material culture

For the past few days the blog has been thrillingly guest hosted by our 13 year old resident games payer but due to lack of comments except by the very supportive Captain JP (why? Where are you all?)
I am back on my regular theme of material culture.
Yesterday in the Guardian there was a feature on how bad material culture is as we all buy more and more things and they end up in an endlessly recycled heap of stuff.
This is bad obviously, but I think that there is something to be said about the relationship between timescales and objects.
I think that the longer you keep an object, its properties change and develop accordingly.
In my work in homes, some objects held longer timescales than others, and were intergenerational, spanning countries and changing meanings and they passed through generations.
In this book on Material Culture in the social world it is argued that, we need to examine,

the way in which consumption choices are made which rely on social customs and practices rather than rational economic decisions.

As someone who rarely relies on rational economic decisions to make purchases I find this a helpful comment.


Some purchases you never regret or recycle.
This Agnes b beret is particularly wonderful and brightens my days.
It could be said to be an artefact of identity.