The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self

Posted on 10 June 2017 by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The meaning of things is a study of the significance of material possessions in contemporary urban life, and of the ways people carve meaning out of their domestic environment Drawing on a survey of eighty families in Chicago who were interviewed on the subject of their feelings about common household objects, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg Halton provide a unique perspective on materialism, American culture, and the self They begin by reviewing what social scientists and philosophers have said about the transactions between people and things In the model of personhood that the authors develop, goal directed action and the cultivation of meaning through signs assume central importance They then relate theoretical issues to the results of their survey An important finding is the distinction between objects valued for action and those valued for contemplation The authors compare families who have warm emotional attachments to their homes with those in which a common set of positive meanings is lacking, and interpret the different patterns of involvement They then trace the cultivation of meaning in case studies of four families Finally, the authors address what they describe as the current crisis of environmental and material exploitation, and suggest that human capacities for the creation and redirection of meaning offer the only hope for survival A wide range of scholars urban and family sociologists, clinical, developmental and environmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists and philosophers, and many general readers will find this book stimulating and compelling. Free Download [ The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self ] by [ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr This book was remarkable for a few reasons First, I admire the political conviction of its authors It s so rare to see academic books espouse a clear point of view in this case materialism is bad I guess academics were able to do as much in the 1970s Maybe someday we ll be back there Second, the book does a remarkable job looking at an understudied subject and treating it fully 312 in depth interviews and with the care and concern it deserves It doesn t strive toward broad generaliza This book was remarkable for a few reasons First, I admire the political conviction of its authors It s so rare to see academic books espouse a clear point of view in this case materialism is bad I guess academics were able to do as much in the 1970s Maybe someday we ll be back there Second, the book does a remarkable job looking at an understudied subject and treating it fully 312 in depth interviews and with the care and concern it deserves It doesn t strive toward broad generalizations, but attempts to draw conclusions based on a huge amount of data in a way that both seems fair to the research subjects and not overambitious in terms of its actual results And it does this while also clearly showing how the data is distributed, coded, and aggregated I joked with Jason a bit that perhaps the reason this book isn t citedoften is due to the craziness of the first author s last name, but then I looked him u...This book is a good example of ethnography in a broad sense the authors begin with reviewing existing notions on the meaning of things, then dive into their own field study, comment extrapolate on the results of the study, both qualitatively and quantitatively, then summarize with a sweeping chapter about the implications of the study.It s clear at several points that the Chicago of 1977 is not the world of today, but that s ok the study is in some ways an analysis of a distant, vanished tribe This book is a good example of ethnography in a broad sense the authors begin with reviewing existing notions on the meaning of things, then dive into their own field study, comment extrapolate on the results of the study, both qualitatively and quantitatively, then summarize with a sweeping chapter about the implications of the ...Beautiful exposition of how people use, learn from, attach to, and create relationships with the objects in their homes Eminently readable, even when they get into the nitty gritty of ethnographic data.Read it for a book club I felt like the conclusions that Csikszentmihalyi pulled from the study had a sexist nature to them, but that could have been the nature of the study being located in an upper class Chicago neighborhood.fdafdsafscommentSocial research at its best.Within a sample size of three hundred individuals from the Chicago area a couple decades ago, furniture is said to be the most meaningful part of domestic environments.some interesting stuff just not what I expected, and somewhat dated by now.

The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self

English
10 June 2017

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi