Doing Things with Things

Name: Doing Things with Things
Brand: Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis

In this book, contributors from across the social sciences focus on everyday objects and how these objects enter our activities over the course of time. Using a combination of different theoretical approaches, the book argues against the standard notion of objects and their properties as inert and meaningless, and for the need to understand the relations between people and objects in terms of process and change. > It has been claimed that the natural sciences have abstracted for themselves a 'material world' set apart from human concerns, and social sciences, in their turn, constructed 'a world of actors devoid of things'. While a subject such as archaeology, by its very nature, takes objects into account, other disciplines, such as psychology, emphasize internal mental structures and other non-material issues.\nThis book brings together a team of contributors from across the social sciences who have been taking 'things' more seriously to examine how people relate to objects. The .