Doing Things with Things

The Design and Use of Everyday Objects

• Author(s): Ole Dreier,
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 256
• ISBN_10: 1317148568
  ISBN_13: 9781317148562
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Psychology / Movements / Humanistic , Science / Earth Sciences / Geography , Psychology / Movements / General , Science / Environmental Science , Social Science / Human Geography , Social Science / Sociology / General , Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development , Social Science / Anthropology / General , Philosophy / Aesthetics ,

Description:... It has been claimed that the natural sciences have abstracted for themselves a 'material world' set apart from human concerns, and social sciences, in their turn, constructed 'a world of actors devoid of things'. While a subject such as archaeology, by its very nature, takes objects into account, other disciplines, such as psychology, emphasize internal mental structures and other non-material issues. This book brings together a team of contributors from across the social sciences who have been taking 'things' more seriously to examine how people relate to objects. The contributors focus on every day objects and how these objects enter into our activities over the course of time. Using a combination of different theoretical approaches, including actor network theory, ecological psychology, cognitive linguistics and science and technology studies, the book argues against the standard notion of objects and their properties as inert and meaningless and argues for the need to understand the relations between people and objects in terms of process and change.