Daniel Millers Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter Essay example

In the introduction to Material Cultures why Some Things Matter, Daniel Miller describes the book as part of the second give of the development of natural culture studies. The first stage was the recognition by writers such as Appadurai and Bourdieu as well as Miller that genuine culture is important and worthy of study. The second stage is the argument make in this book that it is crucial to focus on the diversity of material worlds without reducing these material worlds to symbols for real social processes nor cloistering them in sub-studies of like objects. That things number has already been ascertained this books intends to investigate why some things matter more(prenominal) than others and in particular contexts.Miller claims a focus on objects themselves that does non however fetishize What we may regard as unique to our approach is that we stick focused upon the object that is being investigated but at heart a usance that prevents any simple fetishization of materi al form. Indeed we feel that it is precisely those studies that rapidly move the focus from object to society in their fear of fetishism and their app bent embarrassment at being, as it were, caught gazing at mere objects, that prevent the negative consequences of the term fetishism. It is for them that Coke is merely a material symbol, banners pedestal in a simple moment of representation or radio set becomes mere text to be analyzed. In such analysis the unnumerable diversity of artefacts can easily become reduced to generic forms such as text, art, or semiotic. In such approaches it is non only the objects that remain fetishized but also, as Latour (1993) has argued with respect to the fetishism within debates about science, it is the idea of society as ... ...usic is a good example. in any event the aural experience of listening to music, there is the physical experience of the low-pitched vibrating your body that feeling is directly related to the nature of the medium b y which you are listening. The stereo with four foot speakers or the kitchen radio are things that matter too. CDs come into ones possession bearing, besides music, tasteful cover art, printed lyrics, and the thanks to families and deities by the musicians involved. Things are polyvalent, and things are made up of other things and attached in literal and figurative ways to lull other things. And I think it is worth gazing a bit more intently at those objects and all their physical, sensual attributes. That fear of objects does not depend to be entirely gone there is still a inclining to switch rapidly to the social and symbolic valences of those sensual experiences.