Things: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things

This course examines a variety of approaches that claim to explore the relationships between humans and things. Some of the approaches include Marx and material culture studies; Heidegger; cognitive and phenomenological; Actor Network Theory. But there is a need also to examine behavioral and ecological and Darwinian approaches. Many of these approaches do not adequately deal with the physicality of things as objects and there is a need to seek a way to incorporate such aspects of things into social theory. Prerequisite: graduate standing or consent of instructor