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Miller, Daniel

The Comfort of Things

Miller, Daniel - The Comfort of Things, ebook

23,75€

Ebook, ePUB with Adobe DRM
ISBN: 9780745655369
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Printing95 pages with an additional page accrued every 8 hours, capped at 95 pages
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What do we know about ordinary people in our towns and cities, about what really matters to them and how they organize their lives today? This book visits an ordinary street and looks into thirty households. It reveals the aspirations and frustrations, the tragedies and accomplishments that are played out behind the doors. It focuses on the things that matter to these people, which quite often turn out to be material things – their house, the dog, their music, the Christmas decorations. These are the means by which they express who they have become, and relationships to objects turn out to be central to their relationships with other people – children, lovers, brothers and friends.

If this is a typical street in a modern city like London, then what kind of society is this? It’s not a community, nor a neighbourhood, nor is it a collection of isolated individuals. It isn’t dominated by the family. We assume that social life is corrupted by materialism, made superficial and individualistic by a surfeit of consumer goods, but this is misleading. If the street isn’t any of these things, then what is it?

This brilliant and revealing portrayal of a street in modern London, written by one the most prominent anthropologists, shows how much is to be gained when we stop lamenting what we think we used to be and focus instead on what we are now becoming. It reveals the forms by which ordinary people make sense of their lives, and the ways in which objects become our companions in the daily struggle to make life meaningful.

Keywords: towns; people; ordinary; lives today; households; thirty; aspirations; doors; accomplishments; matter; things; quite often; house; material things; express; means; become; central; relationships; typical; modern city; london; society

Author(s)
Publisher
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Publication year
2008
Language
en
Edition
1
Page amount
316 pages
Category
Geography, Travel
Format
Ebook
eISBN (ePUB)
9780745655369
Printed ISBN
9780745644042

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