Material culture and mass consumption / Daniel Miller.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In recent years, social theory has played an increasingly important role in archaeology. In particular, archaeologists have shown a growing interest in meaning, structure, text, power and ideology. Social Archaeology is a series designed to explore these wider interests and the developing links between archaeology, anthropology, sociology and history. From a basis of detailed archaeological and ethnographic research, the authors will re-examine the relationships between past and present and between material culture and society, looking at, for example, the clothes we wear, the houses we build and the rubbish we deposit. The series will also apply perspectives and methods in archaeology that incorporate or have been influenced by developments in social theory and ethnography. Book jacket.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. vii)
• Part I Objectification (p. 1)
• 1 Introduction (p. 3)
• 2 Hegel and Objectification (p. 19)
• 3 Marx: Objectification as Rupture (p. 34)
• 4 Munn: Objectification as Culture (p. 50)
• 5 Simmel: Objectification as Modernity (p. 68)
• Part II Material Culture (p. 83)
• 6 The Humility of Objects (p. 85)
• 7 Artefacts in their Contexts (p. 109)
• Part III Mass Consumption (p. 131)
• 8 The Study of Consumption (p. 133)
• 9 Object Domains, Ideology and Interests (p. 158)
• 10 Towards a Theory of Consumption (p. 178)
• References (p. 219)
• Index (p. 233)