Clothing As Material Culture

Author : Susanne Küchler
Publisher : Berg Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9781845200671
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Clothing as Material Culture written by Susanne Küchler and published by Berg Publishers. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book puts the material back into clothing. In recent years social scientists have become increasingly interested in theories of fashion, but have rarely directly addressed the material qualities of clothing. By contrast, traditional studies of dress have focused on textiles but often neglect the larger cultural context within which dress becomes consumed as clothing. This book fills a major gap by combining these two 'camps' through an expressly material culture approach to clothing. In sustained case studies, Kchler and Miller argue that cloth and clothing are living, vibrant parts of culture and the body. From the recycling of cloth in Africa and India and the use of pattern in the Pacific, to the history of 'wash and wear' and why women wear the wrong clothes to restaurants in London, this book shows the considerable advantage gained by seamlessly combining material and social aspects of dress and textiles.

Author : Daniel Miller
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226526003
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Material Cultures written by Daniel Miller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of material culture, while historically well established, has recently enjoyed something of a renaissance. Methods once dominated by Marxist- and commodity-oriented analyses and by the study of objects as symbols are giving way to a more ethnographic approach to artifacts. This orientation is the cornerstone of the essays presented in Material Cultures. A collection of case studies which move from the domestic sphere to the global arena, the volume includes examinations of the soundscape produced by home radios, catalog shopping, the role of paper in the workplace, and the relationship between the production and consumption of Coca-Cola in Trinidad. The diversity of the essays is mediated by their common commitment to ethnography with a material focus. Rather than examine objects as mirages of media or language, Material Cultures emphasizes how the study of objects not only contributes to an understanding of artifacts but is also an effective means for studying social values and contradictions.

Author : Christopher Breward
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780719041259
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Culture of Fashion written by Christopher Breward and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1995-05-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illustrated survey of 600 years of fashion investigates its cultural and social meaning from medieval Europe to twentieth-century America. Breward's work provides the reader with a clear guide to the changes in style and taste and shows that clothes have always played a pivotal role in defining a sense of identity and society, especially when concerned with sexual and body politics.

Author : Ian Woodward
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 1848607261
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Understanding Material Culture written by Ian Woodward and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2007-05-09 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In his interdisciplinary review of material culture, Ian Woodward goes beyond synthesis to offer a theoretically innovative reconstruction of the field. It is filled with gems of conceptual insight and empirical discovery. A wonderful book." - Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University "A well-grounded and accessible survey of the burgeoning field of material culture studies for students in sociology and consumption studies. While situating the field within the history of intellectual thought in the broader social sciences, it offers detailed and accessible case studies. These are supplemented by very useful directions for further in-depth reading, making it an excellent undergraduate course companion." - Victor Buchli, University College London Why are i-pods and mobile phones fashion accessories? Why do people spend thousands remodelling their perfectly functional kitchen? Why do people crave shoes or handbags? Is our desire for objects unhealthy, or irrational? Objects have an inescapable hold over us, not just in consumer culture but increasingly in the disciplines that study social relations too. This book offers a systematic overview of the diverse ways of studying the material as culture. Surveying the field of material culture studies through an examination and synthesis of classical and contemporary scholarship on objects, commodities, consumption, and symbolization, this book: introduces the key concepts and approaches in the study of objects and their meanings presents the full sweep of core theory - from Marxist and critical approaches to structuralism and semiotics shows how and why people use objects to perform identity, achieve social status, and narrativize life experiences analyzes everyday domains in which objects are important shows why studying material culture is necessary for understanding the social. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, consumer behaviour studies, design and fashion studies.

Author : Daniel Miller
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745654967
Total Pages : 149 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Stuff written by Daniel Miller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff. The book opens with a critique of the concept of superficiality as applied to clothing. It presents the theories that are required to understand the way we are created by material as well as social relations. It takes us inside the very private worlds of our home possessions and our processes of accommodating. It considers issues of materiality in relation to the media, as well as the implications of such an approach in relation, for example, to poverty. Finally, the book considers objects which we use to define what it is to be alive and how we use objects to cope with death. Based on more than thirty years of research in the Caribbean, India, London and elsewhere, Stuff is nothing less than a manifesto for the study of material culture and a new way of looking at the objects that surround us and make up so much of our social and personal life.

Author : Catherine Richardson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351950924
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Clothing Culture, 1350-1650 written by Catherine Richardson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the subject of clothing in relation to such fundamental issues as national identity, social distinction, gender, the body, religion and politics, Clothing Culture, 1350-1650 provides a springboard into one of the most fascinating yet least understood aspects of social and cultural history. Nowhere in medieval and early modern European society was its hierarchical and social divisions more obviously reflected than in the sphere of clothing. Indeed, one of the few constant themes of writers, chroniclers, diarists and commentators from Chaucer to Pepys was the subject of fashion and clothes. Whether it was lauding the magnificence of court, warning against the vanity of fashion, describing the latest modes, or decrying the habit of the lower orders to ape the dress of their social superiors, people throughout history have been fascinated by the symbolism, power and messages that clothes can project. Yet despite this contemporary interest, clothing as a subject of historical enquiry has been a largely neglected field of academic study. Whilst it has been discussed in relation to various disciplines, it has not in many cases found a place as a central topic of analysis in its own right. The essays presented in this volume form part of a growing recent trend to put fashion and clothing back into the centre ground of historical research. From Russia to Rome, Ireland to France, this volume contains a wealth of examples of the numerous ways clothing was shaped by, and helped to shape, medieval and early modern European society. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the study of clothing can illuminate other facets of life and why it deserves to be treated as a central, rather than peripheral, facet of European history.

Author : Sally Dwyer-McNulty
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 146961409X
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Common Threads written by Sally Dwyer-McNulty and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common Threads: A Cultural History of Clothing in American Catholicism

Author : Regina Lee Blaszczyk
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526122111
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book European fashion written by Regina Lee Blaszczyk and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period since 1945 has been a transformative era for the fashion industry. Over the course of seventy years, the fashion world has moved from celebrating the craftsmanship of haute couture to revelling in ever-changing fast-fashion. This volume examines the transition from the old system to the new in a series of case studies grouped around three major themes. Part I focuses on Paris as a creative hub, aiming to understand how the birthplace of haute couture adapted to late-twentieth-century developments. Part II considers the retailer’s role in shaping taste, responding to consumer expectations and disseminating fashion merchandise. Part III looks to alternative visions of the European fashion system that have appeared in unexpected places. The volume is highly interdisciplinary, covering design history, cultural anthropology, ethnography, management studies and the cultural history of business.

Author : Mary Jo Arnoldi
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253116635
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book African Material Culture written by Mary Jo Arnoldi and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1996-04-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume has much to recommend it -- providing fascinating and stimulating insights into many arenas of material culture, many of which still remain only superficially explored in the archaeological literature." -- Archaeological Review "... a vivid introduction to the topic.... A glimpse into the unique and changing identities in an ever-changing world." -- Come-All-Ye Fourteen interdisciplinary essays open new perspectives for understanding African societies and cultures through the contextualized study of objects, treating everything from the production of material objects to the meaning of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing, and the television set in the contemporary repertoire of African material culture.

Author : Heike Jenss
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350057827
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Fashion and Materiality written by Heike Jenss and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fashion is intimately tied to the material world. With a focus on diverse cultural practices, this book offers new insights into the dynamic relationships between fashion, bodies, and material culture. In a series of original case studies, both historical and contemporary, the collection explores how fashion and clothing affect articulations of body and self, experiences of time and place, and the shaping of social and local/global relationships. With chapters from leading international scholars, Fashion and Materiality takes the reader from the study of clothing and biography, and an early modern “foreign dress” collection, to Chinoiserie clothing in 18th-century Europe and fast fashion production in today's China. The book also examines fashion's role in nation building, and entanglements between fashion and migration across clothing donations for Syrian refugees in Germany and the circulation of “refugee chic” on international fashion runways. Scrutinizing the dense connections between fashion, clothing, materiality, and humanity, the book shows how the material interacts forcefully with the personal and political.