Meaningful Objects
Hermann Bausinger
Meanings and Things
This essay utilizes a number of simple examples, such as a ball, a stones, or a
chair, to examine how meaning becomes attached to objects – as well as how
this meaning is recalled. The argument is that function and meaning are recognized in the context of a reflective or unreflective process than occurs in the
(active) process of attaching meaning to such objects. This bringing up to
date sense should be separated from a historical sequence of recognition
than can result in a multiplicity of potential meaning. This complex model
also makes it possible to incorporate the theories of Leopold Schmidt (the
sacredness of from and objects) as well as Karl-Sigismund Kramer (the meaning of things).
[First published as Ding und Bedeutung. Österreichische Zeitschrift für
Volkskunde, Bd. LVIIII. No. 107. 193-210.]
Gábor Wilhelm
The Bottle and the Beer: On the Ordinary
Phenomenology of Things
Objects are those peculiarly durable forms of which our world is composed.
For the most part, they hover in the background, coming into the focus of
our attention only on certain occasions-the same may be said for the individual features of things. The purpose of this essay is to spotlight the role of
foreground/background, temporality, movement, and perspective as a cultural framework, by describing a selected object (a beer bottle) and the li-
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quid inside it (beer). The emphasis is first on the ordinariness of the chosen
object and material, and second, on the source of the background, knowledge, experience, and skill necessary to interpret and manage them in the
context of day-to-day life. At the same time, the study regards both objects
and materials as things that exist and affect each other whether we are there
or not, but that are nevertheless visible to various observers, who (observers
and objects) “create” them jointly as the means to something.
Zoltán Fejôs
Essay on a Knife
This study discusses the various levels of meaning associated with a knife
used to serve passengers on an aeroplane by first examining the object as an
instrument, then comparing it to other types and classes of knives. The knife
in question came from the Sri Lankan national airline and was originally kept
by its owner as a travel souvenir. During this phase of the object’s life, it was
regarded as a memento: an artefact in a small private collection, obtained
through the relatively common modern practice of collecting and preserving
keepsake items in the course of one’s travels. The knife additionally served a
secondary, practical function as an actual piece of cutlery, as well as bearing
further cultural meaning through a complex system of relationships that
resides where knife and air travel “meet”. Its connotations are linked to such
broader contextual dimensions as the complex experiential world of air travel,
itself a tapestry of particular ideas and images. The meaning attributed to
knives of this sort underwent its greatest change-one appreciable even in
sociohistoric terms-following the terrorist attacks perpetrated on the United
States on 11 September 2001, when their use was banned entirely. Since
then, on-board cutlery has in part returned to the world of air travel, though
it has also suffered recently under the influence of a new external force,
namely, the rather unsophisticated travel style introduced by modern budget
airlines. Within this latest context, the material of airborne eating utensils
has moved from metal to plastic, a transition that confers an air of rarity and
prestige to the use of the more traditional metal.
Zsófia Frazon
The Street Vendor’s Stand: From Calendar Item
to Subjective Speech
The present work spotlights an object that is known by a number of names:
pavillion, kiosk, booth, stall, or stand. The string of texts it presents demonstrate
how an everyday object from a public space can become, through various written formulations, an exhibited and researched museum piece that embodies both
questions and meanings for the field of ethnography. The approach is based on
the relationships between the nature of ethnography, text, and culture.
The street vendor’s stand examined in this study today resides in a museum and
is thus an object for research. As such, a variety of events occur in relation to
it (correspondence, telephone calls, visits, appraisals, donations, exhibition, and
study), so that its role changes from one situation to the next (it becomes, in
turn, an object of note-taking, scrutiny, research, agreement, display, and collection), each corresponding to some transformation undergone by the writer
of the particular text: from researcher to overseer, from expert to contracting
party, and from critic to fan. By describing the situations that have arisen and
the roles that have been played in considerable detail, it becomes possible to
understand the object in its own uniqueness, while still allowing the meanings
it bears to be placed within a broader cultural context.
Zoltán Kacsuk
Skateboard: On the Waves of a Concrete Sea
The study approaches the practices and meanings associated with skateboarding through the physical properties of the skateboard itself, first briefly discussing the past and present appearance of the skateboard, then outlining the
global and local spread of skateboard use, the significance of commercial
channels related to the sport, and key periods in the careers of skateboard
owners. Finally, in the last two sections, the relationships between the physical
attributes of the skateboard and the practice of skateboarding, the relationship
between the skateboard and its physical environment, and the ways in which
the skateboarding environment is occupied for use are examined.
Meaningful
Objects
Zsolt Szijártó
The “Scoubi” and “Scoubidou”:
Material Approaches
The present study concerns itself with a new hobby involving the weaving of
colourful acrylic string into various forms, pursued primarily by school-aged
children. The analysis focuses on how the product of this craft-the “scoubi”
and “scoubidou,” respectively-has become a common leisure time object and
on what typical thematic points this creative activity encompasses.
The study not only investigates how the object is used, but also attempts to
demonstrate where exactly the object is used and how it becomes embedded
in the lives of its users. The methodology applied to the analysis involves a
semi-structured interview with a selected individual, which reveals the various
forms the object takes, as well as its role in various biographical situations.
Péter Szuhay
Wristwatch Wall Clocks in Particular and in General
This study takes the reader on a peculiar tour of the North Hungarian community of Szendrõlád, beginning with the single giant wristwatch wall clock
owned by village resident Etelka Káló and ending with the general case of giant
wristwatch wall clocks owned by residents throughout the area. Wristwatchshaped wall clocks, now familiar to most Hungarians, may be viewed as products of late-20th-century civilisation, or-perhaps more accurately-of the
rather late entry of the social stratum that operates and maintains watches
into consumer society. The wristwatch wall clock, considered “tacky and tasteless” by the owners of both the cheaper and the more refined, nth-generation
wristwatches, is the analogue of original mass-produced wall clocks Hungarian
middle-peasant culture, the painted-faced box pendulum clock, or even perhaps the cuckoo clock. Though use of the wristwatch wall clock is not limited
to the ethnic Roma community, among the Roma of North Hungary, such
clocks are a typically middle-class phenomenon. They cannot be clearly labeled
as “ethnic” in nature, as they are used neither by very poor, nor by very rich
Roma families; nor by families belonging to the local (Hungarian) peasant
classes. On the other hand, one does find this object among Hungarian groups
who, as with middle class Roma families, have entered the arena of general
consumer culture only recently-have been absorbed into “civilization” with
similar speed-and where people have similarly begun to feel that the fact of
their absorption has raised them out of a state of social backwardness and
marginality. Thus, for such social groups, consumption-and with it the wristwatch wall clock-has become part of the positive self-image of the group as a
whole and of the self-esteem of individual members.
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József Vízi Kriston
Mouse on the Pad – The Folklore of the Periphery,
and Folklore on the Periphery
In the summer of 2002, the author of the present work launched an private
investigation into the manner of use of an important “peripheral” piece of
computer equipment: the mouse. One result of this research was a collection
of some 150 mouse pads from both domestic and foreign sources suitable
both for developing a typology of the object, and for establishing directions
for further research. In the autumn of 2003, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Hungarian mathematician János Neumann,
both the collector and his labours were imbued with fresh momentum: the
private collection was given the opportunity of appearing in an exhibition
that would appear first in Budapest, then in other cities of Hungary. The
places visited by the collected mice and the opportunities their exhibition
afforded generated a succession of novel ideas: a PC quiz competition, a
working session for private collectors, the production of illustrative musical
programs, etc. The collection, which currently numbers over 500 specimens,
is used not only for studies of the general variety (mode of use; the nature
of perpetual collection), but also for the investigation of individual phenomena
(the mouse pad from an anthropological standpoint).
Miklós Rékai
Perpetual Lamp
The perpetual lamp, as a ritual object that occupies a special place in the rites
of Judeo-Christian culture: in peeling back the layers of meaning surrounding the lamp examined by this study, this first meaning diverges from (and
at the same time merges with)-to a religious-historical degree-the history
and memories (or forgotten things) of a family and the individual fates of its
owners, and as it does, the events of “greater history,” too, are revealed. In
the end, the object finds itself in hands that strip back the layers, projecting
one upon the other, so that the mosaic of religious, cultural, social, and personal memory might be pieced together.
Júlia Vörös
“Have you ever seen…a frog on a hot summer day?”
In studying the realm of meaning surrounding a frog figure rescued from a
pile of junk on trash day in a foreign country, I have invoked such thought
processes, mental patterns, and subject cognitive experiences as are not ge-
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nerally accepted as elements of scientific thought or the cognitive process.
Apart from drawing conclusions on methodology, the study’s situative textual material-snippets of text that may themselves be regarded as cognitive
exercises-attempt to reconstruct the initial stage of cognition in an overtly
“overwritten,” “object-oriented” fashion. The identification of the various
meanings of an object (where is meaning born and where does it reside?), its
definition in terms of situation (how does the system of meanings surrounding an object change?), and instances of the interplay between cultural and
personal meaning/reading enable us to distinguish between various levels of
meaning, forms of objective speech, frameworks of interpretation, and the
microcultural units and consumer practices surrounding the frog itself. In
this way, what we get is not the story of the frog, but the threads of a story
which, when woven together, reveal the sundry lives lived by the meanings
of the frog.
Tünde Turai
Objects Locked in Ritual; Ritual Framed by Objects
Through an investigation of the confirmation ritual as practised in the
Szilágyság region of North-West Transylvania, the present study examines
the various meanings born of or altered by the transformation of an object
from ordinary article into gift, and of/by the gift’s traversing the ritual channel from giver to recipient. Confirmation is not merely a context, an occasion
for gift-giving, but an event in which a gift follows a prescribed passage
between the individual presenting it and the one receiving it. Along the way,
the respective contents of object and ritual influence one another, thus regulating the various meanings that might be attributed to them. As another
consequence of its progress, the object itself becomes permeated with traces
of its passage. The gifts received by those undergoing confirmation in the
region in question in 2004 were (in order of frequency of occurrence) money,
jewellery, clothes, trousseau-type items, electronics, confections, and books:
all objects that function as profane accessories to ordinary life, but that upon
entering a realm of religious significance, may also take on more elevated
meanings. Such items, though functioning according to the rules of the ritual while locked within its confines, at the same time have significant
impact on the occasion that prompted their being given.
Magda Szapu
Andrea Vándor
The Trick Mug and Similar Items –
Gifts Exchanged by Friends
www.obanyaturist.hu – Or Stories of a Trick Jug
and an Ash Tray
The purpose of this study is to develop, through the example of the gifts
exchanged by young friends, a new, primarily cultural approach to the question of how material environments change with advancing age and changing values systems; and to discuss and understand the relationship between
this material environment and the members of a small social group within
the little-discussed process of gift-giving. The study seeks to answer the following questions: What is the role of the gift among close friends of this age
group? How great an influence is exerted by age on the practice of gift-giving?
What does the object given express? How are gestures and intentions imparted
with materiality? What is most decisive in the process of gift-giving: the
occasion, the object itself, or the person of the giver? To what extent does
fashion affect the exchange process? How is the individuality of the recipient manifested in the culture of physical objects? How does supply affect
consumer demand? In responding to these questions, the study focuses on a
single family member and her extended circle of friends during two separate
age intervals (secondary school students between the ages of 16 and 18, and
university students between the ages of 22 and 24) and residing in two different locations (Kaposvár and Budapest).
The present study examines the circumstances under which two objects currently residing in the Ethnography Museum of Pécs, both produced in
Óbánya in 2003, were originally conceived. Each of the objects in question –
a traditional trick jug and an ash tray-stands out from other objects in the
collection: the first was of a type never before produced in Óbánya, while the
second falls outside the standard canon of folk ceramic forms. Stories
regarding the jug speak of its makers, of the various “life-worlds” that developed-either in succession or in parallel-from the 1940’s onward, and of the
changes that brought objects of this sort to be made there. Stories of the
ashtray, on the other hand, approach production from the standpoint of the
consumer. The study comes to define the ashtray’s place among other objects
in the collection by examining both changes in local tourist offerings and the
general phenomena surrounding tourism in the area.
Károly Zsolt Nagy
“The tulip… now that’ll really get you going!”
Thoughts on the Development of the
Potter’s Craft in Homrogd
Homrogd is a village of scarcely one thousand souls located in the multiply
disadvantaged region of Cserehát in northern Hungary. In the Cserehát, one
of the only potential means for survival is to develop a working tourist industry, though for this to occur, a village must be able to produce some sight
worth seeing. In this brief case study, the author attempts, through participatory observation, to demonstrate just how such “sights” are created.
Strategies for personal and community survival under the conditions prevalent in the community are interrelated. In the focal point of the present case
study are two novice potters struggling to find their way. Their task, beyond
merely making a living, is to find and create the symbol of a community
seeking to construct its own identity.
Krisztina Sedlmayr
The Button Box
The present work concerns a tin box kept in a residence in Budapest, and the
button collection it contains. The red box came to Hungary from Chicago in
the early 1950s, the alcohol-steeped fruit cake inside intended by a friend of
my grandparents to add a splash of colour to our otherwise drab, day-to-day
lives. While the cake was soon consumed, the packaging endured: my grandmother kept her button collection in it for the rest of her life, and though
the collection continually grew as new specimens were added, it was also
continually depleted as buttons were taken out to be used. Today, it is
primarily a souvenir, a symbol of the relationship between a past generation
and the material goods it possessed. Additionally, it serves as an example of
how an everyday object becomes a relic, while still preserving its original
function.
Edina Földessy
The Plasticised Bristle: The Brooms of Paris,
Then and Now
This study concerns a seemingly simple, everyday object of utility: the twig
broom made of injection-moulded plastic of the type used by the streetsweepers of Paris. This object reveals not only the advantages and limitations
Meaningful
Objects
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of technological development, but also the cultural-historical particulars of
big-city trash generation and removal. In this broom, polyethylene, an
important new material for modern society, connects form with material, the
present with the past, what is its own with what is foreign, tradition with
innovation. To all this, the study adds the challenges and possibilities of a
personal story and the building of a museum collection, separating meanings
and stories from each other, so that it can then put them all together again.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara
Difficult Matters: Objects and Narratives that Disturb
and Affect
Contemporary art has blurred the distinction between artist and curator,
treated the museum as an art practice in its own right, and developed concepts and models such as the project and the social sculpture. An examples
is Difficult Matters: Objects and Narratives that Disturb and Affect, which
was organized by Riksutställningar, Swedish Travelling Exhibitions and SAMDOK. Installed in an enormous truck, the exhibition traveled throughout
Sweden, making stops in the town squares. This project performs much of the
theory that interests me. It configures the relationship between information
and experience, things and stories, thinking and feeling, and hard and soft
mastery in ways that are consistent with a performing museology. In a kind
of reverse engineering, it does not try to make a technological interface more
personable, but rather it installs the curators within the exhibition and provides an actual human interface.
[From the author’s Keynote address, Museums 2000: Confirmation or
Challenge, organized by ICOM Sweden, the Swedish Museum Association
and the Swedish Travelling Exhibition/Riksutställningar in Vadstena, Sept 29,
2000.]
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