Week 4 — Gender and DomesticitySOCI/ANTH 441 Material CultureAlexandre EnkerliSeptember 24, 2008

Today

•Logistics•Themes and approaches in material

culture•Readings

Logistics

•Pre-write tonight at latest▫Will give feedback ASAP

•Project Part I next week•Forum discussions•Fabian on materiality of text

Rights

•Property rights•Intellectual property•Cultural heritage•Appropriation

Sociology of Technology

•Technology adoption•Shaping•Science•Engineering•Industrialization•Postmodernism

Subjectivity

•Embodiment•Agency•Aesthetics•Personalization/customization•Value•Fetishism

SI

•Self as social construction•Self is both subject and object•Learn self by interaction with material

objects•Making sense of the world and creating it

SI and Material Culture

•Communicating self•Embodiment•Extend personality•Reminder of sense of self•Stability•Familiarity•Emotion

Contact with Object

•Tactile•Communication•Bodies and things•Reveals inside

Self and Physical World

•Social relation•Mother as object•Later division humans/non-humans•Objects maintain social attributes

Pascali References

•Derrida•Douglas•Pocius

Places and Objects

•Extra Room•Status symbols•Precious items•Cost-cutting•Enjoying one's things

Gordon References

•Bauman•Huizinga•Bakhtin•Geertz•Dundes•Merleau-Ponty•Lakoff and Johnson•Csikszentmihalyi•Goffman

Research methods

•Folkloristics•Ethnographic semiotics•Longitudinal content analysis (neat

method)•Particularism•Microlevel analysis•Description

Folkloristics

•Tradition•Material to verbal•Festivals•Humour•Domestic cultural property

Spaces

•Control environment•Multi-sensory environments•Interactive creation of spaces•Interior/exterior•Front-/backstage•Private/public

Society

•Immigration•Gendered fields•Security/expression•Gift/labour exchange•Socio-economic marker•State macro-/micro-ideology

Next Week

•Project•Barbie archaeology•Museum and interpretation