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Material Culture and Cultural History Many Cultural Historians Ignore the Physical Environment in Which Culture Is Embedded

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Material Culture and Cultural History Many Cultural Historians Ignore the Physical Environment in Which Culture Is Embedded Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxv:4 (Spring, 2005), 591–603. MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY Richard Grassby Material Culture and Cultural History Many cultural historians ignore the physical environment in which culture is embedded. They elevate abstract ideas above things, symbolic meaning above utility, and imagination above empirical facts. They generalize from images and texts as though they were mate- rial commodities, focusing on how the world was represented and perceived, not on how it functioned or how it was physically or emotionally experienced. Style is accorded more signiªcance than form or content; the method of representation is considered to be as meaningful as the object. In the giddy world of symbolic in- terpretation, goods have no practical use and the consumption function has no basis in reality. An indulgent subjectivism creates what has been termed the conceptual equivalent of the permissive society.1 Material life is partly shaped by cultural imperatives. Social reality has to be structured to be perceived and understood. Whether it communicates through words or visual representation, the cultural system relies on metaphor and symbolism. When lit- eral language fails, people express ideas through metaphorical analogies. Economists have their personal agendas and employ rhetoric, metaphors, and allegories, as well as logic and mathemat- ics. Historians often conceptualize in metaphors to relate concrete facts to abstractions.2 Culture is, however, evinced in distinct forms generated by Richard Grassby is a retired scholar currently residing in Hagerstown, Maryland. He is the au- thor of Kinship and Capitalism: Marriage, Family and Business in the English-Speaking World, 1580–1740 (New York, 2001); The Idea of Capitalism before the Industrial Revolution (Lanham, Md., 1999). © 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. 1 Theodore K. Rabb and Jonathan Brown “Introduction,” in Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg (eds.), Art and History: Images and Their Meaning (New York, 1988), 5; Ernest Gellner, “Knowledge of Nature,” in Mihulas Teich, Roy Porter, and Bo Gustafsson (eds.), Nature and Society in Historical Context (Cambridge, 1997), 16. 2 Christopher Y. Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford, 1999), 7; Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison, 1998; orig. pub. 1985), 19; Jacques Le Goff, (trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman), History and Memory (New York, 1992), 121; Roger Chartier (trans. Lydia G. Cochrane), Cultural History: Between Practices and Representa- tions, (Ithaca, 1988), 96. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 592 | RICHARD GRASSBY human responses to opportunities in speciªc historical contexts. Hence historians of material culture use artifacts, as well as written evidence, to reconstruct the patterns of meanings, values, and norms shared by members of society. As in archaeology and aes- thetic theory, the formal system is both perceived and interpreted through material things. What is the value and importance of this approach and what problems of evidence and interpretation have to be overcome? Do goods possess intrinsic meaning or is culture responsible for creat- ing it? Do people impose meaning on things, or do they discover it in them? Can the study of artifacts be integrated with cultural theory? These questions arise in all cultures and periods, but here they will be considered primarily in relation to the pre-industrial society of early modern England.3 artifacts as evidence Historians of material culture describe, categorize, and compare the characteristics of artiªcially con- structed objects that have survived in physical or representational form—their size, shape, color, design, weight, and volume. With the help of literary and archival records they identify and measure the quantity, as well as the quality, of goods and determine how they were made, distributed, and related to each other; when and where they appeared; and who acquired them for what use. Thus are artifacts subjected to archaeometric analysis of their internal structure and viewed in a speciªc temporal sequence and spatial context. Goods are subjected to both etic and emic analysis—the study of their objective attributes and their signiªcance to those who used them. The ultimate objective is to move beyond the concrete data and grasp the more nebulous concept of culture.4 Objects give material form to the rules and belief patterns of those who trade, purchase, or use them. Those with shared attrib- utes can be grouped as a style or type characteristic of a discrete period. Unlike cultural anthropologists, material culturalists may not be directly concerned with systems of belief and practical ac- 3 This article draws on the author’s unpublished study of the material culture of the English business community, 1590–1740. 4 Daniel Miller, “Introduction,” in idem (ed.), Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (Chicago, 1998), 19; D. J. Bryden and D. L. Simms, “Spectacles Improved to Perfection,” Annals of Science, L (1993), 27; Jules D. Prown, Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (New Haven, 2001), 93. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 MATERIAL CULTURE AND CULTURAL HISTORY | 593 tivity, but they are certainly interested in goods as symbols and tools of culture, and in the structural patterns by which artifacts are organized into meaningful relationships.5 This approach engages the senses as well as the mind. Visual images and tactile objects help to recapture choses vécues, the physi- cal conditions of everyday life and the options for action of differ- ent groups. The exteriors and interiors of homes reveal how people met the basic needs of food, shelter, and warmth and whether levels of comfort, privacy, personal security, and taste im- proved. Changes in the material quality of life in early modern England have been demonstrated by a quantitative analysis over time of both goods and services.6 The number, type, repetition, and distribution of goods at different levels of society identify luxuries and distinguish wants from needs. The emergence of a consumer society in eighteenth- century England tended to blur the distinction. Omissions of cate- gories from certain contexts indicate the preferences and values of particular groups. By establishing where and when items appeared, historians can identify patterns of selection as well as degrees of variation from the norm, innovations, transfers from other groups, and revivals. The juxtaposition of objects in space is often telling. For instance, the relative position of graves in a New England cemetery indicates social relationships and family conºicts.7 Objects can be read as well as counted. Goods make visible statements about the hierarchies of value. They carry social and personal information within a larger framework. Inanimate objects communicate relationships and mediate progress through the so- cial world; their diffusion bridges cultural boundaries and connects centers with peripheries. Although artifacts are produced at partic- ular moments, their persistence creates histories. In addition to in- formation and ideas, they can convey hidden cultural constraints, moral standards, social fears, and emotionally laden issues.8 5 Mikhail M. Bakhtin (ed. Michael Holquist; trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin, 1981), 262. 6 Thomas J. Schlereth, Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence, 1985), 12. 7 Ian W. Brown, “The New England Cemeteries,” in Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (eds.), History from Things (Washington, D.C., 1993), 140–159. 8 Grant D. McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington, 1988), 19; Cary Carson, “The Consumer Revo- lution in Colonial British America,” in Ronald Hoffmann, idem, and Peter J. Albert (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1994), 693; Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0022195043327426 by guest on 25 September 2021 594 | RICHARD GRASSBY Possessions, if carefully interpreted, constitute evidence of character, interest, and quality of life. The relative economic value and symbolic importance of goods can be gauged from their pro- portionate volume, mass, scale, and distribution. The meaning of objects becomes clear within narrative contexts. Artifacts provide the depth of image that artists create through linear and tonal per- spective; for example, inventories of artifacts can re-create the in- teriors of early modern English houses that no longer exist. In rare cases, like the archaeological site at Port Royal, Jamaica, which was devastated by an earthquake, the interdependence of objects has been preserved completely intact.9 Material culture sheds light on how people understood them- selves. Objects and their combinations can evoke the atmosphere of a house or room. Artifacts can convey a sensory perception of the past through sight, smell, touch, and texture. In early modern England, people were more occupied with things than with ab- stractions; distance, quantity, and time were measured physically. Making sense of past experience requires replicating the tone and texture of life.10 Culture structures behavior and design. Furniture and cloth- ing, for example,
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