Sophie Woodward
Biographic Data
| ID | 188035 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sophie Woodward |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sophie |
| FAMILY NAME | Woodward |
| SIGNATURE | WOODWARD S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5339-8153 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 114 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Uncommon Sense: Gifts, with Sophie Woodward
Gifts. What do we do with those we don’t want, or can’t yet use, but don’t just get rid of either? Sophie Woodward on “dormant” gifts, their role in our relationships with each other, ourselves and with time. A conversation about objects, obligation, meaning, and the serious significance of “stuff” in social science and beyond
Dormant Gifts: Animating the Imagined and Narrated Pasts and Futures of Gifts
This article frames domestic things that are kept but not used as dormant , drawing from research in people's homes in the UK to argue that such objects are still animated through prior, potential and material lives. Focusing specifically on gifted objects people keep, I bring together literatures on everyday material culture and on the relational dimensions of gifts to centre the underexplored phase of dormancy in the lives of gifts. Taking the …
Retheorizing Archaeological “Artefacts” as “Belongings
In this article, we suggest that archaeologists should recognise the limitations of the term “artefact”, because it does not capture the many ways that diverse groups think about and interact with such objects. There are two important reasons for doing this. First, as we show through numerous examples, archaeologists’ conception of portable material objects as “artefacts” is narrow and unlikely to align with the conceptions by the people who left…
Live methods and live things: Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday
This article focuses upon unnoticed objects in the home, such as those stuffed in a junk drawer, to explore how we can be attentive to the everyday in cultivating a 'live sociology' which illuminates the close at hand, locating the shared, public and moral in the everyday. I argue that attentiveness to the vibrancy of everyday things can expand the possibilities of a vital sociology. Attentiveness is a way to retrain the 'sociological gaze' away …
Secret objects in the home: Potency, (in)visibility and everyday relationships
This article argues that the material dimensions of secrecy, which have been neglected within academic research into consumption and into material culture, are ripe for sociological analysis and attention. We draw on two empirical projects - one using qualitative interviews to talk to women about their sex toys and the other ethnographically informed research into things people keep but are no longer using - to explore secret things within the ho…
Clutter in domestic spaces: Material vibrancy, and competing moralities
Decluttering discourses position clutter as meaningless things as well as, seemingly paradoxically, morally problematic - as signs of laziness or an individual failure to organise the house. This article addresses the lack of academic research on the topic and challenges the mischaracterisation of clutter as meaningless by drawing from ethnographically informed research into clutter in people's homes in Manchester. The article is situated in, and…
What does love give you: Love Island and the returns of love
Life Phases, Mobility and Consumption: An Ethnography of Shopping Routes
Relational resolutions: Digital encounters in ethnographic fieldwork
The articles in this special issue highlight the relationality existing between researchers, participants, cameras and images, with each article bringing complementary perspectives on the use of digital images in ethnographic fieldwork. These include reactivating archives through their digitization for visual repatriation, facilitating dialogue and understanding between participant and researcher, analysing the relation between participants and t…
Object interviews, material imaginings and 'unsettling' methods: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding Materials and Material Culture
This article aims to explore the possibilities and limitations of contemporary qualitative methods for understanding materials and material culture and how these can be expanded through interdisciplinary approaches. Taking the case study of an interdisciplinary project into old jeans, the article first considers the use of object interviews and life histories to explore how people 'speak' the material. Second, it develops the possibilities afford…
Doing Research: Live Methods and Memory Studies
Personal collections as material assemblages: A comparison of wardrobes and music collections
This article takes the case studies of music and clothing collections in the home to explore the possibilities for developing comparative research into everyday consumption by focusing upon personal collections. Drawing on two empirical research projects, it challenges dominant understandings of collections as ‘special’ or separated off from daily practices by considering music and clothing collections as the site for everyday consumption practic…
Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary
Being in the academy: A Cross Generational Conversation
Purpose This article aims to develop the methodological and intellectual approach taken in the authors' co‐authored book to explore the synergies and disconnections in the experience of being in the academy at different historical moments using the inter‐relationship between different feminisms in the context of the authors' lived experiences as a mother and daughter whose experience of the academy has crossed second‐wave feminism into third wave…
Blue jeans: The Art of the Ordinary
Unraveling Denim: Introduction
The Myth of Street Style
The phrase “street style” is present in multiple sites, ranging from magazines, exhibitions, blogs, academic texts, and in popular parlance; its association with quirky individuality is one that arises out of its own mythologized and popularized histories. This article aims to interrogate what the current myth of street style is and the relationship this has to the everyday practices of assemblage. It is based upon an ongoing mass fashion observa…
Digital Photography and Research Relationships: Capturing the Fashion Moment
This article focuses on the interactions produced by the use of the digital camera in a mass observation into everyday fashions in Nottingham. The research project includes a team of researchers, and so there is no single research relationship. Therefore this article uses the mass observation, which includes photographs and interviews with in excess of 800 participants, to highlight the complexities of the research relationship. The definition of…
Why Women Wear What They Wear
Each morning we establish an image and an identity for ourselves through the simple act of getting dressed. Why Women Wear What They Wear presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. The book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions - observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body and identity. Woodward pieces together what women actually think about clothing, dress and the bod…
Manifesto for a study of denim: Manifesto for a Study of Denim
This paper considers the challenge to anthropology represented by a topic such as global denim. Using the phrase ‘blindingly obvious’, it considers the problems posed by objects that have become ubiquitous. While there are historical narratives about the origins, history and spread of denim, these leave open the issue of how we make compatible the ethnographic study of specific regional appropriations of denim and its global presence in a manner …
Fashion foundations: Early writings on fashion and dress – Edited by Kim K.P. Johnson, Susan J. Torntore & Joanne B. Eicher
Kim K.P. Johnson, Susan J. Torntore & Joanne B. Eicher ( eds ). Fashion foundations: early writings on fashion and dress . ix, 156 pp., figs, tables, illus., bibliogrs . Oxford, New York : Berg Publishers , 2003 . £50.00 (cloth), £15.99 (paper) The last fifteen years has seen the academic study of fashion become an established area of study within a range of disciplines. As a result of its previous marginalization from much mainstream academia, i…
The myth of turbulence
Object interviews, material imaginings and 'unsettling' methods: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding Materials and Material Culture
This article aims to explore the possibilities and limitations of contemporary qualitative methods for understanding materials and material culture and how these can be expanded through interdisciplinary approaches. Taking the case study of an interdisciplinary project into old jeans, the article first considers the use of object interviews and life histories to explore how people 'speak' the material. Second, it develops the possibilities afford…
Clutter in domestic spaces: Material vibrancy, and competing moralities
Decluttering discourses position clutter as meaningless things as well as, seemingly paradoxically, morally problematic - as signs of laziness or an individual failure to organise the house. This article addresses the lack of academic research on the topic and challenges the mischaracterisation of clutter as meaningless by drawing from ethnographically informed research into clutter in people's homes in Manchester. The article is situated in, and…
Digital Photography and Research Relationships: Capturing the Fashion Moment
This article focuses on the interactions produced by the use of the digital camera in a mass observation into everyday fashions in Nottingham. The research project includes a team of researchers, and so there is no single research relationship. Therefore this article uses the mass observation, which includes photographs and interviews with in excess of 800 participants, to highlight the complexities of the research relationship. The definition of…
Personal collections as material assemblages: A comparison of wardrobes and music collections
This article takes the case studies of music and clothing collections in the home to explore the possibilities for developing comparative research into everyday consumption by focusing upon personal collections. Drawing on two empirical research projects, it challenges dominant understandings of collections as ‘special’ or separated off from daily practices by considering music and clothing collections as the site for everyday consumption practic…
The Myth of Street Style
The phrase “street style” is present in multiple sites, ranging from magazines, exhibitions, blogs, academic texts, and in popular parlance; its association with quirky individuality is one that arises out of its own mythologized and popularized histories. This article aims to interrogate what the current myth of street style is and the relationship this has to the everyday practices of assemblage. It is based upon an ongoing mass fashion observa…
Secret objects in the home: Potency, (in)visibility and everyday relationships
This article argues that the material dimensions of secrecy, which have been neglected within academic research into consumption and into material culture, are ripe for sociological analysis and attention. We draw on two empirical projects - one using qualitative interviews to talk to women about their sex toys and the other ethnographically informed research into things people keep but are no longer using - to explore secret things within the ho…
The myth of turbulence
Live methods and live things: Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday
This article focuses upon unnoticed objects in the home, such as those stuffed in a junk drawer, to explore how we can be attentive to the everyday in cultivating a 'live sociology' which illuminates the close at hand, locating the shared, public and moral in the everyday. I argue that attentiveness to the vibrancy of everyday things can expand the possibilities of a vital sociology. Attentiveness is a way to retrain the 'sociological gaze' away …
Being in the academy: A Cross Generational Conversation
Purpose This article aims to develop the methodological and intellectual approach taken in the authors' co‐authored book to explore the synergies and disconnections in the experience of being in the academy at different historical moments using the inter‐relationship between different feminisms in the context of the authors' lived experiences as a mother and daughter whose experience of the academy has crossed second‐wave feminism into third wave…
Retheorizing Archaeological “Artefacts” as “Belongings
In this article, we suggest that archaeologists should recognise the limitations of the term “artefact”, because it does not capture the many ways that diverse groups think about and interact with such objects. There are two important reasons for doing this. First, as we show through numerous examples, archaeologists’ conception of portable material objects as “artefacts” is narrow and unlikely to align with the conceptions by the people who left…
The myth of turbulence
Why Women Wear What They Wear
Each morning we establish an image and an identity for ourselves through the simple act of getting dressed. Why Women Wear What They Wear presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. The book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions - observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body and identity. Woodward pieces together what women actually think about clothing, dress and the bod…
Manifesto for a study of denim: Manifesto for a Study of Denim
This paper considers the challenge to anthropology represented by a topic such as global denim. Using the phrase ‘blindingly obvious’, it considers the problems posed by objects that have become ubiquitous. While there are historical narratives about the origins, history and spread of denim, these leave open the issue of how we make compatible the ethnographic study of specific regional appropriations of denim and its global presence in a manner …
Fashion foundations: Early writings on fashion and dress – Edited by Kim K.P. Johnson, Susan J. Torntore & Joanne B. Eicher
Kim K.P. Johnson, Susan J. Torntore & Joanne B. Eicher ( eds ). Fashion foundations: early writings on fashion and dress . ix, 156 pp., figs, tables, illus., bibliogrs . Oxford, New York : Berg Publishers , 2003 . £50.00 (cloth), £15.99 (paper) The last fifteen years has seen the academic study of fashion become an established area of study within a range of disciplines. As a result of its previous marginalization from much mainstream academia, i…
The Myth of Street Style
The phrase “street style” is present in multiple sites, ranging from magazines, exhibitions, blogs, academic texts, and in popular parlance; its association with quirky individuality is one that arises out of its own mythologized and popularized histories. This article aims to interrogate what the current myth of street style is and the relationship this has to the everyday practices of assemblage. It is based upon an ongoing mass fashion observa…
Digital Photography and Research Relationships: Capturing the Fashion Moment
This article focuses on the interactions produced by the use of the digital camera in a mass observation into everyday fashions in Nottingham. The research project includes a team of researchers, and so there is no single research relationship. Therefore this article uses the mass observation, which includes photographs and interviews with in excess of 800 participants, to highlight the complexities of the research relationship. The definition of…
Blue jeans: The Art of the Ordinary
Unraveling Denim: Introduction
Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary
Being in the academy: A Cross Generational Conversation
Purpose This article aims to develop the methodological and intellectual approach taken in the authors' co‐authored book to explore the synergies and disconnections in the experience of being in the academy at different historical moments using the inter‐relationship between different feminisms in the context of the authors' lived experiences as a mother and daughter whose experience of the academy has crossed second‐wave feminism into third wave…
Personal collections as material assemblages: A comparison of wardrobes and music collections
This article takes the case studies of music and clothing collections in the home to explore the possibilities for developing comparative research into everyday consumption by focusing upon personal collections. Drawing on two empirical research projects, it challenges dominant understandings of collections as ‘special’ or separated off from daily practices by considering music and clothing collections as the site for everyday consumption practic…
Relational resolutions: Digital encounters in ethnographic fieldwork
The articles in this special issue highlight the relationality existing between researchers, participants, cameras and images, with each article bringing complementary perspectives on the use of digital images in ethnographic fieldwork. These include reactivating archives through their digitization for visual repatriation, facilitating dialogue and understanding between participant and researcher, analysing the relation between participants and t…
Object interviews, material imaginings and 'unsettling' methods: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding Materials and Material Culture
This article aims to explore the possibilities and limitations of contemporary qualitative methods for understanding materials and material culture and how these can be expanded through interdisciplinary approaches. Taking the case study of an interdisciplinary project into old jeans, the article first considers the use of object interviews and life histories to explore how people 'speak' the material. Second, it develops the possibilities afford…
Doing Research: Live Methods and Memory Studies
Life Phases, Mobility and Consumption: An Ethnography of Shopping Routes
What does love give you: Love Island and the returns of love
Clutter in domestic spaces: Material vibrancy, and competing moralities
Decluttering discourses position clutter as meaningless things as well as, seemingly paradoxically, morally problematic - as signs of laziness or an individual failure to organise the house. This article addresses the lack of academic research on the topic and challenges the mischaracterisation of clutter as meaningless by drawing from ethnographically informed research into clutter in people's homes in Manchester. The article is situated in, and…
Secret objects in the home: Potency, (in)visibility and everyday relationships
This article argues that the material dimensions of secrecy, which have been neglected within academic research into consumption and into material culture, are ripe for sociological analysis and attention. We draw on two empirical projects - one using qualitative interviews to talk to women about their sex toys and the other ethnographically informed research into things people keep but are no longer using - to explore secret things within the ho…
Dormant Gifts: Animating the Imagined and Narrated Pasts and Futures of Gifts
This article frames domestic things that are kept but not used as dormant , drawing from research in people's homes in the UK to argue that such objects are still animated through prior, potential and material lives. Focusing specifically on gifted objects people keep, I bring together literatures on everyday material culture and on the relational dimensions of gifts to centre the underexplored phase of dormancy in the lives of gifts. Taking the …
Retheorizing Archaeological “Artefacts” as “Belongings
In this article, we suggest that archaeologists should recognise the limitations of the term “artefact”, because it does not capture the many ways that diverse groups think about and interact with such objects. There are two important reasons for doing this. First, as we show through numerous examples, archaeologists’ conception of portable material objects as “artefacts” is narrow and unlikely to align with the conceptions by the people who left…
Live methods and live things: Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday
This article focuses upon unnoticed objects in the home, such as those stuffed in a junk drawer, to explore how we can be attentive to the everyday in cultivating a 'live sociology' which illuminates the close at hand, locating the shared, public and moral in the everyday. I argue that attentiveness to the vibrancy of everyday things can expand the possibilities of a vital sociology. Attentiveness is a way to retrain the 'sociological gaze' away …
Uncommon Sense: Gifts, with Sophie Woodward
Gifts. What do we do with those we don’t want, or can’t yet use, but don’t just get rid of either? Sophie Woodward on “dormant” gifts, their role in our relationships with each other, ourselves and with time. A conversation about objects, obligation, meaning, and the serious significance of “stuff” in social science and beyond
Sociology (16 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Art (8 works) · Fashion and Cultural Textiles (8 works) · History (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Clothing (6 works) · History (6 works)