Another day, another anthropological question:
"How does a material culture perspective enrich our understanding of social life?"
The sphere of a social life is like an ecosystem; it
comprises and also requires the interaction of human beings with their
surroundings. In studying the biological relationship in an ecosystem, the
physical environment should not be seen as a separate entity from the
organisms. That is how social life should also be viewed from a material
culture perspective; social relations do not merely encompass human-human
interactions, instead it involves a series of interconnected system between
human and objects. Hence, the significance of material culture perspective in
anthropological studies is indispensable as it involves analysis of domain of
things, or objects, which are endlessly diverse (Tilley 2006:3). This diversity
is the aspect of material culture that has appeared to be most appealing to
anthropologist in understanding the uniqueness of social relationship, the influences
upon choices that humans make as well as the consequences of those choices, and
also the evolution of social relationships itself.
First and foremost, a material culture perspective
enhances understanding of social life by discovering and recognising the
differences and uniqueness of each social relationship and process. Until the 1960s,
artefacts in archaeology were considered to reflect the diffusion of ideas,
migration, invasion and social change (Tilley, 2006:2). Studying artefacts as
end-products were thought to indicate the ideas in the minds of the makers.
Nevertheless, artefacts are also studied in terms of technologies required to
make them (Tilley, 2006:2). From the study of techniques, we get to know that
the same end product is not necessarily derived or produced from the exact same
process. As stated by Lemonnier, any technique is always a ‘physical
manifestation of mental schemata of how things work, how they are to be made,
and how they are to be used’ (Lemonnier 2003:545). This explains why different
societies can elicit different techniques to make the same product, as their
‘mental schemata’ or ‘ideas’ are distinctive from one another. Hence, the
technological choices are also unalike due to the difference in ‘imagination’
that they have about certain techniques. The principle of the way of living,
together with the influence of their environment serve as the justification underlying
the variety of techniques in doing or making things as material culture was
once regarded as the reflection of ethnic identities (Tilley 2006:2). In
understanding the reasons behind the process, it is therefore important not to
overlook the details of the operational sequence in a process which involves
raw materials as well as the technology used which comprises actions and
choices.
From a different perspective, we can also learn about
the uniqueness of social relationships by studying the reasons underlying the
difference in the way people use social media. Media ideology, which is also
known as sets of beliefs that people have while they are using social media,
serves to explain the purpose or reason why certain social media platforms are
used. This in turn led to the production of norms or ‘idioms of practice’ that
evolved from a common understanding of a group of people, for instance, coming
from the same cultural background. Nonetheless, media ideology of each
platforms cannot be understood if it is viewed independently, since the
significance and use of each of them is corresponding to each other; which is
studied under the ‘polymedia’ approach (Miller et al 2016:4). The difference in
notion and ideology in using social media platforms creates a diverging social
scale that involves people’s openness upon their social media followers; from
private communication to public broadcasting (Miller et al 2016:3). The
diversity in sociality is referred here as the ‘scalable sociality’, which can
affect decisions that people make in choosing what they want to share and post.
Apart from understanding the divergence of social
relationships by looking at choices that people make, analysing social life
from the material culture point of view helps us to understand how their
choices will influence human behaviour, and also the factors that influence
their choices. In studying social media, anthropologists have looked into why
people post on their social media account and how their posts affect or are affected
by other people or circumstances. In short, people choose what
they want to express or show to other people; either things that matter to them, what they think, what they feel,
or what they celebrate. Nevertheless, these are all affected by who their
followers are and also what they think the platform is supposed to be used for
ie their media ideology. Besides,
techniques that people choose in order to produce certain things are also
affected by their surroundings. For instance, preparing cereal for breakfast on
an ordinary morning could be different from preparing cereal in the winter
season. People would heat their milk in a bowl on a morning in the winter because
hot drink is more preferable during a cold weather. This shows that weather
could be a factor that can induce a change in the procedure to prepare a cereal.
Another interesting example would be to look at the various ways people make
their tea. Even though the method that is ‘deemed to be the proper’ one would
be adding hot water into a jug or mug with a teabag, some people would just add
sugar after putting the teabag in while they are waiting for the water to boil
to save time. In this case, time constraint would be the element that change
the ‘ordinary’ way of making tea. Hence, we can see that external factors do
have their role in influencing human behaviour.
In some circumstances, decision that human make out of
the choices available to them; though being defined and beliefs and culture as
the norms that limit or guide their action, is affected by other people’s
presence because they do care about what other people think about them. People
do care how they are seen from other people’s view, in other words, their
reputation (Miller 2014: 6). Therefore, people might not show who they really
are or do what they really do in front of others. For example, people are not
only aware about what they post or how they make themselves appear on social
media, but they are also very cautious about visual images that others have
them dressed in (Miller 2014: 6). People have the ability to choose how they
want to present themselves in front of different groups of people. This is also
the case when we look into the aspects of the temporality of photography. For
example, what can be seen from a family portrait does not necessarily depicts
the reality of the family life. Therefore, generalising people’s life from
social media is not representative as people can choose to only portray their
happy moments.
From our understanding of social
relationships, material culture study also allows us to look into the evolution
of this relationships. For example, we can see how role of photographs had
evolved from being a piece of memory and recognition of events to a tool for
identity formation and communication, with the presence or emergence of
digitisation (Van Dijck 2008: 57). This consequently enable us to look into the
aspect of cultural evolution. It shows that the distinction in cultural
perception does not only differ in between different societies, but also differ
in the matter of time. Moreover, individual perceptions are also different from
one another, which shows that it is not only restricted or influenced by
culture and norms, but also personal principle. For instance, in ‘Camera
Lucida’, Roland Barthes discussed his view on the images of his deceased mother as a ‘just image’ (Pinney 2002:100). Meanwhile, this is not the case with most inhabitants in
Nagda, who believe that images should not be an obsessive search of an image.
They argue that it should be a differential identity instead of an essential
identity. However, Pinney further discussed that this might be partly because
of the function of photographs in Nagda, which act as public icons that are
displayed in front of shops and also worshipped monthly and annually (Pinney
2002:100-101).
Material culture studies also
explore a huge extensions of relationship of things with the social context. It
goes deeper into the concept of materiality and conceptualization of things by
examining its linkage with human system, cosmologies, emotions and beliefs
which are related to social and personal identities, analysing connections
between material culture with human culture and society, and lastly
investigating relationship between things to history and tradition, memories,
social change, and also to concept of space and place (Tilley 2006:4). The
human world should not be just be seen as if it is only occupied with human
since social life revolves around the interaction of human with things, in
other words, material culture let alone when objects can be as human-like as
they can be, and how object-like human can be.
p/s: this is one of a whole bunch of my second class pieces, hopefully I'll get better as time flies huehue
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