Material culture, as it can be obvious from its name, is about the people’s relation to the material things. In a wide sense, material culture involves the material things of everyday living, such as houses, cities, churches, castles, offices, means of production, tools, goods and products, etc. Material culture is all material things which people use to define their culture. According to Oxford definition,
‘Material culture centers upon objects, their properties, and the materials that they are made of, and the ways in which these material facts are central to an understanding of culture and social relations.’
We all live in a material world and what surround us are also material things. The sphere of exploration of such subject as material culture is experience and nature of materiality. Overall the study is about how exactly people create, use and exchange objects of materiality. The subject also involves the study of how material world influences people and what are the social effects of this culture.
Talking about the aspects of material culture, one can imply very range scope of things. It can be the study of particular kinds of the culture such as architecture, photography and things of everyday life (clothing, plates, etc). And also it can concern more wide notions, such as technological progress, style, consumption. The study of material culture is tightly bounded to the study of such things as modern technologies, art, and notion of artifacts. Other aspects of material culture are sociological, cognitive and function aspects and how they are related to each other. All these aspects explore the material culture from different sides and sometimes they mix up with one another.
In the following research paper I would like to discourse the aspect of material culture such as function aspect. I have chosen this aspect because I think it reveals the topic very well from the functional side. I consider by exploring the function aspect of material culture it is possible to answer the questions of ‘What exactly material culture exists for?’ and ‘In which way the knowledge of material culture can contribute people’s lives?’ A good review to the function aspect of material culture gives Beth Preston in her book A Philosophy of Material Culture: Action, Function and Mind. According to her, the function aspect of material culture is that ‘the focus is on things made and/or used, and secondarily on the making and/or using of them’
When discussing the function of material culture, it does not go to the study of archaeology and anthropology. But revealing this topic, it is mainly to be talked about the philosophy of biology, because many scientists believe that their function aspects have things in common. As material culture is all about the material things that belong to the human race and compile their culture, the functional aspect is mainly about that each following thing and item has its own function. From here it derives the pluralistic function theory and the theory of intentionalism. We can state that function was first talked about in the field of philosophy of biology, but later it came to the material culture. It is important to say, that pluralistic function theory has two types, different from each other. First type of functions is so called proper functions, which explain the normativity in life. Second type of functions is called system functions. System functions can explain functionality of the things which surround us, but they are too broad and they can’t explain what explain proper functions. These two types do not mandatory work with each other. Some items can have both of the functions, but some of them have only one of the following functions. This creates the pluralistic theory in the function aspect of material culture.
When speaking about the function aspect takes place to say about the notion of fitness. It comes from the belief that material culture is reproduced by others, while living creatures are reproduced by themselves. This notion results in exploring the intentionalism. Material culture items are created to be used in everyday life, and this usage depends on expectations and aims of those who create the culture items. So it can be intended creation of material culture items. The approach to these two theories – pluralistic function theory and intentionalism – is rather challenging. Anyway, these two theories come from human Actions to create the items of material culture. In my opinion, theories describe the function aspect of material culture from two different sides and both of them have a solid ground and a chance to be. From one side, intentionalism says that all material culture was created due to specific purposes that people pursued. And that is true, that all items were intended to be made. And from another side, pluralistic theory says that items have solid and system functions, or one of it. And that is also fair, that each item has its own functions, it has definite characteristic or the set of characteristics. I suppose both theories connected to each other, and they both result from the human’s desire to have one or another material item. The problem which scientists face while exploring function aspect is that it was dedicated too much attention to intentionalism. Some of them say that it should be re-thinking on this topic and de-emphasizing of the too much value put on it. But still intentionalism has its solid place in function aspect of materialistic culture. In order to measure two theories we need to compare artefactual function (both for proper and system function) with intentions. The typical intentionalist belief is that there should be a maker, a designer or a creator of the material items. But the thing is that people can reinvent the item, put new characteristics for it and make a new usage of one or another item. So that’s where intentionalism becomes rather debatable. It means that when it comes to explanation of functions in material culture sometimes it can’t be described from the view point of one person or even the group of people. But it does not discredit the intentionalism; it only requires doing even more re-thinking and reinterpretation.
In the context of material culture, the function of the item is learned skills of the agent. Due to this, important topic to be revealed is reproduction. As the items can’t reproduce themselves, they need someone to be reproduced. And from this perspective, we can talk about two models of reproduction – technical making and biological growing. Tim Ingold gives a view point on this, stating that during the creation of the item of material culture, the one who creates it gives his mental properties to the passive matter. That is where it comes to the complex transaction of forces and in the case with material culture; the item takes into itself the learned skills of an agent. This structure formation establishes functions in material culture. So, the material culture is the second nature and intentions play a significant role in it.
Studying the function of material culture takes to explore the process of how the natural items become the cultural ones. Without any doubts the function theory recovers it and it is very closed to that one in biology. The technical function and structure in material culture items are gained due to the intentional nature of human thoughts. And intentions have a vital role in the establishment of functions in material culture. All this is ongoing process and each compound of which makes the functions of material culture.
The following assumptions could be made on function of material culture: 1) all human activities are driven by intentions; 2) the intentions of human being define what will be the proper functions of the cultural item; 3) intention of people who make decisions determine the technical change in culture. The following considerations show the different result of how the intentions and artifacts can interact. The role that human intentions play in material culture is very sophisticated.
Theories of function in material culture, pluralistic function theory and intentionalism, based on normative background. The intentionalism has two view points. The classical understanding of the intentionalism is based on the viewpoint that individual is not socialized and what matters in intention decision-making is the society in general. Those who have controversial view towards the intentionalism state that the main object here is human practices. It is about that the cultural products demand authentic sense. But both classical and controversial viewpoints show that normative background hides any anti-intentional approach. Intentionalism is a significant part of function aspect of material culture but we should recognize the real role of it in the study and not to give too much importance to it. As each individual human being can create the particular, completely new functions for one or another nature item and make from it the material culture item. The only thing what is needed for that is self-sufficient intention.
In this material culture research paper I have explored function aspect of the following culture. The topic discusses what functions have the culture items which are around us and how they were created from nature items. Each culture item was made with particular purpose or purposes, has its own unique characteristics and function. That is what distinguishes nature item from culture one. Material culture is very broad topic; it includes any material thing that comprises human everyday life. Functional aspect of material culture has two theories – pluralistic function theory and intentionalism. Pluralistic function theory, from its side, has proper function type and system function type. This theory describes the particular features and functions of each culture item. Intentionalism tells that the creation of each culture item had a particular background or human intention in it. There are two views on intentionalism – classical and controversial. Classical intentionalism says that the intention to create a particular culture item has derived from the society’s intention, while controversial intentionalism stands for the idea that each individual can have an intention and create completely new material culture item.
References:
Preston, Beth. A Philosophy Of Material Culture. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.
"Material And Non‐Material Culture". Cliffsnotes.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.
