Text Bites

Question 0

Alienation

Answer 0

Marx, The process whereby people become foreign to the world they live in. For example in industrializing cities people that worked in factories became more disassociated with their neighbors, social relations and even the land outside of the factory

Question 1

Objectification

Answer 1

Hegel. The way which we Impose our consciousness onto external objects. One objectify’s themselves into the object of their labor. One can recognize someone’s personality in objects. Produced by a person. Ideas objectify themself in material reality. Example. The idea of shelter is objectified and houses.

Objectification can become a source of alienation when the mind fails to grasp that these things ideas objectified

Definition. The manifestation of human activity into a material the existing form. Example. The products of human labor show personality and social relations.

Question 2

Commodities

Answer 2

Marx, A thing produced for the purpose of being exchanged for something else. It’s the material form given to the exchange of labor

Question 3

Fetishism

Answer 3

Marx, critique of capitalism. Objects that have been fetishized lose the objectification of social relations in production and carry only relations with economic aspects of its exchange.

Question 4

Conspicuous consumption and leisure

Answer 4

Veblen, spending of money to buy luxury goods and services, so that economic power can be displayed.

The leading of a leisurely life because you do not have to do work and physical labor and are therefore of a high status, class, or position

Question 5

The social order

Answer 5

Veblen

Question 6

Gift exchange

Answer 6

Mauss, argued that gifts are never free. Gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. His famous question was “what power resides in the object given that causes the recipients to pay it back?”

He believed that gift exchange transcended divisions between the spiritual and material in a way that is magical. The giver does not merely given object but also a part of themselves, for the object is tied to the giver. The bond between giver and gift creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate by the recipient.

Objects that are commodities are sold in the marketplace and are therefore alienated from their original owner. In a gift economy, however, the objects that are given are in alienated from the givers and they are loaned rather than sold and seated. The fact that the identity of the giver is down to the object gives in a power which compels the recipient to pay back. The act of giving a gift creates a gift – debt i’m at which must be repaid

Question 7

Reciprocity

Answer 7

Mauss, The notion of having to respond to receiving a gift by giving that person a gift of their own

Question 8

Alienable and inalienable qualities of things

Answer 8

Mauss, Argued that every exchange which a object must go through. Further alienates it from its labor and spiritual bond with its creator. Items in a capitalist economy are more alienable as their true creator and labor is not present in the object.

Mauss in alienable possessions are given as loans, and cannot be disposed of. These objects are property of a family and contain sacra.

Question 9

Habitus

Answer 9

Bourdieu, Habitus refers to lifestyle, values, and expectations of particular social groups which are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life. In more basic terms, habitus could be understood as a structure of the mind characterized by a set of acquired sensibilities, dispositions and tastes. Bourdieu elaborates on the notion of habitus by explaining its dependency on history and human memory. For example, a certain behavior becomes part of the society’s structure when the original purpose of that behavior can no longer be recalled and become socialized into individuals of that culture

Question 10

Dispositions

Answer 10

Bourdieu,

Question 11

Phenomonology*

Answer 11

Bourdieu, an approach to material culture that involves a detailed description and analysis of things as we directly experience and perceive them through our senses. Recognizing that our senses are socialized and then cultured through our life and our experiences with others.

The idea that space and things can have a direct influence on shaping peoples social action, and effectively can reproduce society.

Question 12

Agency*

Answer 12

Bourdieu, from the phenomenalogical materiality of material culture, the notion of agency is closely linked. Agency explores the ability of stuff to affect a response and people – cognitively, emotionally, and physically – action. Agency also refers to people’s abilities to act beyond social institutions norms, to employ our own tactics as we maneuver our way through life.

Question 13

Financial, social, cultural, and symbolic capital

Answer 13

Bourdieu

Question 14

The use of taste in consumption

Answer 14

Bourdieu

Question 15

Purposes of consumption

Answer 15

Douglas & isherwood, we buy things because we are trying to make a sense of our place in society, through consumer goods that symbolize the social order. Consumption is as much about social relationships with people, as protecting our individual identity, it is a meeting point of personhood.

Question 16

Construction of need

Answer 16

Douglas & isherwood

Question 17

Importance of social context

Answer 17

Douglas & isherwood

Question 18

Rituals of consumption

Answer 18

Douglas & isherwood

Question 19

Inalienability

Answer 19

Weiner

Question 20

Memory

Answer 20

Weiner

Question 21

Tangible links to the intangible (memories)

Answer 21

Weiner

Question 22

Addition of meaning and value.

Answer 22

Weiner

Question 23

The importance of possessions

Answer 23

Weiner

Question 24

Social life of things

Answer 24

Appadurai, The social life of a thing, the contexts it inhabits to determine its status as a gift or a commodity.

Question 25

Classification as commodity to gift to possession

Answer 25

Appadurai, Classifies a commodity is an item which is exchanged for money, and a gift for Adam which is exchanged through a personal exchange with the use of little or no money. ?

Question 26

Exposes fetishism

Answer 26

Appadurai

Question 27

Appropriation by consumers

Answer 27

Appadurai

Question 28

Potential for exchange

Answer 28

Appadurai

Question 29

Biographies of objects*

Answer 29

Kopytoff, objects, like people, have socialites, and the biography of things explores the numerous contacts and hands that hold an object, adding different meaning and values through time and space. The biographical approach underscores the idea that people make things, and things make people, and injured clients of agency of both to affect one another. It highlights the importance of context and performance, and examines how collective and individual memories come to be invested in objects

Question 30

How objects are singularised

Answer 30

Kopytoff, It is the changing of a material good from a commodity into a non-– exchangeable, they're taken from capital exchange for some other special purpose.

Question 31

How objects ARe decommodified

Answer 31

Kopytoff, A good example of decomodification process is when you purchase a cat at the market, therefore the cat is a commodity. But once you purchase it is given a place in your life – and it becomes singularized. It is not likely that it will be re-commodified at a later stage. Therefore the cat started as a commodity but because it was taken out of context and its role has changed, it becomes Decommodified

Question 32

How objects are given meaning and value through association with owners

Answer 32

Kopytoff

Question 33

Appropriation

Answer 33

Miller

Question 34

De Commodification

Answer 34

Miller

Question 35

Consumption as work (productive not destructive)

Answer 35

Miller

Question 36

Intimate associations between people and things

Answer 36

Miller