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The Social Life of Things

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A Social Life of Things?

Origins and History
In 1986, the edited volume The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective was published. This work was born out of papers presented in 1983 and 1984 at a workshop and symposium run by the Ethnohistory Program at the University of Pennsylvania. These meetings represented a combined effort by anthropologists and historians to better understand commodities (Farriss 1986). In his introductory essay, editor Arjun Appadurai gives a provisional definition of commodities as objects of economic value (1986:3). By deconstructing notions of value, it is possible to reveal the social relations that help create and define such objects:
Economic exchange creates value. Value is emb odied in commodities that are exchanged. Focusing on the forms or functions of exchange, makes it possib le to argue that what creates the link b etween exchange and value is politics, construed b roadly. This argument justifies the conceit that commodities, like persons, have social lives (Appadurai 1986:3).

While economic exchange is the focus in this volume, the insights provided by investigation of how commodities operate in human social life have proved applicable to the broader study of the politics of value (Preucel and Hodder 1996:106).

Basic Premises
People make the world through physical manipulation and ideational construction. That humans shape, change, and manipulate the material world is readily apparent and uncontroversial. Less obvious are the ways in which objects in turn shape human existence. The idea of a social life of things addresses the interactions between human beings and the material world in a way that pays particular attention to the specific reactions elicited by objects. This reflexive relationship in which the existence of people is responsible for the creation of objects and objects are responsible for the creation of the particularities of human existence is a useful avenue for archaeological thought. Thinking of static objects as having the potential to create the world of human existence does not necessarily come naturally, but it may be clarified by use of specific examples. For instance, imagine a man in a house.

People build houses, but houses also help shape human experience. Houses provide shelter, contain an idea of home, and through their size, upkeep, and decoration convey social messages about the identity of their occupants.

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Without the house, the man would have to sleep and eat somewhere else. He would have to find somewhere else to keep his things. A great deal of his daily life would be different without his house. The same can be said of the mans clothing.

Clothing protects the body from the elements and projects a message about the identity of the wearer. Houses and clothing, like other objects, carry multiple utilitarian, ideational, and social uses. In these ways, they help shape human existence. Discussion of the social life of things is ultimately an examination of the various ways in which objects hold value for individuals and groups. There are many types of potential value, including emotional, aesthetic, spiritual, and knowledge value, or an objects ability to be sold in an open market. The characterization of value made by German philosopher Georg Simmel is particularly relevant. Value, for Simmel, is never an inherent property of objects, but is a judgment made about them by subjects (Appadurai 1986:3). Value may be ascribed by society at large (gold has a high value in economic exchange) or it may be intensely personal and subjective (this teddy bear means a lot to me). However, as Renfrew (2001) notes, when discussing valuables, their value may be ascribed, but it is inseparable from their substantive and material existence (2001:134).

A valuable cube, ascribed aesthetic, memory, and economic values

Appadurais (1986) discussion of commodities may be used to illustrate a further point: the values ascribed to an object are constantly in flux. He refers to the commodity phase as representing the moment during which an object is operating as a commodity. Commodity candidacy refers to the ability of an object to operate as a commodity in a certain situation in line with the needs and desires of buyer and seller, the cultural framework in which the exchange takes place, and other situational factors. Lastly, the commodity context refers to where and when exchange takes place (1986:13-15).

Methodology
To determine the particular ways in which objects have social lives, three things are necessary. First, the values given to the object must be identified. Second, it must be determined how the object came to hold these values. Finally, the ways in
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which said values affected interactions between people and between people and the object are to be determined. Ascribed value(s) may be identified through an examination of how an individual or group treats or reacts to something. Whether the society and object in question exist in the present or in the past, this may be explored by looking at the contexts in which these objects do or do not exist, move, and operate. For instance, most archaeologists assume that an object found in a grave was accorded a higher level of value than something found in a midden. By the same token, if a particular type of object is only found in the graves of certain individuals, such as spindle whorls in the graves of women, then it is assumed that the object was given a particular associative value with these individuals (for example, spinning as a female task and spindle whorls as an emblem of female identity). By locating the effects produced, one can infer values ascribed to an object. The process of discovering how an object came to hold a particular value varies depending on the specifics of its creation, use, and ultimate value. A number of different methodologies may be useful in achieving this end. For historically known groups, ethnographic and historical research may make it possible to discover an emic justification for value. In other cases, examination of an items chane opratoire can be used to uncover the labor, processes, and raw materials involved in its creation. Analysis of the rarity of materials or finished products, the level of expertise required to create the object, or the transformative processes involved in creation may provide clues to value. Gell (1994:43) refers to the way in which beautifully made or skillfully constructed objects may produce certain psychological effects, including the attribution of value, as the enchantment of technology. Objects may be valued for their performance characteristics, or how well they can be used to achieve a goal relative to objects of a similar type. Performance characteristics have been useful for behavioral archaeologists in their attempts to determine why one functional option is chosen over another. Analysis involves considering the physical object and the goal to be accomplished in its use (La Motta and Schiffer 2001). For example, a plastic knife may be of less value than a metal knife, if the task at hand is cutting a piece of steak. Archaeologists have been able to test performance characteristics of materials such as ceramic to determine why one type of pot was preferred by a population for certain uses. At times, the way in which an object performs may be less subject to empirical testing. In an influential and crossdisciplinary use of the concept, Alfred Gell (1994) draws attention to what he calls the technology of enchantment. He uses this term to designate objects designed to elicit a certain psychological effect by exploiting certain sensory characteristics. Gell uses the example of prow-boards used on Trobriand trading canoes. These boards are carved and painted with bold, graphic designs in the highly contrastive colors of white, red, and black. Viewing the boards, especially against the relatively uniform surroundings of island and water, is intended to dazzle the beholder and weaken his grip on himself, thus resulting in a more beneficial trade for the individual in the canoe (1994:44). In this formulation of material performance, Gell argues that human engagement with material culture lend the objects agency. Finally, association of an object or class of objects with specific individuals or events may imbue them with specific ideational values. Igor Kopytoff (1986) offers a way to think about specific objects through what he terms the cultural biography of things. A biographical approach recognizes that the values given to an object change over time. Like people, objects may have a number of different potential biographies focused on different aspects of their lives, including those focused on technical, social, and economic values. A cultural biography focuses specifically on the chain of events through which an object becomes culturally marked and unmarked as a particular type of thing: A culturally informed biography of an object would look at it as a culturally constructed entity, endowed with culturally specific meanings, and classified and reclassified into culturally constituted categories (1986:68). Kopytoff suggests the following questions as potentially useful in outlining the cultural biography of a thing:
What, sociologically, are the biographical possibilities inherent in its status and in the period and culture, and how are these possibilities realized? Where does the thing come from and who made it? What has been its career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized ages or periods in the things life, and what are the cultural markers for them? How does the things use change with its age, and what happens to it when it reaches the end of its usefulness? (1986:66-67)

Similar questions may be asked on a larger scale to determine the social history of a class of things. This refers to a longterm view of how meanings and uses of an object change over time. To put it simply, in a cultural biography, a particular object is followed through time, with its changing context noted at each stage of its life. The social history of things focuses on the large-scale dynamics of supply, demand, and meanings of whole classes of items and tracks their changes through time (Orser Jr. 1996:193). The sum of the cultural biographies of many individual objects form the social history of the class, and the social history of the class, in turn, affects the cultural biography of the individual item.

Early Influences/Ancestors
The concept of a social life of things is a direct descendant of previous work on economic theory. Exchange has long been considered a universal aspect of human life, and the quest to understand the creation and movement of commodities has a long history. A classic case demonstrating the social intricacies of exchange is found in Bronislaw Malinowskis Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). Malinowski describes the k ula exchange cycle of the Trobriand Islands, during which necklaces of red shell (soulava) and bracelets of white shell (mwali) are traded across a huge network of individual trading relationships. The objects in themselves have no utilitarian value, and the point in trading the objects was not in their possession but in their continued movement. As Layton explains, From a Western perspective, it might seem that the trade
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in commodities was the primary purpose of the expedition. For the participants, however, it was the exchange of valuables, based on the love of give and take for its own sake (1997:32). While economic exchange does occur with the barter and trade of soulava, mwali, and other goods, the salient function of the k ula ring is the reproduction and maintenance of social relations. The k ula ring was placed in context with the exchange systems of other non-Western, small scale societies in Marcel Mausss The Gift (1967 [1923]). In this essay, case studies from the Pacific Northwest, Polynesia, and Melanesia are used to discuss the role of gift exchange in the maintenance of social relationships. Mauss argues that while it is assumed that prestations which are in theory voluntary, disinterested and spontaneous are in fact obligatory and interested (1967:1).

Gifts are given as part of social relationships. Certain occasions entail the obligation to give gifts (for instance, a birthday). In relationships where gifts may be given, there is an according obligation to receive gifts. In this relationship is the obligation to repay. This is the expectation that gifts exchanged will be of equivalent value. If a disparity exists in the value of gifts exchanged between two individuals, a debt relationship is established (1967:41). Value cannot be separated from the materiality of the object; therefore, both the object and the exchange relationship create social relations.

Current Trends/Descendants
A conference was held in Amsterdam in 1999 to revisit the themes presented in Appadurais original volume. Sponsored in part by the Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research and Netherlands Science Research Foundation at The Hague, participants focused their attention on the relationships between North and South in a global economy, specifically in Africa. The results were published in a volume entitled Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited) (van Binsbergen and Geschiere 2005). The essays in this work provide examples of the way in which consumption is a profoundly meaningful, social act. Notable in these studies is the full use of Appadurais broad definition of commodity. Papers have been written on the social lives of many items not typically considered commodities, including human organs and birth certificates (Leach 2005; Hunt 2005). Also notable is the way in which consumption has been broadly interpreted. The act of exchange, necessary for a definition of a commodity, is not necessary to consumption. As Rowlands (2005) points out, Terms such as cultural heritage or cultural patrimony are now in wide use to describe objects that acquire value as cultural property which should not be circulated but retained and transmitted from one generation to another. Hence they are objects in social motion without being commodities (2005:267).

Accomplishments
Thinking about the social lives of things has been a major avenue of archaeological interpretation since the beginning of the field. The main accomplishment in recent decades has been a formalization of how, exactly, archaeologists come to
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these interpretations. Thinking about things as having social lives is of great use to the growing, multi-disciplinary field of material culture studies. Archaeology has always been about the material record, but until recently there has been little in the way of thinking about how we think about things. Material culture studies seek to remedy this by fully analyzing the ways in which objects come to have value and, in the possession of ascribed values, have agency. This has proved useful to studies of mass consumption (Miller 1987), technology (Dobres 2000), and art (Gell 1998), among other fields. Renfrew (2001) argues that archaeology has not fully incorporated these insights partially because the fields traditional concern has been with mechanisms of culture change (2001:126). He suggests that human engagement with the material world may be one answer to the sapient paradox of why biological evolution and cultural evolution have not gone hand-in-hand. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens are present in the archaeological record for at least 40,000 years, but little change is seen in material culture and human behavior until about 10,000 years ago. Renfrew suggests that this human revolution was driven not by any biological change. Instead, sedentary life permitted an increased engagement between humans and the material world. Because objects are imbued with meaning and a sedentary lifestyle permits a greater accumulation of objects than does one dependent on mobility, the messages held by each object would have had greater permanence (Renfrew 2001). Given the utility of the concept to other fields and the growing number of archaeological studies considering such things, it is likely that the real successes of the social life of things to archaeological research have yet to come.

Organizations and Websites

The Journal of Material Culture Frequently contains articles discussing objects social lives

References Cited
Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press : 3-63. Dobres, M.-A. (2000). Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framew ork for Archaeology. Oxford, Blackw ell Publishers. Farriss, N. (1986). Forew ord. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press : ix-xi. Gell, A. (1994). The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics. J. Coote and A. Shelton. Oxford, Oxford University Press : 40-66. Gell, A. (1998). Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Hunt, N. R. (2005). Bicycles, birth certificates, and clysters: Colonial objects as reproductive debris in Mobutu's Zaire. Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited). W. van Binsbergen and P. Geschiere. Mnster, Lit Verlag: 123-141. Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press : 64-91. La Motta, V. M. and M. B. Schiffer (2001). Behavioral archaeology: Tow ard a new synthesis. Archaeological Theory Today. I. Hodder. Malden, MA, Polity Press : 14-64. Layton (1997). An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Leach, J. (2005). Livers and lives: Organ extraction narratives on the Rai coast of Papua New Guinea. Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited). 283-300. Mnster, Lit Verlag: 123-141. Mauss, M. (1967 [1923]). The Gift. New York, W.W. Norton and Company. Miller, D. (1987). Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford, Basil Blackw ell. Orser Jr., C. E. (1996). Beneath the material surface of things: Commodities, artifacts, and slave plantations. Contemporary Archaeology in Theory. R. W. Preucel and I. Hodder. Oxford, Blackw ell: 189-202. Preucel, R. W. and I. Hodder (1996). The production of value. Contemporary Archaeology in Theory. R. W. Preucel and I. Hodder. Oxford, Blackw ell: 99-113. Renfrew , C. (2001). Symbol before concept: Material engagement and the early development of society. Archaeological Theory Today. I. Hodder. Polity, Cambridge, UK: 122-140. Row lands, M. (2005). Value and the cultural transmission of things. Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited). W. van Binsbergen and P. Geschiere. Mnster, Lit Verlag: 267-281. van Binsbergen, W. and P. Geschiere, Eds. (2005). Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities (The Social Life of Things Revisited). Mnster, Lit Verlag.

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