Material culture

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As material culture or substantive culture from a is culture or society spawned all of the appliances, tools , weapons , buildings, clothing - and trinkets and other Substantive referred. Research on material culture deals with the role of these objects for the people who produce and use them and asks what importance is assigned to the objects and how the objects in turn influence perception.

In contrast, the immaterial culture represents the underlying knowledge about the material culture and the environment and includes the orally transmitted traditions . Material and immaterial culture create identity for the society that uses them.

research

Material culture is a research area in museology , ethnology (ethnology), folklore , sociology , history , technology and art studies as well as archeology . A university treatment of material culture takes place in the German-speaking area, for example, in the degree courses Museology and Material Culture (BA) and Museum Studies / Museum Studies (MA) at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg . The Prehistory is almost entirely dependent on the research of material culture; as a source for inferences about life in lost writeless societies only their surviving material culture is accessible. One goal of ethnology is the comprehensive and direct observation of the handling of everyday objects in different cultures (see also cybernetic anthropology ).

Connection to everyday social life

Culture and material objects are inconceivable without each other. Only the connection between the material and the immaterial enables access to an understanding of the everyday life of ethnic groups and societies. There can be no connection to an object if its intellectual forms of expression in language and text are not viewed in connection with the craft. Knowledge and action - as well as material objects - are different in every culture and therefore have to be viewed again and again.

Thing significance

The term thing meaningfulness was introduced in 1962 by the German folklorist Karl-Sigismund Kramer . According to this, the practical function of an object and its emotional meaning should be related to one another, so that there is no danger of viewing the observed objects as something isolated or separated. Otherwise, material things would at best be explained as "dead", which would be considered wrong, as Kramer them an inspiration zusprach.

Attempts at systematic documentation

In the phase of the development of ethnology into science, in the 19th century, a rapid growth of ethnographic collections in ethnological museums became apparent. It was hoped that this would lead to systematic knowledge of things in connection with a basis for a uniform description. Such collections, however, made it difficult to deal with things, as they led to the problematic delimitation of spiritual and material culture. Collections are already the result of a selection and thus reflect not only the circumstances of the societies from which they come, but also the ideas of European society. Studies on material culture must not be limited to museums, but must document how things are handled in everyday life. If an object is torn from everyday life, a lot of important information is lost.

See also

List.svgfList of topics: Material culture  - Overview in the portal: Ethnology
  • Material turn (increase in the weighting of material culture in cultural studies)
  • Artifact (archeology) (object created or modified by human action)
  • Architectural sociology (social significance of the built environment)
  • Comfort (convenience through objects, systems or machines)

literature

  • Annette Caroline Cremer, Martin Mulsow (ed.): Objects as sources of historical cultural studies. Status and prospects of research. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-412-50731-2 .
  • Simone Derix et al. a .: The value of things. On the economic and social history of materialities. In: Contemporary historical research . Volume 13, Issue 3. Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam 2016 ( online ).
  • Hans Peter Hahn: Material culture and consumption. In: Bettina Beer , Hans Fischer , Julia Pauli (eds.): Ethnology. Introduction to exploring cultural diversity. 9th edition, expanded and updated new version. Reimer, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-496-01559-8 , pp. 281-296.
  • Hans Peter Hahn: Material culture. An introduction. 2nd, revised edition. Reimer, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-496-02869-7 .
  • Hans Peter Hahn, Hadas Weiss (Ed.): Mobility, Meaning & Transformations of Things. Shifting Contexts of Material Culture through Time and Space. Oxbow, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-1-84217-525-5 (English).
  • Gudrun M. König: On the back of things. Material culture and cultural studies. In: Kaspar Maase , Bernd Jürgen Warneken (ed.): Underworlds of culture. Topics and theories of folklore cultural studies. Böhlau, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-412-15700-5 , pp. 95-118.
  • George Kubler : The Form of Time. Notes on the history of things. Translated from the English by Bettina Blumenberg. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1982, ISBN 3-518-57605-4 .
  • Harry Kühnel : The material culture of middle-class and patrician Nuremberg households of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. In: Trude Ehlert (ed.): Household and family in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1991, ISBN 3-7995-4156-X , pp. 14-31.
  • Otto Lauffer: Sources of research. Words, writings, pictures and things. A contribution to the folklore of object culture. In: Oberdeutsche Zeitschrift für Volkskunde. Volume 17. Konkordia, Bühl / Baden 1943, pp. 106-131.
  • Jules David Prown: Mind in Matter. An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method. In: Winterthur Portfolio. Volume 17, No. 1. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1982, ISSN  0084-0416 , pp. 1-19 ( PDF; 3.4 MB ; English).
  • Stefanie Samida, Manfred KH Eggert , Hans Peter Hahn (Hrsg.): Handbuch Materielle Kultur. Meanings - Concepts - Disciplines. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02464-0 .
  • Susanne Scholz, Ulrike Vedder (Ed.): Handbook Literature & Material Culture. (= Handbooks for cultural studies philology. Volume 6). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-041663-3 .
  • Karl Weule : Cultural Elements of Humanity. Beginnings and archetypes of material culture. 3. Edition. Franckh, Stuttgart 1913, DNB 361876440 .

Web links

Commons : Material culture  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Museology and material culture at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.museologie.uni-wuerzburg.de
  2. ↑ Museum Studies / Museum Studies at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg ( Memento of the original from January 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.museologie.uni-wuerzburg.de
  3. ↑ Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber: Cosiness. A cultural studies approach. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 78.