Material Cultures, Material Minds

Material Cultures, Material Minds PDF

Author: Nicole Boivin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-09-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780521176132

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Material culture has been part of a distinctively human way of life for over two million years. Recent symbolic and social analyses have drawn much attention to the role of material culture in human society, emphasizing the representational and ideological aspects of the material world. These studies have, nonetheless, often overlooked how the very physicality of material culture and our material surroundings make them unique and distinctive from text and discourse. In this study, Nicole Boivin explores how the physicality of the material world shapes our thoughts, emotions, cosmological frameworks, social relations, and even our bodies. Focusing on the agency of material culture, she draws on the work of a diverse range of thinkers, from Marx and Merleau-Ponty to Darwin, while highlighting a wide selection of new studies in archaeology, cultural anthropology, history, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. She asks what is distinctive about material culture compared to other aspects of human culture and presents a comprehensive overview of material agency that has much to offer to both scholars and students

Mind, Materiality and History

Mind, Materiality and History PDF

Author: Christina Toren

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-08-15

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1134645155

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How do we become who we are? How is it that people are so similar in the ways they differ from one another, and so different in the ways they are the same? Christina Toren's theory of mind as not only a physical phenomenon, but an historical one, sets out to answer these questions by examining how the material world of objects and other people informs the constitution of mind in persons over time. This theory of embodied mind as a microhistorical process is set out in the first chapter, providing a context for the nine papers that follow. Questions explored include the way meaning-making processes reference an historically specific world and are responsible at once for continuity and change, how ritual informs children's constitution of the categories adults use to describe the world, and how people represent their relationships with one another and in so doing come to embody history. Mind, Materiality and History has direct relevance to current debates on the nature of mind and consciousness, and demonstrates the centrality of the study of children to social analysis. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars with an interest in anthropological theory and methodology, as well as those engaged in material culture studies.

Memory and Material Culture

Memory and Material Culture PDF

Author: Andrew Jones

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-09-10

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139465600

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We take for granted the survival into the present of artifacts from the past. Indeed the discipline of archaeology would be impossible without the survival of such artifacts. What is the implication of the durability or ephemerality of past material culture for the reproduction of societies in the past? In this book, Andrew Jones argues that the material world offers a vital framework for the formation of collective memory. He uses the topic of memory to critique the treatment of artifacts as symbols by interpretative archaeologists and artifacts as units of information (or memes) by behavioral archaeologists, instead arguing for a treatment of artifacts as forms of mnemonic trace that have an impact on the senses. Using detailed case studies from prehistoric Europe, he further argues that archaeologists can study the relationship between mnemonic traces in the form of networks of reference in artifactual and architectural forms.

The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies PDF

Author: Dan Hicks

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-09-02

Total Pages: 794

ISBN-13: 0199218714

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Written by an international team of experts, the Handbook makes accessible a full range of theoretical and applied approaches to the study of material culture, and the place of materiality in social theory, presenting current thinking about material culture from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies.

Materials of the Mind

Materials of the Mind PDF

Author: James Poskett

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-02-19

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0226820645

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Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters stretching around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world--and how the world changed phrenology. This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is the first substantial account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history could help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.

Material Cultures of Psychiatry

Material Cultures of Psychiatry PDF

Author: Monika Ankele

Publisher: Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner

Published: 2020-04

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9783837647884

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In the past, our ideas on psychiatric hospitals and their history have been shaped by objects like straitjackets, cribs, and binding belts. By focusing on material cultures, this book offers a new perspective on the history of psychiatry as a complex entanglement where power is permanently negotiated.

The Material Culture of Multilingualism

The Material Culture of Multilingualism PDF

Author: Larissa Aronin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-27

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 331991104X

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This volume provides a unique interface between the material and linguistic aspects of communication, education and language use, and cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries, drawing on fields as varied as applied linguistics, ethnology, sociology, history and philosophy. Taking texts, images and objects as their starting points, the authors discuss how cultural context is envisioned in particular materialities and in a variety of contexts and localities. The volume, divided into three sections, aims to deal with material culture not only in the daily language practices of the past and the present, but also language teaching in a number of settings. The main thrust of the volume, then, is the exposure of natural ties between language, cognition, identity and the material world. Aimed at undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in fields as varied as education, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, semiotics and other related disciplines, this volume documents and analyses a wide range of case studies. It provides a unique take on multilingualism and expands our understanding of how materialities permit us new and unexpected insights into multilingual practices.

New Approaches to Ancient Material Culture in the Greek & Roman World

New Approaches to Ancient Material Culture in the Greek & Roman World PDF

Author: Catherine Cooper

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-11-16

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 9004440755

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This book highlights the diversity of current methodologies in Classical Archaeology. It includes papers about archaeology and art history, museum objects and fieldwork data, texts and material culture, archaeological theory and historiography, and technical and literary analysis, across Classical Antiquity.

The Material Culture of Basketry

The Material Culture of Basketry PDF

Author: Stephanie Bunn

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1350094056

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The Material Culture of Basketry celebrates basketry as a culturally significant skilled practice and as a theoretically rich discipline which has much to offer contemporary society. While sometimes understudied and underappreciated, it has much in common with mathematics and engineering, art, craft and design, and can also act as a socially beneficial source of skill and care. Contributors show how local knowledge of materials, plants and place are central to the craft. Case studies include the skill in weaverbird nest building (challenging how we perceive learning in craft and nature), an engineer's perspective on twining Peruvian grass bridges, and the local knowledge embodied in Pacific plaited patterns and knots. Photo-essays explore materials and techniques from the point of view of artists, anthropologists and mathematicians, revealing how the structure and skill in basketwork illustrate a significant form of textile technology. Thus, the book argues that the textures, patterns and geometric forms that emerge through basketwork reflect an embodied knowledge which expresses mathematical and engineering comprehension. The therapeutic value of the craft is recognised through a selection of case studies which consider basketry as a healing process for patients with brain injury, mental health problems, and as a memory aid for people living with dementia. This reclaims basketry's significant role in occupational therapy as an agent of recovery and well–being. Finally, basketry's inherently sustainable nature is also considered, demonstrating the continuation of basketry in spite of handwork's general decline and profiling new and recycled materials. Above all the book envisages basketry as an intellectually rewarding means of knowing. It presents the craft as embodying care for skilled making and for the social and natural environments in which it flourishes.

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