The reading from “Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World” by Mark Miodownik is about materials in the physical objects in everyday lives and how they affect human civilization. Understanding these materials helps us understand how societies and cultures around the world developed and live. His interest in the subject began after a traumatic incident where he was stabbed with a razor blade. He began noticing how many items had steel in them, how they were related, and how little realization society placed on their importance. The message is that materials aren’t just things, but that they have historical and cultural importance to civilization.
The reading from “Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World” by Patricia Crone conveys that pre-industrial societies were not primitive versions of modern societies, but were complicated and diverse. Crone believes that the role of politics and building the “state” were important factors in how these societies developed and that studying these pre-industrial societies is important to understand the world today. I was intrigued by the passage “Most human societies today are either industrial or engaged in the process of industrializing; such wholly non-industrial societies as still exist are archaic pockets doomed to disappear” (Crone 10). The author believes societies that are traditional and based on agriculture will disappear because they are not keeping up with the modern world and are not industrialized and that these “archaic” societies are outdated and doomed if they don’t become developed. I want to believe there are still societies that are not totally industrialized who still follow their traditional way of life, but have adapted to technology. The same day I read this, there was an article in the New York Times about a cave village of olive farmers and sheep herders in Chenini, Tunisia whose younger generations are migrating to places that are more technologically advanced and where their livelihoods are not at the mercy of the weather. The Amazigh still live in caves that have been modernized but “Over time, as young men migrated, it was mostly women, children and old men who filled the villages.“
Crone also believes that family is important in primitive societies and that there are expectations to help relatives based on certain rules of relationships. “Primitive societies generally regulate the use of self-help with reference to kinship: who should help whom, under what circumstances and when, turns on how people are related” (Crone 19). This seems to be how we live today as well. Family members are always the strongest ties to each other in a community and commitment and protection of members outside of families diminishes as you get further from the center of a family.
Bibliography
Crone, Patricia. Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. London: Oneworld, 2015
Miodownik, Mark. Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Yee, Vivian. “Tunisian Cave Village Empties out in Face of Drought and Modernity’s Draw.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Jan. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/world/middleeast/tunisia-cave-village-berbers-amazigh.html.
