Material Culture in the Social World

Acknowledgements
Introduction
the cairn and the mini-strip
Consuming or living with things?
Fetishism and the social value of objects
Building and dwelling
Wearing it out
written and material clothing
Playing with things
interacting with a windsurfer
Objects in time
modernity and biography
Turn it on
objects that mediate
Who's what?
people as objects
Conclusion
Further reading
Bibliography
Index.

"This should become a core text for second year courses in sociology and cultural studies... it synthesizes a vast body of literature and a complex range of debates into a text which is at once accessible, engaging and stimulating... it will lead to students seeing and thinking about the material world in a totally new light and can be used as a way into key theoretical debates."
Keith Tester, Professor of Social Theory, University of Portsmouth

• In what ways do we interact with material things?
• How do material objects affect the way we relate to each other?
• What are the connections between material things and social processes like fashion, discourse, art and design?

Through wearing clothes, keeping furniture, responding to the ring of the telephone, noticing the signature on a painting, holding a paperweight and in many other ways, we interact with objects in our everyday lives. These are not merely functional relationships with things but are connected to the way we relate to other people and the culture of the particular society we live in - they are social relations. This engaging book draws on established theoretical work, including that of Simmel, Marx, McLuhan, Barthes and Baudrillard as well as a range of contemporary empirical work from many humanities disciplines. It uses ideas drawn from this work to explore a variety of things - from stone cairns to denim jeans, televisions to penis rings, houses to works of art - to understand something of how we live with them.