Overview
The theory of agency is an important one in the social sciences and has always been assumed to be anthropocentric
This collection of archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists use their understanding of agency to demonstrate that material culture or non-human entities also have agency
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Agency is a key theme that cross-cuts a wide raft of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and beyond; yet it is invariably discussed separately behind closed disciplinary doors.
Within archaeology, agency has been characterized as a uniquely human attribute, and a means of incorporating individual intentionality into theoretical discourse. In other domains, however, notions of non-human and ‘material’ agency have been finding currency, and it is our aim to introduce some of these themes into archaeology and develop a non-anthropocentric approach to agency.
It is anticipated that such a perspective will not only help us achieve more convincing interpretations of the past, giving a more active role to material culture, but also throw new light on the changing role of artifacts in the present and the future.
This book is a groundbreaking attempt to address questions of non-human and material agency from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines: archaeology, anthropology, sociology, cognitive science, philosophy, and economics. The editors and authors demostrate that a distributed, relational approach to agency, incorporating both humans and artifacts, has important ramifications for how we understand material culture.
Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Material Agency
Book Subtitle: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach
Editors: Carl Knappett, Lambros Malafouris
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74711-8
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag US 2008
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-387-74710-1Published: 19 September 2008
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4419-4512-9Published: 05 November 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-0-387-74711-8Published: 15 December 2008
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 256
Number of Illustrations: 49 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Science, Archaeology, Anthropology, Cultural Heritage