The aim of the course is to explore the relationship between humans and the material world and to develop an expanded understanding of the role and agency of objects in everyday life. Drawing on knowledge from other cultures, the course problematizes the conventional distinction between people and things and foregrounds alternative approaches to material culture that enable new ways of understanding the relationship between humans and their material environment. Material culture is not treated merely in instrumental or aesthetic terms, but as an integral part of human existence—that is, as possessing an active role in the formation of the human subject.

The course seeks to foster an understanding and critical engagement with the material world through key conceptual tools such as “matter,” “materiality,” “production and consumption,” “the biography of things,” “agency,” and related concepts. At the same time, it presents and discusses a broad range of theoretical approaches that contribute to the interpretation of human–object relations, including semiotics and structuralism, post-structuralism, practice theory, phenomenology, and other contemporary theoretical perspectives. These approaches are applied to specific domains of material culture, offering analytical tools for the empirical and critical examination of matter in social life.

Indicatively, the course units include:

• Introduction to the study of material culture
• The semiotics of things
• Semiotics and structuralism: The case of food
• Phenomenological approaches and embodied experience: The case of dress
• Objects in museums: The poetics and politics of representation
• Biography of things
• Consumption