Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China

Couverture
University of Hawaii Press, 31 mai 2004 - 240 pages

Now in paperback

This outstanding and original book, presented here with a new preface, examines the history of material culture in early modern China. Craig Clunas analyzes “superfluous things”—the paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics, carved jade, and other objects owned by the elites of Ming China—and describes contemporary attitudes to them. He informs his discussions with reference to both socio-cultural theory and current debates on eighteenth-century England concerning luxury, conspicuous consumption, and the growth of the consumer society.

À l'intérieur du livre

Table des matières

Introduction
1
Ideas about things
40
Words about things
75
Things of the past
91
Things in motion
116
Anxieties about things
141

Autres éditions - Tout afficher

Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 199 - Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); and Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, ed.
Page 203 - Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985).

À propos de l'auteur (2004)

Craig Clunas is Percival David Chair of Chinese Art at SOAS, London, and the author of Superfluous Things, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, and Art in China.

Informations bibliographiques