Understanding the Human Experience through Objects: Challenges for Material Culture Studies: Daniel Milleru27s Material cultures: Why some things matter

摘要

From the 18e century collections of curiosities to modern days ethnographic endeavors, material culture has offered insights into peopleu27s life and customs and, as such, has been part of the academic world. Mostly used as a tool to support researches with a larger spectrum and a different focus, material culture has seldom been studied for itself. The fear of fetishism contributed to this avoidance of objects as the central preoccupation of research, and still remains sometimes an obstacle to a positive approach of material culture as a deserving area of academia. A renewal in the academic interest towards material culture, rising since the mid 90u27, seems to be changing this tendency. Breaking away from the once common Marxist-oriented approaches as well as the semiotic analyses, material culture studies have started to embrace a more cultural and ethnographic approach. In this new turn of event, objects are not understood as mere commodities or symbols anymore, but as counterparts and expressions of social and personal life. With the will to call attention to the need for a non-reductionist approach of material culture, this article first focuses on the evolution material culture studies have gone through, and the ever changing relationships between researchers and material culture. It then describes a new and encouraging trend in these studies, using Daniel Milleru27s Material Cultures: Why some things matter as an example of material culture studies freed from the weigh of academic boundaries.