Readings: Hodder, Clarke, Star and Bowker

Beyond the Spoken Word: The Importance of Material Culture

Issues for consideration:

1. What is material culture and why is it important for qualitative research?

2. Is qualitative research able to accurately represent material culture?

3. What are the key components of a theory of material culture?

4. What are the methods of interpretation and confirmation of material culture? (Are they really any different from analyses of the spoken word?)

The non-spoken word often referred to as mute evidence or material culture: these are all forms of material artifacts and the ‘written text’. Hoddler differentiates between records (evidence of formal transactions) and documents (personal records). Both types of material culture provide researchers with insights for meanings and both require contextual interpretation. Material culture therefore offers analysts another avenue to study ‘multiple and conflicting voices’ that are not readily visible through language. (Usually the lived experience of a subordinate group: see his examples on words as agents of transformation) The representation of these alternate voices is what is challenging for research.

This challenge (problem) is centered upon the positioning of material culture:

Analysts of material culture address these issues by starting from the premise that material culture is active: not a by-product of life but an avenue for meanings and social constructions. (See examples on pages 114-115)

Theories that have been applied to the study of material structure have had varied success regarding contextual interpretation. (Information Technology, Marxism, Structural Analysis) Theoretical advances need to be made where analysis of material culture considers meaning as

Theories of material culture need to emphasize that these two types of knowledge are closely related, as stated on page 119

a set of practices may associate men and women with different parts of hours or times of day, but I certain social contexts these associations might be built upon to build an abstract representational scheme… Thus practice, evocation, and representation interpenetrate and feed off each other in many if not all areas of life.

This point is further emphasized by the notion of material culture as lived experience or sequence of use. Identifying and interpreting the temporal meanings of material culture emphasizes the varying contextual meanings. (Page 120) Attention to temporality ensures an analysis that takes into account many possible patterned meanings. This leads to a final problem, the confirmation of interpretive meanings – ‘Why are some interpretations more plausible than others?’

Hodder states that this problem is resolved when analysts pay attention to coherence (Consistency -degree to which data and theories fit with one another, by which he means they are not contradictory) and correspondence (Equivalence – exactness of fit, # cases, range, different types of data). [NB- do you believe these criteria are applicable to qualitative research, especially given his position on the importance of ‘other’ criteria: credentials, status, and trustworthiness, on bottom of page 126?]

Examples of how analysts come to terms with material culture, from a grounded theory perspective, are evident in the work of Clarke (Social Worlds) and Star and Bowker’s (tuberculosis). What can be said about their analyses – for example, do you see evidence of, similarities with, differences from, issues brought up by Hodder?