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The Meaning of Things
Abstract
The Meaning of Things explores the meanings of household possessions for three generation families in the Chicago area, and the place of materialism in American culture. Now regarded as a keystone in material culture studies, Halton's first book is based on his dissertation and coauthored with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. First published by Cambridge University Press in 1981, it has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, and Hungarian. The Meaning of Things is a study of the significance of material possessions in contemporary urban life, and of the ways people carve meaning out of their domestic environment. Drawing on a survey of eighty families in Chicago who were interviewed on the subject of their feelings about common household objects, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton provide a unique perspective on materialism, American culture, and the self. They begin by reviewing what social scientists and philosophers have said about the transactions between people and things. In the model of 'personhood' that the authors develop, goal-directed action and the cultivation of meaning through signs assume central importance. They then relate theoretical issues to the results of their survey. An important finding is the distinction between objects valued for action and those valued for contemplation. The authors compare families who have warm emotional attachments to their homes with those in which a common set of positive meanings is lacking, and interpret the different patterns of involvement. They then trace the cultivation of meaning in case studies of four families. Finally, the authors address what they describe as the current crisis of environmental and material exploitation, and suggest that human capacities for the creation and redirection of meaning offer the only hope for survival. A wide range of scholars - urban and family sociologists, clinical, developmental and environmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers, and many general readers - will find this book stimulating and compelling. Translations: Il significato degli oggetti. Italian translation. Rome: Edizione Kappa, 1986. Der Sinn der Dinge. German translation. Munich: Psychologie Verlags Union, 1989. Japanese translation 2007. Targyaink tukreben. Hungarian translation, 2011.
... Specifically, the present study will examine how the FFF movement is perceived by pupils and the role of stereotypes in identification. It will be answered to what extent the two personal factors environmental concerns (Dunlap et al., 2000) and attachment to goods as a pro-material value (Csikszentmihalyi and Halton, 1981) influence the identification. In addition, emphasis will be placed on the extent to which identification with the FFF movement promotes PEB and the extent to which there are differences between PEB in the public and PEB in the private spheres. ...
... Due to the fact that one of the central demands of the movement is aimed at protecting the climate and thus the environment, it can be assumed that individuals who have a high level of environmental concern are more likely to associate themselves with the social group of the FFF movement and to identify with it. If, in contrast, the personality is characterized by a high attachment to goods, in which one's identity is strongly determined and expressed by material goods (Csikszentmihalyi and Halton, 1981), a low fit with the FFF movement can be assumed. Consequently, the first two hypotheses can be derived from the above: H 1 : The higher the pupils' environmental concern, the more they identify with the FFF movement. ...
Especially for the younger generation, climate change is a threat, and therefore, environmental protection and pro-environmental behavior (PEB) are most important. The Fridays for Future movement speaks up for the young generation. Based on the social identity approach, the study is the first to investigate the role of stereotypes related to identification with the movement as a political expression of youth. Using structural equation modeling ( n = 543), the study demonstrates that identification is higher when pupils connect the movement with positive stereotypes, aligning with previous research findings for other activists, such as feminists. Whereby environmental concern has an additionally significant but low impact on identification, pro-material value orientation has no effect. Furthermore, the study investigates the relationship between identification with the movement and different types of PEB. The relationship is strongest with public sphere PEB in the form of future participation in a demonstration of the movement. Nevertheless, there is also a positive relationship with private sphere PEB such as nature-compatible actions in everyday life, for example, a meat-free diet and buying an environmentally friendly product. This is partly additionally confirmed through a conjoint analysis also conducted as part of the study. These findings enhance the understanding of the relationship between activism and different types of PEB among pupils and they contribute to closing this research gap. Finally, the implications and limitations of the work are discussed, along with an outlook for future research.
In this article, we focus on relational labour as a form of emotional labour associated with the use of platformised possessions, such as pins, messages, photos, videos and playlists hosted on digital platforms, to maintain relationships with friends and family. We argue that this ongoing effort is a type of consumer labour because it generates profitable engagements for digital platforms, which intentionally exploit negative emotions, namely, anxiety and guilt, associated with maintaining social connections. Drawing on 47 depth interviews with people living in the South of the UK, we identify the direct (communication via platforms) and indirect (information gathered via platforms to attain relational goals) relational work undertaken by consumers via their platformised possessions. We then consider the emotional experiences related to this work, demonstrating how such experiences differ from reports of possession work on material goods, while maintaining platform profits. Recognising that this work is the basis of much platform engagement, and hence profit, we further show how this effort becomes a form of unpaid labour. We thus contribute to the nascent literature on platformisation and emotion, to broader studies of possession work, and to critical marketing scholarship on consumer labour.
Although objects can be abstract in their meanings, they will be referred to in their physical sense, i.e., physical objects or material objects. Also, the objects described here are inanimate. An object is a “thing consisting of matter.” Objects have physical representations that enable human beings to experience them through the senses, to see them, touch them, taste them, smell them, and hear them. Interpretations of objects are often limited to their views as equipments or instruments to fulfill tasks like work or survival. However, objects are more than that. This paper shall present some important roles of objects. Physical inactivity has increased significantly over the past years, and the advancement of technology has contributed to it. Paradoxically, domestic IoT shapes human behavior through human interaction. As everyday objects become a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), this paper aims to investigate how the IoT devices and everyday objects can collaborate with humans to address growing physical inactivity. Using a speculative and critical design approach, design proposals in the form of physical and video prototypes are constructed and discussed in a series of workshops. Participation in the workshops moves the participants from being passive consumers of technology to citizens that actively debate and design their own future. The outcomes of the paper are themes that critically address the implications of domesticating technology and its future roles and functions. Also, a set of characteristics is outlined to illustrate desirable, undesirable, and preferred characteristics of networked technologies that may encourage physical activity.
This essay explores things in translation, examining what translation does to things and what happens to things in their trajectory in translation. Although translation scholars have posed useful questions about how to translate realia, I take a different approach here. When objects circulate among different groups of people, they are transformed in defiance of their material stability. The linguistic analysis of translations may allow us to observe from a unique perspective not only what kind of force things have at different times in different societies but also how the materially stable objects can actually be different things in different translation scenes. Translations of material objects offer, then, a charged locus of study, generating special, valuable knowledge about cultural contact and transfer, as well as about cross-cultural and transethnic misunderstandings. The essay focuses on three case studies from English retranslations of the landmark nineteenth-century Brazilian novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas , by J. M. Machado de Assis, as well as retranslations of biblical Hebrew narratives. By contextualizing particular linguistic references to clothing and artifacts, I demonstrate that translation imbues these ostensibly stable material objects with new cultural significances and valuations: language effectively remakes them.
In this article, I will focus on the study of the living space in houses of Russian-speaking emigrants in 1990s–2000s in Germany. I will discuss the “home” in several aspects: in a wide sense as a place on Earth where people’s life goes on, as physically built environment where a family dwells, and as objectified everyday life in the interiors. The choice of objects and furnishings for a “Russian” house in Germany cannot be classified, but it is unique and is associated with the biographies of the owners, the history of each individual family, as well as the history of moving to Germany. The “Russian” house in Germany turns out to be a complex phenomenon: it can be seen as a safe space, escape from the outside world, and offering emotional comfort. It is a place for representation of family and personal values, the owners’ identity, and preferences. It is also a scene where scenarios of relationships between a person and objects unfold. The objects that a person places in his/her house appear as objectified memories of life events and other people, reflecting the importance of family and interpersonal relationships expressed in gifts, photos, children’s drawings, and crafts. In a new place, people are no longer limited to a set of typical furnishing patterns that were dictated by a shortage of goods and ideas in the country of origin. House owners show their personality, trying to make their home different from that in the place of origin and introduce a non-standard style of European interiors in their homes, yet unwittingly they often reproduce stereotypes and fragments from their previous houses where they lived before migrating.
The concept of place is used three ways in sociology. First, there is the microsociological concept of place as a material location; a fixed, bounded site which can be identified with a particular set of situated expectations and behaviors. A second use of the term refers to the identification or attachment an individual develops to a particular location, usually geographical, which has an influence on his or her ongoing self‐identity. A third use of the term refers to the niche in the social stratification system in which the individual belongs.
The concept of place is used three ways in sociology. First, there is the microsociological concept of place as a material location; second, the identification or attachment an individual develops to a particular location; and, third, a niche in the social stratification system.
Material culture refers to the physical stuff that human beings surround themselves with and which has meaning for the members of a cultural group. Mostly this “stuff” is things that are made within a society, but sometimes it is gathered directly from the natural world or recovered from past or distant cultures. It can be contrasted with other cultural forms such as ideas, images, practices, beliefs, and language that can be treated as independent from any specific material substance. The clothes, tools, utensils, gadgets, ornaments, pictures, furniture, buildings, and equipment of a group of people are its material culture and for disciplines such as archeology and anthropology provide the raw data for understanding other societies. In recent years sociologists have begun to recognize that the ways that material things are incorporated into the culture shape the way that society works and communicates many of its features to individual members.
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