SOCI/ANTH 441 Material Culture

Meeting 4: MovementSeptember 30, 2010

PROJECT

Project Ideas

• Shipping container as office• Call button in plane• Garden Gnome• Squeegee• Nametag• Lenin's brain• Reusable grocery bag

Other ideas

• Velvet Elvis• OLPC• Bubble wrap• Construction hard hat• Opus card• Handicap door opener• Stethoscope• Hand grinder

• Labcoat• Touchscreen• Chopsticks• Spray can• Mystery object• Round tuit• Payphone• Badge

MILLER

Spot the object

• Certificates– Material evidence– Defined by absence

• Homes– Pascali – Sedentary

• Final home– Connection to graveyard lore

• Food– Identity

Mobile phones

• Ingenuity• Social conditions• Networking• Informal economy

Kitsch

• Taste• Telling off• Embedded judgment• Jackson

Descriptive language

• Journalistic• Cinematographic– FIFEQ

• Literary– Biswas

Living history

• Similar to oral but "what words can't tell"– Show reliance on words or behaviour

• Individuals• Plight– Integration, assimilation

• Agency• Not realizing (saved by social scientist)• Sociology/anthropology