Material culture

Question 1

IKEA’s balancing act

Answer 1

Uses advertisements to connect their things with people through visual images, which makes people want to buy their thing (“I can live like that if I buy it”). They produce worlds where preferably you want to place yourself in it. Objects hidden power.

Question 2

Objects and ideology

Answer 2

The state tries to produce a world through material culture - but also create a person through material culture - eg a lecture hall turns you into a particular kind of person

Question 3

The meaning of things

Answer 3

Arjan Appadurai: “Things have no meaning apart from those that human transactions, attributions and motivations endow them with”. They thereby contribute to shaping our habitus. Eg - the world with a stone ax differs from a world with a chainsaw. The introduction of objects can change worlds - eg the TV, the telephone, computers etc.

Question 4

Semiotic approach

Answer 4

Things are culturally coded. People encode things, but things also encode people

Question 5

Animism

Answer 5

The idea that material objects have a soul - they are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. Eg: Robot dog Aibo - deconstructs the eurocentric belief that there is a binary between animate and inanimate life because people mourn over their robot dogs

Question 6

Commodification

Answer 6

The exchangeability and compatibility of highly different objects
->things being drawn into the monetary sphere
->money becomes the thing that gives objects value
->all commodities can be compared in terms of monetary value

Question 7

Alienation of things

Answer 7

Things lose its meaning because their worth becomes comparable to other things