KULTURA MATERIALNA. NOWY PARADYGMAT ANTROPOLOGICZNY
MATERIAL CULTURE. A NEW PARADIGM OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: The beginnings of modern material culture studies in anthropology are also the beginnings of modern anthropology – both should be associated with the work of Malinowski, Boas and Mauss, as well as with the holistic and multi-functional approach to culture. These theories found their continuation in the concepts of Evans-Pritchard, and in the „culture and personality” school, but with the changing scope of cultural anthropology the subject lost its importance in the postwar period. Meanwhile, it was taken up by some neighbouring disciplines, especially history, sociology and psychology (Prown, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Csikszentmihalyi), which contributed to the appearance of a strong interdisciplinary approach in material culture studies. Last decade of the twentieth and early twenty-first century brought about a revival of the subject in cultural anthropology (Sahlins, Douglas, McCracken, Appadurai, Kopytoff, Gell). It is associated with the recognition of the growing importance of the consumer culture – a phenomenon of everyday life in the Western world, as well as the increase of cultural subjectivity and reflexivity. The growing interest in material culture is maintained by posthumanity movement (Ingold, Latour), exposing the hybrid, symbiotic nature of the relationship between human beings and things. The latest history of material culture studies and contemporary trends make it likely that the research will be developed on a macro- (global economic processes), meso- (group identification, local) and microcultural level (identity, lifestyles).

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