What kind of person is a thing?

Kirjoittajat

• Daniel Miller University College London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37449/ennenjanyt.161168

Avainsanat:

material culture, digital anthropology

Abstrakti

This paper uses the question of what kind of person is a thing, to trace a trajectory through material culture studies through digital anthropology. It aims to demonstrate the continued values of material culture studies in helping us understand contemporary issues around materiality and the ways in which digital technologies have added to our capacity to represent, develop relationships with and to go beyond conventional anthropomorphism, in creating things that have person like qualities. This history starts with theories that derive from structuralism and Marxism. The paper then become a retrospective of the author’s contributions, first to non-dualist theory of the relationship between things and people and then a series of research projects that followed from this. The paper argues that the online and digital should be seen more as continuity, rather than a break, from older material culture studies. Examples are given based on studies of smartphones and finally the use of AI to develop what is here called `Beyond Anthropomorphism’ in the replication of the dead.