Material Culture and Museology

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

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.

Learning Outcomes

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.   

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

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.

 

Head Lecturer(s)

Gonçalo João Duro dos Santos

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Synthesis work: 20.0%
Research work: 40.0%
Frequency: 40.0%

Bibliography

   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.