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Description
This book examines the relationships between society and
material culture: the interaction between people and things.
Tim Dant argues that the traditional approach to material
culture has focused on the symbolic meanings of objects,
largely overlooking the material impact that objects have on
everyday life in late modernity. Dant resists the now well-established
model of consumption as the principal relationship
with `things? in our lives. Using the motor car as a recurring
theme, he shows how we confront our society through material
interaction with the objects that surround us.
Materiality and Society draws on debates with historical,
philosophical and theoretical discourses that address materiality,
from Braudel and Merleau-Ponty to Heidegger and Latour. The
book opens up new lines of enquiry and makes a convincing
case for the closer study of the interaction between people and
things.
This book is key reading for students and researchers in a variety
of disciplines concerned with social relationships with things ?
including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and
technology studies.
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