Understanding Material Culture: Key Principles and Case Studies, Lecture notes of Sociology

Download Understanding Material Culture: Key Principles and Case Studies and more Lecture notes Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! PART I LOCATING MATERIAL CULTURE Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 1 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 2 practices and manipulations. What was once fixed by analytic measure and conceptual clarity alone melts away. The current interest in material culture is associated with two key developments in the social sciences: the profusion of research into con- sumption across a range of disciplines, and the rise of poststructural and interpretive theory. Attention to objects as rudimentary elements of con- sumer culture has acquired renewed status in socio-cultural accounts of consumption processes in late-modern societies. This interest in con- sumption objects is also tied up with broader developments in social the- ory, particularly the so-called ‘cultural turn’. Although social scientists have historically had an enduring concern for the material constituents of culture (Goffman, 1951; Mauss, 1967[1954]; Simmel, 1904[1957]; Veblen, 1899[1934]), the recent interest in objects has developed in the context of prominent socio-cultural accounts of modern consumerism, and in turn, the emphasis these have given to the material basis of consumption processes, and the cultural meanings that colonise such objects as they move through social landscapes (Appadurai, 1986; Douglas and Isherwood, [1996]1979; Miller, 1987; Riggins, 1994). The second development is connected to the general turn toward language, culture, sites and spaces in poststructural social theory, and the associated interest beyond traditional social scien- tific analytic categories associated with ‘big’ social forces like class, gen- der and race. Linked with the rise of poststructural theory is an interest in the importance of different variables and sites in social formation and transformation such as the body, space and objects. These approaches don’t ignore social-structural dimensions; however they do consider them in a contextualised, grounded way. As well as interpretive and textual work in the humanities and cultural anthropology (such as Clifford Geertz), the work of Foucault has been of major importance in this devel- opment, for it takes social scientists away from studying traditional macro, structural patterns and directs their interest to discourses, tech- nologies and strategies that are applied at the level of ideas, the body, time and space, as techniques for social governance. While Foucault generally ignores questions of meaning and interpretation that are the central focus of the current work, he has made us aware that it is through the micro- physics of temporal and spatial organisation that social power and control is both established and challenged. Objects such as the guillotine, the uniform, the timetable, the school writing desk, or the panopticon – which is the central motif in his work Discipline and Punish – are important mate- rial tools in the establishment of such capillaries of power, rather than mere ‘props’ or environmental filler. How can objects be ‘cultural’? A selection of case studies Having made some preliminary progress, the best way to proceed is to think about objects and culture through practical applications and The Material as Culture 5 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 5 exemplar cases. This section emphasises the varied capacities of objects to do cultural and social work. In particular, the following case studies demonstrate the diverse capacities of objects to afford meaning, perform relations of power, and construct selfhood. The three sections show how objects can be (i) used as markers of value, (ii) used as markers of identity and (iii) encapsulations of networks of cultural and political power. Objects as social markers It is in Bourdieu’s (1984) writing on taste that the idea of objects as markers of aesthetic and cultural value is most thoroughly developed. Bourdieu emphasises the role of aesthetic choice – one’s tastes – in reproducing social inequality. Bourdieu usurped the (Kantian) idea that judgements of taste are based upon objective and absolute criteria by showing that particular social and class fractions tended to have distinctive taste preferences, which amounts to professing a liking for certain objects over others. Moreover, dominant social groups have the authority to define the parameters of cultural value (e.g. notions of what is ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture), thus devaluing working class modes of judgement as ‘unaesthetic’. In con- sumer societies where taste becomes a highly visible marker of difference, such judgements are implicated in structures of social position and status. Importantly, aesthetic choice is so thoroughly learnt and ingrained that class markers are expressed in the body, self-presentation and performance. Simple learning of cultural and aesthetic rules may not be enough, as one’s demeanour and comportment (‘bodily hexis’, in Bourdieu’s words) can sel- dom succeed in betraying one’s class origins. With this brief overview of Bourdieu’s theory of aesthetic judgement in mind, one can progress to consider the following case studies where objects act as markers of aesthetic value and of self-identity. These cases were gathered as part of a larger project into the narrativisation of aesthetic judgement, which is more fully discussed elsewhere (see Woodward, 2001, 2003; Woodward and Emmison, 2001). Note that it is not just the actual objects these respondents choose to discuss which is impor- tant, but also the content of their talk about the object. The object is given meaning through the narrativisation of broader discourses of self, identity and biography, which link aesthetics to ethics of self, and social identity. So, when you read the following case studies, look not just at the what (i.e. the actual object), but the why and how (i.e. the narrative and performative accompaniment) of aesthetic judgement. Helen For Helen, a chair that sits in a corner of her main bedroom is an object which exemplifies her aesthetic taste. In the research interview, Helen interprets the chair through an aesthetic frame, reflecting on its style Locating Material Culture6 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 6 and design and how she feels this fits with her self-presentation. Throughout the interview, Helen portrays a high level of aesthetic competence – in Bourdieu’s terms, she has mastered the ‘symmetries and correspondences’ (1984: 174) associated with her choices. As a result, she is able to contextualise her own choices within wider social and aesthetic trends with a degree of high cultural authority, bringing a range of cultural knowledges and expertise to bear on her discus- sion of the chair. Helen is someone who places a high value on appropriate home styles and choices, to the extent that she works with an interior designer through important phases of home renovation. Helen and her partner are both professionals in high-salary positions. Helen lives in the inner north east of the city on top of a prominent hill with outstanding views to the city’s east toward the ocean. In terms of questions of taste and style, Helen could be classified as ‘modern classicist’: one who is committed to traditional, classic notions of ‘good taste’ which are based on subtle colour combinations founded in whites and creams, with soft blues and greens as highlight colours. Helen’s aesthetic choices are not directed towards the bright or ostentatious. Rather, decorative schemes are themed consistently through the house, employ neutral-based colours, and present an image of understatement and timelessness that are typically ascribed characteristics of classic ‘good taste’. Asked during the interview to describe her own style, Helen responds: Pretty minimalist, without being minimalist in terms of futuristic minimalist. I certainly tend to be a … it’s the same with the way I dress, fairly uncluttered, fairly simple, clean lines, certainly very neutral in colours, simple patterns, very classic I guess. Helen has such a well developed conception of what constitutes her style that she is able to adroitly sum up her aesthetic values through the use of an exemplar object – a chair that stands in a prominent corner of the main bedroom. Helen uses the chair as a prop for her account. The chair – apart from its functional or use value which is not addressed by Helen – is an object that signifies, and summarises, the style of its owner and the desired ambience of the whole house. The chair’s simplicity, neutrality and classical enduring style are instructive: I can’t see myself ever really taking the plunge and going really bright with the upholstery. As I said, in the main bedroom, come in and I’ll show you, it’s probably the most recent. To me that chair, that sums up my idea. That’s me, I love that. That sort of cream, neutral, New England look. The Material as Culture 7 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 7 one of those reserves, it’s really a game park, a lot of them carve them, but he was just a really good piece … but not finished, totally unfinished, that sheen, the finish has been done since I’ve been back, which has made it come up a whole lot better … he’s just unique, everyone goes ‘ughhh … what’s that!!!’ … wartishog … I sort of like oddities I suppose, something that no one else has got that’s a bit weird you know … not because it’s really expensive but because it’s a bit weird … it’s unique, you’re not going to find things like that in many houses in Hamilton, are you? As an object the ‘wartishog’ seems to have been chosen partly for its perceived lack of conventional beauty or fashionability – for its aggressively anti-style position. Seen in this context, Christina adopts a strongly political attitude toward conventional prescrip- tions of taste, which has its origins in an anti-fashion outlook. At the same time, Christina’s stance is display-oriented, because of its emphasis on the shock-value of the object, manifested through its perceived strangeness or quirkiness. The sign-value of the object for Christina is thus not based in conventional standards of beauty or taste. Its value lies in the same domain as other status objects, but obtains its currency through different signifiers: physically shocking rather than refined and understated, provocative rather than calm- ing, aggressive rather than peaceful. In addition, it is apparent that the wartishog is strongly associated with Christina’s experiences of travel, family and friends. It is an exotic object (Riggins, 1994), linked to a specific touring experience and the contacts with friends and family involved in such travel. These two cases show how people attach various meanings to commonplace objects, using them to think through and account for aspects of self and society more broadly. Objects as markers of identity As the previous examples show, separating aesthetic claims from narratives or claims about self-identity in the study of objects is somewhat futile, for in everyday talk – and especially within the artificial setting of a research interview – a personal aesthetic choice is generally required to be accompa- nied by a justification. Such justifications – which sociologists might classify as being a matter of ‘aesthetics’ – are rarely couched in purely aesthetic terms, but associated with matters of self-identity and a range of external factors (such as, for example, monetary cost or needs associated with one’s life stage). So, while it is rare for respondents to ignore matters of identity in relation to possessions (even when they are ‘aesthetic’ possessions), the following case looks at a very private object with a high degree of personal meaning and a very strong association with personal identity – a bible. The Locating Material Culture10 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 10 bible – like any sacred religious text – is perhaps the ultimate case of a mass- produced object retaining a powerful aura. Even though it is an important spiritual text, it is also an object of mass production with a vast circulation. At odds with the status of a sacred text, a bible originates from nowhere special, essentially having the same qualities as any other mass-produced textbook or magazine. Yet, it manages to retain an aura of authority. The fol- lowing case is not just about any bible, for example, the sort you may find in a bedside table draw when staying at a hotel, but a highly personalised, customised object. A bible is an object that is not generally displayed or carried in public, but reserved for particular occasions and rituals. It may symbolise deeply held, cherished values for Christians, and may be respected by people as a possible legitimate moral code whether or not they are Christian. Yet, depending on your attitude to religion, the bible can also be an object with particular stigmas attached – for example, its association with Christianity as a form of moral imperialism and entrepreneurship, morally and socially conservative values generally, and adherence to strict or anachronistic moral codes. This said, the bible may seem an entirely appropriate accoutrement for a conservative Christian to carry or exhibit, but what about a university student majoring in philosophy and sociology? The following case study considers university student Sarah, through her own words, who nominates her bible as a focal object for understanding her identity. Sarah For Sarah, her Christian faith is a crucial aspect of her identity which defines her life’s direction and meaning. She wishes to live her life consistent with Christian beliefs and perceives a significant differ- ence between her life choices and the life choices those of those who do not have such beliefs. Her bible is symbolic of her beliefs and, she says, offers her a way of ‘fighting’ the social pressures that could pull her away from such beliefs: My bible comes to represent my identity, and to shape it. When I say that it represents me I do not mean that it is simply any bible that can express my identity. It is with the book that I saved to pay for, that I hand covered, and that I have spent hours poring over, and some- times crying over, that I identify. Sarah’s bible represents her decision to identify with the Christian beliefs as defining parts of her personal search for direction and meaning. Yet, she cannot control the way the bible is perceived by others, and recognises that some people may perceive it with suspicion. Hence, she reports some anxiety about how the object is perceived by The Material as Culture 11 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 11 others, especially amongst young people and particularly her peers at university – ‘my nervousness about carrying the bible in public … can in some ways be seen to indicate the pressure I feel to conform to a more secular lifestyle’. While the bible carries special, significant meanings for her, she also recognises that it may signify conservative, restrictive values to others. Her response is to customise the bible, transforming it from a mass-produced object into a personalised object that serves to deconstruct typical notions of how a bible (and a Christian) should appear. One might say the pressures she feels relate to (apparently) contradictory roles or membership category locations – sociology and philosophy student, Christian, alternative university student, member of a youth sub-culture. Sarah has customised a young person’s bible: My fear of being misunderstood can be seen in the way I adorn my bible. I am aware of the hypocrisy of many people who share my belief in God and choose not to live a life that exemplifies this, and so I wrap my bible in corduroy and fill it with poetry so that an observer can see that it is something I treasure. I want people to see that it is interpolated into my life, and that it interacts with other parts of my identity … It is because I am afraid of being seen as a traditional rule-focused Christian that I need to cover my bible and fill its pockets with other identity markers. Sarah’s bible is then a marker of who ‘Sarah’ is, both in terms of her social identity and for Sarah herself. Furthermore, its meaning is mediated through popular and contradictory discourses related to Christianity, youth and being a university student that Sarah has to negotiate as she reflexively monitors her identity. Her bible thus retains its core meaning to her as a spiritual guide, but, in its cus- tomised form, helps Sarah to socially mediate aspects of her identity, given the multiple social locations her identity intersects (youth, alternative lifestyles, Christian, university student). Objects as sites of cultural and political power In this oeuvre, which emerged from new theorisations of the relations between people and technology, objects are constructed by particular power relations, and in turn also actively construct such relations. In this tradition, known as actant-network theory, objects are produced by par- ticular networks of cultural and political discourses and, in conjunction with humans, act to reproduce such relations. So, the discourses and net- works which connect people to objects are not only inextricable as if they are one actor, but may in fact be ‘made of the same stuff’ (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999: 25). Arising from work in the sociology of science and Locating Material Culture12 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 12 mind as ‘dreams and pleasurable dramas’ which are the basis of ongoing desires for objects of consumption (Campbell, 1987: 90). Having made this point, it is important to note that in everyday practice this distinction between discrete physical, embodied and ideational elements of material culture is indistinguishable and artificial – objects are culturally powerful because in practice they connect physical and mental manipulation. What term is best to describe the ‘material’ component of material cul- ture studies? The term ‘material culture’ is often used in conjunction with ‘things’, ‘objects’, ‘artefacts’, ‘goods’, ‘commodities’ and, more recently, ‘actants’. These terms (with the exception of the last) are, for most pur- poses, used interchangeably. There are, however, some important nuances in the meaning of each term, which help to demarcate the context in which it should be used. We can begin with the most general term and move to the most specific. ‘Things’ have a concrete and real material exis- tence but the word ‘thing’ suggests an inanimate or inert quality, requir- ing that actors bring things to life through imagination or physical activity. ‘Objects’ are discrete components of material culture that are per- ceptible by touch or sight. ‘Artefacts’ are the physical products or traces of human activity. Like objects, they have importance because of their materiality or concreteness, and become the subject of retrospective inter- pretation and ordering. Artefacts are generally regarded as symbolic of some prior aspect of cultural or social activity. ‘Goods’ are objects that are produced under specific market relations, typically assumed to be capital- ism, where they are assigned value within a system of exchange. The word ‘commodity’ is a technical expression related to the concept of a ‘good’. Similarly, a commodity is something that can be exchanged. Objects enter into and out of spheres of commoditisation, so that an object that is now a commodity might not always remain a commodity due to its incorporation into private or ritual worlds of individuals, families and cul- tures. ‘Actant’ is a term developed from recent approaches in the sociol- ogy of science and technology which refers to entities – both human and non-human – which have the ability to ‘act’ socially. By dissolving the boundary between people who ‘act’ and objects which are seen as inani- mate or ‘outside’, the term ‘actant’ is designed to overcome any a priori distinction between the social, technological and natural worlds, and emphasises the inextricable links between humans and material things. When using any of these terms there is a danger of reification – that is, of imagining that objects are simply there for human actors to engage with or use up, as though they exist apart from cultural and social history, narrative and codes. Kopytoff (1986) points out that in western thought a mythic dichotomy exists between the notion of ‘individualised’ persons and ‘commoditised’ things which has constructed an inflexible and limit- ing binary for understanding the relations between persons and things. What’s more, there is a danger in pursuing a hard distinction between objects as part of an artefactual world and the other natural world (Miller, 1994: 407). As Miller argues, we should take care to recognise that ‘the The Material as Culture 15 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 15 continual process by which meaning is giving to things is the same process by which meaning is given to lives’ (1994: 417).What’s more, some theorists are of the opinion it may be of greater use to collapse such dis- tinctions and see a radical dissolution of the human/non-human distinc- tion, as suggested by actor, or ‘actant’, network theory. According to this theory, objects are not only defined by their material quality, but by their location within systems of narrative and logic laid out by social dis- courses related to technology, culture, economy and politics. Objects exist within networks of relations that serve to define, mediate and order them, and which in turn are ‘acted upon’ by such objects and human subjects, affording them purpose and meaning within a system of social relations (Law, 2002: 91–2). In other words, objects exist because social, cultural and political forces define them as objects within systems of relations with other objects. Whatever term one chooses to apply in a given context – whether it is objects, actants, material culture, things or goods – one needs only look to their immediate surroundings to find examples. It is this endless diversity and ordinariness of subjects for study that makes material culture studies fascinating and fundamental to understanding culture. SUGGESTED FURTHER READING Lury’s Consumer Culture (1996) is a concise and interesting critical review of a range of literatures within the related field of consumption studies. Particularly useful is Chapter 2 of this work, which investigates the link between consumer culture and material culture. Douglas and Isherwood’s The World of Goods ([1996]1979) is a foundational work, uniquely combining insights from the disciplines of economics and anthropology. Much of what Douglas and Isherwood say about the uses of material culture has since become elemental to contempo- rary studies of material culture. The principle ideas of the work are expressed in Chapters 3 and 4. Kopytoff’s (1986) essay is also important to defining the current field and requires some close reading. This essay on the cultural biography of things explains how objects have biographies and discusses the way objects are commoditised and ‘singularised’ – personalised or given special or sacred meaning within a culture – in capitalist societies. Chapter 1 of Dittmar’s The Social Psychology of Material Possessions (1992) is a lucid introduction to consumption and material culture studies from a social psychological perspective. In addition, consider reading small-scale empirical studies which engage with material culture perspectives in relation to identity-based consumption in a way accessible to the beginning reader – see Miles (1996) on youth and the use of sneakers in construc- tion of a symbolic universe, Lupton and Noble (2002) on the customisation of personal computers within the workplace, and Woodward (2001, 2003) on narra- tives of identity construction using domestic material culture. Locating Material Culture16 Woodward-3528-Chapter-01.qxd 4/20/2007 2:22 PM Page 16