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23

STYLE DESIGN ND FUNCTION

Margaret W. onkey

How

can one

address

these three

topics-

style,

design and function - in a single chapter? Of

course they are interrelated; perhaps one can

not

really discuss one

without

both of the

others? How can there be style without a func

tion? How can there be style without design

and

design conventions? These three entan

gled concepts have been core concepts, but

with a variable history of use

and

centrality in

our

study of material culture. They have been

addressed in

a multiplicity of

ways,

and

have

been both responsive to

and,

less frequently,

defining of many shifts in material culture

theory and interpretation over the

past

century

or more. The primary players in the

study and

uses of s le and design

have

been

art

histori

ans and,

within

anthropology, archaeolog1sts.

Social and cultural anthropology

has been

less

concerned with such concepts, if only because

their

engagement

with the material world of

human life has been notably erratic, coming

to some fruition

and

promise primarily in the

past

few decades.

The main objective of this chapter is to pro

vide historical perspectives on

how

design and

style have been used in the study of material

culture, especially within an anthropological

and cultural framework. I will suggest that this

histo has been directl influenced b shiftin

anthro olo cal a roaches to the stud of

both

technology and 'art'. These trends have also

directly impacted the place and understandings

of the function(s) of material culture. I will con

clude with just a few of the social

and

cultural

insights that have

been

generated through the

study of design and style,

with

particular refer

ence to recent studies of cloth.

Although there has been an impressive 'turn'

to the object world in the past two decades, the

social scientists

who

study material culture

have primarily been concerned with the rela-

tionships

between

people and things, more so

than in the thiilgs t m s l v Thus, it is not

surprising to see fewer studies of design and

style than might

be

expected with this new

materiality. As the title of Sillitoe s (1988) article

says so succinctly, our concerns have shifted

from [the] head-dress to head-messages , and

Ingold

(2004)

has expressed concern that we

have

often lost the material

in our

studies of

materiality. 1hona y recen s 1es ave

also been more focused

on

how objects con

struct and express social identities without,

however, simply referring to these as the func

tions of the objects. This is primarily because

t

he

studies have simultaneously been con

cerned with the social practices in which objects

are

embedded,

and, in a quite new direction,

with

'the dynamics

of recontextualization,

valuation

and

remterpretation they (objects)

undergo

along their trajectories through differ

ent

cultural

and

historical contexts (Leite

2004).

In a way, objects today are more

'on

the move'

and 'in circulation ; they are not standing still

long enough, perhaps, for a more traditional

(and often static?) stylistic analysis, functional

interpretation and/

or

capturing of principles of

design. As Wobst says so succinctly in

is

important

reassessment of his

own

very influ

ential work on style (Wobst

1977),

style never

quite gets there , it never stays . t s always in

contest, in motion, unresolved, discursive, in

process (Wobst

1999: 130).

While the

trajectories

of material culture

and

~

have been revealed and inferred with

new theoretical perspectives (e.g., Appadurai

1986;

Kopytoff

1986;

Thomas

1991;

Miller

1998; Spyer 1998; Phillips and Steiner 1999;

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56 PROCESS ND TR NSFORM TION

Myers 2001), there has also been a theoretical

trajecto of material culture them

se ves

witnm

anthropology

and

related fields,

including

an important new kind

of connec

tion

between

sociocultural

anthropology

ethnography

and

archaeology (Brumfiel 2003).

These often

mutual

dialogues may

perhaps

best

be

seen in the approaches to the study of

'technology' (see Eglash

in

Chapter 21 or in

Dobres

and

Hoffman 1999),

and

to the

study

of

'art'

or image making. Intra- and interdiscipli

nary connections may also be heightened by

the current widespread recognition,

and

per

haps

growing importance in our globalized

worlds, of the increased value and power of

objects from the

past

or from

'the other'

(e.g.,

Hobsbawm and

Ranger

1983;

Lowenthal1985;

Handler 1988; Price 1989), especially in the cre

ation

and suppor

t of national

and

other politi

cal identities and negotiations. Although this

chapter will dwell more

on

the anthropological

trends, concerns

and

accomplishments, it goes

without saying that the re-engagement with

the object

world

has been strikingly -

but

not

surprisingly - interdisciplinary; just note

the 'disciplines' represented by the authors

of articles in the Journal of Material ulture

(Leite 2004).

One reason to focus primarily on the anthro

pological approaches to material culture and

the object world is because anthropology has

had an erratic history, an on-again/off-again,

often distancing relationship

with

'things'. This

makes for a interesting inquiry into

why

it was

distanced and then re-engaged: what are the

theoretical or disciplinary influences or pro

moters of such re-engagement that might yield

insights into the field of material culture stud

ies? There will also be a tendency toward the

anthropological here because anthropological

inquiry, distinctively balances (or tries to) two

dimensions:

on

the one

hand,

the local-level,

sma

ll-scale studies using most often (in ethnog

raphy

and

ethnoarchaeology) the participant

observation method.

On

the

other hand,

anthropology attempts a holism that prefers to

not take separate slices of the cultural 'pie'

but

to understand the intersectionalities

and

situat

edness of

human

life, behaviors and meanings

in an as-complete-as-possible social and cultural

context (after Pfaffenberger 1988: 245), That is,

the very multi-scalar nature of the anthro olog

~ a

entefErise allows us to cons1 er the

maten

world and

o jects

at

multiple scales as well.

Ana,

as

many

recent studies have shown, this is

precisely one fascination and excite

material culture stu

1es

at t e tum of the

~

SOMETHING OF HISTORIC L

OVERVIEW

Of course, Franz Boas 1927, see also Jonaitis

1995) is usually the anthropological baseline for

the

study

of objects

and

'primitive art', although

contemporary material culture studies today

would

go back to major theorists of culture (e.g.,

Marx, Veblen, Simmel). Even though Boas's

1927) chapter 5 was on 'style', anthropologists

usually trace their roots in the

study

of style to

Kroeber (e.g., 1919, 1957) and the art historical

roots to scholars such as Wolfflin 1932; see also

Gombrich 1960; Saiierlander 1983). Lemonnier

1 3b:

7) identified the 1930s as the period

when

there is a noticeable decline in an interest

in material culture; it was only in France, he

points out, that an institutionalized

study

of the

anthropology of techniques took hold.Thus, the

work

of Mauss (e.g., 1935) on techniques du corps

as well as his more

we

ll

known

s

tud

y The

Gift

1967

/1925) may provide an important bridge

between this time period

and what would

become, by the 1980s, an increasingly robust

field of technology studies (e.g. Lemonnier 1986,

1993a; Pfaffenberger 1988, among many; see

Eglash, Chapter

21

in this volume). Lemonnier

notes 1986: 181

n.

3) that

in

one valiant attempt

at recuperating the anthropological

study

of

material culture, Reynolds 1983) astutely 'mar

vels justly at the immediate disinterest of ethnol

ogists for the objects they confer on museums as

soon as they are deposited'.

This is

not

to say, though, that within this so

called

'gap'

there was little being done; it's just

not

of major focus in

an

anthropology of objects

that is waiting backstage for certain trends to

pass on

and

for the curtain to be opened on to a

more robust engagement

with

the object world.

First, archaeology does not really experience a

gap,

but

this is

not

surprising, given its depen

dence

on

material culture. However, despite

the momentum established with the rise of

the so-call

ed New

(or processual) Archaeology

with its emphasis on understandmg the nature

and

si cance of variabiliry in the archaeolo -

ical record B

ord

1962, 1965 , an e stu ies

hat ed

stylistic attributes to

soCial

phenom

~ e . g . , Hill1970, Longacre 1970 and chapters

in Binford and Binford 1968), the primary flurrx

of arc aeolo cal discussion and debate on

for example, came in the two eca es

~ n

1270

and

1990. In fact,

we

oole conveying 'considerable information about

its producers

and

their culture\ there is not y

et

a firm differentiation between the audiences to

whom

this information is being conveyed: to

the other members of the cultural group

under

consideration or to the anthropologists

who

are using the style to infer information (see

also the Sackett-Wiessner debate in Sackett

1985)? This query, as

phrased

in the informa

tion theory jargon

that

Silver also anticipates,

would

be 'To

whom

is the style signaling,

and

what

is it signaling?'

e

.g., Sterner 1989). Thus,

.1 the second

dimen

sion to the

study

of style

at this time was the convergence of thinking

about style in anthropological

o n t e x t s

i t h

the

parallel

develo,ments

in information

theor

and

lingttistic metaphors for t e mtef-

pretation of culture. e 1970s

and

s,

or

example,

it would have

been

hard

to miss the

idea

that

style in material culture

was

trans

mitting information (for the classic expression

of this, see Wobst 1977), an approach that has

not

disappeared

but

only, perhaps, become

more nuanced (e.g., VanWyck 2003).

Not

sur

prisingly, more recent studies of material

culture - its s les, des1 s and functions-:

have

c allen

ed

or es ewe t e nmac of

r

e gmstic an anguage me ap ors e.g.,

artifact as text),

and

a

somewhat

bald commu

nication a

roach

(e.g., McCrae

en S;

Dietler and erbich 1989; Conkey 1990: 10-11;

MacKenzie 1991 : 24-5; Gell1998; Stahl2002).

THE STORY OF

STYLE

BRINGING

LONG DESIGN

ND FUNCTION

or types of style

e

.g., Bascom 1969, Plog 1983)?

Does style have

any

function

or

is style a pri

mary

way to

'do'

certain cultural things,

such

as communicate, negotiate,

or

reinforce ethnic

ity or identities? Can we use style to classify

different so-called 'cultures'

and

to chart

them

through space and time?

The second trend has been either to not worry

I f

about any definitions of or specific analytical

methods for the study of s le and just assume

it,

and

go

on

to other anthropological questions,

or to reconceptualize style completely. Two inno

vative and intriguing approaches here

would

be

Wobst's

1999)

notion of style as 'interventions',

or Wilk's

1995, 2004)

conce t of 'co

mmon

dif

ference' . As well, some other theoretical trends,

su as the uses of practice theory, have in\.pli

cations for concepts, such as that of 'traditions',

which have long been rooted in concepts of style

e

.g., Lightfoot 2001). Let us first

turn

to one

summary

historical account, starting with the

foundational culture history approaches

and

then move to consider

'what's

new?'

As noted above, gyk_became rooted in

anthropological analyses

with

the culture hi

S ;

li'Y\e__

torical

approaches

of the 1930s to 1960s,

approaches that have not really gone away

JQ

culture

hi

storians (e.g., Kreiger 1944) style

was

in the service of chronology and the tyRologies

that were

developed to

order

the material

world

were explicitly time-sensitive. For

both

art histo

and

anthro olo 'stilus ' (styk) and

'c onos' time

would

intersect (Sauerlander

983). Style was a self-evident concept upon

which historical understandings were based.

Archaeolo ists, at least, still de end u on the

roducts 0 e cu ture-history approac ana

its concep an uses o s

e:

e pas , anaeven

'

other

cultures' ethnographically, are often

divided into spatial

and

temporal units

with

labels

and

these,

in

turn, have allowed the con

struction of unquestioned periodizations (e.g.,

the Mesolithic) that are based on and thus

privilege certain tools, technologies, 'styles' of

ceramics or of other material

s.

The

ethnographic study

of

'things' was

somehow delegated or fell to the museological

world, which had similar concerns to dili

gently catalog material objects, with, perhaps,

an overemphasis on the form of the objects,

with

function or context infrequently of con

sideration. With such approaches, there are ele

gant

typologies

and

closely

honed

studies of

the formal relationships among the material

objects themselves, but, in general, 'the artefact

becomes recontextualized as an object of scien

tific anal sis

within

a Western discourse, and

its meanin is divorced from its ori m as

an

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36 PROCESS ND TR NSFORM T IO

indigenous

product'

(MacKenzie 1991: 23) .

Style has continued to be a specific analytical

tool

but beyond

just to locate social units

and

to chart

them

through time

and

s ace

or

in

order to organize

o ~ n

museums.

was

used to er, measure

or

orm on

more

s- ecific social

and

cultural rocesses,

such

as

soCla

interaction (e.g., - Frie ric

r970 ]ai1a

social exchange (see Plog 1978 for a review).

In

archaeology,

at

least, the debates were more

about w

hat

the given 'formal variation' that is

style referred to

or

derived from.

There seem

not

to be

many

debates these

days about

how

to 'measure' style, where to

'locate' style,

or

the function(s) of style.

On

the

one

hand,

some have suggested two dismis

sive directions: Boast (1997) is ready to get rid

of style; it is

'not

a meaningful analytical cate

gory in the hermeneutic account of social

action' that he outlines (Boast 1997: 189). Or,

according to

many

(but

not

all) contributors

to one edited volume (Lorblanchet

and

Bahn

1993),

we

have

moved

into

what

they call the

'pos

t-stylistic era',

at

least

in

the

study

of rock

iJit..

This is attributed

not

so

much

to

any

new

theoretical frameworks,

but

to

such

things as

more viable dating techniques, pigment studies,

and qliestionSlliat go eyon establishing artis

tic chronologies based

on

mere stylistic impres

sions (Lorblanchet 1990: 20). This is a reaction

to the persistence of

how

'stilus'

and

'chronos'

have intersected;

how

chronologies have been

all too

un

uestionabl

based

on

assumed

notions

an

i entifications of style. Some stud

ies explicitly refuse to produce a chronological

scheme based

on

changes

in

style, which

had

led previous researchers

away

from careful

study

of the cont

en

t of images or 'arts' (e.g.,

Garlake 1995).

On

the other

hand,

perhaps

ironically, there

is something of a return to some of the more

culture-historical understandings of style

and

variation in material culture,

and

a less pro

grammatic approach to the uses

and

concepts

of style. First,

J.b.e

ver eneral idea of s le as

being

'a way

of doing' has reappeart;,. e.g.,

Wiessner 1990,

but

contrast

with Hodder

1990),

if it ever really

went

away. This, however is a

notion that is much more om lex an a a

S

s1ve normativism a s revailed intra-

ditional culture-historical studies. Style is

tak

en now

as

'a

way

of

domg' but

also as some

thing more than that; style is

part

of the means

by

which

humans

make sense of their

world

ana

with

which cultural meanings are always

in roduction.

To

a certain extent, these approaches, concerns,

new labels

and

even dismissals actually signal

a continued engagement

with

'style' -

how

could

we

ever

ot

work with aspects of variation

in material culture that are

produced

in and

constitutive of

human

cultural

and

social life?

These trends are a quiet

way

of rethinking

style,

and

of framing it within

new

theoretical

approaches

e

.g., practice theory, culture-as

production,

technological

and operational

choices, communities of practice),

new

method

ological possibilities (e.g., chronometric dating

techniques),

and

richer

and

more

nuanced

understandings of material culture, of

humans

as being simultaneously symbolists

and

mate

rialists,

and

of the 'social life of things' (e.g.,

Appadurai

1986). But, once again, there is

no one comprehensive theory of style,

nor

a call for one; neither is there a specific analytic

tool kit

that

one can just pick

up

and apply

to

a set of things.

This is not, however, to abandon discussion

and

suggestions for

how

to use some under

standings about style

in

the

study

of material

culture. Taking the extreme approach of Boast

(1997), for example, one cou

ld

argue

that

he

is

not

really dismissing style completely, but,

rather, critiquing that the

past

uses of the con

cept of style have perlfietuated the Cartesian

boundaries between umans and

objects,

'between the active

us

from

an

inactive

its

(1997: 190; see also,

he

suggests, Latour 1992

and

Akrich 1992).

He

is

not

alone

in

arguing

for a different and more 'active' or agential

dimension to objects, images

and

things (e.g.,

Gell1998).

He

is also suggesting

that

a concept

of s le is 'de

endent upon

a s ecific set of

assum

tions a

out

ow

t e social

world

wor

'

witn1ittle o t u

beyo

nd

a

vernacular distinction between social forms

d1sfingwsned

within

a consumerist society'

{Boast

1997:

190, 191). Both concerns are

worth

discussion; some of us can readily accept the

first

but

perhaps

not

the second.

In

any

event,

such ideas have found their

way

from Boast

and

from other authors into contemporary

debates

and

studies

e

.g., for discussions

and

critique of Cell's agency theory of art, see in

Pinney

and

Thomas 2001 or Layton 2003).

SO what's

new?

t ere

again, although the

focus is

on

style, it is

not

reall

ossfble10

av d illUmes into function

and

studies -of

First, there are several intriguing

new

ways of conceptualizing 'style', and I mention

only two here. In

the long awaited

update

from

Wobst (1999) concerning his

contemporary

thoughts

about

'style'

now that we

are some

twenty-five years from his paradigm-setting

paper

of 1977, he embraces style more ambi

tiously

and

enthusiastically: style is

that

aspect

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STYLE DES I

GN

AND FUNCTION

36

of

our

material world that talks

and

interferes

in the social field (1999 : 125); stylistic form on

artifacts interferes materially with humans

(p. 120, emphasis his). Since his original view

stressed the communicative

fUi1c

tions of style,

style as messaging

th

ou

h all e

features, Wobst reports now

on

his mel

lowed functionalism (1999: 124). He takes

up

Giddens's notion of enstructuration, which

allows for contemporaneous social actors to

arrive at different optimal solutions (even in

the same social context), something that is very

difficult to accommodate

in many

of the overly

functionalist paradigms' (Wobst 1999: 125) . He

elaborates as to how even the

most

obvious

and apparent functional aspects of an object

(such as the

working

edge of a tool) are insep

arably interwoven

with

social dynamic

s;

after

all, these functional features themselves help

constitute, constrain or alter the social field

(1999:

126). Lastly,

hi

s discussion

on

the deeply

problematic implications of the effects of cer

tain long-standing methodological approaches

to style, especially

in

archaeology, is particu

larly provocative, although substantive consid

eration here is

not

possible. Wobst shows

how

the predominant uses of styielUlve promoted

a focus

on

sameness ('structuring

data

into

intemall

homo

eneous es and

th

e 'su -

pression of variance

),

an

this

ha

s

not

just

reduced social variance

in

the

human

past,

but

serves certain social

and

political agendas

in

the present (1999 : 127-9). After all, don't admin

istrators of all sorts strive for docile underlings

who manifest similarities in template, action

and symbols ?

Another provocative approach is that

by

Rick Wilk

.{e.g.,

1995, 2004) in which he seeks to

understand

the processes whereby what is

often called style comes into existence and is

worked out

and

a ears to s read or, as

we

u

SedtO

think, diffuse . Rat er an invo g

'stye', Wilk coins t m of 'common differ

ence , which is a code

and

a set of practices that

narrow difference into

an

a

eed-u on

s stem,

whereby some kinds 0

d"

erence are cu ti

vated and others are suppressed.

An

art style,

~ e c i l l y a widestread one (his 2004 example

is the famous mec style

in

early Meso

America) is really

an

arena within which dif

ferences can be expressed, yet

man

of these

are e ted, ~ a system of o ~ o n e:

ence IS roduced.

And

the really interesting

questions are the agential ones:

who

controls

what

the rules will be,

and how

are

th

ese

accepted

and

agreed to? His

own

ethnographic

work (on beauty pageants in Belize) suggests

that there may be

what

appears as a resulting

hegemony of form but not necessarily of

significances. What might appear as some sort of

tradition or even a cultural adoption may well

be much more dynamic, and such a c o n c e ~ t as

e ucidate m the specifics (e.g.

Wllk 2 04)

-

resonates with the rethinking of the very concept

of tradition (e.g., Hobsbawm

and

Ranger

1983;

Pauketat 2001) . Traditions, styles

and

systems

of common difference are being shown as

diachronic henomena, as loci for olitical inno

vation and even resistance, as c tur ro uc

tions

ou

a ractices e.g., rown 1998;

Lightfoot

2001).

As

we

recognize that globaliza

tion is just a current variant of the long-standing

circulation of objects within

and

through social

forms and social relations,

we

are increasingly

drawn to more dynamic notions about the

mutability of things in recontextualization

(Thomas

1989:

49).

Thus, things and styles are not the (essential)

things they

used

to be. The pervasive

under

standings of objects as being referable to some

(usually single) essential categories or phenom

ena has been quite successfully challenged,

at least among many scholars. It is difficult to

sustain, for example, that all the Neolithic fig

urines of females can be referred to some essen

tialized, transhistorical concept of fertility

(e.g., Conkey

and

Tringham 1995; Goodison

and

Morris 1998), that Paleolithic cave art is

all referable to (hunting) magic , or that string

bag

s

(bilum)

among the Telefol-speaking people

of the Mountain Ok (New Guinea) are merely

women's

(and therefore unvalued)

'things'

(MacKenzie 1991). The Ion -standin tendenc

9

view objects, throu their sty es an arms,

as absolutes of human experience has given

way

to the idea that objects, o ~ sJyles

and functions are evolving, more mutable,

and

iilliltivalent,

without

essentia

e r t i And

wfule this has certainly made the interpretive

task more complicated

and

challenging, it

nonetheless

ha

s simultaneously

opened

the

door to new

and

hopefully more enlightening

perspectives. For example, rather than assum

ing that

many

objects

and

forms carmot

be

explained because we carmot readily substanti

ate empirically such things as symbol and

meaning - especially in archaeological

contexts

it is now possible to use empirical work - such

as

in

technological processes (e.g., Lechtrnan

1984; Dietler

and

Herbich 1998; Stark 1999) or

studies of pigments

and

colors (e.g., Boser

Sarivaxevanis 1969) - to reconceptualize

objects, forms and images as material ractice>

and performances with ~ a

g e s

to social facts

a n d c

u l t u r ~

ogics

(e

.g., Ingold 1993,

among

many).

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36

PROCESS ND TR NSFORM TION

RECENT APPROACHES TO

TECHNOLOGY ND ART THAT HAVE

INFLUENCED UNDERSTANDINGS

ND USES OF STYLE DESIGN

ND

FUNCTION

As already suggested, trends in the study

of our three characters - style, design, and

function - have been integrally enmeshed in,

produced

by and

yet contributed t? shifts and

concerns

in

the broader anthropological and cul

tural interests in the study of technology, on the

one hand e .g., Lemonnier 1986, 1993a; Dobres

and

Hoffman 1999; see Eglash, Chapter 21 in

this volume)

and art ,

on the

other

(e.g.,

Morphy 1994). In some ways, the trends in the

study of technology may have had more

~

impact

on our

three characters;

perhaps

this

S

due to the growth of social studies of science

and technology (e.g., Jasanoff et al. 1995). From

Lechtrnan's (1977, 1984) important work that

argued for the place and power f technologi

cal practice and therefore of ventable ~ e c h n o -

logical styles in the making a n ~ meanmgs of

objects, to the engagement

with

technology

sensu latu) as cultural productions, material

culture has not been thought of in quite the

same way, and certainly no longer as just the

'forms'

or

end products of previously unspeci

fied, often

assumed or

ignored practices

and

social relations of production. For a concept of

'style' in the manner of Schapiro (1953), with

a focus on forms, on form relationships, there

was no

immediate attention to an understand

ing of the practices and social relations that

brought such forms into existence. One illus

trative case study that might attest how far we

have come

in

the integration of technologies,

productive practices and social contexts

in

the

making of 'things' and

in

the definition of style

would be the continuing work by Dietler and

Herbich (e.g., 1989, 1998)

on

Luo

~ o t t e r y

ma.k-

ing. Here, they r e ~ us of n?t

JUSt

the dis

tinction between

thmgs and techmques

cf. Mauss

1935), but of the two (often conflated) senses of

style: style ofaction and material style From sev

eral decades of

new

approaches to understand

ing technology (e.g., Lemonnier 1986, 1993a;

Pfaffenberger 1988, 1992; Ingold 1993; Dobres

and Hoffman 1994; Dobres 1995, 2000), and

from Bourdieu's (1977) concept of habitus,

Dietler and Herbich

1998)

put together a com

pelling case study of a more dynamic an?

deeply social understanding of

what had

previ

ously often been a focus

on

a static c o n ~ e p t

of style and a mechanistic set of assumptions

about the uses of style either to 'mark' social

boundaries or, on the part of the analyst, to infer

them (see also, e.g.,

Hegmon

1998, among

others). In fact, to talk today about an under

standing of 'style' cannot be separated from our

understandings both of 'technology' and of the

practices

and

production of social relations. And,

as Dietler and Herbich discuss, these approaches

extend to the design conventions

and

decora

tions that so often stand for 'style': An under

standing of the social origins and i ~ c a n c . e

material culture will not come from readmg

the decorations as text (see Lemonnier 1990). t

requires a dynamic, diachronic perspective

founded

upon

an appreciation of the contexts of

both production and

consumption (see Dietler

and Herbich 1994) .. ' (Dietler and Herbich 1998:

244).

Because of the intertwined reconsidera

tions of style

and

of technology, neither will be

understood

in

the same ways again.

Especially since the 1950s,

a n t h r o p o l o g i c ~ l

approaches to art, especially in small-scale soci

eties have focused on the mechanisms and

n a ~ e of the messages carried

by

art',

drawing

upon either psychological

or

linguistic (tex

tual, semiotic, communication) models,

and

following in 'the functionalist and structuralist

modes of anthropology' (Graburn 2001: 765) .

Many of these were, of course, more syn

chronic, ahistorical and

normative, and

the diachronic, temporal

and

historical poten

tials of material culture were yet to be recog

nized,

much

less realized. With psycholo ?ical

approaches, style

might

be c o ~ c e p t u a h 7 e ~

as 'aestheticized versions of soCial fantasies

(Grabum

2001: 765)

that give security or plea

sure, as in Fischer (1961), who proposed that

different (evolutionary) types of societies (egal

itarian or

hierarchical)

tended

to produce

designs that were material and visual correlates

of their prevailing social structure. ~ o w e v e r

it has been the linguistic approaches m art, as

well as to material culture more broadly, which

have prevailed, including

t r u c t u r a l i s ~

( ~ s p i r e d

by Levi-Strauss

1963:

245-76); sermotic (e.g.,

Riggins

1994);

and art-as-communication (e.g.

Forge 1970, Munn 1973 as early, if not ? m e ' : ' ~ a t

precocious, examples). Morphy 1994) Identifies

two primary influences that o ~ t e r e d t h ~ re-entry

of art into the a n t h r o p o l o g ~ c a l mainstream.

On the one hand, a more culturally oriented

archaeology was spawned, especially at

Cambridge in the 1980s; many of today's m o ~ t

active material culture researchers have had this

kind of archaeological background. On the

other hand,

but

not, in fact, distinct from the

so-called 'post-processual' archaeologies,

~ a s

the expansion of an anthropology of meanmg

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STYLE

DESIGN, ND FUNCTION 6

and

symbolism: content

was

joined with form

(Morphy 1994: 659) .

Perhaps the

most

significant aspect of the

tum

to art

and

material culture has been the

conjuncture with

what we might

call colonial

and

postcolonial sensibilities, which have pro

moted, first, the ah ha understandings

that

much of the material world observed by

anthropologists could not be considered in ahis

torical, static or normative terms (e.g., Graburn

1999); the arts were already enmeshed in colo

nial projects and trajectories when they were

first encountered. (See especially Thomas 1991,

who notes that his own project on entangled

objects

was

necessarily

about recasting

[these] issues in historical terms and with

respect to the cultural constitution of objects ,

1991: xi.) Beginning perhaps

with

the pioneer

ing

work

of

Grabum

1976)

on

ethnic

and

tourist arts, one might say that the anthropology

of material culture,

and

all that it entails, includ

ing style, design

and

understandings of func

tion, itself experienced a colonial encounter : a

more widespread recognition of the previously

unconsidered contexts of colonial domination.

Not

only has there been more attention to the

historical depth

and

sociocultural complexity

of art production in colonial and postcolonial,

often touristic, contexts (e.g., Marcus and

Myers

1995; Phillips

and

Steiner 1999),

but

fundamen

tal concepts such as the functions of objects, the

maintenance of or changes in style, and the cul

tural generation

and

deployment of designs,

have had to be rethought. Furthermore, any

studies of style, function

and

design have bene

fited from these deeper understandings of his

torically situated cultural practices, including

observations

on

the ways in which local styles,

for example, are actively reworked for

new

markets, global desires, and ever shifting politi

cal

and

cultural audiences

and

goals. Thus,

approaches such as Wobst s notions

on

style-as

interventions, or Wilk s interest

in

the construc

tions of common difference, resonate

with

these

new

directions.

Certainly, Stahl s elegant 2002) critique of

the prevailing (logocentric) linguistic and

meaning-based models

for

understanding

material culture, and her emphases on the prac

tices of taste (after Bourdieu 1984), especially in

understanding colonial entanglements, attest

that

what

initially may have stimulated renewed

interest in the anthropology of art

and

the

object

world

- namely, the engagement

with

meaning and symbolism - has now been chal

lenged

and

soundly critiqued. From both

archaeological directions (e.g., Dietler and

Herbich

1998)

and those of a more historical

anthropology (e.g., Phillips

and

Steiner

1999;

Stahl2002) art, style, design and functions have

been reframed

away

from

such

a focus on find

ing the meaning(s). Even those still engaged

with

a semiotic preference

have

advocated not

the Sassurian semiological approaches,

but

those of C.S. Peirce (e.g., Peirce 1955; Singer

1978; Parmentier 1997; Preucel and Bauer 2001;

Layton 2000,2001: 329). What is heralded about

such

an approach is the way in which it almost

necessarily accounts for

and

directs inquiry

into the multiple meanings of a single artefact

or sign (Preucel

and

Bauer 2001: 91). In an inter

pretive world where inferring or understanding

the possible functions

and

meanings of things

is

now

thoroughly more

open-ended

and

multivalent, discussions are necessarily more

directed to the limits of interpretation (e.g.,

Eco 1990, 1992) .

ON ESIGN

The

debate

and shifts in

our

understandings

about style, the influences

from

technology

studies and the new approaches to the

anthropology of art have all made their

mark on

the study

of

design. The

studies

of

designs

and

decorations

on

objects are obvi

ously

integral to

most ways

in which style

has been approached. There is often an uncon

scious slippage from one to the other. Pye

(1982) argues that anyone

studying

material

culture must

understand

the fundamentals of

design; without design - in some form or

another - one cannot really make anything.

This is to consider design

at

the highest level;

that is,

how an

object is conceived of

and

put

together. In a difficult and

somewhat

classic

essay, Pye proposed six

requirements

for

design. As stated

in

the helpful editorial notes

by Schlereth that precede Pye s essay,

what

Pye

wants

to do is to distinguish design as philo

sophical concept from

solely sociological

considerations . In particular, Pye challenges

the presumedly uncomplicated and causal

relationship between

design

and function;

design is not conditioned only by its function.

Furthermore, it s not clear there even is

such

a

thing as the purely functional . How a number

of factors affect design are Pye s focus: use, ease,

economy and appearance. n early archaeolog

ical

study

of this type of design (McGuire and

Schiffer 1983) wanted to focus

on

design as a

social process, while noting that the treatment

of the design process is usually

subsumed

by discussions of either style or function 1983:

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64

PROCESS

ND TR NSFORM TION

277-303). McGuire

and

Schiffer are intentionally,

as is Pye, considering design at a higher level

than those

who study

the designs incorporated

into baskets, pots, masks painted on to houses,

and

the like.

For these latter designs, there are classic stud

ies of material objects of

ethnography and

archaeology, such as Barrett s 1908 Ph.D. disser

tation Porno

Indian

Basketry (republished

1996). Today this kind of

work

is hailed, includ

ing

by

contemporary

Porno Indian

basket

makers, for its relative lack of theoretical over

burden; it is thoroughly a descriptive exposition

on

the designs of a certain set of Porno baskets

(Smith-Ferri 1996: 20). To this day, there are

comparably meticulous studies of design, with

lists of motifs, technologies

and materials used,

but

most

of them have a

much

wider tale to

tell,

an

account of

how

such designs

and

their

making are

embedded

in

and

constitutive of

social relations (e.g., DeBoer s, e.g. 1990, excel

lent ethno-archaeological

work

with Shipibo

Conibo designs; MacKenzie 1991 on string bags

and

gender dynamics in central

New

Guinea;

and

Chiu 2003

on

Lapita pottery designs

and

house societies in Polynesia).

Among the more persistent approaches to

design over the past several decades

has

been

the study of symmetry (Washburn 1977, 1983;

Washburn

and

Crowe 1988, 2004), which owes

its heritage to structuralist approaches to mater

ial culture. Washburn

began

trying to access

underlying cultural concepts in archaeological

contexts

by

developing

an

analytical system

based on universal principles of plane pattern

symmetry (1977; for another example, see Fritz

1978 or in Washburn 1983). This has continued

in collaboration

with

a mathematician as to

how to undertake such analyses (Washburn

and Crowe 1988), leading to an edited volume

with

a wide

var

iety of case studies (Washburn

and

Crowe 2004). In his

somewhat

radical chal

lenges to the anthropology of art, the late Alfred

Gell (e.g., 1998) accepts the idea of a universal

aesthetic based on patterned surfaces - such as

the symmetry analyses - even

i f

one of his pri

mary

challenges is to aesthetics as the basis for

a theory of art contra Morphy 1994, Coote 1992,

1996, Price 1989; see Layton 2003). In fact, Gell

can accept this because

he

views relationships

between the elements of decorative

art

. . . [as]

analogous to social relationships constructed

through exchange (Layton 2003: 450).

Although Gellis perhaps even more radical in

his rejection of the view of art as a visual code, as

a matter of communication

and

meaning (after

Thomas 1998 :

xi xiii;

see also Layton 2003: 449),

he does accept some studies of decorative art

and

design as being of anthropological interest

(e

.g., Kaeppler 1978; Price

and

Price 1980;

Hanson

1983)

. Furthermore, decoration, to Gell,

is often an essential aspect of what he terms the

technology of enchantment ; i t is the decora

tions

on

objects

and th

eir designs that can weave

a spell (see also Gell1992; Layton

2003: 450)

As already noted, one can

properly

credit

the emergence of structuralism

with

a

power-

ful rejuvenating effect

upon

material culture

studies, including such approaches to design as

symmetry analysis. In fact, linguistic approaches

to design

have been paramount

since the early

1960s, at least. Munn s classic (1973) work on

the design elements of Walpiri

art

suggests in

this case that the designs are, in fact, parasitic

on the language for the telling of the sand

drawing

stories. Other early approaches to

design include

Bloch

s

(1974)

ideas

that

designs and their organizational principles

(such as repetition, symmetries, fixed

sequences, delimited elements)

may be some

of the formal mechanisms whereby

cultur

al

authorities

may

be

empowered and might be

enabled to control ritual, rhetoric

and

the arts,

and may

enact

power

over those

who

are encul

turated to the patterns (after Graburn 2001).

Another early

and

important use of the lin

guistic

models

was the

work

of Friedrich

(1970) ,

who viewed

design generation

and

design sharing as

part

of interaction communi

ties

and

how design makers (in this case, ethno

graphically

produced

designs

on

ceramics)

did

or did not

participate in learning communities

that

themselves were specified sets of social

relations. This kind of

work

anticipates one of

the current very useful approaches based

on

the concepts of communities of practice (after

Lave

and

Wenger 1991).

Yet such structuralist, linguistic, communica

tion and correlative approaches have been set

to one side

with

the lure of context, the destabi

lization of the so-called concept of culture (e.g.,

Fabian 1998: xii),

and an engagement with

history in a

world

of transnationalisms and

globalized commodities

where

material objects

are not,

and have not

been,

just caught up

in

an ever shifting

world

but are actually creat

ing, constituting, materializing and mobilizing

history, contacts

and entang

lements.

One of the more interesting approaches to

design

in

these contemporary circumstances

within which material culture studies are situ

ated is that by Attfield

(1999,

2000),

who

comes

to a material culture approach (as she calls it)

from the perspective of professional designer

herself,

an approach that for her avoids the dual

ity between art

and

design

and

makes central

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STYLE

DESIGN

ND

FUNCTION

65

such issues as materiality

and

experience

(Attfield 2000: xii). Attfield is particularly inter

ested in the issues of identity and even individ

uality within a cultural context, even if these

are not the usual domains of concern for the

study

of design. With

an

approach that is specif

ically focused

on

understanding design as an

aspect of the material world as a social place ,

where we have as

much

to learn from rubbish

and discarded things as from things of value,

Attfield s book is explicitly and celebratorily

interdisciplinary, bridging the views from the

history of design and material culture studies.

Her

introduction provides a most useful under

standing of design history and,

by

the end of

Chapter 3 design has come to life. By placing

the understanding of design in the contexts of

time, space

and

the body; Attfield opens

up

the

study of design to dimensions not often consid

ered over the years of anthropological and

archaeological studies of design.

O FUN TION

Some of

what

there is to say

about

function is

mentioned above,

and

yet this is a

grand

topic

in

any

aspect of the social sciences and in the

study

of the material world. This is notably so

due to the importance of functionalism as an

approach for

many

decades (e.g., Eisenstadt

1990). I f one goes looking for function as a

topic, there are instead plenty of references to

functionalism. On one

hand,

the study of ar t

and

the material

world was not

very central to

mainstream developments (such as structural

functionalism) in anthropological theory until

the 1990s, and, on the other hand, theres very

little material culture in classic functionalist

social anthropology (but see, e.g., Firth 1936).

As well,

most

anthropological definitions of

art

have to

do with

the aesthetic, rather than

sacred

or

functional qualities (Graburn 2001).

Yet

much

work was concerned

with

how

art

styles,

de

signs and forms function, particularly

how

they function to maintain the social (e.g.,

Sieber 1962; Biebuyck 1973).

In the debate over the function(s) of style,

style came to take on communication as one of

its functions.

And

style became more substan

tive than just a residual dimension of material

culture that was left over once we had identified

what was functional about an object

or

class of

objects (e.g., Wobst 1977; Sackett 1982,

contr

Dunnell1978). Although early attempts at using

style in this way often produced quite function

alist interpretations where style was assumed to

be adaptive or functioned to maintain cultural

equilibri

um

, further analyses

hav

e suggested

how, in some cases, a materialist view on style

in societies - as a means for political manipula

tion, for example - can be put to work (e.g.,

Earle 1990). A great deal of ethnographic

work

with art took this

turn

(see in Anderson

1989:

29-52): art and objects as a means for social con

trol, art and objects as homeostasis, objects and

the social order, objects as forms of legitimation,

objects as symbols of power.

Nonetheless, there persisted a view

that

the

object/artifact is almost autonomous

and

that

stylistic analysis was primarily about the analy

sis of patterns of material culture, patterns

often floating free of anything other than a

generalized notion of function .

It

was a view

like this that accentuated some of the gaps

between archaeology (often with its

head

in the

stylistic sand) and sociocultural anthropology

and

ethnography (often completely

unaware

of the material world).

MacKenzie, in her brilliant

study

of string

bags and gender in New Guinea (1991), notes

that when

anthropologists

approached

the

study

of artifacts from the perspective of their

social functions

in

exchange systems, they

often focused

not

so much,

i f

at all, on the

things that are exchanged,

but on

the social

context of the transactions. Their emphasis

on

function, context

and

relations was at the

expense of

any

consideration of the objects

themselves (see, e.g., in Sieber 1962).

In contrast, archaeologists

were

perhaps

over-dependent upon the objects

and

their

inferred functions in overly generalized cul

tural or processual terms (exchange, interac

tion, political manipulation)

at

the expense

of objects-in-social-action. Given a predilec

tion for categories

and

types, archaeologists

have generated types of function. For exam

ple, Binford (1962) suggested ideotechnic or

sociotechnic objects and their implied func

tions (in a systems view of culture). Schiffer

1992) is even more specific

with

his categories

of technofunction, sociofunction and ideofunc

tion. For the more philosophically inclined,

Preston 2000) brings in the philosophical stud

ies of function in relation to how materiality

matters,

with

particular reference to archaeol

ogy. She

weds

two different philosophical con

ceptions of function: Millikan s

1993)

theory of

proper function and Cummins s 1975) con

ception of system function that are not rival

conceptions

but

instead complementary ones;

both

are required for an understanding of

function in material culture (Preston 2000: 46).

Proper function, she reports, is function as a

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66

PROCESS ND TR NSFORM TION

normative phenomenon - as a matter of

what

artifacts are

supposed

to do. Whereas system

function is function as a matter of

what

artifacts

in fact do in the

way

of useful performance.

As recently as 1994,

Morphy

suggests that

the

most

productive initial approach to the

explanation of form is through function' 1994:

662),

hoping to

wed

content with form'

p.

659).

But two divergent approaches can

perhaps

best

sum up

attitudes today towards function.

On the one hand, there is the pervasive critique

by

Gell (1998),

who

bases his attitudes towards

function through the lens of his

primary

objec

tion,

that

is, to aesthetics as a foundation for a

theory of art. Thus, because art is not always

about

aesthetics, the function of

art

is

not

to

express a culturally specific aesthetic system.

The anthropology of art

and

of objects

should

be interested, then,

in how

aesthetic principles

are mobilized in social action.

In

fact, Gell's

th

eory, as one rooted in social relationships

and on

'the social' (rather than

on

culture; Gell

1998:

7), provides

an

important

(albeit often

conceptually challenging)

new

approach to

the

social' that, as Layton writes

2003:

448),

differs from structural functionalism in impor

tant ways

(see also Thomas 1998).

On

the other

hand,

the reframing of ' the

social' is also heralded

in

the view articulated

by

MacKenzie

1991:

27):

the value of

an

object

and

even its function(s) are

not

inherent

in

the

object

but

are multivalent

and

variously real

ized'. t is objects themselves

th

at give value to

social relations, yet the social values of objects

are culturally constructed. Function, then, like

style

and

design, is integrally caught

up

in

expanded views

on

the ways

that

objects are

linked to concepts of the

world

through cul

tural praxis (Morphy

1994:

664),

and

not

just

through but s

social action.

SOMETHING

OF

SUMMARY

THE STUDY

OF CLOTH

In this section, I

want

to

point

to two

primary

features of current studies of the style, design

and

function of material culture: the centrality

now

of attending to issues of 'choices',

and

the

destabilization of the communication func

tions

and

language metaphors.

Embedded

in

the recent trajectory of material culture studies

have been

new

approaches to

and

debates

about

the anthropology of cloth, where

both

of

these features can be seen clearly.

In

the key

volume

that

took up the 'social life of things',

edited

by Appadurai

(1986), three (of eight)

chapters

on

specific materials focus

on

cloth.

The study, analysis

and

interpretation of cloth

have been a bridge between anthropology, art

history

and

semioticians (Schevill

1992:

38),

and

the literature

on

cloth is enormous

and

instructive (e.g., Cordwell

and

Schwarz 1979;

Tedlock

and

Tedlock 1985; Schneider 1987;

McCracken 1987, 1988:

62

f.f;

Weiner

and

Schneider

1989;

Hendrickson

1993; Renne

1995; Eicher 2001). Additionally, the metaphors

of textiles,

and

especially of weaving, are com

mon

in the

study

of material culture (e.g.,

Jarman 1997; Ingold 2000).

This

multitude

of publications

on

cloth since

the mid-1980s conveys the shifts in how dimen

sions like style

and

design, even function, are

conceptualized, especially as more nuanced

and

complex

phenomena

. Style

cannot

be

read in

some of the more essentialized ways.

Rather

than

a focus on the identification or

characterization of

a

style', it is the dynamics

of style or the mutability of style as embedded

in contexts of social life

and

social relations

that has captured the attention of

and

been

elaborated

by most

cloth researchers. In

what

can be characterized as a key article, Schneider

and

Weiner (1986) make the

point that

while

cloth is an economic commodity, it is

also-

and

often just as

much

-

a

critical object in social

exchange,

an

objectification of ritual intent,

and an

instrument of political

power

1986:

178).

t

is simultaneously a

medium

for the

study

of style, technology, function

and

design

In

a

subsequent review

article,

Schneider

1987)

explicitly takes on

what

she calls the

'dynamic of style', drawing for her baseline

concept

on that

put forth

by

Schapiro (1953).

Those concepts of style as a homogeneous

and

uncontested expression of a discrete culture's

world

view, or 'as propelled by its

own

logic',

obscure the

ways

in which

such

materials as

cloth are relevant to the enactment of

power

through time. Schneider is particularly con

cerned

1987:

420-4) with the aesthetic options

in cloth production; options

that

are tied in, to

be sure, with 'designs'

and

' technological styl

e

(loom types, fiber types, etc.).

What

are the aes

thetic choices that shape historical cloth styles?

This issue of 'options' or 'choices' is

perhaps

the key aspect in the contemporary approaches

to style, design,

and

function. Although long

recognized as one

way

to

think

about style

e .g., Sackett's isochrestism 1977,

1982)

, it

is now

the particular

onjun ture

of,

on

the one

hand,

a

concern with choices all along the trajectory of

material culture - from materials, aesthetics,

technologies, production and consumption -

with,

on

the other hand, a concern for cultural

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STYLE DESIGN ND FUNCTION 67

praxis, habitus

and

the dynamics of taste that

best characterizes current approaches to style,

design and function. A starter reading list here

would include Schneider (1987), Lemonnier

1993b),

Dietler and Herbich 1989, 1998) and

Stahl

2002),

and the references therein.

The second feature of present approaches to

our

three characters of style, design

and

func

tion

would

be the critique and alternatives to

the communication models

and

the linguistic

metaphors. The issue of using clothing as a

metaphor for language (or vice versa) has both

its supporters

and

its critics,

but

all might agree

by now that a communication system cannot

work without contextual knowledge . Schevill,

for example

1987,

1992), is motivated to reha

bilitate the approach to cloth

and

clothing as a

communication system as an expressive system

1992: 9). But material culture theorists, such as

McCracken, would disagree (1987; see his

chapter

C

lothing as language in McCracken

1988), even if a rehabilitation of this concept is

one of his options. He argues that we need to

jettison the metaphor (clothing as language, as

communication), which has been so over-used

(and putatively

without

any

depth

or critical

assessment) that it is, to McCracken, a dead

metaphor and a fixity of conventional

wisdom 1988: 62).

In

the

study

of cloth

and

clothing,

we

can

see

how

an approach to one kind of material

culture embodies many of the issues being dis

cussed and debated

in

regard to other kinds of

material culture. The point that McCracken

insists on is one reaction to a somew

hat

sim

plistic view of X as communication , especially

as understood through its style and design.

The McCracken view holds that it is precisely

because material culture, in its styles, designs

and

even functions, is more limited than lan

guage in its expressive possibilities that it

instead holds power;

it

is inconspicuous ,

ha

s

the potential to convey

in

more subtle ways,

and allows a certain ambiguity that can be

mobilized situationally

and

even more effi

ciently than language.

The domain of style, design and function

is today more mutable, and ripe

with

more

choices for us to make in

how we

study

and

understand it. There is no single

new

para

digm

and, if anything,

our

understandings are

necessarily more nuanced, complex

and

situa

tional. History has

made

a strong appearance,

and our

key concepts have been complicated.

Style can no longer be equated with decora

tion; choices in the technologies of production

must

be attended to. Material culture doe

s

much

more

than

communicate, and the agency

of both people and the objects that are used

to intervene into everyday practices, identities

and

social

worlds

is

now in

focus .

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