Henry Glassie and the General Meaning of Things

Abstract

Henry Glassie’s Material Culture provides long-lasting definitions of material culture, the ethnographic technique for understanding it, the social context in which it exists, the kinds to be studied, what it is to be studied against, and how to write about it. Professor Glassie creates a beautiful style that becomes a model for how to produce work worthy of his informants’ crafts. Material Culture provides a kind of Ansel Adams photograph of the people who taught Glassie how they made their works. This book took a long time to learn to write, just as it took his informants and teachers a long time to perfect their skills. Yet, like the items he studies, his book can come and go quickly through your hands, and even has a few parts that are wasters.1