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The course contemplates theoretical and practical lessons. In the later, students should work on practical exercises, regarding a final work on specific objects of the MAUC Collection.
1. Introduction to social and cultural diversity through the analyses of the way things participate in different ways in social relations. 2. Selection of anthropological methods in object analysis: a) objects as social agents; b) objects as commodities; c) objects as mediators. 3. Analysis of museums and ethnographic objects relation: a) the history; b) museum culture c) representation politics in the museum.
In this unit we develop an approach to the way objects mediate social relations, taking into account the anthropological analysis in the field of material cultural and museology. We examine the following topics:
1. Objects as social agentes
2. The material system and the the biography of objects
3. The technical object as a social action mediator
4. Objects, collections and museum s as instruments of cultural representation.
5. Museums as cultural objects.
Andrea Catarina Marques Gaspar
Assessment
Synthesis work: 20.0%
Frequency: 40.0%
Research work: 40.0%
Ames, Michael,
1996, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, University of British Columbia Press
Miller, Daniel (ed.)
1998, Material Cultures: why some things matter, London, University College of London Press
Reynolds, B. & Stout, Margaret, (eds.),
1986, Material Anthropology - Contemporary Approaches to Material Culture,
Langham, University Press of America.