Reading an Object

social lives across time and space

Matt Liebmann
John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences

How does an object fit into a larger social world?  How can we talk about objects around both aspects of "space and time" for the contexts of an object?  In Anthropology we are interested in the "Social Lives" of objects -but how we can "read" an object? How can you locate and account for an object in the time and place it was produced, what social meanings circulate around the objects, how did it move, what can this tell us?  

Professor Liebmann addresses ways we might think through an object - reading it - in order to approach writing about the many layers of meaning around them.

Examples of Student Object Analysis