These exercises are intended to help you get started in studying the anthropology of stuff and the material culture of everyday life. Questions to bear in mind are: where did the stuff come from, who invented it and why, what does it say and do, what effect does it have on our lives? ©2011 Taylor and Francis

Perfume and cars The world of advertising is full of made-up narratives about stuff. Perfume and cars provide many good examples. Exercise 1: Pick one or several examples of perfume and car advertisements, and analyse what story or stories you think they are telling. Where did you see the advertisements – in a magazine or newspaper, on television, on YouTube or Twitter? How did the medium affect the message? Are they aimed at different consumers, do they use different language? Exercise 2: Design and write a perfume or car advertisement of your own, one that tells a story through stuff. Exercise 3: What are the similarities and differences between perfume and car advertisements? © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Food and drink Food and drink are examples of ‘stuff’ that are heavily loaded with meaning and values embedded in stories. In the case of food, ‘love’ and ‘good times’ are frequent narratives. Exercise 4: A Pillsbury advertisement of the 1950’s and 1960’s said – Nothing says loving like something from the oven, and Pillsbury says it best’. In other words – stuff helps you to show you love a person or your family and friends by buying and preparing particular foods for them. Find examples of ‘love narrative’ advertising, and analyse them. What are they saying and how are they saying it? Exercise 5: The Coca Cola company is well known for it’s slogans – such as Things go better with Coke’, Have a Coke and a smile, Live on the Coke side of life – and highly visual advertising campaigns going back to the 1880’s. These ads not only show changes in American culture over time, they have also been credited with creating American culture, through promoting images of the ‘good life’, and popularising the familiar image of a red-suited and bearded Santa Claus. Find advertisements for Coca-Cola from different periods (the internet is great for this), and compare them – what are the similarities and differences? For images see: © 2011Taylor and Francis

Stuff as people Sometimes stuff turns into people. Not real people – but imaginary characters who are associated with particular kinds of stuff. Sometimes these are aimed at grown-ups, like General Foods Corporation’s character ‘Betty Crocker’, the imaginary ideal home-maker, whose name and face are found on a range of foods. More often, they are aimed at children – think of all the breakfast cereal characters like Tony the Tiger, or candy characters like the M&M’s that you probably grew up with. Exercise 6: Find an imaginary character or characters connected with particular kinds of stuff, and describe how the characters make the stuff appealing to us. ©2011 Taylor and Francis