| Abstract: | Commodity is the key subject of material culture studies. In the1980s, scholars in the field of cultural anthropology started discussing the social life of things and the cultural biography of things, and tracing the path of things in society and culture: “commoditization/de-commoditization/re-commoditization”. Different values of things have been produced in the process of commoditization. Unceasing change of value means things as agencies are deeply involved in the cultural orders and people’s social life, thereby developing the politics of value. Studies on the social life of things, led by Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff,embody not merely the positivity and activity of things, but also a kind of symbiosis between people and things. What is more, they offer a new approach to material culture studies. |
