Things as Tools
How can we study material culture as tools or actants? This article is discussing the growing inspiration from phenomenological theory within the discipline of ethnology. According to this meaning is more to the heart than interpretation; agency – how culture happens – more than what it is. The development of a critical ethnology founded upon deconstruction of hegemonic or dominating discourses was an important contribution to the discipline in late 20th Century. What was later called the linguistic turn brought ethnological research much closer to other disciplines within the humanities. But ethnology has a special role to play by the focus on situated praxis – the study of everyday life – that tells it apart from neighbouring disciplines. Theories that focus upon experience of material culture are now more systematically added to the rich toolbox called cultural analysis. They will facilitate a more profound analysis of a wide range of objects – in museums as well as in contemporary culture. In different ways this means reconnecting to a long tradition of studying material culture within ethnology.
