary Saami shamanism and how past and present are entwined in the presentation of power animals. In the old Saami worldviews, in addition to animals, spirits and sacred rocks (sieidi, SaaN) were also considered to be able to interact with people. Animals were an important part of offering rituals because livelihood and rituals were intertwined. Past “religions” are used as an inspiration for contemporary shamanistic practices, in line with one of late modernity’s core concepts, namely creativity. Present-day shamanistic practices can be described as ritual creativity, and they combine traces of old and new ritual activities. At the shamanistic festival Isogaisa, organized in northern Norway, these different roles of animals and ritual creativity become evident. Here, animals appear as spirit animals, as well as decorative elements on drums and clothes and as performance. In this paper, we combine material culture studies, interview data, and participatory observations in order to reflect the meanings and use of power animals in contemporary spiritual practices. How are traces of the past used in creating contemporary spirituality? How are animals and their artistic presentations entangled in contemporary shamanism?

Afterword: : Thinking Through Material Thinking as Placing and Arrangement

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel J. Thrift
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Island Communities ◽  
History Of

This book has demonstrated how the study of material culture has come of age. From being the preserve of a few hardy souls working in disconnected island Communities — the social and economic history of consumption, ethnographies of contemporary consumption, the anthropology of goods, such as clothing and pottery, material culture studies in archaeology — it has become the stamping ground of many. The concluding article here demonstrates how the study of material culture has come of age. From being the preserve of a few hardy souls working in disconnected island communities — the social and economic history of consumption, ethnographies of contemporary consumption, the anthropology of goods, such as clothing and pottery, material culture studies in archaeology — it has become the stamping ground of many. Things have now become a key part of worlds. That was always true in the sense that the layout of things has always been a powerful pointer to a culture's propensities and dispositions.

scholarly journals The re-collection of the Ryerson fashion research collection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Masak Mida
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Christian Dior once said, “We invent nothing, we always start from something that has come before” (qtd. in Pochna 80). Historic garments can inform and inspire the present, offering up design potential for reinterpretations of styles of the past or serving as evidence of how fashion was worn and lived for material culture studies. Seeing a dress in a photo is a very different experience than feeling the weight of the fabric in hand, examining the details of cut, construction and embellishment, considering the relationship of the garment to the body or searching for evidence of how the garment was worn, used or altered over time. The Ryerson Fashion Research Collection is a repository of several thousand items acquired by donation since 1981, many of which are dresses and evening gowns dating from 1860 to 2000. For several years, this collection lay dormant behind an unmarked door and was largely unknown by the student body. This project was initiated to understand the nature of the artifacts contained therein and is a first step in the process of refocusing and rebuilding the Collection for the future. The title “Re-collection of the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection” encapsulates the organizing principle for this practice-led interdisciplinary project, encompassing the intersection of material culture, curatorial process and collective memory in the identification of one hundred key items from the archive that reflect the breadth and history of the Collection itself.

scholarly journals A Different, Different Direction

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Jason Baird Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
New Developments ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
Review Editor

In an editorial, Museum Anthropology Review editor Jason Baird Jackson discusses new developments for the journal, highlighting its new status as a publication of the Indiana University Press. The move of the journal’s publishing home from the Mathers Museum of World Cultures to the Indiana University Press necessitates reversing an editorial plan previously announced. As has been true for all but the past year of its history, the journal welcomes scholarly and practitioner contributions from across the full breadth of the fields of museum anthropology, museum-based folklore studies, and material culture studies.

scholarly journals The re-collection of the Ryerson fashion research collection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Masak Mida
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Christian Dior once said, “We invent nothing, we always start from something that has come before” (qtd. in Pochna 80). Historic garments can inform and inspire the present, offering up design potential for reinterpretations of styles of the past or serving as evidence of how fashion was worn and lived for material culture studies. Seeing a dress in a photo is a very different experience than feeling the weight of the fabric in hand, examining the details of cut, construction and embellishment, considering the relationship of the garment to the body or searching for evidence of how the garment was worn, used or altered over time. The Ryerson Fashion Research Collection is a repository of several thousand items acquired by donation since 1981, many of which are dresses and evening gowns dating from 1860 to 2000. For several years, this collection lay dormant behind an unmarked door and was largely unknown by the student body. This project was initiated to understand the nature of the artifacts contained therein and is a first step in the process of refocusing and rebuilding the Collection for the future. The title “Re-collection of the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection” encapsulates the organizing principle for this practice-led interdisciplinary project, encompassing the intersection of material culture, curatorial process and collective memory in the identification of one hundred key items from the archive that reflect the breadth and history of the Collection itself.

scholarly journals Ideas, Persons, and Objects in the History of Ideas

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Bennett Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Deep Foundation ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Abstract Ideas ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract The history of ideas is most prominently understood as a highly specialized group of methods for the study of abstract ideas, with both diachronic and synchronic aspects. While theorizing the field has focused on the methods of study, defining the object of study – ideas – has been neglected. But the development of the theories behind material culture studies poses a sharp challenge to these narrow approaches. It both challenges the integrity of the notion of abstract ideas and also offers possibilities for enlarging the scope of the ways in which we can study ideas historically. It is proposed here to regard ideas as mental relations deeply connected to human communication by both thinking and doing. This connection of ideational thought to human production and behavior is a deep foundation for the history of ideas as an interdisciplinary historiographic means of understanding moral life.

Die Macht der Institution

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.

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