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

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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