Reading Material Culture

Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the very nature of interpretation itself: how we 'read' artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the complex relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.

List of contributors vi

Preface vii

Part I Structuralism

1 Claude Levi-Strauss: Structuralism and Beyond 3

Part II Hermeneutics

2 Paul Ricoeur: Action, Meaning and Text 85

3 Clifford Geertz: Towards a More 'Thick' Understanding? 121

Part III Post-Structuralism

4 Roland Barthes: From Sign to Text 163

5 Jacques Derrida: 'There is nothing outside of the text' 206

6 Michel Foucault: Towards an Archaeology of Archaeology 281

Index 348

Christopher Tilly is Lecturer in Archaeology at St. David's University College, Lampeter, and was formerly Lecturer in Anthropology at University College, London. He is the author of several books, most recently (with Michael Shanks) Social Theory and Archaeology (1987) and (with Daniel Miller and Michael Rowlands) Domination and Resistance (1989). Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the very nature of interpretation itself: how we 'read' artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the complex relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.

Reading Material Culture explores this interpretative process though examinations of the work of outstanding contemporary thinkers, focusing on Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Paul Ricoeur. It is considers their contributions to understanding past and present social worlds and the role of material-culture production and use within them. Among the themes discussed are the nature of time and history; discourse and textuality; the problem of subjectivity; and the politics of academic production. Each chapter concludes with an assessment of the theorists relevance to the future of material-culture studies in the 1990s. These essays challenge many of our fundamental preconceptions about language, society and the material world we inhabit. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, this book will be indispensable reading for students and specialist in archaeology, anthropology, literary criticism, and cultural and media studies.