Technology and Social Agency Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology,9781577181248

Technology and Social Agency Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology

by
Edition: 1st
ISBN13: 9781577181248
ISBN10: 1577181247
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 1991-01-16
Publisher(s): Wiley-Blackwell
List Price: $72.53

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Summary

The book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective. The author is explicitly concerned with studying ancient technological practices but the general concept of technology forms the centrepiece of discussion and is defined as an explicitly social, symbolic, and embodied endeavour that simultaneously brings into being both human agents and their material world.Dobres argues that, for ancient technologies and products to be fully understood, we need to appreciate the historically constituted ways in which social agency, technical knowledge and the gestural acts of artefact production and use were socially meaningful and, thus, politically charged.

Author Biography

Marcia-Anne Dobres received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently teaching at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on Palaeolithic and contemporary hunter-gatherers, technology, social agency, and gender, as well as prehistoric art and symbolism. She has ongoing research projects in France and South Africa. She is senior editor of The Social Dynamics of Technology: Practice, Politics, and World Views (1999) and Agency in Archaeology (ed. with Robb, 2000).

Table of Contents

List of Figures
viii
Preface x
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1(9)
Of Black Boxes and Matters Material: The State of Things
10(37)
Deconstructing the Black Box: Some Philosophical and Historical Reflections on the Logos of Tekhne
47(23)
Prying Open the Black Box: Philosophical Insights on Technology and Being
70(26)
A Synoptic Approach to Technology: The Social Contours of a Practice Framework
96(31)
Social Agency and Practice: The Heart and Soul of Technology
127(37)
Engendering the Chaine Operatoire: Methodological Considerations
164(48)
A Future for Technology's Pasts
212(19)
Notes 231(17)
References 248(45)
Index 293

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