Reading Material Culture

Central to any understanding of the significance of material objects, whether contemporary or prehistoric, is a discussion of the very nature of interpretation itself: how we 'read' artefacts and inscribe them into the present. This book examines the complex relations between material culture, social structures and social practices from structuralist, hermeneutical and post-structuralist viewpoints.

List of contributors vi Preface vii Part I Structuralism 1 Claude Levi-Strauss: Structuralism and Beyond 3 Part II Hermeneutics 2 Paul Ricoeur: Action, Meaning and Text 85 3 Clifford Geertz: Towards a More 'Thick' Understanding? 121 Part III Post-Structuralism 4 Roland Barthes: From Sign to Text 163 5 Jacques Derrida: 'There is nothing outside of the text' 206 6 Michel Foucault: Towards an Archaeology of Archaeology 281 Index 348