Material habits, identity, semeiotic

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2405228
AutoresVeerendra P Lele (Denison University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen6
Número1
Páginas48-70
Fecha de publicación2006-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Social Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1469-6053 • E-ISSN: 1741-2951
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1469605306060561
OpenAlexW2076424741
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas23
Referencias citadas31

Complementing recent archaeological work on identities, in this article I describe the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce - his general 'theory of signs' - and discuss its uses for interpreting human identity through material culture and the artefactual record. Often classified as 'symbolic anthropology/archaeology', previous researches have presented a more restricted sense of semeiotic, while fewer scholars have been working through Peirce's theories directly. Here, I articulate some aspects of Peirce's semeiotic realism and his pragmatism with his theories regarding semeiosic matter and semeiosic identity. Specifically, Peirce regarded matter as 'mind hidebound with habits', and his semeiotic is particularly well-suited for analyzing the obdurate or habitual character of material culture. Based primarily on my ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork in an Irish-speaking region in western Ireland, I explore and apply some of Peirce's theories to an interpretation of human social identities manifest through such things as prayer beads and field-walls

Aesthetics · Character (mathematics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Field (mathematics · Identity (music · Interpretation (philosophy · Irish · Linguistics · Pragmatism · Realism · Semiotics · Sociology · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy