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My Life with Things : The Consumer Diaries by Elizabeth Chin (2016, Hardcover)

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Number of Pages: 248. Weight: 0.95 lbs. Publication Date: 2016-06-10.

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherDuke University Press

ISBN-100822361183

ISBN-139780822361183

eBay Product ID (ePID)215929986

Product Key Features

Number of Pages248 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameMy Life with Things : the Consumer Diaries

SubjectEthnic Studies / Asian American Studies, Anthropology / Cultural & Social

Publication Year2016

TypeTextbook

AuthorElizabeth Chin

Subject AreaSocial Science

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight16.8 Oz

Item Length9.5 in

Item Width6.3 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2015-042545

Dewey Edition23

ReviewsPart academic study and part personal essay, My Life with Things offers both casual and scholarly readers an entryway into conversation about the place of material possessions in our lives.... [A] nuanced reflection on both the fact that we are inescapably tied to our possessions and the ways they connect us to our loved ones and neighbors around the world., "Chin composes a sprawling paean to the joy of stuff and the impossibility of our ever eschewing it. In My Life With Things , she is winningly alert to the ambivalence around our acts of consumption, both the awful guilt and the immeasurable pleasure nonetheless." , In the end this book, as Chin tells us, is a focus on moments, rife with the complexities and contradictions of everyday life. Just as in other life moments and journeys, it is full of fodder for contemplation and discussion as well as catalysts for new perspectives. I can imagine it as a resource for teachers as well as students, and I envision many imaginative and lively discussions based on objects described in this book as well as the particular objects animating others' lives and relationships., My Life with Things is thought-provoking in the best sense of the term. It poses new questions, approaches old ones in fresh ways, and tugs at the complex heart of people's relationship to the things they have and the things they want., Elizabeth Chin's My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries , is a fantastic book. I can't imagine anyone reading it and not wanting to become an anthropologist. It is also one of the funniest books I've read in a long time, with actual laugh-out-loud moments., My Life with Things is a strange yet fascinating look at our cultural preoccupation with owning and communing with physical objects. Chin uses her anthropological background to present an autoethnography, combining research, theory, and personal writing to criticize (and commiserate with) our love of objects., In My Life With Things Elizabeth Chin offers a smart and fascinating look at the historical, political, personal, and material specificity of people's relationship to commodities. Chin's use of short essays, autoethnography, colloquial language, and often poetic prose make for an elegant, original, insightful, and accessible book., My Life with Things is a refreshing and honest book, which gives a rich insight into the experience of engaging with auto-ethnography. It should certainly appeal to the more adventurous, less conventional academic from across the social sciences and not just anthropology, the author's home discipline.... At the end of the day, researchers interested in anthropology, auto-ethnography and/or consumption looking for an insider account complete with warts and all, should find this an invaluable companion., With herself as both subject and object of study, Chin . . . weaves a highly personal, idiosyncratic, and explanatory narrative. Ever the provocateur, she brings her own consumer diaries over the span of several years into conversation with the likes of Karl Marx, not only at a theoretical level but also as biographical touchstones. The narratives, structured around the themes of inheritance, survival, and love, detail the author's close relationship with the everyday items that surround her. The results can be exhilarating, giving readers self-reflexive pause on the consumptive world and how they got there., In this highly anticipated volume Elizabeth Chin provides what is sure to be a classic text in consumption studies: a breakthrough auto-ethnography that exposes this mundane space as the highly affective, contradictory, and political space that it is. Smart, beautifully written and honest, My Life With Things is a singular achievement and an unprecedented work that will forever trouble how we think about consumption and the very craft of contemporary ethnography., " My Life with Things is a strange yet fascinating look at our cultural preoccupation with owning and communing with physical objects. Chin uses her anthropological background to present an autoethnography, combining research, theory, and personal writing to criticize (and commiserate with) our love of objects."

Dewey Decimal306.3

Table Of ContentAcknowledgments vii 1. Introduction 3 2. The Entries 37 My Life with Things 37 Learn to Love Stuff 38 Banky 40 A Digression on the Topic of the Transitional Object 42 Cebebrate! 56 My Purple Shoes 58 Newspapers 61 Rose Nails 63 The Window Shade 67 Napkins 69 My White Man's Tooth 72 Should I Be Straighter 76 Cyberfucked 79 Knobs 80 Glasses 82 Curing Rug Lust 85 Window Shopping Online 89 Catalogs 92 Other People's Labor 95 Making Roots/Making Routes 98 My Closet(s) 101 Joining the MRE 108 Fun Shopping 114 Preschool Birthday Parties 114 Xena Warrior Consumer Princess 118 I Love Your Nail Polish 120 Little Benches 123 The Kiss 126 Are There Malls in Haiti? 127 Baby Number Two Turned Me into Economic Man 129 Pictures of the Rice Grain 132 Panting in Ikea 136 Capitalism Makes Me Sick 139 My Grandmother's Rings 147 Anorectic Energy 157 Mi-Mi's Piano 162 Dream-Filled Prescriptions 169 The Turquoise Arrowhead 170 Turning The Tables 173 Minnie Mouse Earring Holder 176 Make Yourself a Beloved Person 181 3. Writing as Practice and Process 187 4. This Never Happened 203 Notes 221 Bibliography 227 Index 235

SynopsisMy Life with Things is Elizabeth Chin's meditation on her relationship with consumer goods and a critical statement on the politics and method of anthropology in which she uses everyday items to intimately examine the ways consumption resonates with personal and social meaning., Unconventional and provocative, My Life with Things is Elizabeth Chin's meditation on her relationship with consumer goods and a critical statement on the politics and method of anthropology. Chin centers the book on diary entries that focus on everyday items-kitchen cabinet knobs, shoes, a piano-and uses them to intimately examine the ways consumption resonates with personal and social meaning: from writing love haikus about her favorite nail polish and discussing the racial implications of her tooth cap, to revealing how she used shopping to cope with a miscarriage and contemplating how her young daughter came to think that she needed Lunesta. Throughout, Chin keeps Karl Marx and his family's relationship to their possessions in mind, drawing parallels between Marx's napkins, the production of late nineteenth-century table linens, and Chin's own vintage linen collection. Unflinchingly and refreshingly honest, Chin unlocks the complexities of her attachments to, reliance on, and complicated relationships with her things. In so doing, she prompts readers to reconsider their own consumption, as well as their assumptions about the possibilities for creative scholarship., Unconventional and provocative, My Life with Things is Elizabeth Chin's meditation on her relationship with consumer goods and a critical statement on the politics and method of anthropology. Chin centers the book on diary entries that focus on everyday items--kitchen cabinet knobs, shoes, a piano--and uses them to intimately examine the ways consumption resonates with personal and social meaning: from writing love haikus about her favorite nail polish and discussing the racial implications of her tooth cap, to revealing how she used shopping to cope with a miscarriage and contemplating how her young daughter came to think that she needed Lunesta. Throughout, Chin keeps Karl Marx and his family's relationship to their possessions in mind, drawing parallels between Marx's napkins, the production of late nineteenth-century table linens, and Chin's own vintage linen collection. Unflinchingly and refreshingly honest, Chin unlocks the complexities of her attachments to, reliance on, and complicated relationships with her things. In so doing, she prompts readers to reconsider their own consumption, as well as their assumptions about the possibilities for creative scholarship.

LC Classification NumberHF5415.32.C456 2016