Description: This book offers a systematic overview of the diverse ways of studying the material as culture. Surveying the field of material culture studies through an examination and synthesis of classical and contemporary scholarship on objects, commodities, consumption, and symbolization, this book:
" Introduces the key concepts and approaches in the study of objects and their meanings;
" Presents the full sweep of core theory - from Marxist and critical approaches to structuralism and semiotics - to evaluate the frameworks for approaching the material world;
" Shows how and why people use objects to perform identity, achieve social status, and narrativize life experiences;
" Analyzes everyday domains in which objects are important: social status, identity, social performance and narrativization;
" Shows why studying material culture is necessary for understanding the social.
Brief description:
Ian Woodward is a professor in the Department of Marketing and Management at the University of Southern Denmark. He has research interests in the sociological aspects of consumption and material culture and in the cultural and consumptive dimensions of cosmopolitanism, cultural openness, and boundary work. Most recently, he published the coauthored books Vinyl, The Analogue Record in the Digital Age (Bloomsbury, 2015, with Dominik Bartmanski) and Cosmopolitanism, Uses of the Idea (SAGE/Theory, Culture & Society, 2013, with Zlatko Skrbis). He has published widely on a range of related theoretical and empirical areas within consumption and material culture studies, alongside studies of everyday cosmopolitanism including most recently studies around consumer cosmopolitanism, gender, hospitality, fairness, and encounters. With Frederick F. Wherry, he is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Consumption, and with Julie Emontspool, editor of the collection Cosmopolitanism, Markets and Consumption.
Review Quotes: This book deserves its niche, both as a textbook covering long standing debates and discussions, but also as an entry point to a particular perspective. It comes about as close as anything I have seen to a genuine standard textbook that tries to transcend particular disciplines.--Material World