Material culture

Material culture is culture manifested by the physical objects and architecture of a society. The term is primarily used in archaeology and anthropology, but is also of interest to sociology, geography and history. The field considers artifacts in relation to their specific cultural and historic contexts, communities and belief systems. It includes the usage, consumption, creation and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms and rituals that the objects create or take part in.

Material culture is contrasted with symbolic culture or non-material culture, which include non-material symbols, beliefs and social constructs. However, some scholars include in material culture other intangible phenomena like sound, smell and events, while some even consider it to include language and media. Material culture can be described as any object that humans use to survive, define social relationships, represent facets of identity, or benefit peoples' state of mind, social, or economic standing.

The scholarly analysis of material culture, which can include both human made and natural or altered objects, is called material culture studies. It is an interdisciplinary field and methodology that tells of the relationships between people and their things: the making, history, preservation and interpretation of objects. It draws on both theory and practice from the social sciences and humanities such as art history, archaeology, anthropology, history, historic preservation, folklore, archival science, literary criticism and museum studies.

Research in several areas looks into the reasons for perceiving an object as having meaning. Common reasons for valuing material lie in their monetary or sentimental value.

A well-known related theory is Daniel Kahneman's endowment effect theory. According to Kahneman, people infuse objects they own with a higher value than they do if they do not own the object. The endowment effect is found to occur as soon as an item is acquired and the effect increases over time.

Another way in which material can hold meaning and value is by carrying communication between people, just like other communication forms such as speech, touch and gesture. An object can mediate messages between time or space or both between people who are not together. A work of art, for example, can transfer a message from the creator to the viewer and share an image, a feeling, or an experience. Material can contain memories and mutual experiences across time and influence thoughts and feelings. A study found that couples who have more items that were jointly acquired and more favorite items among them had higher-quality relationships.

Researchers from the fields of sociology, psychology, and anthropology have also been fascinated by gift-giving, a universal phenomenon that holds emotional meaning using material culture. According to Schieffelin, "gift-giving is a vehicle of social obligation and political maneuver." Mauss defines the gift as creating a special bond between the giver and the receiver. According to Mauss, the giver never really leaves the gift but becomes part of the receiver's future by inserting the gift into their life. A gift leads at some point to another gift in response, which creates a special reciprocal bond between people.

The academic field of material culture studies is historically rooted in colonial-era anthropology, initially focusing almost exclusively on non-Western material culture. This early focus often served to categorize, marginalize, and hierarchize the originating cultures. During the "golden age" of museum-going, material cultures were used to illustrate a supposed social evolution, contrasting the simple objects of non-Westerners to the advanced objects of Europeans. It was a way of positioning European society at the final, most evolved stage, with non-Westerners at the beginning.^{[citation needed]} Eventually, scholars left the notion that culture evolved though predictable cycles, and the study of material culture changed to have a more objective view of non-Western material culture.^{[citation needed]}