SOSC301 links readings

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 WHAT IS MATERIAL CULTURE?



This course will introduce the student to different disciplinary, interdisciplinary and theoretical discussions of Material Culture. It will also focus on empirical examples of what material culture may constitute and we will be looking at topics from the built environment to the body. It is important to remember that material culture also has a strong historical component and as such, any socio-cultural and political discussion of material culture is also entangled with the historical. 

What this course is NOT about is materials - we are not studying the properties of materials.

This course will also concentrate more on the everyday, and everyday spaces and objects. For this year, we will pay attention to the material culture of the pandemic world and how we might begin to perceive the world around us, our futures differently. What material objects have become prominent, important in your life, what spaces have you missed - what has fallen away in terms of significance? 


Life provides us with an embarrassment of riches to draw out narratives and micro-histories that illuminate how we live, how we remember, how societies may have functioned, express themselves, etc. The most obscure of objects like the 'paperclip' or the 'remote control', food -  may give us a window into thinking about connections or practices. For example, how has the paperclip become such a ubiquitous object? How did it change office environments? What do even the most mundane of practices (e.g. the hockey game) tell us about race, class and gender in addressing material culture. How does the mp3 change the way we relate to or use music as oppose to the vinyl record? We will also be focusing on non-conventional notions of material culture particularly in light of changing technologies as well as the latest scholarship in the field, eg. affect studies, companion species studies, big data and the internet of things. We will also look at theory and philosophy - and I will be introducing to thinkers like Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway etc. This course will also look at various methods used in communicating material culture studies. 


DECOLONIZING MATERIAL CULTURE

reading 1

reading 2

reading 3


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