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Style, design and function have been core concepts, but with a variable history of use. Social and cultural anthropology has been less concerned with such concepts. There has been an impressive 'turn' to the object world in the past two decades. The social scientists who study material culture have primarily been concerned with the relationships between people and things.
Style, design and function have been core concepts, but with a variable history of use. Social and cultural anthropology has been less concerned with such concepts. There has been an impressive 'turn' to the object world in the past two decades. The social scientists who study material culture have primarily been concerned with the relationships between people and things.
Style, design and function have been core concepts, but with a variable history of use. Social and cultural anthropology has been less concerned with such concepts. There has been an impressive 'turn' to the object world in the past two decades. The social scientists who study material culture have primarily been concerned with the relationships between people and things.
Margaret W. Conkey How can one address these three topics- style, design and function - in a single chapter? Of course they are interrelated; perhaps one can- not really discuss one without both of the others? How can there be style without a func- tion? How can there be style without design and design conventions? These three entan- gled concepts have been core concepts, but with a variable history of use and centrality in our study of material culture. They have been addressed in a multiplicity of ways, and have been both responsive to and, less frequently, defining of many shifts in material culture theory and interpretation over the past century or more. The primary players in the study and uses of s le and design have been art histori- ans and, within anthropology, archaeolog1sts. Social and cultural anthropology has been less concerned with such concepts, if only because their engagement with the material world of human life has been notably erratic, coming to some fruition and promise primarily in the past few decades. The main objective of this chapter is to pro- vide historical perspectives on how design and style have been used in the study of material culture, especially within an anthropological and cultural framework. I will suggest that this histo has been directl influenced b shiftin anthro olo cal a roaches to the stud of both technology and 'art'. These trends have also directly impacted the place and understandings of the function(s) of material culture. I will con- clude with just a few of the social and cultural insights that have been generated through the study of design and style, with particular refer- ence to recent studies of cloth. Although there has been an impressive 'turn' to the object world in the past two decades, the social scientists who study material culture have primarily been concerned with the rela- tionships between people and things, more so than in the thiilgs Thus, it is not surprising to see fewer studies of design and style than might be expected with this new materiality. As the title of Sillitoe's (1988) article says so succinctly, our concerns have shifted 'from [the] head-dress to head-messages', and Ingold (2004) has expressed concern that we have often lost the material in our studies of materiality. 1hona y, recen s 1es ave also been more focused on how objects con- struct and express social identities without, however, simply referring to these as the func- tions of the objects. This is primarily because the" studies have simultaneously been con- cerned with the social practices in which objects are embedded, and, in a quite new direction, with 'the dynamics of recontextualization, valuation and remterpretation they (objects) undergo along their trajectories through differ- ent cultural and historical contexts' (Leite 2004). In a way, objects today are more 'on the move' and 'in circulation'; they are not standing still long enough, perhaps, for a more traditional (and often static?) stylistic analysis, functional interpretation and/ or capturing of principles of design. As Wobst says so succinctly in his important reassessment of his own very influ- ential work on style (Wobst 1977), style 'never quite gets there', it 'never stays'. It is 'always in contest, in motion, unresolved, discursive, in process' (Wobst 1999: 130). While the trajectories of material culture and have been revealed and inferred with new theoretical perspectives (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986; Thomas 1991; Miller 1998; Spyer 1998; Phillips and Steiner 1999; 356 PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION Myers 2001), there has also been a theoretical trajecto of material culture them- se ves witnm anthropology and related fields, including an important new kind of connec- tion between sociocultural anthropology I ethnography and archaeology (Brumfiel 2003). These often mutual dialogues may perhaps best be seen in the approaches to the study of 'technology' (see Eglash in Chapter 21 or in Dobres and Hoffman 1999), and to the study of 'art' or image making. Intra- and interdiscipli- nary connections may also be heightened by the current widespread recognition, and per- haps growing importance in our globalized worlds, of the increased value and power of objects from the past or from 'the other' (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Lowenthal1985; Handler 1988; Price 1989), especially in the cre- ation and support of national and other politi- cal identities and negotiations. Although this chapter will dwell more on the anthropological trends, concerns and accomplishments, it goes without saying that the re-engagement with the object world has been strikingly - but not surprisingly - interdisciplinary; just note the 'disciplines' represented by the authors of articles in the Journal of Material Culture (Leite 2004). One reason to focus primarily on the anthro- pological approaches to material culture and the object world is because anthropology has had an erratic history, an on-again/ off-again, often distancing relationship with 'things'. This makes for a interesting inquiry into why it was distanced and then re-engaged: what are the theoretical or disciplinary influences or pro- moters of such re-engagement that might yield insights into the field of material culture stud- ies? There will also be a tendency toward the anthropological here because anthropological inquiry, distinctively balances (or tries to) two dimensions: on the one hand, the local-level, small-scale studies using most often (in ethnog- raphy and ethnoarchaeology) the participant observation method. On the other hand, anthropology attempts a holism that prefers to not take separate slices of the cultural ' pie' but to understand the intersectionalities and situat- edness of human life, behaviors and meanings in an as-complete-as-possible social and cultural context (after Pfaffenberger 1988: 245), That is, the very multi-scalar nature of the anthro olog- entefErise allows us to cons1 er the maten world and o jects at multiple scales as well. Ana, as many recent studies have shown, this is precisely one fascination and excite material culture stu 1es at t e tum of the
SOMETHING OF A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Of course, Franz Boas (1927, see also Jonaitis 1995) is usually the anthropological baseline for the study of objects and 'primitive art', although contemporary material culture studies today would go back to major theorists of culture (e.g., Marx, Veblen, Simmel). Even though Boas's (1927) chapter 5 was on 'style', anthropologists usually trace their roots in the study of style to Kroeber (e.g., 1919, 1957) and the art historical roots to scholars such as Wolfflin (1932; see also Gombrich 1960; Saiierlander 1983). Lemonnier (1 3b: 7) identified the 1930s as the period when there is a noticeable decline in an interest in material culture; it was only in France, he points out, that an institutionalized study of the anthropology of techniques took hold. Thus, the work of Mauss (e.g., 1935) on techniques du corps as well as his more well known study The Gift (1967 /1925) may provide an important bridge between this time period and what would become, by the 1980s, an increasingly robust field of technology studies (e.g. Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Pfaffenberger 1988, among many; see Eglash, Chapter 21 in this volume). Lemonnier notes (1986: 181 n. 3) that in one valiant attempt at recuperating the anthropological study of material culture, Reynolds (1983) astutely 'mar- vels justly at the immediate disinterest of ethnol- ogists for the objects they confer on museums as soon as they are deposited'. This is not to say, though, that within this so- called 'gap' there was little being done; it's just not of major focus in an anthropology of objects that is waiting backstage for certain trends to pass on and for the curtain to be opened on to a more robust engagement with the object world. First, archaeology does not really experience a gap, but this is not surprising, given its depen- dence on material culture. However, despite the momentum established with the rise of the so-called New (or processual) Archaeology with its emphasis on understandmg the nature and si cance of variabiliry in the archaeolo - ical record (B" ord 1962, 1965 , an e stu ies !hat ed stylistic attributes to soCial phenom- Hill1970, Longacre 1970 and chapters in Binford and Binford 1968), the primary flurrx of arc aeolo cal discussion and debate on for example, came in the two eca es 1270 and 1990. In fact, we ool< or review or overview articles on the concepts, use, and study of 'style', for example, these are primarily (only?) in archaeology (e.g., Plog 1983; Hegmon 1992; Conkey 1990; Boast 1997; STYLE, DESIGN, AND FUNCTION 357 Wobst 1999) and in art history (e.g. Schapiro 1953; Saiierlander 1983; Davis 1990). However, with some notable exceptions, archaeological studies of style, design, func- tion, material culture and technology can be said to share with other approaches the general characteristic that they have tended to look pri- marily (and sometimes only) at the effects '!f material culture systems (style, design, tech- nology) on culture or soCiety or, more often, to look primarily for what/how /why humans communicate with material cUlture and artifacts. That this has changed as a primary approach will be considered below, and a notable early exception, at least in regard to technologies, would be the pioneering work by Heather Lechtman (1977) that identifies and illustrates the concept of 'technolo ical style' (see also Lechtman 1984; Dobres an -"ROir"man 1994; Stark 1999; Dobres 2000), that is, that the tech- nolo ies, materials an.. making_ of ob"ects ~ s l v s ave 's.!Y!_e'. In cultural anffiropology, the development of structuralism (e.g., in Levi-Strauss 1963) brought forth a spate of material culture studies (e.g., Fernandez 1966; Munn 1966; Faris 1972; Adams 1973), which linked objects and other dimensions of culture. Semiotic approaches, broadly speaking, were also being developed (e.g., Forge 1966; 1970; Munn 1973) stressing how fundamental concepts could be visibly encoded in artifacts, objects and art. In fact, there was a notably renewed interest in the 'anthropology of art' (e.g., edited volumes by Jopling 1971 and Otten 1971a). In each of these volumes, for example, the editor has brought together articles primarily dating to the 1950s and 1960s, suggesting that the so-called 'gap' is one of quantity and attention, not complete absence. Otten (1971b) suggests that the renewed engagement with art was stimulated by the then current interests in the nature and evolu- tion of human communication and in the approach to culture as a human value system. A key paper in 1969 that signaled an emergent engagement with an anthropologically more productive approach to material culture would be that by Ucko on penis sheaths. His concern 'was to unite the social and technological approaches to the study of material culture such that a detailed examination of the material object would lead to information about the non-material aspects of the producing culture' (MacKenzie 1991: 23). However, as will be discussed further below, the ways in which anthropologists now view 'art' and how to study it- as a (problem- atic) 'category' of the material world - have shifted since this 1970s reappearance on the anthropological stage (e.g., Sparshott 1997; Gell 1998; Townsend-Gault 1998; Graburn 2001). By the 1990s anthropological studies of art (despite many differing definitions), nonetheless 'become more numerous and informed by the- oretical concerns such as gender and colonial- ism (Morphy 1991; Thomas 1991)' (Cannizzo 1996: 54). Of course, this is not the first appear- ance of a theoretically informed approach, but the theoretical approaches now at hand are ones that do more than look only at the effects of the objects and forms (whether they are called 'art' or 1:1ot) on culture or society. This itself derives from 'a revival of interest in material culture as exegesis and evidence' (Cannizzo 1996: 54). With the wider developments in the study of material culture, 'things' and/or repre- sentations have been shown to be crucial to the articulation of debates on gender, power re,@- tions, colonialism, exchan e, ossession, con- sum tion, tourism, perceptu ow IDQ_tg (after Townsend-Gault 1998: 427). Thus, while one would be hard-pressed to find, in the cultural anthropological literature, many (or any?) overviews that summarize the state of approaches to and understandings of the study of style and design, much less the relationships to function, there is a burgeoning literature both on the anthropology of 'art' and, even more so, on the anthropology of material culture, which, perhaps like technology, has fortunately become less likely to be taken as a given and lacking intrinsic value (as Pfaffenberger suggests in 1988 for the anthro- pology of technology). ABOVE ALL, THERE IS STYLE Even a brief survey of the literature will confirm that the subject of 'style' is the most prominent of our three concepts to be treated on its own, with individual articles (e.g., Plog 1983; Hegmon 1992), especially in archaeology and art history, or as an important subheading in a review article (e.g., in Silver 1979; Schneider 1987). Recall that Kroeber considered 'Style' to be important enough to warrant its own chapter in his Anthropology Today volume (Schapiro 1953), even though the author is an art historian, not an anthropologist. Although there are fine studies that focus on design (e.g., Schevill 1985; Washburn 1977), 'design' and 'function' are not likely to be individual head- ings or topics to be covered in encyclopedias of anthropology or the social sciences. For many, 358 PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION style itself is methodologically taken as a set of 'design conventions' or 'formal attributes'. There are no major volumes addressing the concept and theory of design or function, but such do exist for 'style' (e.g., Conkey and Hastorf 1990; Carr and Nietzel 1995). Yet, most discussions of style almost inevitably engage with design or aspects of it. So many studies of material culture are concerned with function(s), even if the authors prefer a more complex understanding of the use(s), context(s) and significance(s) of mate- rial objects or forms. Assessments of s le are in s,!yle is a centr con- cept in any analyses of the material world; 'style is involved in all archaeological analysis' (Conkey and Hastorf 1990: 1). Yet to take this foundational concept apart is a major historical and epistemological endeavor. At one level, it is a 'self-evident' concept (after Gadamer 1965: 466, cited by Sauerlander 1983: 253), but few seem to be able to agree on what it 'means' . For many studies u to the 1960s, styl_e was taken as some sort of a ey' tnat macrecultural materials accessi- e to us, an m some sort of cultural wa s. This was espeCia y t e case m archaeological studies, as the understandings and delin- eations of style were !b_e foundation on which olo 1es and classifications were con- structed. An , unti e 1960s, at least in Ang1o- American archaeologies, classifications and olo ies, as well as thei!"i.iSein defining 'culture areas', were absolutely originary in any understanaings of culture and culture history. With inte retive goals more focused on estab- j.s mg chrono og1es J!nd on tracing inter- actions, influences and pathways of diffusion, sryle was a Cl}!Cial component of any historian's re,gertoire. This entire chapter could be taken up with the relatively recent history (post-1960s) of the concepts and uses of style, especially as they have been the subject of definitional debates and reworkings by archaeologists alone (e.g., Plog 1983; Hegmon 1992; Carr and Nietzel 1995; Boast 1997; Conkey 1990; Wobst 1999). Perhaps this is because of the archaeological dilemma- or challenge - in the study of the material world, given the absence of infor- mants and often, the absence of texts or other documents. Perhaps it is because of greater dependence upon providing a plausible and compelling 'reading' of the material record. Or perhaps it is because archaeologists haye long been concerned with both epistemological and ontological premises and practices. It was not pntil the 1960s that archaeologists really began to 'push' with style - into whereby more social and cultural inferences were attem te an sou hlusin s le The inferences of interest were now at a more refined scale than the general ebb and flow of 'cultures' . One might say that this was the time when was seen as a 'key' to the social, it t s ial at of 12articular interest. These 1960s were the heady days of suggest- ing such things as how we could reveal post- marital residence practices using distributional patterns of variation in ceramic designs both within and between sites, assuming that moth- ers taught the designs to their daughters. As is now well documented, many of these early ' ceramic sociology' projects (e.g., Deetz 1965; Hill 1970; Longacre 1970) had problematic assumptions (e.g., Stanislawski 1969, 1973; Friedrich 1970). And, as Graves (1998) details so well, there were numerous precursors in such design and stylistic analyses in the US South- west. Nonetheless, they set into motion core debates about what style measures, what it reflects, or can be used for in archaeological interpretations, as well as what the relation- ship between style and function was all about (e.g., Sackett 1982; Durmell 1978). into the 1980s, was often taken to be (in what we now see as rather depersonalized and objec- tifying jargon) one as ect of coded information about variabili - m ctionm o ast cultural s ste s. - - In his 1979 review of 'Ethnoart', Silver is one of the relatively rare cultural anthropologists to address the topic of 'Style' under its own heading (but see in Layton 1991: 150-92, an entire chapter on 'Style' in a text on the anthro- pology of art). Silver noted the two problems of style for the social scientist, with its defini- tion being one. But, unlike for most archaeolo- gists, the definition of style is not the problem he will address explicitly. Rather, he prefers to wrestle with the problem of the relationship between art styles and the civilizations that produce them (Silver 1979: 270). He recognizes style as being operative at different levels, and refers the reader to Bascom's (1969) systematic overview for types of style. Silver's own pref- erence is to consider the general theoretical approaches that would link style to its 'civi- lization': diffusion and evolution (e.g., Munro 1963); style, psyche and civilization (e.g. , Bunzel 1927; Kroeber 1957); and the cross- cultural approach (e.g., Fischer 1961; Barry 1957; Wolfe 1969). As is evidenced in other cul- tural anthropological approaches to style (e.g., Schneider 1987), Silver comfortably accepts and works with the ' intensive' treatment of the concept of style put forth by art historian STYLE, DESIGN, AND FUNCTION 359 Schapiro (1953) in Kroeber's Anthropology Today. Layton's (1991: 150) introductory text also follows Schapiro. Other studies (e.g., Van Wyck 2003) never define 'style' or 'design' but assume it. In concluding his section on style, Silver anticipates what we see today were perhaps the two major dimensions that characterize the concern with s le m the 1970s and 1980s, no matter what the field or suo- iel . First is the emergent recognition that, while a style may_ 0 l;>e conveying 'considerable information about its producers and their culture\ there is not yet a firm differentiation between the audiences to whom this information is being conveyed: to the other members of the cultural group under consideration or to the anthropologists who are using the style to infer information (see also the Sackett-Wiessner debate in Sackett 1985)? This query, as phrased in the informa- tion theory jargon that Silver also anticipates, would be 'To whom is the style signaling, and what is it signaling?' (e.g., Sterner 1989). Thus, .1) the second dimension to the study of style at this time was the convergence of thinking about style in anthropological the parallel develo,ments in information theor and lingttistic metaphors for t e mtef- pretation of culture. e 1970s and s, or example, it would have been hard to miss the idea that style in material culture was trans- mitting information (for the classic expression of this, see Wobst 1977), an approach that has not disappeared but only, perhaps, become more nuanced (e.g., VanWyck 2003). Not sur- prisingly, more recent studies of material culture - its s les, des1 s and functions-:" have c allen ed or es ewe t e nmac of r e gmstic an anguage me ap ors e.g., artifact as text), and a somewhat bald commu- nication a roach (e.g., McCrae en :S; Dietler and erbich 1989; Conkey 1990: 10-11; MacKenzie 1991: 24-5; Gell1998; Stahl2002). THE STORY OF STYLE, BRINGING ALONG DESIGN AND FUNCTION or types of style (e.g., Bascom 1969, Plog 1983)? Does style have any function or is style a pri- mary way to 'do' certain cultural things, such as communicate, negotiate, or reinforce ethnic- ity or identities? Can we use style to classify different so-called 'cultures' and to chart them through space and time? The second trend has been either to not worry If' about any definitions of or specific analytical methods for the study of s le and just assume it, and go on to other anthropological questions, or to reconceptualize style completely. Two inno- vative and intriguing approaches here would be Wobst's (1999) notion of style as 'interventions', or Wilk's (1995, 2004) conce t of 'common dif- ference' . As well, some other theoretical trends, su as the uses of practice theory, have in\.pli- cations for concepts, such as that of 'traditions', which have long been rooted in concepts of style (e.g., Lightfoot 2001). Let us first turn to one summary historical account, starting with the foundational culture history approaches and then move to consider 'what's new?' As noted above, gyk_ became rooted in anthropological analyses with the culture hiS:; li'Y\e__ torical approaches of the 1930s to 1960s, approaches that have not really gone away . .JQ.. culture historians (e.g., Kreiger 1944) style was in the service of chronology and the tyRologies that were developed to order the material world were explicitly time-sensitive. For both art histo and anthro olo 'stilus' (styk) and 'c onos' time would intersect (Sauerlander 983). Style was a self-evident concept upon which historical understandings were based. Archaeolo ists, at least, still de end u on the roducts 0 e cu ture-history approac ana " its concep an uses o s e: e pas , ana even ' other cultures' ethnographically, are often divided into spatial and temporal units with labels and these, in turn, have allowed the con- struction of unquestioned periodizations (e.g., the Mesolithic) that are based on and thus privilege certain tools, technologies, 'styles' of ceramics or of other materials. The ethnographic study of 'things' was somehow delegated or fell to the museological world, which had similar concerns to dili- gently catalog material objects, with, perhaps, an overemphasis on the form of the objects, with function or context infrequently of con- sideration. With such approaches, there are ele- gant typologies and closely honed studies of the formal relationships among the material objects themselves, but, in general, 'the artefact becomes recontextualized as an object of scien- tific anal sis within a Western discourse, and its meanin is divorced from its ori m as an 360 PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION indigenous product' (MacKenzie 1991: 23) . Style has continued to be a specific analytical tool but beyond just to locate social units and to chart them through time and s ace or in order to organize museums. was used to er, measure or orm on more s- ecific social and cultural rocesses, such as soCla interaction (e.g., - Frie ric r970"]ai1a social exchange (see Plog 1978 for a review). In archaeology, at least, the debates were more about what the given 'formal variation' that is style referred to or derived from. There seem not to be many debates these days about how to 'measure' style, where to 'locate' style, or the function(s) of style. On the one hand, some have suggested two dismis- sive directions: Boast (1997) is ready to get rid of style; it is 'not a meaningful analytical cate- gory in the hermeneutic account of social action' that he outlines (Boast 1997: 189). Or, according to many (but not all) contributors to one edited volume (Lorblanchet and Bahn 1993), we have moved into what they call the 'post-stylistic era', at least in the study of rock iJit.. This is attributed not so much to any new theoretical frameworks, but to such things as more viable dating techniques, pigment studies, and qliestionSlliat go eyon establishing artis- tic chronologies based on mere stylistic impres- sions (Lorblanchet 1990: 20). This is a reaction to the persistence of how 'stilus' and ' chronos' have intersected; how chronologies have been all too un uestionabl based on assumed notions an i entifications of style. Some stud- ies explicitly refuse to produce a chronological scheme based on changes in style, which had led previous researchers away from careful study of the content of images or 'arts' (e.g., Garlake 1995). On the other hand, perhaps ironically, there is something of a return to some of the more culture-historical understandings of style and variation in material culture, and a less pro- grammatic approach to the uses and concepts of style. First, J.b.e ver eneral idea of s le as being 'a way of doing' has reappeart;,. e.g., Wiessner 1990, but contrast with Hodder 1990), if it ever really went away. This, however is a notion that is much more com lex an a aS: s1ve normativism a s revailed intra- ditional culture-historical studies. Style is taken now as 'a way of domg' but also as some- thing more than that; style is part of the means by which humans make sense of their world ana with which cultural meanings are always in roduction. To a certain extent, these approaches, concerns, new labels and even dismissals actually signal a continued engagement with 'style' - how could we ever not work with aspects of variation in material culture that are produced in and constitutive of human cultural and social life? These trends are a quiet way of rethinking style, and of framing it within new theoretical approaches (e.g., practice theory, culture-as- production, technological and operational choices, communities of practice), new method- ological possibilities (e.g., chronometric dating techniques), and richer and more nuanced understandings of material culture, of humans as being simultaneously symbolists and mate- rialists, and of the 'social life of things' (e.g., Appadurai 1986). But, once again, there is no one comprehensive theory of style, nor a call for one; neither is there a specific analytic tool kit that one can just pick up and apply to a set of things. This is not, however, to abandon discussion and suggestions for how to use some under- standings about style in the study of material culture. Taking the extreme approach of Boast (1997), for example, one could argue that he is not really dismissing style completely, but, rather, critiquing that the past uses of the con- cept of style have perlfietuated the Cartesian boundaries between umans and objects, 'between the active us from an inactive its' (1997: 190; see also, he suggests, Latour 1992 and Akrich 1992). He is not alone in arguing for a different and more 'active' or agential dimension to objects, images and things (e.g., Gell1998). He is also suggesting that a concept of s le is 'de endent upon a s ecific set of assum tions a out ow t e social world wor ' witn1ittle beyond a vernacular distinction between social forms d1sfingwsned within a consumerist society' {Boast 1997: 190, 191). Both concerns are worth discussion; some of us can readily accept the first but perhaps not the second. In any event, such ideas have found their way from Boast and from other authors into contemporary debates and studies (e.g., for discussions and critique of Cell's agency theory of art, see in Pinney and Thomas 2001 or Layton 2003). .SO what's new? t!ere again, although the focus is on style, it is not reall ossfble10 av d illUmes into function and studies -of First, there are several intriguing new ways of conceptualizing 'style', and I mention only two here. In the long awaited update from Wobst (1999) concerning his contemporary thoughts about 'style' now that we are some twenty-five years from his paradigm-setting paper of 1977, he embraces style more ambi- tiously and enthusiastically: style is that aspect STYLE, DESIGN, AND FUNCTION 361 of our material world that talks and interferes in the social field (1999: 125); 'stylistic form on artifacts interferes materially with humans' (p. 120, emphasis his). Since his original view stressed the communicative fUi1ctions of style, style as 'messaging' th!ou h all e features, Wobst reports now on his 'mel- lowed functionalism' (1999: 124). He takes up Giddens's notion of enstructuration, which 'allows for contemporaneous social actors to arrive at different optimal solutions (even in the same social context), something that is very difficult to accommodate in many of the overly functionalist paradigms' (Wobst 1999: 125). He elaborates as to how even the most obvious and apparent functional aspects of an object (such as the working edge of a tool) are insep- arably interwoven with social dynamics; after all, these functional features themselves help 'constitute, constrain or alter the social field' (1999: 126). Lastly, his discussion on the deeply problematic implications of the effects of cer- tain long-standing methodological approaches to style, especially in archaeology, is particu- larly provocative, although substantive consid- eration here is not possible. Wobst shows how the predominant uses of styielUlve promoted a focus on 'sameness' ('structuring data into intemall homo eneous es' and the 'su - pression of variance' ), an this has not just reduced social variance in the human past, but serves certain social and political agendas in the present (1999: 127-9). After all, don't admin- istrators of all sorts strive for 'docile underlings' who manifest 'similarities in template, action and symbols'? Another provocative approach is that by Rick Wilk .{e.g., 1995, 2004) in which he seeks to understand the processes whereby what is often called 'style' comes into existence and is worked out and a ears to 's read' or, as we uSedtO think, ' diffuse'. Rat er an invo g 'stye', Wilk coins eterm of 'common differ- ence', which is a code and a set of practices that narrow difference into an a eed-u on s stem, whereby some kinds 0 d" erence are cu ti- vated and others are suppressed. An art style, a widestread one (his 2004 example is the famous 0 mec style in early Meso- America) is really an arena within which dif- ferences can be expressed, yet man of these are e ted, a system of e!:.- ence IS roduced. And the really interesting questions are the agential ones: who controls what the 'rules' will be, and how are these accepted and agreed to? His own ethnographic work (on beauty pageants in Belize) suggests that there may be what appears as a resulting hegemony of form but not necessarily of significances. What might appear as some sort of ' tradition' or even a cultural adoption may well be much more dynamic, and such a as e ucidate m the specifics (e.g. Wllk 2 04) - resonates with the rethinking of the very concept of tradition (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Pauketat 2001). Traditions, styles and systems of common difference are being shown as diachronic henomena, as loci for olitical inno- vation and even resistance, as c tur ro uc- tions ou a ractices e.g., rown 1998; Lightfoot 2001). As we recognize that globaliza- tion is just a current variant of the long-standing circulation of objects within and through social forms and social relations, we are increasingly drawn to more dynamic notions about the 'mutability of things in recontextualization' (Thomas 1989: 49). Thus, things and styles are not the (essential) things they used to be. The pervasive under- standings of objects as being referable to some (usually single) essential categories or phenom- ena has been quite successfully challenged, at least among many scholars. It is difficult to sustain, for example, that all the Neolithic fig- urines of females can be referred to some essen- tialized, transhistorical concept of 'fertility' (e.g., Conkey and Tringham 1995; Goodison and Morris 1998), that Paleolithic cave art is all referable to (hunting) 'magic', or that string bags (bilum) among the Telefol-speaking people of the Mountain Ok (New Guinea) are merely women's (and therefore unvalued) 'things' (MacKenzie 1991). The Ion -standin tendenc !9 view objects, throu their sty es an arms, as absolutes of human experience has given way to the idea that objects, sJyles and functions are evolving, more mutable, and iilliltivalent, without essentia And wfule this has certainly made the interpretive task more complicated and challenging, it nonetheless has simultaneously opened the door to new and hopefully more enlightening perspectives. For example, rather than assum- ing that many objects and forms carmot be explained because we carmot readily substanti- ate empirically such things as symbol and meaning - especially in archaeological contexts- it is now possible to use empirical work - such as in technological processes (e.g., Lechtrnan 1984; Dietler and Herbich 1998; Stark 1999) or studies of pigments and colors (e.g., Boser- Sarivaxevanis 1969) - to reconceptualize objects, forms and images as material ractice> and performances with to social facts ogics (e.g., Ingold 1993, among many). 362 PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION RECENT APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGY AND 'ART' THAT HAVE INFLUENCED UNDERSTANDINGS AND USES OF STYLE, DESIGN AND FUNCTION As already suggested, trends in the study of our three characters - style, design, and function - have been integrally enmeshed in, produced by and yet contributed t? shifts and concerns in the broader anthropological and cul- tural interests in the study of technology, on the one hand (e.g., Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Dobres and Hoffman 1999; see Eglash, Chapter 21 in this volume) and 'art', on the other (e.g., Morphy 1994). In some ways, the trends in the study of technology may have had more impact on our three characters; perhaps this IS due to the growth of social studies of science and technology (e.g., Jasanoff et al. 1995). From Lechtrnan's (1977, 1984) important work that argued for the place and power ?f technologi- cal practice and therefore of ventable logical styles in the making meanmgs of objects, to the engagement with technology (sensu latu) as cultural productions, material culture has not been thought of in quite the same way, and certainly no longer as just the 'forms' or end products of previously unspeci- fied, often assumed or ignored practices and social relations of production. For a concept of 'style' in the manner of Schapiro (1953), with a focus on forms, on form relationships, there was no immediate attention to an understand- ing of the practices and social relations that brought such forms into existence. One illus- trative case study that might attest how far we have come in the integration of technologies, productive practices and social contexts in the making of 'things' and in the definition of style would be the continuing work by Dietler and Herbich (e.g., 1989, 1998) on Luo ma.k- ing. Here, they us of n?t JUSt the dis- tinction between thmgs and techmques (cf. Mauss 1935), but of the two (often conflated) senses of style: style of action and material style. From sev- eral decades of new approaches to understand- ing technology (e.g., Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Pfaffenberger 1988, 1992; Ingold 1993; Dobres and Hoffman 1994; Dobres 1995, 2000), and from Bourdieu's (1977) concept of habitus, Dietler and Herbich (1998) put together a com- pelling case study of a more dynamic an? deeply social understanding of what had previ- ously often been a focus on a static of style and a mechanistic set of assumptions about the uses of style either to 'mark' social boundaries or, on the part of the analyst, to infer them (see also, e.g., Hegmon 1998, among others). In fact, to talk today about an under- standing of 'style' cannot be separated from our understandings both of 'technology' and of the practices and production of social relations. And, as Dietler and Herbich discuss, these approaches extend to the design conventions and decora- tions that so often stand for 'style': 'An under- standing of the social origins and material culture will not come from readmg the decorations as text (see Lemonnier 1990). It requires a dynamic, diachronic perspective founded upon an appreciation of the contexts of both production and consumption (see Dietler and Herbich 1994) .. .' (Dietler and Herbich 1998: 244). Because of the intertwined reconsidera- tions of style and of technology, neither will be understood in the same ways again. Especially since the 1950s, approaches to art, especially in small-scale soci- eties have focused on 'the mechanisms and of the messages carried by art', drawing upon either psychological or linguistic (tex- tual, semiotic, communication) models, and following in 'the functionalist and structuralist modes of anthropology' (Graburn 2001: 765). Many of these were, of course, more syn- chronic, ahistorical and normative, and the diachronic, temporal and historical poten- tials of material culture were yet to be recog- nized, much less realized. With psycholo!?ical approaches, style might be as 'aestheticized versions of soCial fantasies (Grabum 2001: 765) that give security or plea- sure, as in Fischer (1961), who proposed that different (evolutionary) types of societies (egal- itarian or hierarchical) tended to produce designs that were material and visual correlates of their prevailing social structure. it has been the linguistic approaches m art, as well as to material culture more broadly, which have prevailed, including by Levi-Strauss 1963: 245-76); sermotic (e.g., Riggins 1994); and art-as-communication (e.g. Forge 1970, Munn 1973 as early, if not precocious, examples). Morphy (1994) Identifies two primary influences that re-entry of art into the mainstream. On the one hand, a more culturally oriented archaeology was spawned, especially at Cambridge in the 1980s; many of today's active material culture researchers have had this kind of archaeological background. On the other hand, but not, in fact, distinct from the so-called 'post-processual' archaeologies, the expansion of an anthropology of meanmg STYLE, DESIGN, AND FUNCTION 363 and symbolism: 'content was joined with form' (Morphy 1994: 659). Perhaps the most significant aspect of the 'tum' to art and material culture has been the conjuncture with what we might call colonial and postcolonial sensibilities, which have pro- moted, first, the 'ah ha' understandings that much of the material world observed by anthropologists could not be considered in ahis- torical, static or normative terms (e.g., Graburn 1999); the 'arts' were already enmeshed in colo- nial projects and trajectories when they were first encountered. (See especially Thomas 1991, who notes that his own project on 'entangled objects' was necessarily about 'recasting [these] issues in historical terms and with respect to the cultural constitution of objects', 1991: xi.) Beginning perhaps with the pioneer- ing work of Grabum (1976) on ethnic and tourist arts, one might say that the anthropology of material culture, and all that it entails, includ- ing style, design and understandings of func- tion, itself experienced a 'colonial encounter': a more widespread recognition of the previously unconsidered contexts of colonial domination. Not only has there been more attention to the historical depth and sociocultural complexity of art production in colonial and postcolonial, often touristic, contexts (e.g., Marcus and Myers 1995; Phillips and Steiner 1999), but fundamen- tal concepts such as the functions of objects, the maintenance of or changes in style, and the cul- tural generation and deployment of designs, have had to be rethought. Furthermore, any studies of style, function and design have bene- fited from these deeper understandings of his- torically situated cultural practices, including observations on the ways in which local styles, for example, are actively reworked for new markets, global desires, and ever shifting politi- cal and cultural audiences and goals. Thus, approaches such as Wobst's notions on style-as- interventions, or Wilk's interest in the construc- tions of common difference, resonate with these new directions. Certainly, Stahl's elegant (2002) critique of the prevailing (logocentric) linguistic and meaning-based models for understanding material culture, and her emphases on the prac- tices of taste (after Bourdieu 1984), especially in understanding colonial entanglements, attest that what initially may have stimulated renewed interest in the anthropology of art and the object world - namely, the engagement with meaning and symbolism - has now been chal- lenged and soundly critiqued. From both archaeological directions (e.g., Dietler and Herbich 1998) and those of a more historical anthropology (e.g., Phillips and Steiner 1999; Stahl2002) art, style, design and functions have been reframed away from such a focus on find- ing 'the' meaning(s). Even those still engaged with a semiotic preference have advocated not the Sassurian semiological approaches, but those of C.S. Peirce (e.g., Peirce 1955; Singer 1978; Parmentier 1997; Preucel and Bauer 2001; Layton 2000,2001: 329). What is heralded about such an approach is the way in which it almost necessarily 'accounts for and directs inquiry into the multiple meanings of a single artefact or sign' (Preucel and Bauer 2001: 91). In an inter- pretive world where inferring or understanding the possible functions and meanings of things is now thoroughly more open-ended and multivalent, discussions are necessarily more directed to the 'limits of interpretation' (e.g., Eco 1990, 1992). ON DESIGN The debate and shifts in our understandings about style, the influences from technology studies and the new approaches to the anthropology of art have all made their mark on the study of design. The studies of designs and decorations on objects are obvi- ously integral to most ways in which style has been approached. There is often an uncon- scious slippage from one to the other. Pye (1982) argues that anyone studying material culture must understand the fundamentals of design; without design - in some form or another - one cannot really make anything. This is to consider design at the highest level; that is, how an object is conceived of and put together. In a difficult and somewhat classic essay, Pye proposed six requirements for design. As stated in the helpful editorial notes by Schlereth that precede Pye's essay, what Pye wants to do is to 'distinguish design as philo- sophical concept from solely sociological considerations'. In particular, Pye challenges the presumedly uncomplicated and causal relationship between design and function; design is not conditioned only by its function. Furthermore, it's not clear there even is such a thing as the 'purely functional'. How a number of factors affect design are Pye's focus: use, ease, economy and appearance. An early archaeolog- ical study of this type of design (McGuire and Schiffer 1983) wanted to focus on design as a social process, while noting that the treatment of the design process is usually subsumed by discussions of either style or function (1983: 364 PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION 277-303). McGuire and Schiffer are intentionally, as is Pye, considering design at a higher level than those who study 'the designs' incorporated into baskets, pots, masks painted on to houses, and the like. For these latter designs, there are classic stud- ies of material objects of ethnography and archaeology, such as Barrett's 1908 Ph.D. disser- tation 'Porno Indian Basketry' (republished 1996). Today this kind of work is hailed, includ- ing by contemporary Porno Indian basket makers, for its relative lack of theoretical over- burden; it is thoroughly a descriptive exposition on the designs of a certain set of Porno baskets (Smith-Ferri 1996: 20). To this day, there are comparably meticulous studies of design, with lists of motifs, technologies and materials used, but most of them have a much wider tale to tell, an account of how such designs and their making are embedded in and constitutive of social relations (e.g., DeBoer's, e.g. 1990, excel- lent ethno-archaeological work with Shipibo- Conibo designs; MacKenzie 1991 on string bags and gender dynamics in central New Guinea; and Chiu 2003 on Lapita pottery designs and 'house societies' in Polynesia). Among the more persistent approaches to design over the past several decades has been the study of symmetry (Washburn 1977, 1983; Washburn and Crowe 1988, 2004), which owes its heritage to structuralist approaches to mater- ial culture. Washburn began trying to access underlying cultural concepts in archaeological contexts by developing an analytical system based on universal principles of plane pattern symmetry (1977; for another example, see Fritz 1978 or in Washburn 1983). This has continued in collaboration with a mathematician as to 'how to' undertake such analyses (Washburn and Crowe 1988), leading to an edited volume with a wide variety of case studies (Washburn and Crowe 2004). In his somewhat radical chal- lenges to the anthropology of art, the late Alfred Gell (e.g., 1998) accepts the idea of a universal aesthetic based on patterned surfaces - such as the symmetry analyses - even if one of his pri- mary challenges is to aesthetics as the basis for a theory of art (contra Morphy 1994, Coote 1992, 1996, Price 1989; see Layton 2003). In fact, Gell can accept this because he views 'relationships between the elements of decorative art . . . [as] analogous to social relationships constructed through exchange' (Layton 2003: 450). Although Gellis perhaps even more radical in his rejection of the view of art as a visual code, as a matter of communication and meaning (after Thomas 1998: xi-xiii; see also Layton 2003: 449), he does accept some studies of decorative art and design as being of anthropological interest (e.g., Kaeppler 1978; Price and Price 1980; Hanson 1983). Furthermore, decoration, to Gell, is often an essential aspect of what he terms the 'technology of enchantment'; it is the decora- tions on objects and their designs that can weave a spell (see also Gell1992; Layton 2003: 450)! As already noted, one can properly credit the emergence of structuralism with a power- ful rejuvenating effect upon material culture studies, including such approaches to design as symmetry analysis. In fact, linguistic approaches to design have been paramount since the early 1960s, at least. Munn's classic (1973) work on the design elements of Walpiri art suggests in this case that the designs are, in fact, parasitic on the language for the 'telling' of the sand drawing stories. Other early approaches to design include Bloch's (1974) ideas that designs and their organizational principles (such as repetition, symmetries, fixed sequences, delimited elements) may be some of the formal mechanisms whereby cultural 'authorities' may be empowered and might be enabled to control ritual, rhetoric and the arts, and may enact power over those who are encul- turated to the patterns (after Graburn 2001). Another early and important use of the lin- guistic models was the work of Friedrich (1970), who viewed design generation and design sharing as part of interaction communi- ties and how design makers (in this case, ethno- graphically produced designs on ceramics) did or did not participate in learning communities that themselves were specified sets of social relations. This kind of work anticipates one of the current very useful approaches based on the concepts of 'communities of practice' (after Lave and Wenger 1991). Yet such structuralist, linguistic, communica- tion and correlative approaches have been set to one side with the lure of context, the destabi- lization of the so-called 'concept of culture' (e.g., Fabian 1998: xii), and an engagement with history in a world of transnationalisms and globalized commodities where material objects are not, and have not been, just caught up in an ever shifting world but are actually creat- ing, constituting, materializing and mobilizing history, contacts and entanglements. One of the more interesting approaches to design in these contemporary circumstances within which material culture studies are situ- ated is that by Attfield (1999, 2000), who comes to a material culture approach (as she calls it) from the perspective of professional designer herself, an approach that for her avoids the dual- ity between art and design and makes central STYLE, DESIGN, AND FUNCTION 365 such issues as materiality and experience (Attfield 2000: xii). Attfield is particularly inter- ested in the issues of identity and even individ- uality within a cultural context, even if these are not the usual domains of concern for the study of design. With an approach that is specif- ically focused on 'understanding design as an aspect of the material world as a social place', where we have as much to learn from rubbish and discarded things as from things of value, Attfield's book is explicitly and celebratorily interdisciplinary, bridging the views from the history of design and material culture studies. Her introduction provides a most useful under- standing of design history and, by the end of Chapter 3 design has come to life. By placing the understanding of design in the contexts of time, space and the body; Attfield opens up the study of design to dimensions not often consid- ered over the years of anthropological and archaeological studies of design. ON FUNCTION Some of what there is to say about function is mentioned above, and yet this is a grand topic in any aspect of the social sciences and in the study of the material world. This is notably so due to the importance of functionalism as an approach for many decades (e.g., Eisenstadt 1990). If one goes looking for 'function' as a topic, there are instead plenty of references to 'functionalism'. On one hand, the study of 'art' and the material world was not very central to mainstream developments (such as structural functionalism) in anthropological theory until the 1990s, and, on the other hand, there's very little material culture in classic functionalist social anthropology (but see, e.g., Firth 1936). As well, most anthropological definitions of 'art' have to do with the aesthetic, rather than sacred or functional qualities (Graburn 2001). Yet much work was concerned with how art styles, designs and forms function, particularly how they function to maintain the social (e.g., Sieber 1962; Biebuyck 1973). In the debate over the function(s) of style, style came to take on communication as one of its functions. And style became more substan- tive than 'just' a residual dimension of material culture that was left over once we had identified what was functional about an object or class of objects (e.g., Wobst 1977; Sackett 1982, contra Dunnell1978). Although early attempts at using style in this way often produced quite function- alist interpretations where style was assumed to be 'adaptive' or functioned to maintain cultural equilibrium, further analyses have suggested how, in some cases, a materialist view on style in societies - as a means for political manipula- tion, for example - can be put to work (e.g., Earle 1990). A great deal of ethnographic work with art took this turn (see in Anderson 1989: 29-52): art and objects as a means for social con- trol, art and objects as homeostasis, objects and the social order, objects as forms of legitimation, objects as symbols of power. Nonetheless, there persisted a view that the object/artifact is almost autonomous and that stylistic analysis was primarily about the analy- sis of patterns of material culture, patterns often floating free of anything other than a generalized notion of ' function'. It was a view like this that accentuated some of the gaps between archaeology (often with its head in the stylistic sand) and sociocultural anthropology and ethnography (often completely unaware of the material world). MacKenzie, in her brilliant study of string bags and gender in New Guinea (1991), notes that when anthropologists approached the study of artifacts from the perspective of their social functions in exchange systems, they often focused not so much, if at all, on the things that are exchanged, but on the social context of the transactions. Their emphasis on function, context and relations was at the expense of any consideration of the objects themselves (see, e.g., in Sieber 1962). In contrast, archaeologists were perhaps over-dependent upon the objects and their inferred functions in overly generalized cul- tural or 'processual' terms (exchange, interac- tion, political manipulation) at the expense of objects-in-social-action. Given a predilec- tion for categories and types, archaeologists have generated 'types' of function. For exam- ple, Binford (1962) suggested ideotechnic or sociotechnic objects and their implied func- tions (in a systems view of culture). Schiffer (1992) is even more specific with his categories of technofunction, sociofunction and ideofunc- tion. For the more philosophically inclined, Preston (2000) brings in the philosophical stud- ies of function in relation to how materiality matters, with particular reference to archaeol- ogy. She weds two different philosophical con- ceptions of function: Millikan's (1993) theory of 'proper function' and Cummins's (1975) con- ception of 'system function' that are not rival conceptions but instead complementary ones; both are 'required for an understanding of function in material culture' (Preston 2000: 46). Proper function, she reports, is function as a 366 PROCESS AND TRANSFORMATION normative phenomenon - as a matter of what artifacts are supposed to do. Whereas system function is function as a matter of what artifacts in fact do in the way of useful performance. As recently as 1994, Morphy suggests that 'the most productive initial approach to the explanation of form is through function' (1994: 662), hoping to 'wed content with form' (p. 659). But two divergent approaches can perhaps best sum up attitudes today towards function. On the one hand, there is the pervasive critique by Gell (1998), who bases his attitudes towards function through the lens of his primary objec- tion, that is, to aesthetics as a foundation for a theory of art. Thus, because art is not always about aesthetics, the function of art is not to express a culturally specific aesthetic system. The anthropology of art and of objects should be interested, then, in how aesthetic principles are mobilized in social action. In fact, Gell's theory, as one rooted in social relationships and on 'the social' (rather than on culture; Gell 1998: 7), provides an important (albeit often conceptually challenging) new approach to 'the social' that, as Layton writes (2003: 448), differs from structural functionalism in impor- tant ways (see also Thomas 1998). On the other hand, the reframing of ' the social' is also heralded in the view articulated by MacKenzie (1991: 27): the value of an object and even its function(s) are not inherent in the object but are 'multivalent and variously real- ized'. It is objects themselves that give value to social relations, yet the social values of objects are culturally constructed. Function, then, like style and design, is integrally caught up in expanded views on the ways that objects are linked to concepts of the world through cul- tural praxis (Morphy 1994: 664), and not just through but as social action. SOMETHING OF A SUMMARY: THE STUDY OF CLOTH In this section, I want to point to two primary features of current studies of the style, design and function of material culture: the centrality now of attending to issues of ' choices', and the destabilization of the communication func- tions and language metaphors. Embedded in the recent trajectory of material culture studies have been new approaches to and debates about the anthropology of cloth, where both of these features can be seen clearly. In the key volume that took up the 'social life of things', edited by Appadurai (1986), three (of eight) chapters on specific materials focus on cloth. The study, analysis and interpretation of cloth have been a bridge between anthropology, art history and semioticians (Schevill 1992: 38), and the literature on cloth is enormous and instructive (e.g., Cordwell and Schwarz 1979; Tedlock and Tedlock 1985; Schneider 1987; McCracken 1987, 1988: 62 f.f; Weiner and Schneider 1989; Hendrickson 1993; Renne 1995; Eicher 2001). Additionally, the metaphors of textiles, and especially of weaving, are com- mon in the study of material culture (e.g., Jarman 1997; Ingold 2000). This multitude of publications on cloth since the mid-1980s conveys the shifts in how dimen- sions like style and design, even function, are conceptualized, especially as more nuanced and complex phenomena. Style cannot be 'read' in some of the more essentialized ways. Rather than a focus on the identification or characterization of 'a style', it is the dynamics of style or the mutability of style as embedded in contexts of social life and social relations that has captured the attention of and been elaborated by most cloth researchers. In what can be characterized as a key article, Schneider and Weiner (1986) make the point that while cloth is an economic commodity, it is also- and often just as much - 'a critical object in social exchange, an objectification of ritual intent, and an instrument of political power' (1986: 178). It is simultaneously a medium for the study of style, technology, function and design! In a subsequent review article, Schneider (1987) explicitly takes on what she calls the 'dynamic of style', drawing for her baseline concept on that put forth by Schapiro (1953). Those concepts of style as a homogeneous and uncontested expression of a discrete culture's world view, or 'as propelled by its own logic', obscure the ways in which such materials as cloth are relevant to the enactment of power through time. Schneider is particularly con- cerned (1987: 420-4) with the aesthetic options in cloth production; options that are tied in, to be sure, with 'designs' and ' technological style' (loom types, fiber types, etc.). What are the aes- thetic choices that shape historical cloth styles? This issue of 'options' or 'choices' is perhaps the key aspect in the contemporary approaches to style, design, and function. Although long recognized as one way to think about style (e.g., Sackett's isochrestism 1977, 1982), it is now the particular conjuncture of, on the one hand, a concern with choices all along the trajectory of material culture - from materials, aesthetics, technologies, production and consumption - with, on the other hand, a concern for cultural STYLE, DESIGN, AND FUNCTION 367 praxis, habitus and the dynamics of taste that best characterizes current approaches to style, design and function. A 'starter' reading list here would include Schneider (1987), Lemonnier (1993b), Dietler and Herbich (1989, 1998) and Stahl (2002), and the references therein. The second feature of present approaches to our three characters of style, design and func- tion would be the critique and alternatives to the communication models and the linguistic metaphors. The issue of using clothing as a metaphor for language (or vice versa) has both its supporters and its critics, but all might agree by now that a communication system cannot work without 'contextual knowledge'. Schevill, for example (1987, 1992), is motivated to 'reha- bilitate' the approach to cloth and clothing as a communication system as an expressive system (1992: 9). But material culture theorists, such as McCracken, would disagree (1987; see his chapter 'Clothing as language' in McCracken 1988), even if a 'rehabilitation' of this concept is one of his options. He argues that we need to jettison the metaphor (clothing as language, as communication), which has been so over-used (and putatively without any depth or critical assessment) that it is, to McCracken, a 'dead metaphor' and a 'fixity of conventional wisdom' (1988: 62). In the study of cloth and clothing, we can see how an approach to one kind of material culture embodies many of the issues being dis- cussed and debated in regard to other kinds of material culture. The point that McCracken insists on is one reaction to a somewhat sim- plistic view of 'X as communication', especially as understood through its style and design. The McCracken view holds that it is precisely because material culture, in its styles, designs and even functions, is more limited than lan- guage in its expressive possibilities that it instead holds power; it is 'inconspicuous', has the potential to convey in more subtle ways, and allows a certain ambiguity that can be mobilized situationally and even more effi- ciently than language. The domain of style, design and function is today more mutable, and ripe with more choices for us to make in how we study and understand it. 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