Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T02:58:56.764Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Close Are Things To Us? On the Relation Between the Incidental and the Valuable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2020

Hans Peter Hahn
Hans Peter Hahn*
Affiliation:
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Institut für Ethnologie, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, 60323Frankfurt am Main, Germany Email: hans.hahn@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Je mehr man außer sich ist, desto besser beschaut man das Objekt

Kant ([1772] 1923, 664)
As pointed out in the introduction, incidentalness is a challenge for the study of culture. This applies not only to anthropological and archaeological approaches, but to any discipline that produces descriptions of cultures. As I will explain in more detail, in the framework of more detailed empirical studies dealing with things, the challenge is not only one of ‘method’, but also in terms of ‘research artefacts’, such as the tendency to overestimate meaning. Basically, this is about the question of how cultures should be described and what role everyday things play in cultural change. In this comment, I shall develop the hypothesis that the place of the individual in a society and in his or her material environment as part of everyday culture is adequately described only when incidentalness has a prominent role. Furthermore, I argue that incidentalness is a condition that is unstable, if not transient and ephemeral in terms of temporality. Innovation and cultural change are often related to this specific form of instability in time. Things are eclipsed from incidentalness and, at a certain historical moment, may become central vehicles of meaning in a society, or vice versa: things are shifted to the status of casualness, and the collective awareness shifts to other fields.

Type
Special Section
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 168 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnold, J.E., Graesch, A., Ragazzini, E. & Ochs, Elinor (eds), 2012. Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 families open their doors. Los Angeles (CA): Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K., 2012. Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers. Interview with Karen Barad, in New Materialism: Interviews & cartographies, eds. Dolphijn, R. & Tuin, I.v.d.. Ann Arbor (MI): Open Humanities, 48–71.Google Scholar
Barthes, R., 1983. The Fashion System. New York (NY): Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, J., 1968. Le système des objets [The system of objects]. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Bloor, D., 1999. Anti-Latour. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 30(1), 81–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bogost, I. (ed.), 2012. Alien Phenomenology, or What it's Like to be a Thing. Minneapolis (MN): Univocal Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Böhme, J., 2009. De Signatura Rerum. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.Google Scholar
Coupaye, L. & Douny, L., 2009. Dans la trajectoire des choses. Comparaison des approches francophones et anglophones contemporaines en anthropologie des techniques [In the course of things. Comparison of approaches by contemporary French and English speakers in the anthropology of techniques]. Techniques et Culture 52–53, 12–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dugast, I., 1955. Monographie de la tribu des Ndiki. Banen du Cameroun. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.Google Scholar
Hahn, H.P., 2005. Materielle Kultur [Material culture]. Berlin: Reimer.Google Scholar
Hahn, H.P., 2006. Sachbesitz, Individuum und Gruppe – eine ethnologische Perspektive [Personal property, the individual and the group – an ethnological perspective], in Soziale Gruppen – kulturelle Grenzen. Die Interpretation sozialer Identitäten in der Prähistorischen Archäologie [Social groups – cultural boundaries. The interpretation of social identities in prehistoric archaeology], eds Burmeister, S. & Müller-Scheeßel, N.. Münster: Waxmann, 59–80.Google Scholar
Hofer, T., 1979. Gegenstände im dörflichen und städtischen Milieu [Themes in rural and urban contexts], in Gemeinde im Wandel [Communities and change], ed. Wiegelmann, G.. Münster: Coppenrath, 113–37.Google Scholar
Kant, I., [1772] 1923. Collegentwürfe aus den 70er Jahren [Reflexionen zur Anthropologie], in Gesammelte Schriften, Band XV(2), ed. Kant, I.. Berlin: de Gruyter, 657–798.Google Scholar
Kaplan, D., 2000. The darker side of the original affluent society. Journal of Anthropological Research 56(3), 301–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Küchler, S., 2011. Materials and design, in Design Anthropology. Object culture in the 21st century, ed. Clarke, A.. New York (NY): Springer, 130–41.Google Scholar
Lemonnier, P., 2014. The blending power of things. Hau. Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1), 537–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D., 2001. The poverty of morality. Journal of Consumer Culture 1(2), 225–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D., 2005. Materiality: an introduction, in Materiality, ed. Miller, D.. Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 1–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moles, A.A., 1972. Théorie des objets {Thing theory]. Paris: Éditions Universitaires.Google Scholar
Nöth, W. (ed.), 2000. Handbuch der Semiotik [Handbook of semiotics]. Stuttgart: Metzler.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thevenot, L., 1994. Le régime de familiarité. Des choses en personne [The regime of familiarity. Things in person]. Genèses 17, 72–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trabant, J., 1976. Elemente der Semiotik [Elements of semiotics]. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Trabant, J., 2004. Vico's New Science of Ancient Signs. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vico, G., 1948. The New Science. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press. [Original: Scienza Nuova. Naples 1725.]Google Scholar