1. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The meaning of things is a study of the significance of material possessions in contemporary urban life, and of the ways people carve meaning out of their domestic environment. Drawing on a survey of eighty families in Chicago who were interviewed on the subject of their feelings about common household objects, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton provide a unique perspective on materialism, American culture, and the self. They begin by reviewing what social scientists and philosophers have said about the transactions between people and things. In the model of ‘personhood’ that the authors develop, goal-directed action and the cultivation of meaning through signs assume central importance. They then relate theoretical issues to the results of their survey. An important finding is the distinction between objects valued for action and those valued for contemplation. The authors compare families who have warm emotional attachments to their homes with those in which a common set of positive meanings is lacking, and interpret the different patterns of involvement. They then trace the cultivation of meaning in case studies of four families. Finally, the authors address what they describe as the current crisis of environmental and material exploitation, and suggest that human capacities for the creation and redirection of meaning offer the only hope for survival. A wide range of scholars - urban and family sociologists, clinical, developmental and environmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers, and many general readers - will find this book stimulating and compelling.

    The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self

    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

    The meaning of things is a study of the significance of material possessions in contemporary urban life, and of the ways people carve meaning out of their domestic environment. Drawing on a survey of eighty families in Chicago who were interviewed on the subject of their feelings about common household objects, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton provide a unique perspective on materialism, American culture, and the self. They begin by reviewing what social scientists and philosophers have said about the transactions between people and things. In the model of ‘personhood’ that the authors develop, goal-directed action and the cultivation of meaning through signs assume central importance. They then relate theoretical issues to the results of their survey. An important finding is the distinction between objects valued for action and those valued for contemplation. The authors compare families who have warm emotional attachments to their homes with those in which a common set of positive meanings is lacking, and interpret the different patterns of involvement. They then trace the cultivation of meaning in case studies of four families. Finally, the authors address what they describe as the current crisis of environmental and material exploitation, and suggest that human capacities for the creation and redirection of meaning offer the only hope for survival. A wide range of scholars - urban and family sociologists, clinical, developmental and environmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers, and many general readers - will find this book stimulating and compelling.
  2. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 Steven Conn During the last half of the nineteenth century, many of the country’s most celebrated museums were built. In this original and daring study, Steven Conn argues that Americans, endowed with the belief that knowledge resided in objects themselves, built these institutions with the confidence that they could collect, organize, and display the sum of the world’s knowledge. Conn discovers how museums gave definition to different bodies of knowledge and how these various museums helped to shape America’s intellectual history.

    Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926

    Steven Conn

    During the last half of the nineteenth century, many of the country’s most celebrated museums were built. In this original and daring study, Steven Conn argues that Americans, endowed with the belief that knowledge resided in objects themselves, built these institutions with the confidence that they could collect, organize, and display the sum of the world’s knowledge. Conn discovers how museums gave definition to different bodies of knowledge and how these various museums helped to shape America’s intellectual history.

  3. The Future of Nostalgia Svetlana Boym Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Svetlana Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

    The Future of Nostalgia

    Svetlana Boym

    Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Svetlana Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

  4. Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas Rebecca Solnit What makes a place? Infinite City, Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, searches out the answer by examining the many layers of meaning in one place, the San Francisco Bay Area. Aided by artists, writers, cartographers, and twenty-two gorgeous color maps, each of which illuminates the city and its surroundings as experienced by different inhabitants, Solnit takes us on a tour that will forever change the way we think about place. She explores the area thematically—connecting, for example, Eadweard Muybridge’s foundation of motion-picture technology with Alfred Hitchcock’s filming of Vertigo. Across an urban grid of just seven by seven miles, she finds seemingly unlimited landmarks and treasures—butterfly habitats, queer sites, murders, World War II shipyards, blues clubs, Zen Buddhist centers. She roams the political terrain, both progressive and conservative, and details the cultural geographies of the Mission District, the culture wars of the Fillmore, the South of Market world being devoured by redevelopment, and much, much more. Breathtakingly original, this atlas of the imagination invites us to search out the layers of San Francisco that carry meaning for us—or to discover our own infinite city, be it Cleveland, Toulouse, or Shanghai. CONTRIBUTORS: Cartographers: Ben Pease and Shizue Seigel Designer: Lia Tjandra Artists: Sandow Birk, Mona Caron, Jaime Cortez, Hugh D’Andrade, Robert Dawson, Paz de la Calzada, Jim Herrington, Ira Nowinski, Alison Pebworth, Michael Rauner, Gent Sturgeon, Sunaura Taylor Writers and researchers: Summer Brenner, Adriana Camarena, Chris Carlsson, Lisa Conrad, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, Paul La Farge, Genine Lentine, Stella Lochman, Aaron Shurin, Heather Smith, Richard Walker Additional cartography: Darin Jensen; Robin Grossinger and Ruth Askevold, San Francisco Estuary Institute

    Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas

    Rebecca Solnit

    What makes a place? Infinite City, Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, searches out the answer by examining the many layers of meaning in one place, the San Francisco Bay Area. Aided by artists, writers, cartographers, and twenty-two gorgeous color maps, each of which illuminates the city and its surroundings as experienced by different inhabitants, Solnit takes us on a tour that will forever change the way we think about place. She explores the area thematically—connecting, for example, Eadweard Muybridge’s foundation of motion-picture technology with Alfred Hitchcock’s filming of Vertigo. Across an urban grid of just seven by seven miles, she finds seemingly unlimited landmarks and treasures—butterfly habitats, queer sites, murders, World War II shipyards, blues clubs, Zen Buddhist centers. She roams the political terrain, both progressive and conservative, and details the cultural geographies of the Mission District, the culture wars of the Fillmore, the South of Market world being devoured by redevelopment, and much, much more. Breathtakingly original, this atlas of the imagination invites us to search out the layers of San Francisco that carry meaning for us—or to discover our own infinite city, be it Cleveland, Toulouse, or Shanghai.
    CONTRIBUTORS:
    Cartographers: Ben Pease and Shizue Seigel
    Designer: Lia Tjandra
    Artists: Sandow Birk, Mona Caron, Jaime Cortez, Hugh D’Andrade, Robert Dawson, Paz de la Calzada, Jim Herrington, Ira Nowinski, Alison Pebworth, Michael Rauner, Gent Sturgeon, Sunaura Taylor
    Writers and researchers: Summer Brenner, Adriana Camarena, Chris Carlsson, Lisa Conrad, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, Paul La Farge, Genine Lentine, Stella Lochman, Aaron Shurin, Heather Smith, Richard Walker
    Additional cartography: Darin Jensen; Robin Grossinger and Ruth Askevold, San Francisco Estuary Institute
  5. English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas Coco Fusco When Coco Fusco and collaborator Guillermo Gomez-Pena toured the country in a cage as “authentic natives,” their provocative performance piece enraged some and enthralled others. Known for using performance to explore the boundaries of ethnicity in art, Coco Fusco has now brought her talents to bear in a volume of cultural criticism and theory, English is Broken Here. Infused with a unique cultural sensibility, English is Broken Here examines cross-cultural art issues in America at a crucial moment. Coco Fusco adds an original and eloquent voice to a growing debate over cultural identity and visual politics.

    English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas

    Coco Fusco

    When Coco Fusco and collaborator Guillermo Gomez-Pena toured the country in a cage as “authentic natives,” their provocative performance piece enraged some and enthralled others. Known for using performance to explore the boundaries of ethnicity in art, Coco Fusco has now brought her talents to bear in a volume of cultural criticism and theory, English is Broken Here. Infused with a unique cultural sensibility, English is Broken Here examines cross-cultural art issues in America at a crucial moment. Coco Fusco adds an original and eloquent voice to a growing debate over cultural identity and visual politics.
  6. Performing the archive: The transformation of the archive in Contemporary art from repository of documents to art medium Simone Osthoff Instead of smoothing over contemporary art’s violent and iconoclastic dimensions, instead of sanitizing and making complex artworks docile in terms of archival possibilities, this book suggests we abandon our fantasy of mastery over representation and respond in kind to the archive-as-artwork, to “living” archives, and to reenactments of history with their seamless connections between fiction and non-fiction. Among the concepts examined are Vilém Flusser’s techno-imagination, Lygia Clark’s and Hélio Oiticica’s participatory aesthetics, and Paulo Bruscky’s and Eduardo Kac’s literal performances of the archive. They contribute to the erosion of the archive’s former boundaries, stability, function, and meaning. Writing alongside the artists as much as about them, Osthoff examines the archive mise-en-abyme, as it grows increasingly recombinant and generative. Simone Osthoff received her Ph.D. from the European Graduate School and is Associate Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Visual Arts at Pennsylvania State University. An art critic and historian of contemporary art, her numerous essays, focusing on media art practices and issues of historiography, have been published internationally and translated into over eight languages.

    Performing the archive: The transformation of the archive in Contemporary art from repository of documents to art medium

    Simone Osthoff

    Instead of smoothing over contemporary art’s violent and iconoclastic dimensions, instead of sanitizing and making complex artworks docile in terms of archival possibilities, this book suggests we abandon our fantasy of mastery over representation and respond in kind to the archive-as-artwork, to “living” archives, and to reenactments of history with their seamless connections between fiction and non-fiction. Among the concepts examined are Vilém Flusser’s techno-imagination, Lygia Clark’s and Hélio Oiticica’s participatory aesthetics, and Paulo Bruscky’s and Eduardo Kac’s literal performances of the archive. They contribute to the erosion of the archive’s former boundaries, stability, function, and meaning. Writing alongside the artists as much as about them, Osthoff examines the archive mise-en-abyme, as it grows increasingly recombinant and generative. Simone Osthoff received her Ph.D. from the European Graduate School and is Associate Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Visual Arts at Pennsylvania State University. An art critic and historian of contemporary art, her numerous essays, focusing on media art practices and issues of historiography, have been published internationally and translated into over eight languages.
  7. Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (Encounters) Carolyn Kay Steedman

    Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (Encounters)

    Carolyn Kay Steedman
  8. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense Ann Laura Stoler Along the Archival Grain offers a unique methodological and analytic opening to the affective registers of imperial governance and the political content of archival forms. In a series of nuanced mediations on the nature of colonial documents from the nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies, Ann Laura Stoler identifies the social epistemologies that guided perception and practice, revealing the problematic racial ontologies of that confused epistemic space. Navigating familiar and extraordinary paths through the lettered lives of those who ruled, she seizes on moments when common sense failed and prevailing categories no longer seemed to work. She asks not what colonial agents knew, but what happened when what they thought they knew they found they did not. Rejecting the notion that archival labor be approached as an extractive enterprise, Stoler sets her sights on archival production as a consequential act of governance, as a field of force with violent effect, and not least as a vivid space to do ethnography.

    Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense

    Ann Laura Stoler

    Along the Archival Grain offers a unique methodological and analytic opening to the affective registers of imperial governance and the political content of archival forms. In a series of nuanced mediations on the nature of colonial documents from the nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies, Ann Laura Stoler identifies the social epistemologies that guided perception and practice, revealing the problematic racial ontologies of that confused epistemic space.

    Navigating familiar and extraordinary paths through the lettered lives of those who ruled, she seizes on moments when common sense failed and prevailing categories no longer seemed to work. She asks not what colonial agents knew, but what happened when what they thought they knew they found they did not. Rejecting the notion that archival labor be approached as an extractive enterprise, Stoler sets her sights on archival production as a consequential act of governance, as a field of force with violent effect, and not least as a vivid space to do ethnography.
  9. Wanderlust: A History of Walking Rebecca Solnit Drawing together many histories-of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores-Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction-from Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet to Andre Breton’s Nadja-finding a profound relationship between walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.

    Wanderlust: A History of Walking

    Rebecca Solnit

    Drawing together many histories-of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores-Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction-from Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet to Andre Breton’s Nadja-finding a profound relationship between walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.
  10. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. *Illuminations *includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht’s Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin’s continued relevance for our times.

    Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

    Walter Benjamin

    Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. *Illuminations *includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht’s Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history.

    Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin’s continued relevance for our times.

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