Materiality and Society

This book examines the relationships between society andmaterial culture: the interaction between people and things.Tim Dant argues that the traditional approach to materialculture has focused on the symbolic meanings of objects,largely overlooking the material impact that objects have oneveryday life in late modernity. Dant resists the now well-establishedmodel of consumption as the principal relationshipwith ‘things’ in our lives. Using the motor car as a recurringtheme, he shows how we confront our society through materialinteraction with the objects that surround us.

Materiality and Society draws on debates with historical,philosophical and theoretical discourses that address materiality,from Braudel and Merleau-Ponty to Heidegger and Latour. Thebook opens up new lines of enquiry and makes a convincingcase for the closer study of the interaction between people andthings.

This book is key reading for students and researchers in a varietyof disciplines concerned with social relationships with things –including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, andtechnology studies.