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12 What Do Things Want? Object Design as a Middle Range Theory of Material Culture
Author(s) -
Robb John
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
archeological papers of the american anthropological association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1551-8248
pISSN - 1551-823X
DOI - 10.1111/apaa.12069
Subject(s) - interpretation (philosophy) , style (visual arts) , object (grammar) , task (project management) , epistemology , computer science , sociology , artificial intelligence , engineering , history , philosophy , archaeology , systems engineering , programming language
Material culture theorists in archaeology often argue directly from abstract philosophical models to the interpretation of specific examples which exemplify a particular paradigm well; there has been little attempt to develop methods which work across the entire range of material things we make and which relate the social projects they form part of to the actual material characteristics of things. This paper attempts to refocus attention upon objects by asking the design question: what social task are they intended to accomplish, and what characteristics (material and otherwise) enable them to do it? It develops a general model in which objects incorporate knowledge of the responses they are intended to provoke; this incorporated knowledge gives archaeologists analytical purchase for understanding ancient things. This thesis is illustrated both by a survey of some common strategies of material efficacy and by two capsule examples of how aesthetic style as a design feature provokes specific reactions on the part of people using objects, linking them into particular kinds of social relationships.