ABSTRACT
Studies in materiality are at a moment of a conceptual shift from a cultural to speculative paradigm. This shift developed from conflicts over the agency of things—a standpoint that the speculative materialism proclaims and the cultural method defies—which has opened space for the revision of approaches to material culture as well as for new methodological frames to conceptualize materiality in modern contexts. This chapter offers a method in the study of materiality that draws on cultural materialisms (mainly the culturalist and anthropological ones) and combines their research tools to speak of popular culture as a lens for analyzing material reality. It uses the culturalist idea of field (popular culture) and discusses it in terms of cultural infrastructure to show that most of our material experience is an effect of the working of processes, specific for each cultural domain. My thinking of popular culture in terms of processes was inspired by studies in modernization (Fornäs, Giddens, Beck, Lash), which describe contemporary cultural conditions with respect to procedures (rather than effects). Following this approach, this chapter distinguishes and theoretically systematizes processes typical for popular culture and studies them in relation to ‘the life of things.’ The temporal frame of my analysis is late modernity with a focus on the latest experience of popular and material cultures. A binding notion for the study of both is popular materialism—a concept I coin to reflect on the plurality of the materialist approach. It helps consolidate the popular method and outline a wider perspective for defining materiality in culture today.
