Chapter 4: Sociological Analysis of Material Culture

Annotations:

• Definition: “deals with attempts that sociologists and other scholars have made to understand how institutions as described by the Bergers above, function in society” (p.63).     “The focus is on the way society functions and includes such areas marriage and the family, class systems, race, gender, religion, and other aspects of collective behavior” (p.63). The focus of chapter is sociological theories and concepts that help illuminate material culture” (63).       

1. August Comte

   Annotations:

   •  —used “term ‘sociology’ to integrate theoretical and practical studies of human beings” (64). Goals- “to know in order to predict in order to control” (64).     
   1. Emile Durkheim

      Annotations:

      • —“argued that the relationship that exists between individuals and society is very complicated” (64).  “We have individuality, which is based on our physical endowments, the fact that we are an ‘organism,’ and we are also, at the same time, social beings, whose ideas and values are shaped, to varying degrees, by the social order” (65). “We are in society and society is in us, and it is simplistic to neglect either of these two sides to our nature. We can say the same thing about artifacts: they are in society and society is reflected in them. That is why artifacts are not only reluctant witnesses to the past but also valuable witnesses to the present” (65).    
      1. Functionalism
         1. six aspects of functionalism

            Annotations:

            • six aspects of functionalism that are of interest to theorists of material culture” (66). Functional, dysfunctional, non-functional, functional alternative, manifest function, latent function.     
            1. Taste Cultures

               Annotations:

               • Soc. Use Typologies = classification schemes that they believe help us better understand societies, institutions, and other phenomena function. Gans-“wanted to defend people who like popular culture against attack by elitists who like high or ‘elite’ culture” (68). “Five American taste cultures, are based on matters such as socio-economic class, religion, age, education, ethnic and racial background, and personality factors” (70). High culture, upper middle culture, lower middle culture, quasi-folk low culture, youth, black, and ethnic cultures.     
               1. Uses and Gratifications Provided by Artifacts

                  Annotations:

                  •      “developed by theorists—they were interested in why people listened to soap operas or watched certain television programs” –to include “to have beautiful things, to find diversion and distraction, to imitate models we respect, to affirm aesthetic values” (74).     
                  1. Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

                     Annotations:

                     • interesting that it is “suggested that race and ethnicity play an important role in the choice of artifacts people purchase, and marketers have discerned that different races purchase different brands of alcohol, kinds of cigarettes, and food products” (74).     
                     1. Status

                        Annotations:

                        • “is the position an individual has in some groups, or that a group has relative to other groups.” One way to show status is “by purchasing objects that function as status symbols, artifacts that suggest our wealth and socio-economic class” (75).     
                        1. Role

                           Annotations:

                           • connect to status—role is the behavior expected of people who have a particular status” (76).     
                           1. Jean Baudrillard on The System of Objects

                              Annotations:

                              •     contributed to understanding material culture.“Everyday objects proliferate, needs multiply, production speeds up the lifespan of such objects—yet we lack vocabulary to name them all” (77).