SOC562 Social Life of Things: Material Culture and Consumption

Faculty of Social Studies
Autumn 2017
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 10 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Zuzana Sekeráková Búriková, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Ladislav Rabušic, CSc.
Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: Ing. Soňa Enenkelová
Supplier department: Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Timetable
Wed 8:00–9:30 M117
Prerequisites
Students have to be able to read, write and participate in classes in English: They are expected to read 25 pages of academic text in English per week, write assignments and essays, and participate in discussions in English.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 20 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/20, only registered: 0/20, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/20
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
This course will examine anthropological approaches to material culture and consumption: the practices, relations, and rituals through which things – from houses, toys and clothing to shell valuables or money – act and become meaningful, how objects mediate social relationships — and ultimately how inanimate objects can be read as having a form of subjectivity and agency of their own.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the semester, students should be able to:
- Define and discuss various anthropological approaches to material culture and consumption;
- Design a research methodology for studying material culture
Syllabus
  • 1. Fetishizing commodities, fetishizing things
  • 2. Gifts and commodities in Consumer Society: Things as alienable and inalienable
  • 3. Biographies of things; things and human biographies: Social lives of things
  • 4. Consumption and social differentiation: things as status symbols, things as constituting class
  • 5. Consumption and identity, consumption and relations: How things make people
  • 6. Practices of consumption: material culture and objectification
  • 7. Workshop: Hundred objects of contemporary world
  • 8. Agency of things: who can be an agent?
  • 9. Things as concepts: relative ontologies
  • 10. Presentations of final essays
  • 11. Presentations of final essays
Literature
  • Woodward, Ian. 2007. Understanding Material Culture. London: SAGE Publications.
Teaching methods
lectures; class discussions; reading; workhops with objects; writing assignments, writing projects
Assessment methods
active participation at discussion; three written assignments; final essay
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
Listed among pre-requisites of other courses
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2019.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2017, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/autumn2017/SOC562