Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology (Social Archaeology) - Hardcover

Dobres, Marcia-Anne

 
9781577181231: Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology (Social Archaeology)

Synopsis

The book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective.

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About the Author

Marcia-Anne Dobres received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently teaching at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on Palaeolithic and contemporary hunter-gatherers, technology, social agency, and gender, as well as prehistoric art and symbolism. She has ongoing research projects in France and South Africa. She is senior editor of The Social Dynamics of Technology: Practice, Politics, and World Views (1999) and Agency in Archaeology (ed. with Robb, 2000).

From the Back Cover

The book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective. The author is explicitly concerned with studying ancient technological practices but the general concept of technology forms the centrepiece of discussion and is defined as an explicitly social, symbolic, and embodied endeavour that simultaneously brings into being both human agents and their material world.

Dobres argues that, for ancient technologies and products to be fully understood, we need to appreciate the historically constituted ways in which social agency, technical knowledge and the gestural acts of artefact production and use were socially meaningful and, thus, politically charged.

From the Inside Flap

The book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective. The author is explicitly concerned with studying ancient technological practices but the general concept of technology forms the centrepiece of discussion and is defined as an explicitly social, symbolic, and embodied endeavour that simultaneously brings into being both human agents and their material world.

Dobres argues that, for ancient technologies and products to be fully understood, we need to appreciate the historically constituted ways in which social agency, technical knowledge and the gestural acts of artefact production and use were socially meaningful and, thus, politically charged.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781577181248: Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology (Social Archaeology)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  1577181247 ISBN 13:  9781577181248
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000
Softcover