Mundane Objects: Materiality and Non-verbal Communication

 

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Mundane Objects:

Materiality and Non-verbal Communication

Pierre Lemonnier

October 2012, 205 pages

            

"Pierre Lemonnier is one of the few anthropologists of techniques trained in
the tradition of Leroi-Gourhan. In his capable hands, daily objects from New
Guinea, as well as from Europe, are taken out of the boring life granted to
them by the common notion of 'matter' and begin to extend their connections
to the whole social domain, forcing us to understand differently what is
meant by 'materiality'." 
~Bruno Latour, Institut d'études politiques de Paris

This concise book shows the importance of objects that are considered
ordinary by cultural outsiders and scholars, yet lie at the heart of the
systems of thought and practices of their makers and users. This volume
demonstrates the role of these objects in nonverbal communication, both in
non-ritual and in ritual situations. Lemonnier shows that some objects,
their physical properties and their material implementation, are wordless
expressions of fundamental aspects of a way of living and thinking, as well
as sometimes the only means of expressing the inexpressible. Through the
study of the most mundane technical activities such as fence building,
creating models cars, or trapping fish, we often gain a better understanding
of what these objects mean and how they work within their cultures of
origin. In addition to anthropologists and archaeologists, this book will
also be of interest to sociologists, historians, philosophers, cognitive
anthropologists and primatologists, for whom the intertwining of "function"
and "style" is the very mark of all cultural behavior.

 

To order Mundane Objects: Materiality and Non-verbal Communication, visit
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ISBN: 978-1-61132-056-5 (c) / 978-1-61132-681-9 (eBook)

 

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