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environments and things is called material culture studies. It is an awkward phrase, to be sure.
Yet its emphasis on the material to explore and understand the invisible systems of meaning
that humans share—culture—makes it a worthy endeavor. Many people, from university
scholars and museum curators to amateur collectors, explore the past and present not
through documents but through objects and images, buildings and structures, and the human-
altered environment.
This volume introduces readers to the types and forms of American material culture as
embodied in the various approaches adopted by scholars, curators, and collectors. An impor-
tant innovator in the field, art historian Jules David Prown (1982, 2) observed, “the term mate-
rial culture . . . refers quite directly and efficiently, if not elegantly, both to the subject matter
of the study, material, and to its purpose, the understanding of culture.” Where objects are
subjects, material culture specialists may be found. Individuals with training in art, aesthetics,
materials conservation, history, anthropology and archaeology, technology, architecture, eco-
nomics, sociology, museum studies, and library science bring a variety of perspectives, the-
ories, and methodologies to the field. Included in this volume, then, are entries on the
various academic disciplines that incorporate material culture in the study of American society
and culture, past and present. Entries include discussions of theoretical issues, methodologies,
and professional practice—that is, how material culture is organized for the purposes of analy-
sis, interpretation, and exhibition. The majority of the entries engage Americans’ material lives,
from clothing to automobiles to houses to cities to junk.
The entries in this volume exemplify material culture studies as “centrifugal” or a “pattern,”
one that Kenneth L. Ames (1980, 295) described as moving “outward from small issues to
larger, more encompassing, and more fundamental concerns.” The promise of American mate-
rial culture studies has been, and remains, to expand the understanding of human existence
through attention to the relationships between objects and people in what anthropologist
Mary Douglas (1979), speaking of consumption, has called the “world of goods.” To that end,
we endeavored to include entries that engage broadly specific forms of American material
but also entries that reflect how a cultural phenomenon, such as aging or consumption or
ethnicity, may be more fruitfully explored by including things in its study. In short, a consid-
eration of the material culture of Americans’ lives allows us to tell a richer, more complex story
of the nation and its peoples. Indeed, such a consideration changes what we know and how
we tell the nation’s stories.
Material culture studies in the United States has found a professional home both in the
museum and in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies. The alliance of material culture
studies and American Studies is based on the necessity of employing the theories and
methodologies of a variety of disciplines, as well as deriving new knowledge at disciplinary
interstices. Both fields explore the geopolitical unit called the United States of America and
the idea of America. American Studies programs across the nation feature training in material
culture studies, and the American Studies Association hosts the Material Culture Caucus.
History of Material Culture Studies in the United States
The study of the material culture of the United States is a relatively recent academic field, but
the collection and study of artifacts have taken place since before the nation’s founding. Amer-
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M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E I N A M E R I C A
Introduction
