Publisher's Synopsis
Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the nature of interpretation: how we "read" artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.;"Reading Material Culture" explores this interpretative process through examinations of the work of contemporary thinkers, focusing on Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Claude Levi-Strauss and Paul Ricoeur. It considers their contributions to understanding past and present social worlds and the role of material culture production used within them. Among the themes discussed are the nature of time and history; discourse and textuality; the problem of subjectivity and the politics of academic production. Each chapter concludes with an assessment of the theorist's relevance to the future of material culture studies in the 1990s.
