Theoretical Approaches to Material Culture by Berger a Summary Review of Chapters 1 – 7

Artifacts and Cultures in the Americas                

27 October 2013

Theoretical Approaches to Material Culture by Berger

A Summary Review of Chapters 1 – 7        

Before reading the text book and taking this class, I was not aware of the term material culture.  From everything I had learned and observed was that artifacts were items that were discovered from the past.  Not the past of a decade or two yet more along the lines of ancient artifacts.  Some examples are Ancient Rome, Egyptian, Mayan, Native American and from ancient cultures which no longer exist.

What was interesting to me in reading chapter 1 is the premise of using a multidisciplinary approach to objects and material culture. It is very important to apply a number of different types of theories. By not limiting yourself on how you look at an object  this action will enable you to open up your mind in order to gain a different perspective (20).  A lot of times we have a fear of being wrong and we have to put that aside in developing different theories about an object.  Being open minded, observant, looking at the object from various angles, noting details, and what we know relevant to our own experiences can help to give us insights on the use of the object and what it meant within the particular culture. The new information I learned was about the Nietzschean approach to look at love, life, and how to look at material objects not from just one or two sides but by a multitude of different directions and how everyone always thinks their way is the only correct way.  “What fuels our battles over ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ and ‘facts’ is … ‘a kind of lust to rule.’  We want everyone else to accept our disciplinary perspective on things as the one and only true perspective.  There is … a psychological need to triumph over or dominate others, or what Nietzsche described as a will to power” (24).

        As we move on with the other chapters what was interesting in chapter 2 was the Freudian Psychoanalytic Approach to material objects.  I am well aware of the three levels of human psyche and how the subconscious can shape our behaviors.  We also have the conscious level of our memories, what we have done in the past, in the present and being aware of the future.  The pre-conscious level is more along the lines of what we know, yet we don’t know for sure how we know it, and we just do.  What I found interesting and was not consciously aware of is that we can apply this approach to material objects during our analysis. These ideas tie back to chapter 1 of looking at material objects in an open minded way and from multiple perspectives.

        According to chapter 3, a semiotic approach is to study the signs in society.  In order to correctly identify the sign, we need to understand it as a whole.  What I found interesting and did not know was stated by Charles Sanders Peirce “that there are three kinds of signs: iconic signs that signify by resemblances; indexical signs that signify by cause and effect; and symbolic signs, whose meaning must be      learned” (44).  The explanations and examples of objects on page 45 about coins, flags, and bomb fragments helped me to really understand the meaning of each category.  Also it explains how an object does not have a meaning standing entirely on its own but its meaning needs to be seen in the context of the network of relationships to the object. We can also note that signs can be used to lie.  Such as a wig can cover baldness or the use of water bras is to highly enhance the bust and mislead to having a larger size than is normal for that person. Thus as stated in chapter 3 we can “manipulate our identities and ‘lie’ with signs” just by what we do in our everyday lives (47).  Some examples are a body shaper under our clothes to enable us to look firmer and hide those bulges, change the color of our hair, or even our sex.  So as we look at signs, we really need to see beyond just the surface and look at them from many different perspectives but also keeping in the back of our mind that these signs can lie to us.