Objects, Identities and Cultures

General characterization

Prerequisites

Available soon

Bibliography

Appadurai, A., 1986, The Social Life of Things – Commodities and Cultural Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 3-63 and 64. Bourdieu, P.,1979, La distinction, Paris, Minuit, 91-06 Coupaye, L. e Douny, L., 2009, Dans la trajectoire des choses - Comparaison des approches francophones et anglophones contemporaines en anthropologie des techniques, in : Techniques & Culture, 52-53. Douglas, M . e Isherwood, B., 1979, The world of goods, New York, Basic Books Ingold, T., 2010, The textility of making, Cambridge Journal of Economics 2010, 34, p. 91–102. Miller, D., 1987, Material culture and mass consumption, Oxford, Blackwell. Latour, B.1993. La clef de Berlin et autres leçons d’un amateur de sciences, Paris, La Découverte.
Weiner A., 1994, Cultural Difference and the Density of Objects, in American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 391-403

Teaching method

Classes centred on the teacher's presentation, based on the analysis and critical reflection of works included in the syllabus. 2. classes centred on the presentation by students of reading sheets on texts defined by the lecturer. 3. classes centred on the presentation by the lecturer of case studies, followed by discussion with the students.

Evaluation method

Objects, identities and cultures is a non-exam UC, which means that students will have to obtain an overall mark of 10 in all the tests taken in order to pass automatically.
Students must read the texts in the general bibliography as well as the texts presented in class - each student will present a text (alone or together with a colleague). The presentation of the texts and attendance and participation in the discussions (based on the texts in the bibliography) constitute the assessment elements of the seminar (final assessment weight of 50 per cent).
At the end of the semester, an individual essay must be submitted, with a maximum of 10 pages (Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1.5 spacing), centred around the topics covered in the seminar and using at least six references from the bibliography (50% of the final assessment).

Subject matter

1. Anthropology and Material Culture - substantialist conceptions and the conceptual impasse
Until the 1980s, anthropology was unable to formulate conceptual propositions that, in the context of consumer societies, interpreted the significant relationships established between objects, cultures and identities. This was due to the predominance of substantialist conceptions (Duarte, 2010) which, based above all on the theoretical precepts of Marx and Mauss, divided the world into commodity societies and gift societies. On the former side, the relationship between people and objects was perceived as negative - from the point of view of production, because the subject didn't have access to the product of their own labour, and from the point of view of consumption, because the exchange of objects there didn't produce significant social ties, as it did in gift societies.

2. The conceptual shift of recent decades

During the last decades of the 20th century, material culture studies made a critical revision of existing theories, proposing new perspectives that consider: a) that, in all societies, objects are objectifications of culture and consequently carry meanings (Baudrillard, 1968; Douglas and Isherwood, 1978; McCracken, 1988; Sahlings, 1976); b) that objects serve to reproduce social structures (Bourdieu, 1979); c) that objects are part of the processes of constructing identities (Miller, 1987); d) that objects go through different situations in their social lives, with merchandise being just one of them (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986); e) that objects are not always exchangeable - sometimes they become inseparable from the person to whom they belong (Godelier, 1996; Weiner, 1992); and, finally, that objects themselves have the capacity to act socially (Gell, 1998; Latour, 1993).

3. Objects and ethnographies in a globalised world

From the 1990s onwards, new perspectives fuelled a wave of material culture studies anchored in ethnographic work that focused on the processes of appropriation of objects. Ethnographies have shown that these processes first take place inside houses, but then extend outside, in a logic of social confirmation of the complex identity relationship between subject and objects (Duarte, 2009; Gato, 2014; Miller, 2001).

In situations of spatial mobility, the things that accompany people's journeys play an important role, firstly in the construction of the memory of abandoned places, but also, and probably above all, in the links between this memory and the life that takes place inside the new homes (Basu et Coleman, 2008; Hecht, 2001; Marcoux, 2001; Petridou, 2001; Rosales, 2016; Sarup, 1998; Silvano, 1990, 2017; Silvano and Rosales 2015). Things are indispensable for activating, in new contexts, practices incorporated by people in their pasts (Bourdieu, 1979; Kaufmann, 2011) - they constitute the framework of action and the framework of social interactions (Halbwachs, 1950; Latour, 2007; Rémy, 2005).

Clothes, because they are part of the universal practice of dressing, are perhaps the objects that most clearly demonstrate the role of things in the dynamics of the construction of subjects' identities (Eicher, 2000; Miller, 2005; Turner, 2012). The anthropological approach to clothes and dressing allows us to construct a view of fashion that places it beyond the history of Western material culture (Silvano, 2021).

Programs

Programs where the course is taught: