Mundane objects : materiality and non-verbal communication
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Mundane objects : materiality and non-verbal communication
（Publications of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, . Critical cultural heritage series ; v. 10）
Left Coast Press, c2012
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p.179-191) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This concise book shows the importance of objects that are considered ordinary by cultural outsiders and scholars, yet lie at the heart of the systems of thought and practices of their makers and users. This volume demonstrates the role of these objects in nonverbal communication, both in non-ritual and in ritual situations. Lemonnier shows that some objects, their physical properties and their material implementation, are wordless expressions of fundamental aspects of a way of living and thinking, as well as sometimes the only means of expressing the inexpressible. Through the study of the most mundane technical activities such as fence building, creating models cars, or trapping fish, we often gain a better understanding of what these objects mean and how they work within their cultures of origin. In addition to anthropologists and archaeologists, this book will also be of interest to sociologists, historians, philosophers, cognitive anthropologists and primatologists, for whom the intertwining of "function" and "style" is the very mark of all cultural behavior.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Too Sturdy To Be Mundane: A Baruya Garden Fence
- Chapter 2 Entwined by Nature: Eels, Traps, and Ritual
- Chapter 3 The Anthropological Complexity of Unremarkable Drums
- Chapter 4 Artefacts as Images or How to Relate Relations
- Chapter 5 Race Cars, Dinky Toys, and Aging Boys
- Chapter 6 What Materiality Means: Objects as Resonators
- Chapter 7 What's New? Blurring Anthropological Borders but Keeping "Technology" in Mind
- Chapter 8 The Paradox of Marginal Changes
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