Posted at Sep 26/2007 02:56PM:
chris witmore: PLEASE NOTE: I have created a PRIVATE FORUM for all the readings. The password is, of course, the same. [link]
Week one: T., 9/11—Introduction: aims and objectives
Week two: T., 9/18—Materialist Approaches
- Marx, K. 1971. Capital: Vol.1. A Critical analysis of capitalist production. (Read: Chapter 1 The Commodity, pp. 125-177) (Library has electronic copy) Also check out Google Scholar: [link] as well as the Marx & Engels Internet Archive for a non-pdf/copy-paste friendly version [link]
- Marx, K. 2002. The machine verses the worker. In The Social Shaping of Technology. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (eds), Second Edition. Buckingham: Open University Press. 156-58.
- Stallybrass, P. 1998. Marx’s Coat. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces. P. Spyer (ed.) London: Routledge, pp. 183-207.
- Appadurai, A. 1986. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In The Social Life of Things. A. Appadurai (ed.). Cambridge: CUP, pp. 3-63.
- Mauss, M. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: Norton. (Library has electronic copy)
Further Reading
- Appadurai, A. 1994. Commodities and the politics of value, In Interpreting objects and collections. S.M. Pearce (ed.) London: Routledge. 76-91.
- Mauss, M. 2006. Techniques, Technology and Civilization. N. Schlanger (ed.) Durkheim Press.
DISCUSSANTS: Michelle, Stephen, Kate, Charlotte
Week three: T., 9/25—Material culture studies: American and French Approaches
- Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1993. Gesture and Speech. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Chapters 8 and 9. 237-266.
- Lemonnier, P. 1992. Elements for an Anthropology of Technology. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Chapter 1 and 3. 1-24 and 51-77.
- Schiffer, M. with A.R. Miller, 1999. The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behaviour, and Communication. London: Routledge. ALL (Library has electronic copy)
Further reading:
- Glassie, H. 1999: Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Lemonnier, P. 1993. Technical Choices: Transformations in Material Cultures since the Neolithic. London: Routledge.
DISCUSSANTS: Brad, Colin, Heidi, Alex
Week four: T., 10/2—Material culture studies/Materiality
- Miller, D. 1998. Material Cultures; Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1, 3-21 and Chapter 8, 169-187.
- Miller, D. 2005. Introduction. In D. Miller (ed.) Materiality. Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 1-50.
- Buchli, V. 2004. Material Culture: Current Problems. In A Companion to Social Archaeology. L. Meskell and R. Preucel (eds) . Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 179-194.
- Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14(1), 1-16.
- Olsen, B., 2005: Scenes from a troubled engagement. Post-structuralism and material culture studies, in C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer (eds), Handbook of Material Culture. London, 85-103.
Further readings:
- Buchli, V. 1995. Interpreting material culture: the trouble with text. In Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past. I. Hodder, M. Shanks, A. Alexandri, V. Buchli, J. Carman, J. Last, and G. Lucas (eds), London: Routledge, pp. 181-93.
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. and E. Rochberg-Halton, 1981. The meaning of things: Domestic symbols and the self. Cambridge: CUP.
- Tilley, C. 1991. Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity. London: Routledge.
DISCUSSANTS: Christy, Claudia, Michelle
Week five: T., 10/9—Goods and process: Between biographical approaches and life-cycles
- Du Gay, P., S. Hall, L. Janes, H. Mackay, K. Negus, 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of The Sony Walkman. London: Sage. (Introduction, 1-7 and Introduction to each section)
- Shanks, M. 1998. The life of an artifact. Fennoscandia Archeologica 15, 15-42.
- Holtorf, C. 1998. The life-history of megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany). World Archaeology 30 (1): 23–38.
- Holtorf, C. 2002. Notes on the life history of a pot shard. Journal of Material Culture 7 (1): 49–71.
- Kopytoff, I. 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In The Social Life of Things. A. Appadurai (ed.), Cambridge: CUP, pp. 64–91.
- Gosden, C. and Y. Marshall (eds) 1999. The cultural biography of objects. World Archaeology 31 (2): 169-178.
- Brooks, R. 2004. The Portland Vase. New York: Harper Collins. (Summarize Journey)
Further readings:
- Hoskins, J. 2005. Agency, biography and objects. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer (eds), Handbook of Material Culture. London, 74-84.
DISCUSSANTS: Tom, Keffie, Ray, Carrie, Kate, Clarissa, Claudia
Week six: T., 10/16—Phenomenology
- Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. The Thing and the Natural World, pp. 348-402.
- Merleau-Ponty, M. 1969. The Visible and the Invisible. (tr. A. Lingis) Northwestern University Press SELECTIONS TO FOLLOW
- Tilley, C. 2004. The Materiality of Stone. Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg. Introduction 1-31.
- Benjamin, W. 1973. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (ed.) Illuminations. New York, pp. 217-252.
- Ihde. D. 2003. If Phenomenology is an Albatross, is Post-phenomenology Possible? In Ihde, D. and Selinger E. (eds.), Chasing Technoscience. Matrix for Materiality. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 131-144.
Further reading:
- Brück, J. 2005. Experiencing the past? The development of a phenomenological archaeology in British prehistory. Archaeological Dialogues 12(1) 45-72.
- Johnson, M.H. 2006. On the nature of theoretical archaeology and archaeological theory. Archaeological Dialogues 13(2) 117-132.
- Olsen, B. 2006. Archaeology, hermeneutics of suspicion and phenomenological trivialization. Archaeological Dialogues 13(2) 144-150.
DISCUSSANTS: Charlotte, Chris, Keffie, Kori
Week seven: T., 10/23—Heidegger: from objects to things
- Heidegger, M. 1996. Being and Time. State University of New York Press, Albany. The Necessity, Structure and Priority of the Question of Being and The Worldliness of the World, 2-12 and 59-105
- Harman, G. 2002: Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Chicago: Open Court.
- Heidegger, M., 1971: Poetry, language, thought, (tr. A. Hofstadter), New York. READ: The Thing, 161-184.
- Harman, G. 2005: Heidegger on Objects and Things. In Latour, B. and Weibel, P. (eds) Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 268-271.
- Rorty, R. 2005: Heidegger and the Atomic Bomb. In Latour, B. and Weibel, P. (eds) Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 274-275.
Further readings:
- Benso, S. 1996. Of things face-to-face with Levinas face-to-face with Heidegger: prolegomena to a metaphysical ethics of things. Philosophy Today 40(1), 132-141.
- Harman, G. 2007: Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing. Chicago: Open Court.
- Harman, G. 2005: Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Chicago: Open Court.
- Thomas, J. 1996: Time, Culture, and Identity, London: Routledge.
DISCUSSANTS: Tom, Ray, Carrie, Steven
Week eight: T., 10/30—The sociology of technology and technoscience studies
- Bijker, W.E. 1995. Of Bicycles Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press. READ Chapters 1, 2 and 5 (Introduction, King of the Road, and Conclusion) pp. 1-100 and 269-290.
- Law, J. 2002. Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience. Duke Univeristy Press. READ Chapters 1, 2 and 3, (Introduction, Objects, and Subjects) pp. 1-64.
- Bijker, W.E. and J. Law, 1992. General Introduction. In Shaping Technology/Building Society. W.E. Bijker and J. Law (ed.) Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, pp 1-14. (Library has electronic copy)
- Hughes, T.P. 2002. Edison and electric light. In The Social Shaping of Technology. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman, Second Edition. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 50-63.
Further reading:
- Hacking, I. 2001. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass: Harvard.
DISCUSSANTS: Bochay, Kori . . .
Week nine: T., 11/6—Cognitive approaches
- Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Ingold, T., 2000. The Perception of the Environment. Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge, London. General Introduction, Chapters, 15, 16, 18, and 21, pp 1-7, 294-322, 339-248, 373-391 (Library has electronic copy).
- Ingold, T. 2004. Culture on the ground: the world perceived through the feet. Journal of Material Culture 9(3): 315-340.
Further readings:
- Knappett, C. 2005. Thinking through Material Culture. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
- Malafouris, L. 2004. The cognitive basis of material engagement. Where brain, body and culture conflate. In DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C., and Renfrew, C. (eds.) 2004. Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World. MacDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge, pp. 53-62.
DISCUSSANTS: Bochay, Brad, Christy, Michelle
Week ten: T., 11/13— The question of agency: Anthropological angles
- Gell, A. 1998. Art and agency. Oxford: OUP.
- Strathern, M. 1999. Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays in persons and Things. London: Athlone Press. READ Chapters 1 (this includes “Chapter 1 Concluded), 2, and 3. (The Ethnographic Effect I and The Ethnographic Effect II, Pre-figured Features, and The Aesthetics of Substance) pp 1-85 and 229-260.
Further Readings:
- Osborne, R and J. Tanner (eds), Art’s Agency and Art History. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Pinney, C. and N. Thomas (eds), 2001. Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
DISCUSSANTS: Keffie, Heidi, Alex
Guest Discussant: Timothy Webmoor
Week eleven: T., 11/20—Actor-Network-Theory
- Callon, M. and J. Law, 1997. After the individual in society. Lessons on collectivity from science, technology and society, Canadian journal of sociology, 22(2), 165-82.
- Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Further Readings:
- Law, J. and J. Hassard, 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell
DISCUSSANTS: Bochay, Clarissa, Colin, Chris
Week twelve: T., 11/27—Design studies
- Norman, D.A. 2001. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. READ: Chapters 1 and 7 (The Psychopathology of Everyday Things and User-Centered Design) pp. 1-33 and 187-217.
- Norman, D.A. 2005. Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York, Basic Books. READ: Chapters 1, 2 and 3 (Attractive Things Work Better, The Multiple Faces of Emotion and Design and Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective) pp. 17-98.
- Petroski, H. 1996. Invention by design: How engineers get from thought to thing. HUP: Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp.1-42.
- Shanks, M. and C. Tilley, 1992. Social values, social constraints and material culture: the design of contemporary beer cans. In Re-Constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, pp.172-240.
- Sterling, B. 2005 Shaping Things. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT press.
Further Reading from an Architectural Angle
- Alexander, C. 1979. The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press.
- Alexander, C. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press.
DISCUSSANTS: Ray?, Kori . . .
Week thirteen: T., 12/4—The return to things
- Brown, B. 2003. A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Brown, B. 2001. Thing Theory. Critical Inquiry 28(1), 1-22.
- Domanska, E. 2006. The return to things. Archaeologia Polona 44, 171-185.
- Latour, B. 2005b. From realpolitik to dingpolitik – or how to make things public. In Making Things Public–Atmospheres of Democracy (eds B. Latour and P. Weibel). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 14-41
- Olsen, B. 2003. Material culture after text: re-membering things. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36 (3): 87–104.
- Preda, A. 1999. The turn to things: arguments for a sociological theory of things. The Sociological Quarterly 40(2), 347-366.
DISCUSSANTS: Brad, Christy, Clarissa, Chris
Guest Discussant: TBA
