Is material culture the universal outcome of technological development, or is it a more variegated resource used in constituting family relations and social imaginaries? Is ‘materialism’ a reflex of modernity, or does it require a critical and fine-grained analysis of the production, use, exchange, and circulation of different genres of object and image? Is personal documentation a recent expansion of individual freedom, or are its historical roots entangled with state identification systems? Ranging from 19th century to contemporary anthropological scholarship, this course analyzes evolutionary, structuralist, symbolic, social field, actor network theory, and more recent approaches including the visual and material ‘turns’, to examine how material and visual culture are used to contest, mediate, and negotiate post-colonial identities and civil rights.

Anthropological studies are used to challenge widely-held assumptions about materialism in the contemporary world. The course examines how different forms of material and visual culture shape social action and discourses about authenticity, identity, tradition, modernity, heritage, and citizenship. By scrutinizing accounts of variation in material and visual culture, the course illuminates how material and visible dimensions of the social have been the agents as well as the objects of change.

 

Format
There are two hours of lecture per week, supplemented by films, and one museum visit; and two hours of group discussion. In the first hour the class critically discusses the week’s reading assignment, led by two students. In the second hour, the same two students will begin with a 15 minute introduction to a current news item involving material or visual culture and then lead a discussion about the relevance of the week’s reading to that item.