Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life

Ethnographic Approaches

Author: Professor Phillip Vannini, Cameron McCarthy and Angharad N. Valdivia Series: Intersections in Communications and Culture

Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life

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Description

Focusing on the technoculture of everyday life, this book attempts to zero in on the simplicity and the habitual character of the interaction between humans and material objects, which is often assumed or taken for granted. Because objects are always meaningful in the pragmatic use to which they are directed, the material world of everyday life can be seen as a technoculture of its own – one made of behaviors as simple, and yet as significant, as using a lawnmower, or decorating one’s body. In discussing the unique methodological components of the ethnography of the technoculture of everyday life, this book begins a dialogue on how we can examine – from the participants’ perspective – the interconnections between social agents, their technological/material practices, their material objects or technics, and their social and material environment.

Critic Reviews

“This exciting new collection of essays brings together writing by sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural and media analysts around the core theme of the materiality of everyday life. A variety of perspectives including those of technology, actor-network theory, and phenomenology are brought to bear on a range of different material stuffs that feature in ordinary lives such as screens, cars, gardens, mobile phones, and music recorders. This is a thought-provoking book that will provide inspiration and ideas for all researchers and students who are interested in the social consequences of the things that surround us. (Tim Dant, Reader in Sociology, University of Lancaster, United Kingdom)”

"This exciting new collection of essays brings together writing by sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural and media analysts around the core theme of the materiality of everyday life. A variety of perspectives including those of technology, actor-network theory, and phenomenology are brought to bear on a range of different material stuffs that feature in ordinary lives such as screens, cars, gardens, mobile phones, and music recorders. This is a thought-provoking book that will provide inspiration and ideas for all researchers and students who are interested in the social consequences of the things that surround us." (Tim Dant, Reader in Sociology, University of Lancaster, United Kingdom)

About the Author

The Editor: Phillip Vannini is Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Royal Roads University in Canada. He holds a Master of Arts in communication and a Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University. Co-author of Understanding Society Through Popular Music (2009), and co-editor of Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interactionism and the Sociology of the Body (2006) and Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society (2009), Vannini has published over forty journal articles and book chapters on such topics as qualitative research methodology, material culture, the sociology of the body, technology, popular culture, and interactionist theory.