Chapter 1: Making Sense of Material Culture

Annotations:

• By Silvana Rodarte    Citation  Berger, A. A. (2016) What Objects Mean: An Introduction to Material Culture (2nd ed.). NY, NY: Routledge.    

1. On The Nature of Theory
   1. We make sense of the world by fitting things that happen into theories we have that explain why they happen.
   2. Theory definition based on Durham and Kellner: “Thus, cultural and social theories are descriptive and interpretive, they highlight specific topics, make connections, contextualize, provide interpretations, and offer explanations…Multiplying theories and methods at one’s disposal helps to grasp the diverse dimensions of an object, to make more and better connections, and thus provide richer and more comprehensive understanding of cultural artifacts and practices under scrutiny."
   3. Large theories generate smaller and more focused theories and concepts, and it is these theories and concepts we use when considering psychoanalytic theory to help us understand human behavior.Single disciplinary approach is too narrow and often neglects important aspects on what is being studied.
   4. Durham and Kellner argue that the best approach to understanding cultural artifacts is a multidisciplinary approach (seeing all complexities).
2. Defining Material Culture
   1. Things we buy or are given are known as objects and artifacts which lead to material culture.
   2. Definition: World of things that people make and things that we purchase or possess. There are many definitions but it can be focused on cultural values and beliefs that take form or are manifested in artifacts and objects.
   3. Scholars use terms “object” for contemporary material culture and “artifact” for material culture of earlier times, yet both can be interchangeable.
   4. Objects and artefacts reflect beliefs, attitudes, and values found in various societies. Also, Artifacts and objects are keys to understand material culture.
3. The Blue Carbuncle as a Model for the Study of Material Culture
   1. One of the greatest people readers is Sherlock Holmes who could figure out what an individual was like by their clothing, activities, and identities.
   2. In “The Blue Carbuncle” story, Holmes gives a large, wax stained, old hat to his friend Watson to examine. Watson finds nothing. Holmes offers an applied semiotic analysis of the hat, which shows us to we look at material culture. Watson is an example of a person who does not know how to “read” objects. Holmes is an example of a person who can use objects to determine the owner or where it came from.
   3. Ways to be like Holmes: Increase your fund of knowledge (study to know various things), pay close attention to details and make inferences, and bring a store of relevant knowledge to objects when you are analyzing them.
   4. Two ways to analyze artifacts to find out about its cultures: objects tell you about the culture and the culture tells you about the objects.
4. Nietzsche and Prospectivism
   1. German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) adopts a perspectivist approach that involves recognizing the importance of different theories and methodologies to understand phenomena (precursor to multidisciplinary approach).
   2. Perspectivism, according to Nietzsche, is “In so far as the word ‘knowledge’ has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.”
   3. Nietzsche’s point is that interpretation is always an important part of any analyses we make.
5. The Rashomon Problem
   1. Made into a film in 1951 by Akira Kurosawa.
   2. It is based on two short stories by Rynosuke Akutagawa: “Rashomon” and “In a Grove”.
   3. It is about four people who are involved in an episode in a grove and each one gives a very different point of view of what happened. Who is telling the truth? We don’t know.
   4. The Rashomon problem is this: what do we do when theorists or experts disagree on how to interpret an artifact or object?