English

Baranov, Dmitriy Aleksandrovich. On the ethnographic understanding of materiality

Published Date:

Section: Commentarii / Articles

Posted in Commentarii / Articles

For citation: Baranov, Dmitriy Aleksandrovich. On the ethnographic understanding of materiality, in Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2018. № 2. Pp. 36-56. DOI https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu19.2018.203.

Title of the article On the ethnographic understanding of materiality
Authors Baranov, Dmitriy Aleksandrovich — PhD in History, Head of the Department of Ethnography of Russian People, Russian Ethnography Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In the section Commentarii / Articles
Year 2018 Issue  2 Pages  36-56
Type of article RAR Index UDK; BBK 316.74+39; 79.1 Index DOI https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu19.2018.203
Abstract The article discusses the ethnographic approaches to the study of material culture and the place they have taken within the material turn that has occurred in the social sciences in recent decades. Despite the fact that at the stage of its formation, ethnography was understood primarily as a study of the material culture of different nations, however, the material nature of the thing turned out to be poorly problematized. Until now, the conservative line dominates the ethnographic approach to material culture, within which the focus is either «material» (material, manufacturing techniques, utilitarian functions) or «symbolic» (semantics, ritual functions). The object-centric perspective proposed by sociologists, equalizing subject and object, the human being and thing, is hardly fully in the interests of ethnography. For the latter, promising approaches to material study are largely determined by the consideration of its physical features that appeal to human feelings. It is in this «contact zone» of human interaction with a thing — the sphere of human feelings that a thing acquires a human dimension, which, in fact, is the subject field of anthropology / ethnography.
Keywords materiality, ontological turn, ethnographic subject, museum, semantics, technology, unique, traditional culture
Full text version of the article. Article language  Russian
Bibliography
  •  Ananyev, Vitaliy Gennadievich. Istoriya zarubezhnoy muzeologii. Uchebno-metodicheskoe posobie [The History of foreign museology. Teaching guide]. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State Universite Press (Institute of History), 2014. 136 p. (in Russian).

    Bayburin, Al’bert Kashfullovich. Etnograficheskiy muzey: semiotika i ideologiya [The Ethnographic Museum: semiotics and ideology], in Neprikosnovenniy zapas. 2004. No. 1 (URL: http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2004/1/bab13.html). (in Russian).

    Baranova, Irina Ivanovna. Pokaz sovremennosti v GME narodov SSSR (poiski i problemy) [Show of modernity in the ethnographical museum of the peoples of the USSR (researches and problems)], in Sovetskaya etnografiya. 1981. No. 2. Pp. 25–35. (in Russian).

    Clifford, James. The predicament of the culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harward University Press, 1988. 381 p.

    Dmitriev, Vladimir Aleksandrovich; Kalashnikova, Natal’ya Moiseevna. O printsipakh komplektovaniya fondov etnograficheskikh muzeev na sovremennom etape [On the principles of the acquisition of collections of ethnographic museums at the present time], in Sovetskaya etnografiya. Moscow, 1989. No. 2. Pp. 82–93. (in Russian).

    Eco, Umberto. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. London: Macmillan Publ., 1984. 249 p.

    Eriksen, Tomas H. Chto takoe antropologiya? [What Is Anthropology?]. Moscow: The Higher School of Economics Publishing House, 2014. 240 p. (in Russian).

    Heidegger, Martin. Bytie i vremya [Being and Time]. Kharkov: Folio Publ., 2003. 509 p. (in Russian).

    Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. 271 p.

    Ivanov, Dmitriy. Stanitsa Otradnaya, Kubanskoy oblasti, Batalpashinskogo uezda [The village of Otradnaya, Kuban region, Batalpashinsky district], in Sbornik materialov opisaniy mestnostey i plemen Kavkaza. Tiflis, 1888. Issue 6. Pp. 10–40. (in Russian).

    Kopytoff, Igor’. Kul’turnaya biografiya veshchey: tovarizatsiya kak protsess [The cultural biography of things: commodization as process], in Vakhshtayn, Viktor Semenovich (ed.). Sotsiologiya veshchey. Moscow: «Territoriya budushchego» Publ., 2006. (Series «Universitetskaya biblioteka Aleksandra Pogorelskogo»). Pp. 134–168. (in Russian).

    Kotilainen, Eija-Maija. Novye predstavleniya mirovykh kul’tur v muzee [New representation of world cultures in the museum], in Antropologicheskiy forum. St. Petersburg, 2007. No 6. Pp. 48–56. (in Russian).

    Krutkin, Viktor Leonidovich. Sotsiokul’turnaya materialnost’ v antropologii D. Millera [The socio-cultural materiality in D. Miller’s anthropology], in Zhurnal sotsiologii i sotsial’noy antropologii. 2017. No. 1. Pp. 149–165. (in Russian).

    Kuhn, Thomas. Struktura nauchnykh revolyutsiy [The structure of scientific revolution]. Moscow: Progress Publ., 1977. 300 p. (in Russian).

    Latour, Bruno. Another way to compose the common world: the Ontological Turn in French Philosophical Anthropology, in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 2014. Vol. 4 (1). Pp. 301–307.

    Lem, Stanislav. Absolyutnaya pustota [The absolute emptiness]. Moscow: AST Publ., 2003. 608 p. (in Russian).

    Lem, Stanislav. Summa tekhnologiy [Summa (Compendium) of Technologies]. Moscow: AST Publ.; St Petersburg: TERRA FANTASTICA Publ., 2004. 668 p. (in Russian).

    Mastenitsa, Elena Nikolaevna. Informatsionniy potentsial muzeynogo predmeta: Etnokul’turniy aspekt [The information potential of the museum subject: Ethnocultural aspect], in Muzey. Traditsii. Etnichnost’. Materialy mezhdunarodnoy nauchnoy konferentsii, posvyashchennoy 100-letiyu Rossiyskogo etnograficheskogo muzeya. Kishinev; St. Petersburg: Nestor-Historia Publ., 2002. Pp. 328–330. (in Russian).

    Miller, Daniel. Introduction, in Miller, Daniel (ed.). Materiality. Durham (N. C.): Duke University Press, 2005. Pp. 1–50.

    Mitrofanova, Vera Viktorovna. Zagadki [The riddles]. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1968. 253 p. (in Russian).

    Pronina, Natalya Yuryevna. Umberto Eko: znak i realnost’. Avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoy stepeni kandidata filosofskikh nauk [Sign and reality. Thesis for a Ph. D. in Philosophy degree]. Saratov, 2013. 25 p. (in Russian).

    Prown, Jules David. Mind in matter: an introduction to material culture theory and method, in Winterthur Portfolio. 1982. Vol. 17. Pp. 1–19.

    Rowlands, Michael. A Materialist Approach to Materiality, in Miller, Daniel (ed.). Materiality. Durham (N. C.): Duke University Press, 2005. Pp. 72–87.

    Shangina, Izabella Iosifovna. Russkiy fond etnograficheskikh muzeev Moskvy i Sankt-Peterburga. Istoriya i problemy komplektovaniya. 1867–1930 gg. [The russian collections of ethnographic museums of Moscow and St. Petersburg. History and problems of acquisition. 1867–1930]. St Petersburg: Russian Institute of cultural studies Press, 1994. 40 p. (in Russian).

    Shchepanskaya, Tatyana Borisovna. Rzhavaya merezha: k voprosu o transformatsii i variativnosti traditsionnoy kul’tury [Rusty merezha: to the question of the transformation and variation of traditional culture], in Bayburin, Albert Kashfullovich; Shchepanskaya, Tatyana Borisovna (eds). Fol’klor i etnografiya: K devyanostoletiyu so dnya rozhdeniya K. V. Chistova: Sbornik nauchnykh statey. St. Petersburg: Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Russian Academy of Science) Publ., 2011. 316 p. (in Russian).

    Shklovskiy, Viktor Borisovich. Iskusstvo kak priem [Art as a technique], in O teorii prozy. Moscow: Sovetskiy pisatel’ Publ., 1983. Pp. 9–25. (in Russian).

    Sokolovskiy, Sergey Valeryevich. K samim veshcham? (Ob ontologicheskom povorote v sotsial’nykh i gumanitarnykh distsiplinakh) [To the things themselves? (On the ontological turn in social sciences and humanities)], in Etnometodologiya: problemy, podkhody, kontseptsii. Moscow, 2016. Issue 21. Pp. 9–33. (in Russian).

    Tokarev, Sergey Aleksandrovich. K metodike etnograficheskogo izucheniya material’noy kul’tury [To the method of ethnographic study of material culture], in Sovetskaya etnografiya. 1970. No. 4. Pp. 3–17. (in Russian).

    Tolstaya, Svetlana Mikhaylovna. Kategoriya priznaka v simvolicheskom yazyke kul’tury [The category of an attribute in the symbolic language of culture], in Priznakovoe prostranstvo kul’tury. Moscow: Indrik Publ., 2002. Pp. 3–15. (in Russian).

    Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich. Iz nablyudeniy nad zagadkoy [From observations of the riddle], in Issledovaniya v oblasti balto-slavyanskoy dukhovnoy kul’tury. Zagadka kak tekst. Vol. 1. Moscow: Indrik Publ., 1994. Pp. 10–117. (in Russian).

    Toporov, Vladimir Nikolaevich. Mif. Ritual. Simvol. Obraz. Issledovaniya v oblasti mifopoeticheskogo. Izbrannoe [Myth. Ritual. Symbol. Image. The research in the field of mythopoetic]. Moscow: «Progress» – «Kul’tura» Publ., 1995. 624 p. (in Russian).

    Vlasova, Marina Nikitichna. Russkie sueveriya [The Russian superstitions]. St. Petersburg: Azbuka Publ., 1998. 672 p. (in Russian).

    Woolgar, Steve; Lezaun, Javier. The wrong bin bag: A turn to ontology in science and technology studies?, in Social Studies of Science. 2013. Vol. 43. No. 3. Pp. 321–340.

 

  English