Introduction to Material Culture Studies

Written assignment 1: Object biography, due Oct. 9, 11:55 pm on Moodle. Submit as PDF, Worth 15
marks.
The idea that objects have life cycles that reveal information about the objects themselves and about the
social and environmental context in which they were created and distributed was introduced by
anthropologist Igor Kopytoff.
1 Object biography uses the history of any material object (such as a soda
bottle, a souvenir from a shrine, or a tee shirt) to “address the way social interactions involving people
and objects create meaning.”
2
Some objects have great emotional durability,
3
the capacity to retain and
gain significance over time. The unique fading and softness of a favorite pair of jeans suggests emotional
durability; so do the multiple customizations, extra memory, and curated software collection of a laptop
computer on which you have stored photos, songs, playlists, and videos. Other emotionally durable items
gain significance through history of acquisition, ownership, use and associated memories. Emotional
durability has emerged as an important strategy in sustainable design, ie product design that aims to
reduce resource consumption and waste.
In this assignment, you will select something you purchased or was purchased by someone else and was
given to you. This object should be one that has moderate or high emotional durability – something that
you value and don’t want to replace anytime soon. Follow these instructions. Answer each question, using
the question numbers to designate your answers. Your answer to each question will take the form of one
or two paragraphs.

1. Describe the physical characteristics of the item. What is it? What is it made of? Has it been
   modified in any way since your acquired it?
2. Tell when and how you acquired it.
3. Find out as much as you can about where and how it was produced, and describe this briefly. Use
   footnotes to provide reference data similar to what I have done here, including URLs for sources
   that are not academic publications. An additional bibliography is not necessary. You may use a
   standard footnote format of your choice.
4. Assess how much emotional durability the item has for you. What characteristics give the item
   emotional durability?
5. What additional characteristics could the designer incorporate in order to increase the useful and
   meaningful life of the object?
6. Under what circumstances would you or someone else dispose of this object? What will most
   likely happen to this object at the end of its life? Are there multiple options, and what conditions
   would be necessary for these options to be relevant?

1 Kopytoff, Igor 1986 “The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process” in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 64–91.
2 Gosden, Chris and Marshall, Yvonne 1999 “The cultural biography of objects” World Archaeology 31(2): 169.
3 Chapman, Jonathan 2009 “Design for (emotional) durability” Design Issues 25(4):29-35.

Sample Solution