Back to search results

The material life of human beings

Enlarge text Shrink text
  • Book

In this ground-breaking work, the distinguished anthropological theorist, Michael Brian Schiffer, presents a profound challenge to the social sciences. Through a broad range of examples, he demonstrates how theories of behavior and communication have too often ignored the fundamental importance of objects in human life. In The Material Life of Human Beings, the author builds upon the premise that the most important feature of human life is not language but the relationships which take place between people and objects. The author shows that artifacts are involved in all modes of human communication - be they visual, auditory or tactile. By creatively folding elements of postmodernist thought into a scientific framework, he creates new concepts and models for understanding and analyzing communication and behavior. Challenging established theories within the social sciences, Michael Brian Schiffer offers a reassessment of the centrality of materiality to everyday life.

Title The material life of human beings : artifacts, behavior, and communication / Michael Brian Schiffer with the assistance of Andrea R. Miller.
Publisher London
New York : Routledge
Creation Date 1999
Notes Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [129]-150) and index.
English
Content What is human behavior? -- Artifacts and ~interpersonal~ communication -- Some first principles -- A general theory of communication -- Basic communication processes -- Explaining performance: a general model of receiver response.
Extent 1 online resource (173 pages)
Language English
National Library system number 997010708154205171
MARC RECORDS
Tags

Have more information? Found a mistake?

More on this subject

Material culture.
Periodical
African material culture
Book
Memory and material culture / Andrew Jones. [electronic resource]
Book
The importance of British material culture to historical archaeologies of the nineteenth century / edited and with an introduction by Alasdair Brooks.
Book

This may also interest you

Who Is the Empty Chair at the Passover Seder Intended for?

Who Is the Empty Chair at the Passover Seder Intended for?

While we all sit, as we do every year, at the Seder table, while we sing, ask questions, read the Haggadah and enjoy the holiday meal, hundreds of families among us will not be able to do this. Their holiday spirit, their joy, their loved ones were taken from them.  Their loved ones were kidna

To the article on our blog
Let’s Raise a Glass for Miriam the Prophetess

Let’s Raise a Glass for Miriam the Prophetess

As opposed to the Passover Haggadah, the Jewish Midrash tells us of the significant role played by Miriam the Prophetess in the Exodus from Egypt. Every Passover we are told of the Children of Israel’s journey from slavery to freedom, but it often goes unmentioned that Miriam the Prophetess, sister

To the article on our blog
World War II

World War II

World War II was the most destructive and deadly war in human history. The war officially began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Although the invasion of Poland is commonly seen as the first act of war, Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria and its occupation of Czechoslovakia i

More on this subject