SOCI/ANTH 441/2A – Material Culture

Week 2: September 10, 2014

Today

• Project
• DiSalvo
• Magaudda
• Library session

Working Together

• Classroom
• Forum
• Sharing links: Diigo Group

Project

Have you thought about an object?

Part I: Description (October 8)

Questions to ask (of) the object

Object Phenomenology

• What is it?
• What are its features?
• What are its parts, components, materials?
• How does it feel, smell, sound, look, or even taste?
• How can it be characterized, categorized, typologized?
• How is it made, built?

Object Life

• What is its history?
• Who has made it, transformed it, distributed it?
• When was it made?
• What are its antecedents, ancestors, prerequisites?
• Where does it come from?
• Where is it heading?

Object Value

• What does it mean, represent, signify?
• What is it worth, to whom?
• How does it compare to similar objects?
• What can it do, how can it be used?
• What does it afford?

Dumit’s Dimensions

• http://web.mit.edu/dumit/www/artifact.htm
• symbolic, labor, professional, material, technological, political, economic, textual, bodily, historical
• context, educational, political, mythological, symbolic, labor, professional, material, technological, economic, textual, bodily

Past Week: DiSalvo

Core Text

What did you notice?

Complementary Texts

Other angles on DiSalvo?

Next Week: Magaudda

• Magaudda, Paolo. “When Materiality ‘bites Back’: Digital Music Consumption Practices in the Age of Dematerialization.” Journal of Consumer Culture 11, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 15–36. doi:10.1177/1469540510390499.
  

  music (156), practice (75), practices (78), consumption (70), digital (61).

Magaudda WordCloud

Magaudda Terms

music, practices, practice, consumption, digital, material, objects, ipod, materiality, process, changes, cultural, consumer, circuit, change, object, devices, listening, digitalization, processes, meanings, personal, appropriation, technologies, reconfiguration, dematerialization, sense, listeners, experience, integration, adoption, technology, records, record, gift, computer, performative, culture, articulation, players, formats, consumers, transformation, sts, shift, portable, obsolete, materialities, experiences, everyday, embodied, diffusion, values, value, interviews, emergence, cultures, connected, accessories, adaptation

Context

• Digital economy (Anderson)
• Anthropology of consumption (McCracken)
• STS: Science and Technology Studies (Bijker, Pinch…)
• ANT: Actor-Network Theory (Latour, Callon, Law)

Further Context

• Immaterial vs. material
• Commodification of music
• Practices and objects
• Appropriation
• Circuit of practice

Complementary Texts

• Texts cited by Magaudda (Bijker, Dant, Douglas, Kopytoff, Latour, Miller, Orlikowski, Pinch, Ritzer, Shove, Vannini)
• Texts citing Magaudda