In the face of hyper-production and consumption, what happens with all the stuff? How does some get kept for the future and what happens with the rest? Are we at risk of 'stuffocation' - being submerged in too many things, too much information and too many decisions to make? The last decade has seen a major rise in many countries of specialised products and services to help people cope with excess and overload. This includes vast storage facilities for things that won't fit into people's homes, smart domestic storage 'solutions' to help pack more and more in, and professional organisers and 'declutterers' to help people to 'let go' of excess stuff. Hoarding has become defined as an official psychological illness in the US; and in many West European countries even museums have begun looking into whether they can get dispose of things from their increasingly growing collections. Focusing on material profusion – the overload of things – in this seminar we will take an anthropological perspective, considering especially whether what we are witnessing is a particular kind of relationship of personhood, things and time. To do so, we will look for theoretical elucidation from various areas, ranging from those concerning the nature of contemporary capitalism to sustainability, and from purity and danger to spirit possession. In the first part of the semester we will read and discuss texts. In the second half, seminar participants will present cases of their choice.
The seminar will be in English.
Findet im Rahmen des normalen Lehrprogrammes am Institut für Europäische Ethnologie statt, ÜWP Studierende können zusätzlich teilnehmen.
Czarniawska, B. and O.Löfgren (eds) 2012: Managing Overflow in Affluent Societies. (London: Routledge)
Lewe, C., T.Othold and N.Oxen (eds) 2016: Müll. Intrediziplinäre Perspektiven auf das Übrig-gebliebene. (Bielefeld: transcript)
Miller, D. 2010: Stuff. (Cambridge: Polity)
Newell, S. 2014: 'The matter of the unfetish. Hoarding and the spirit of possessions.' HAU: Journal of Anthropological Theory 4(3): 185-213
Tischleder, B. and S.Wassmann (eds) 2015: Cultures of Obsolescence. History, Materiality and the Digital Age. (Heidelberg: Springer)
Wallman, J. 2015: Stuffocation. Living More with Less. (Harmondsworth: Penguin)
Die Lehrveranstaltung findet im Raum 408, Mohrenstraße 41 statt.
