The Social Life of Objects: Interpreting Our Material Culture

Art Education ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Feldhusen
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals TINJAUAN AWAL ASPEK TIPOLOGI DAN DATA INSKRIPSI BATU NISAN DI HOLLANDISCHE KERK BANDA NEIRA

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 251
Author(s):  
Syahruddin Mansyur
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Preliminary Review ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Social Status

AbstrakKepulauan Banda dikenal sebagai wilayah yang memiliki pengaruh kolonial yang kuat. Salah satu tinggalan arkeologi yang banyak ditemui di wilayah ini adalah batu nisan. Sebagai salah satu budaya materi, batu nisan memiliki beragam informasi yang terdapat pada batu nisan itu sendiri mulai dari bentuk, bahan, dan ragam hias. Penelitian ini merupakan tinjauan awal untuk mengetahui tipologi dan beragam informasi yang dapat diungkap dari inskripsi yang termuat pada batu nisan. Melalui tahapan penelitian arkeologi dengan melakukan analisis terhadap keragaman jenis artefak dan analisis terhadap data inskripsi, penelitian ini mengungkap bahwa tipologi batu nisan memiliki kekayaan ragam hias berupa lambang heraldik, iluminasi, dan inskripsi. Aspek lain pada data inskripsi adalah informasi tentang orang-orang yang dimakamkan memiliki status sosial tinggi, di antaranya; para pejabat pemerintahan, pejabat militer, pejabat perdagangan, pejabat keagamaan, para perkenier, beserta para keluarganya. Aspek lain yang berhasil diungkap bahwa kehidupan sosial masyarakat Eropa saat itu menganggap bahwa batu nisan adalah salah satu simbol kemewahan. AbstractBanda Islands are known as the region that has a strong colonial influence. One of the archaeological remains found in the region is the tombstone. As one of the material culture, the tombstone has a variety of information contained on a tombstone itself from the shape, material, and ornaments. This study is a preliminary review to determine the typology and variety of information that can be revealed from inscriptions contained in the tombstone. Through the stages of archaeological research by analysing the diversity of artefacts and analysis inscriptions data, this study revealed that the typology of the tombstone has a wealth of ornamentation in the form of heraldic emblem, illumination, and inscriptions. Another aspect from the inscription data is information about people who are buried has a high social status. They are from government officials, military officials, trade officials, religious officials, the perkenier (landlord), along with his family. Another aspect that can be revealed is the social life of Europe in that time considered that the tombstone is one of the symbols of luxury.

Material Culture

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence E. McDonnell ◽  
Kelcie Vercel
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
The Social

Beginning with many of its earliest writings, sociology has a long tradition of theorizing the role of objects and material culture in social life. In the middle of the 20th century, these themes were taken up again by major sociological and anthropological thinkers who inspired a resurgence of interest in the study of objects. The sociology of culture and art began to address the production and reception of objects, while scholars from anthropology, cultural studies, and media studies began to develop a robust body of work around material culture. These two fields have somewhat different takes on the study of objects. Sociological accounts tend to be people focused, examining how institutional characteristics of art worlds shape the objects produced, and focusing explanations of meaning-making on the social position of the audience more so than the symbolic qualities of the object. Alternatively, material culture approaches tend to be object focused, engaging objects as symbols that help explain how people organize subcultures, create solidarity through exchange, or express social status. A turn toward materiality, originating from anthropology but taken up more recently in sociology, privileges the material qualities of objects and how they shape the use and symbolic meaning of objects. This work on objects raises the question of how sociologists should incorporate objects into accounts of action. This question has sparked an ongoing cross-disciplinary debate about whether objects have agency. Research in science and technology studies, alongside studies of craft and sport, have brought attention to how objects act back, shaping how knowledge is produced. Objects have also been understood as mechanisms of power, by shaping categories and morality, ritualizing icons, stabilizing social relations as instruments of the states and institutions, and structuring action through the built environment. These robust and vibrant areas of research make a strong case for the incorporation of objects into theories of power and knowledge.

scholarly journals Out of the Closet, into the World: The Power of Puppets in Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist

Literatūra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Rūta Šlapkauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Ambivalence

The present paper examines the tropological significance of miniature figures in Jessie Burton’s novel The Miniaturist. By highlighting the ways in which the narrative’s figural system negotiates the structural and conceptual dichotomies of human/doll, object/thing, interiority/exteriority, authenticity/artificiality, and mobility/stasis, this reading of Burton’s novel attempts to show how the literary text rethinks the social life of things and the ambiguity of subject-object relations in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Aligned with the commercial circuits of material culture, which underscore the moral ambivalence of the novel’s Dutch society, material objects are shown to exceed their decorative function and reveal their destructive purchase on human life.

Choreography and Ceremony: The Artful Side of Action

Human Affairs ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy James
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Creative Art ◽  
Social Gathering ◽  
Sudanese Refugees ◽  
Organizing Principles

Choreography and Ceremony: The Artful Side of Action"Actions" are normally thought of as taken by individuals. But to understand their quality, it is not enough to classify them from the perspective of individual psychology (rational vs. emotional, technical vs. artistic, etc.). We need to grasp their relation to those forms of collective life which have a historical existence independent of specific individual action (institutions, the conventions of social gathering, the organizing principles of games, architecture, music, ritual, etc.). This paper focuses on what characteristics such forms of collective life share, not what seems to separate them (eg. into sacred vs secular, technology vs creative art). The main features emphasized are their choreography, that is their enactment within commonly understood patterns of a spatial and temporal kind, as well as rules of interactive movement; and their ceremonial character, something which can be found in simple situations such as a conversation or a meal, though much more intensely in major religious ritual. A particularly resonant image for these enactments of social life is the dance. Because there is a ceremonial aspect to all social interaction, the paper argues that individual action, necessarily oriented to the social context, always has an "artful" side (however habitual or technical). The paper draws on the writings of Wittgenstein on action, and those of Collingwood on language and art, to shape the argument. Illustrations are provided of the "artful" employment of language (especially by actors on the stage), the "artful" side of material culture, and from the author's own ethnographic studies, the significance of dance among Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia.

Paper documents and copper-plates: localization of hegemonic practices

2015 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Pushkar Sohoni
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Copper Plate ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Textual Content

AbstractThis paper examines the social currency of copper-plate charters on the basis of Persian copper-plates from the Deccan. Indic religious systems have a long tradition of conferring land grants using this medium, partially rooted in beliefs of metaphysical qualities attributed to metals. The objects from this region are highly unusual because there are no other recorded instances of a sultan issuing or authorizing land grants on copper-plates. The Persian-language copper-plates appear from the sixteenth century onwards, and seem to be later copies of (or extracts from) paper-based charters issued by Bahmani sultans and other kingdoms in the Deccan. Issues of authenticity and forgeries, fakes and copies are also raised in this paper. This study examines objects that combine material culture and textual content. While the textual content of these objects has always been privileged as being a source of history, the medium – which itself has a history of reception – has not been given its own historical narrative. The paper provides new perspectives on what we might call the “social life” of different documentary formats in medieval and early modern India, in particular the copper-plate grant.

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