Quiz 4 Consumer Culture

Alfred Gell- Extended Person

• The person is projected into things

• Personhood is detachable

• May outlive its originator

• Projection of a person into a thing confounds the Great Divide but it allows humans to have social relationships with things

Marcel Mauss- The GIft

• Had a study of exchange practices in non-modern societies

• Said when objects move between people, these exchanges are almost always of gifts

  • But (under moral obligation), gifts must be reciprocated at a later time

• The gift contains the person of the giver

  • The giver is projected into the object given

  • A gift gives part of one’s person to someone else

• Gift exchange is motivated by a desire to possess the person of the giver

• Concluded the gift itself must be a person because it retains the person of the giver

  • Since the gift is a person, it has a social life

• Human and object can share the same identity, so they can substitute for one another

• Some things have a social relationship with people because they are also persons

• Mauss’ ideas apply to modernity

Curatorial Consumption

• Work of Grant McCracken

• Mrs. Lois Roget’s farmhouse was filled with heirlooms

• Antique: something that is old

• Heirloom: Something old having a relationship between a current and previous owners

• Heirlooms were given/inherited as gifts across generations and she was their curator (caretaker and preserver)

  • She devotes alot of energy and time into upkeep

  • She could not purchase antiques or furniture she wanted

  • Told her children stories of their ancestors in connection with the objects themselves

• Defined her identity in relation of who she was to all of her ancestors who were represented in all these objects in her house

• Curatorial practices help maintain object personhood

Marx vs Mauss

• The gift in inalienable- it cannot be alienated from its owner/maker

• The “how” of the gift remains- it always contains the essence of the giver

• Some inalienable objects are unmovable because they have too much personhood of previous owners

Gifts vs Commodities

• Marx: Commodities

  • Alienable

  • Exchangeable

  • Independent of makers and owners

  • Made in mass quantities, interchangeable

  • Have a standard monetary value

  • Sold in an anonymous market exchange

  • Pure “objects”

• Mauss: Gifts

  • Inalienable

  • Dependent on makers and owners

  • Cannot be valued solely in terms of money

  • Unique in some way

  • Establish social bonds among those who exchange them

  • Subject-like (persons)

Decommodization

• Kopytoff: Consumers may transform commodities into inalienable (gift-like) goods

• A commodity can become part of your nature, so Marx was wrong in that sense

• Commodities that become gifts/decommotized are called possessions

  • Become subject-like so that humans can have social relationships with commodities

    • Goods endowed with aspects of the person who owns or uses them

Analysis of Intertwining Social Lives of People and Things

Through the idea of biographical objects and object biographies

Biographical Objects- Lois Roget

• Her identity was in a “time-relation” to generations past and future

• Identity is materlalized by heirlooms and hoped to pass the objects down to her children

• Mrs. Roget was a link in a chain in time

  • Individuals come and go, but objects persist

Time-Oriented Possession(s)

• We define aspects of ourselves at different phases in our lives, and also certain milestones

Biographical Objects- Janet Hoskins

• Materialized as keepsakes or souvenirs (biographical objects)

• We project our life course in these special possessions, and those objects form our material biography

  • Can be past or remembered objects

• Biographical objects anchor their owners to a time frame in their lives

  • The social fields and places of that time frame

• Biographical objects reassure us of who we are and are part of our identity project and sometimes the historical trajectory of our identity

• Our sense of who we are depends on our sense of who we were

Object Biographies- Igor Kopytoff

• Any made object changes over time

• Commoditization, decommodization, recommoditization- meaning at each stage

• Physical traces of changes may accumulate over time

  • Meaning accumulates with longevity

• We should be able to write the “life story” of an object- equivalent to a human biography

  • Not the same as the “history” of the object

• An object biography likens the object to a person

• The object is an actant through its life stages and is enrolled in different social fields and social projects

• Object biography is a method of social analysis that focuses on consumer goods as we use them over time

  • Emphasizes shifting social fields and meanings of objects over time, through their use-lives

• Goal: Trace the changing relationships between people and things over time

Limitations of Object Biographies

• Objects are not limited to human life stages

• Human biography is linear, but objects can take nonlinear or reversible paths

• Objects can be divided up, and their parts travel in different directions

• Biography neglects the spatial dimension of social lives

Commodity Chains

• Analytical method used by industry, geographers, and economists

• It charts the processes of transforming raw materials into commodities, which are then distributed for sale to consumers

• Movement creates the “chain” of connected places

• Focuses mostly on the origin, transformations, and purchase, but does not deal with consumers

  • Also ignores what happens to commodities at the end of their use life

  • Because it ignores consumers, it misses out on most of the biography of objects

Commodityscape

• The actual spatial territory encompassed by the movement of a commodity along its change

• Focuses mostly on the origin, transformations, and purchase, but does not deal with consumers

  • Also ignores what happens to commodities at the end of their use life

• Because it ignores consumers, it misses out on most of the biography of objects

Anthropologists….

Concerned with how things change as they move

Arjun Appadurai

• Consumer goods depend on consumers for their meanings

• We must follow the things themselves as they acquire their meanings

• Pay attention to social fields and interconnections as they move

• Analyze the transformation in value and meaning as they move

  • Account for physical transformation as well

Daniel Miller

Things we make are “in-motion” and things-in-motion make us

Object Itineraries

• Objects must be followed through space

• A method beyond the limitations of object biography

• Pays attention to the routes and how they connect objects to people and places

  • As well as nodes or stopping points on the route

• Technology of circulation

• Changes in properties and meanings

• Applies to individual entities and classes of objects or things