Author: Arthur Asa Berger Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315415844 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Arthur Asa Berger is back with the second edition of his popular, user-friendly guide for students who want to understand the social meanings of objects.
Author: Glenn Adamson Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1632869667 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.
Author: Katharine Weber Publisher: Broadway Books ISBN: 0307587940 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
Harriet Rose, 26, is an American photographer just winning recognition for her work. A travel fellowship brings her to visit her best friend and former roommate, Anne Gordon, in Switzerland. In an ongoing letter to her boyfriend, Harriet reports on strange developments in Anne's life, most notably her affair with a much older married man, which seems to be leading to a disastrous conclusion. Before she can rescue Anne, events take a series of unexpected turns, and Harriet must reexamine her own life and past, and come to terms with the difficulties and possibilities of human relationships. Already excerpted in The New Yorker, Katharine Weber's witty first novel of attraction and deception, a tale with the sensibility of a Margaret Atwood, pulses with cultural references and word games that echo Nabokov.
Author: Peter N. Miller Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501708236 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 441
Book Description
Weaving together literary and scholarly insights, History and Its Objects will prove indispensable reading for historians and cultural historians, as well as anthropologists and archeologists worldwide. — Nathan Schlanger, École nationale des chartes, Paris Cultural history is increasingly informed by the history of material culture—the ways in which individuals or entire societies create and relate to objects both mundane and extraordinary—rather than on textual evidence alone. Books such as The Hare with Amber Eyes and A History of the World in 100 Objects indicate the growing popularity of this way of understanding the past. In History and Its Objects, Peter N. Miller uncovers the forgotten origins of our fascination with exploring the past through its artifacts by highlighting the role of antiquarianism—a pursuit ignored and derided by modem academic history—in grasping the significance of material culture. From the efforts of Renaissance antiquarians, who reconstructed life in the ancient world from coins, inscriptions, seals, and other detritus, to amateur historians in the nineteenth century working within burgeoning national traditions, Miller connects collecting—whether by individuals or institutions—to the professionalization of the historical profession, one which came to regard its progenitors with skepticism and disdain. The struggle to articulate the value of objects as historical evidence, then, lies at the heart both of academic history-writing and of the popular engagement with things. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that our current preoccupation with objects is far from novel and reflects a human need to reexperience the past as a physical presence.
Author: Leora Auslander Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501720090 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
The book, Objects of War, illuminates the ways in which people have used things to grapple with the social, cultural, and psychological upheavals wrought by war and forced displacement.― Utah Public Radio Historians have become increasingly interested in material culture as both a category of analysis and as a teaching tool. And yet the profession tends to be suspicious of things; words are its stock-in-trade. What new insights can historians gain about the past by thinking about things? A central object (and consequence) of modern warfare is the radical destruction and transformation of the material world. And yet we know little about the role of material culture in the history of war and forced displacement: objects carried in flight; objects stolen on battlefields; objects expropriated, reappropriated, and remembered. Objects of War illuminates the ways in which people have used things to grapple with the social, cultural, and psychological upheavals wrought by war and forced displacement. Chapters consider theft and pillaging as strategies of conquest; soldiers' relationships with their weapons; and the use of clothing and domestic goods by prisoners of war, extermination camp inmates, freed people, and refugees to make claims and to create a kind of normalcy. While studies of migration and material culture have proliferated in recent years, as have histories of the Napoleonic, colonial, World Wars, and postcolonial wars, few have focused on the movement of people and things in times of war across two centuries. This focus, in combination with a broad temporal canvas, serves historians and others well as they seek to push beyond the written word. Contributors: Noah Benninga, Sandra H. Dudley, Bonnie Effros, Cathleen M. Giustino, Alice Goff, Gerdien Jonker, Aubrey Pomerance, Iris Rachamimov, Brandon M. Schechter, Jeffrey Wallen, and Sarah Jones Weicksel
Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107392829 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
The meaning of things is a study of the significance of material possessions in contemporary urban life, and of the ways people carve meaning out of their domestic environment. Drawing on a survey of eighty families in Chicago who were interviewed on the subject of their feelings about common household objects, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton provide a unique perspective on materialism, American culture, and the self. They begin by reviewing what social scientists and philosophers have said about the transactions between people and things. In the model of 'personhood' that the authors develop, goal-directed action and the cultivation of meaning through signs assume central importance. They then relate theoretical issues to the results of their survey. An important finding is the distinction between objects valued for action and those valued for contemplation. The authors compare families who have warm emotional attachments to their homes with those in which a common set of positive meanings is lacking, and interpret the different patterns of involvement. They then trace the cultivation of meaning in case studies of four families. Finally, the authors address what they describe as the current crisis of environmental and material exploitation, and suggest that human capacities for the creation and redirection of meaning offer the only hope for survival. A wide range of scholars - urban and family sociologists, clinical, developmental and environmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers, and many general readers - will find this book stimulating and compelling.
Author: Daniel Z. Korman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198732538 Category : Metaphysics Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
What sorts of material objects are there? Many philosophers opt for surprising answers to this question that seem deeply at odds with how we ordinarily think about the material world. Some embrace radically eliminative views, on which there are far fewer objects than we ordinarily take there to be, while others go in for radically permissive views on which there are legions of extraordinary objects that somehow escape our notice, despite being highly visible and right before our eyes. In this book, Daniel Z. Korman defends our ordinary, intuitive judgments about which objects there are. The book responds to a wide variety of arguments that have driven people away from the intuitive view: arbitrariness arguments, debunking arguments, overdetermination arguments, arguments from vagueness and material constitution, and the problem of the many. It also criticizes attempts to show that permissive and eliminative views are, despite appearances, entirely compatible with our ordinary beliefs and intuitions.
Author: Paula Zuccotti Publisher: National Geographic Books ISBN: 0241205905 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
*Features exposed spine showing stitching and enabling book to open completely flat!* What's the first thing we touch when we wake up? How do our favourite things reveal our hopes and fears? Can objects tell the story of our lives? Imagine how your day would look if you recorded everything that you touched. From smartphone to soap, from spice to spoon... what if they were all brought together in one place? Would they tell a bigger story? Driven by this idea, Paula Zuccotti travelled around the world to find people from an incredible array of ages, cultures, professions and backgrounds. She asked them to document every object they touched in 24 hours. Then she gathered those objects together and photographed them in a single shot. From a toddler in Tokyo to a cowboy in Arizona, from a cleaner in London to a cloister nun in Madrid, Every Thing We Touch is their story told through the objects they own, consume, need, choose, treasure and can't let go. Each image is mystery, a story, a work of art. Each is a moment in time: a life and a world reflected back at us. every-thingwetouch.tumblr.com
Author: Bisi Adjapon Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0063088967 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
“Bisi Adjapon writes with incredible vividness and clarity. Her similes and attention to all of the senses are really extraordinary.”—Dave Eggers, author of The Monk of Mokha “Melding blistering humor with razor-sharp insight, The Teller of Secrets heralds a marvel of a writer, one capable of deftly balancing questions of sexuality, politics, and feminism in a novel that is a pure joy to read.”—Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize In this stunning debut novel—a tale of self-discovery and feminist awakening—a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women. Young Esi Agyekum is the unofficial “secret keeper” of her family, as tight-lipped about her father's adultery as she is about her half-sisters’ sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women's secrets and men's secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places. As she navigates her burgeoning womanhood, Esi tries to reconcile her own ideals and dreams with her family’s complicated past and troubled present, as well as society’s many double standards that limit her and other women. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways. Funny, fresh, and fiercely original, The Teller of Secrets marks the American debut of one of West Africa's most exciting literary talents.
Author: William L. Randall Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 1487534604 Category : Health & Fitness Languages : en Pages : 293
Book Description
Many of us have particular things in our lives – photographs, paintings, old letters, books, furniture, jewellery, or clothing – that hold special meaning for us. Often, they correspond to pivotal memories and can be central to our sense of self and our life narratives, all the more so as we age. Things That Matter sheds important light on the intricate intertwining of mementos with stories – and vice versa – in most people’s lives. The book explores the significance of cherished objects within the life stories of nine participants in a qualitative study of the links between reminiscence and resilience in later life. The researchers who conducted the study represent a variety of fields, including gerontology, social work, ministry, nursing, literature, and education. The book details how life stories can be fraught with a wide range of insights and questions from the memories that get stirred up as people embark on the process of "life review" prompted by the challenges and changes of aging. Shedding light on the complex emotional, psychological, and spiritual findings of the study, Things That Matter ultimately reveals the intricacy of personal narrative and the incredible ways in which things and stories are interwoven in our lives over time.
Proudly powered by WordPress |
Theme: Rits Blog by Crimson Themes.
Author: Arthur Asa Berger
Author: Glenn Adamson
Author: Katharine Weber
Author: Peter N. Miller
Author: Leora Auslander
Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Author: Daniel Z. Korman
Author: Paula Zuccotti
Author: Bisi Adjapon
Author: William L. Randall