Material Cultures, Material Minds argues for a reconsideration of the role of material culture in human society. Nicole Boivin sets out to demonstrate that, far from being inanimate epiphenomena surrounding human actions, materiality has played a central and active role in human life. Well written and illustrated, this book is that rare thing, an enjoyable read on theory. Boivin seeks to explore research on materiality across many disciplines, showing how the material world affects culture, action, cognition and even biology.
The book springs from Boivin’s dissertation research, from a micromorphological perspective, on the construction and decoration of houses in Rajasthan. Subsequent trips to these villages sparked for Boivin a confrontation of her earlier semiotic analysis with the concrete experience of lives lived with the material world. One has the sense throughout this book of the author’s journey through a very wide range of reading and approaches in an attempt to regain the materiality she feels was lost in her earlier work. This emphasis on her own journey through ideas around material culture adds to the approachability of the book.
Boivin does not, in this book, propose an overarching new theory of society and materiality; rather more usefully, she provides us with a thoughtful overview of the diverse ways this has been studied across various disciplines. She sets in context the work of Tim Ingold, Fredrik Barth and Alfred Gell, as well as researchers who may be less well known to many archaeologists, such as anthropologist Michael Jackson or historian of technology Langdon Winner.
Much of the book functions as a polemic against the various world views that, in Boivin’s opinion, have hindered a closer examination of the role of material culture – the split between the humanities and the sciences, as well as the recent dominance of the ‘linguistic turn’ in the humanities. In Chapter 1 (‘Introduction’), Boivin argues that the mind–body dichotomy fundamental to much Western thought has had a detrimental effect on material culture studies, with the humanities often ignoring or downplaying materiality. And in Chapter 2 (‘Representation and matter’), she takes on postmodernism, suggesting that the semiotic approach to the material world has meant that its role as symbol in human culture has dominated recent research. Boivin argues that the physical world impacts on human society not just as symbol, but also through its physical properties. Things don’t just say, they also do, she suggests.
In Chapter 4 (‘The agency of matter’), the author considers agency in the material world – and outlines a clear and useful distinction between the wilful, intended agency of humans, and the impact the material world has on society through its very physical properties. In this chapter she takes on the spectre of determinism, and describes the ebb and flow of views on the role of technology in human society. Boivin makes a good case for a more nuanced view of the ways that materials enable, motivate, constrain and provide affordances for human life, building on an interesting extended example of the central role of soil in the Neolithization of the Middle East. She argues that soil was central to many of the new technologies of the Neolithic (pottery, building materials, the domestication of plants) and that its specific attributes of plasticity and ‘untransportability’ both enabled the enclosures, containers and spatial divisions that characterize villages of this period, and also constrained group mobility.
In Chapter 5 (‘A self-made species’), Boivin considers recent research on the role of the material world in evolution, taking the work of Kevin Laland and others on ‘niche construction’ (the idea that species live in, and evolve in response to, niches that they themselves have to some extent, over time, constructed) as her starting point. After a brief consideration of hominin evolution in this context, she goes on to suggest that recent human evolution may also be operating within the context of a material world in some ways created by us.
Among the strengths of this book are the numerous examples taken from a rich variety of disciplines, including, of course, archaeology and anthropology, but also philosophy, history, sociology, psychology and cognitive science. It will form a useful sourcebook for both scholars and students in further reading across the field(s) of material culture studies. Boivin’s clear writing makes what could have been difficult or dense reading slip down a treat. If I have any criticism, it is that some parts of the book could be extended, with more depth in the examples and further exploration of some of the other disciplines touched on. Overall, this is a worthy successor to Boivin’s interesting edited volume (with Mary Ann Owoc) on the role of minerals in human society (2004).
