Abstract
A professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, Michael Brian Schiffer may be known to SHOT members for his books on consumer goods, including The Portable Radio in American Life (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991) and Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). In this new monograph, written in collaboration with research assistant Andrea R. Miller at his school's Laboratory for Traditional Technology, Schiffer turns away from the empiricism of ethnography to big ideas. Challenging social scientists who privilege language--that is, sounds and words--in the study of human behavior, Schiffer argues that people-object relations are the key to unlocking the everyday world. Putting the spotlight on things, he offers a theory of communications that is rooted not in verbal performance but in the archaeology of daily life.
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