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ISI Library

A unified academic catalogue for books, journal articles, book chapters, proceedings papers, conference abstracts and semiotic research materials.

A unified academic catalogue for books, journal articles, proceedings papers, collection articles and semiotic research materials. Search across the full database; results are shown with pagination.

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Showing 1–6 of 6 records
Book 2000.0

The Perception of the Environment

Tim Ingold

Space Routledge 0415228328 Available

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Other title information: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill

Annotation: In this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive new approach to understanding how human beings perceive their surroundings. He argues that what we are used to calling cultural variation consists, in the first place, of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired, skills are grown, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural. To account for the generation of skills we have therefore to understand the dynamics of development. And this in turn calls for an ecological approach that situates practitioners in the context of an active engagement with the constituents of their surroundings. The twenty-three essays comprising this book focus in turn on the procurement of livelihood, on what it means to ‘dwell’, and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before. The book is set to revolutionise the way we think about what is ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ in humans, about evolution and history, and indeed about what it means for human beings – at once organisms and persons – to inhabit an environment. The Perception of the Environment will be essential reading not only for anthropologists but also for biologists, psychologists, archaeologists, geographers and philosophers.

Identifier: 0415228328

Status: Available

Proceedings Paper 1997

Material culture in the mirror of archival sources

Imre Grafik

In: Synthesis in Diversity, Volume 1

Pages
277-280

Semiotics Around the World

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Journal Article 1997

Part 3: Semiotic approaches to meaning in material culture

In: Semiotica 1997, Issue 1

Pages
42-63

Semiotica DOI: 10.1515/semi.1997.116.1.42

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Identifier: DOI: 10.1515/semi.1997.116.1.42

Open source

Book 1994.0

Cultural Artifacts and the production of meaning

Edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell | Hatherine O'Brien O'Heefe

Dependent title
The Page, the Image, and the Body

Culture University of Michigan Press 0472082574 Available

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Annotation: Diverse essays addressing a variety of subjects, from Renaissance cartography to performance art to rap music, united in their common exploration of material criticism. This recognizes that materialist criticism may embrace techniques borrowed from psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxian, and historicist criticisms. It employs materialist criticism to broaden and strengthen our understanding of what constitutes a 'cultural artifact' and how such artifacts function.

Identifier: 0472082574

Status: Available

Book 1994.0

The Socialness of Things

edited by Stephen Harold Riggins

Social Mouton de Gruyter 3110141337 Available

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Other title information: Essays on the Socio-Semiotics of Objects

Notes: This book is based on the proceedings of an international conference which took place at the University of Toronto in 1990.

Annotation: The term "socialness" is a neologism that is used in this volume to call attention to the integration of objects in the social fabric of everyday life. Specialists in material culture studies have understood for some time, that societies consist of both people and artifacts. It is not only with people and animals that we interact but also with objects. The chapters in the first part of the volume deal with artefacts such as furniture, mementoes, and knickknacks, which can be manipulated as social "others" – entities with which one can socialize or make a part in socialisation processes such as establishing a bond, conveying a message, etc. The second section of articles concerns artefacts whose dimensions take such proportions that humans become dwarfed with respect to them, such as tourists travelling to visit them or shoppers being herded through their artificial geography as if flowing within an oversized organism. In the concluding section, the artefacts examined are by contrast so adjusted to the proportion of the human body, so close to it that they become an indissociable part of the social persona sticking to the skin, expressing better than any other means of the socialness - fashion.

Identifier: 3110141337

Status: Available

Book 1994.0

The Swastika

Malcolm Quinn

Dependent title
Constructing the Symbol
Edition
1 edition

Social Routledge 041510095X Available

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Annotation: By identifying the swastika as a bounary or liminal image, Malcolm Quinn allies visual analysis to issues of material culture and history.

Identifier: 041510095X

Status: Available