Department of Sociology

Lancaster University 

Tim Dant

Reader in Sociology

B. Sc. Soc. Sci., CNAA

D. Phil., University of York

 

Room 0.3

North Bowland

Lancaster University

Bailrigg, Lancaster, LA1 4YT

Tel: +44 (0)1524 594183

email: t.dant@lancaster.ac.uk

 

 

 


On this page:

Books

Journal articles
Book chapters
Background
Material culture
Material Interaction

The Critique of Culture

Teaching

Research Students

Cars and the 'Car Care' project

Car Care papers

 

Books:

Dant, T. (2005) Materiality and Society, Buckingham: Open University Press – ISBN: 0-335-20855-X, 154 pages.

see McGraw-Hill

 

Dant, T. (2003) Critical Social Theory: Culture, Society and Critique, London: Sage publications – ISBN: 0-7619-5478X, 165 pages.

see Sage Publications

 

Dant, T. (1999) Material Culture in the Social World: Values, Activities, Lifestyles  Buckingham: Open University Press - ISBN: 0335198228 / 033519821X, 204 pages.

see McGraw-Hill

Dant, T. & Gully, V. (1994) Co-ordinating Care at Home: A Handbook for Organising Support for Elderly People at Home, London: Harper Collins - ISBN: 0-00-322337X.

see Amazon UK

Dant, T. (1991) Knowledge, Ideology and Discourse: A Sociological Perspective, London: Routledge - ISBN: 0415047862 / 0415064589, 236 pages.

see Amazon UK

Dant, T. & Deacon, A. (1989) Hostels to Homes?: Rehousing Homeless Single People in Leeds, Aldershot: Avebury - ISBN: 0566070588, 106 pages.

see Amazon UK

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Background

After a number of years as a researcher in the fields of social policy and social gerontology, I joined the sociology teaching staff of Manchester Polytechnic in 1990. For a decade I taught social theory, research methods and the sociology of culture before transferring to the University of East Anglia in 2000. In September 2007 I was delighted to move to the Sociology Department at Lancaster University to amongst colleagues who share my interests in critical theory and the material aspects of society,

I continue to be interested in social gerontology (two of the doctoral students I have supervised looked at different aspects of caring for older people) but most of my teaching and research is in the field of sociology, especially social theory and cultural sociology.

Material culture

In the mid-1990s it occurred to me that we spend much of our lives engaged with things rather than people. These ‘things’ are often closer to us and we have a more intimate relationship them than we do with the people around us – sadly, like most people, I spend more time gazing into computer and television screens than I do into the eyes of my lover! Now these things are not natural, they aren’t just there in the world, they are things that have been designed, produced and distributed through the culture in which I live and they link me to my society. Each object is embedded with the ideas and values of my society, shaping what I do and often what I think or feel. After writing 'Playing with Things: Objects and Subjects in Windsurfing' (Journal of Material Culture, 1998, Vol. 3 (1): 77-95), I wrote a book about the various ways in which material objects entwine people’s lives with modern society (Material Culture in The Social World, 1999, Open University Press).

The critique of culture

By far the most interesting social theory I read as a student at South Bank Polytechnic in the 1970s and the University of York in the 1980s was either French or German in origin and was critical of modern societies, turning Marx’s analysis of economic structures into a critique of the cultural forms that they produced. Science, art, media, language and the patterns of everyday life and work were understood as shaped by the particular society in which they emerged and served to channel the lives of individuals. The motivation of the critique that these theorists practised was not to overthrow political institutions but to undermine the entrenched values and accepted trajectory of capitalism and ‘progress’. In a recent book Critical Social Theory (2003, Sage) I tried to show that rather than a series of ‘schools’ and individual theorists with distinct perspectives, the work of a range of Germanic and Gallic writers address very similar themes and issues to question what, in the flow of ordinary life, we so often take for granted.

More recently I have become interested in the 'moral turn' in contemporary culture, especially the moral content of television programmes and I have presented papers to the European Sociological Association conference in Torun, September 2005 on "Consuming morality: television and postmodern ethics" and to the Sociology Department at the University of Essex in November 2005 on "Getting morality of the TV". I will be teaching a new third year unit in 2007 on 'TV and Morality' and I am working on research proposals with Keith Tester of Portsmouth University on the idea of 'post-institutional morality'.

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Material interaction

Much of the study of material culture has focussed on the symbolic meanings of ‘things’ – the objects around us are treated as vehicles for signs and values. While this line of analysis, developed in anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, has drawn attention to the importance of our material life, it tends to overlook the embodied, continuing relationship that we have with objects through using them. I have argued that the sociological and anthropological analysis of consumption, for example, has paid undue attention to the meanings of objects at the moment they are bought – the cash nexus –  and has tended to focus on symbolic value rather than the practical value of how things enhance human action. In 2005 I published Materiality and Society in which I argued that during modernity the lives of people in the industrialised countries have been increasingly engaged with material objects that they interact with bodily, especially through sight and touch. Although there are strands in anthropological writing that are interested in how we interact with objects (Mauss, Parlebas and Warnier for example) there has been little sociological work on the embodied relationship between people and things. Despite its reputation for abstract and even mystical thought, phenomenology, particularly the writing of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, has provided a useful beginning for thinking through how we interact with the material world around us. I am continuing to write about the process of material interaction and at the moment I am writing about the exchange of knowledge between people and objects and the 'pragmatics' of material interaction.

Cars - the 'Car Care' project

To begin to study how human beings interact with material objects I undertook a small research project between 2001 and 2002 (funded by ESRC Grant No: R 00023370) to study aspects of the repair and maintenance of private cars. The car is a material object that have over the last century has moved from being an exotic luxury item to being part of the mundane equipment of modern living – the ‘leading object’ of modern society, as Lefebvre called it in 1968. The smooth working of modern society depends on our cars being maintained by a large but dispersed workforce of people in small workshops located in the heart of most centres of living, both urban and rural. The technicians blend traditional skills that use eye and touch, handtools and judgement, with sophisticated electronics and ultra modern industrial organisation. Their ‘material interaction’ with the cars they work on is embodied and felt as well as subject to the forethought and planning of rational systems. To capture the detail of this complex material interaction we (David Bowles was the field researcher on the project) videoed the work of professional technicians in a number of garages of different sizes and settings. The analysis of this video data presents its own problems but is leading to a number of different ‘takes’ on how the material life of people and cars are merged.

A summary of the grant application and the outputs from the project are shown on the ESRC Society Today site - at Car Care. Some of the publications are also listed below.

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Car Care papers

The following publications have included analysis of data from the Car Care project:

Dant, T. (2005) Materiality and Society, Buckingham: Open University Press – ISBN: 0-335-20855-X, 154 pages.

Dant, T. (2004) ‘Recording the Habitus’ in C. Pole (ed.) ­‘Seeing is believing? Approaches to Visual Methodology’, Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 7, 43-63, Amsterdam: Elsevier - ISBN: 0-7623-1021-9.

Dant, T and Bowles, D. (2003) ‘Dealing with Dirt: Servicing and Repairing Cars’ Sociological Research Online, Vol. 8, No. 2, ISSN 1360-7804, <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/8/2/dant.html> PDF Copy

Dant T. & Bowles, D (2002) Car Care: The Professional Repair and Maintenance of the Private Car - Summary Report, mimeo, University of East Anglia. PDF Copy

Dant T. (2002) Car Care: The Professional Repair and Maintenance of the Private Car, End of Award Report (ESRC).

The following conference and other presentations have drawn on the analysis of data from the Car Care project:

Dant, T. (2004) Material Interaction: Embodied Actions and Embedded Culture, Presented to ‘Chimera’ research group, University of Essex, November 10th 2004.

Dant, T. (2003) Material Interaction: Working on Cars with Intentional Threads, Presented to Sociology Department, University of Surrey, 27th November 2003

Dant, T. & Bowles, D (2002) Things 'Talk' Back: material interaction with cars during their repair , Presented to conference on 'Automobility', University of Keele, 8th-10th September 2002 PDF Copy

Bowles, D. and Dant, T. (2002) Dirty Work: Fixing Cars for Us, Presented to Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, University of Leicester, 25th-27th March 2002. PDF Copy

I have also published papers on various aspects relating to the car and presented conference papers on the car and its place in society:

Dant, T. & Martin, P. (2001) 'By Car: Carrying Modern Society' in A. Warde and J. Grunow (eds.) Ordinary Consumption, London: Routledge. PDF Copy

Dant, T. (2001) Contradictions of the car, Presented to the 'Mobilities Group', convened by Professor John Urry, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. PDF Copy

Dant, T. (2000) Driving Identities, Presented to 'Mobilizing Forces: Social and Cultural Aspects of Automobility', University of Göteborg, Sweden, 5th May 2000.

Dant, T and Martin, P. (1999) By Car: Carrying Modern Society, With Peter Martin - Presented to 'Sociality/Materiality: The Status of the Object' in Social Science, Brunel University, 10th September 1999.

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Teaching

At Lancaster I am contributing to undergraduate teaching on introductory sociology, social theory and dissertation. I plan to offer Part II option modules on aspects of Television and Society in future years. I am currently teaching an Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science at Masters level and hope to collaborate with Elizabeth Shove on a masters module on Design and Society.

Research students

At UEA I supervised research students on: Ethics of Care; Social Capital and Volunteers; Gender and Internet Shopping. I have also supervised three doctoral students at Manchester Metropolitan University to successful completion on: Teenage Bedroom Culture, the Commodification of Adventure and Culture as a Change Agent.

I would be keen to hear from students wishing to undertake research degrees in critical and contemporary social theory, the sociology of material culture, visual sociology or other aspects of the sociology of culture.

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Other Publications:

 

Journal Articles

Dant, T. and Wheaton, B. (2007) ‘Sailing a board: An Extreme Sport?’, Anthropology Today, Vol. 23 

Dant, T. (2006) ‘Materiality and Civilization: Things and Society’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57 (2): 289-308.

Dant, T. (2004) 'The Driver-Car', Theory, Culture and Society - special issue on Automobility, Vol. 21 (4) ISSN 0263-2764.

Gilloch G. and Dant, T. (2005) ‘From “Passage” to “Parly 2”: Commodity Culture in Benjamin and Baudrillard’, New Formations, No. 54, ISBN 1905-007-132.

Dant, T and Bowles, D. (2003) ‘Dealing with Dirt: Servicing and Repairing Cars’ Sociological Research Online, Vol. 8, No. 2, ISSN 1360-7804, <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/8/2/dant.html>

Dant, T. and Gilloch, G. (2002) 'Pictures of the Past: Benjamin and Barthes on photography', European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 5 (1): 5-25 – ISSN 1367-5494.

Dant, T. (2001) 'Fruitbox/Toolbox: Biography and Objects' Auto/Biography, Vol. IX, Nos. 1&2: 11-20 ISSN 0967-5507.

Dant, T. (2000) 'Consumption Caught in the Cash Nexus' Sociology, Vol. 34 (4): 655-670 – ISSN 0038-0385.

Dant, T. (2000) 'Stars in our eyes?', things 12: 130-133 - ISSN 1356-921X.

Dant, T. (1999) 'Consumption: Sociology Caught in the Cash Nexus' in Sosiologisk Arbok Norway, Vol. 4 (1): 41-56 – ISSN 0808-288X.

Dant, T. (1998) 'Playing with Things: Objects and Subjects in Windsurfing' Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 3 (1): 77-95 - ISSN 1359-1835.

Dant, T. & Francis, D. (1998) 'Planning: Applied Rationality or Contingent Practice?', Sociological Research Online, Vol. 3 (2), <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/socresonline/3/2/4.html>.

Dant, T. (1997) 'Thoroughly Modern Mannheim and the Postmodern Weltanschauung ', Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, (No 4, Dec. 1997) - ISBN 88-15-05897-4.

Dant, T. (1996) 'Fetishism and the social value of objects' Sociological Review, Vol. 44 (3): 495-516 - ISSN 0038-0261.

Dant, T. & Gearing, B. (1990) 'Keyworkers for elderly people in the community: Case Managers and Care Co-ordinators', Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 19 (3): 331-360 - ISSN: 00472794.

Dant, T. (1988) 'Dependency and Old Age: Theoretical Accounts and Practical Understandings', Ageing and Society, Vol. 8: 171-188 - ISSN: 0144686X.

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Chapters in books:

Dant, T. (2004) ‘Recording the Habitus’ in C. Pole (ed.) ­‘Seeing is believing? Approaches to Visual Methodology’, Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 7, 43-63, Amsterdam: Elsevier - ISBN: 0-7623-1021-9.

Dant, T. & Martin, P. (2001) 'By Car: Carrying Modern Society' in A. Warde and J. Grunow (eds.) Ordinary Consumption, London: Routledge.

Dant, T. & Gearing, B. (1993) 'Keyworkers for elderly people in the community: Case Managers and Care Co-ordinators', in J. Bornat, C. Pereira, D. Pilgrim, F. Williams (eds) Community Care: A Reader, Basingstoke: Macmillan (abridged version of Dant & Gearing 1990) - ISBN: 0333698460 / 0333698460 / 0333698479.

Dant, T., Carley, M., Gearing, B. & Johnson, M. (1992) 'Care for Elderly People at Home: The Gloucester Study', in K. Morgan, Gerontology: Responding to an Ageing Society, London: Jessica Kingsley - ISBN: 1853021172.

Dant, T. & Gregory, S. (1991) 'The Social Construction of Deafness', Block 3 Unit 8 of D251, Issues in Deafness, A Social Sciences Second Level Course, Milton Keynes: Open University.

Dant, T. & Johnson, M. (1991) 'Growing Older in the Eyes of the Media', in R. Franklin and N. Parton, (eds), Social Work and the Media, London: Routledge - ISBN: 0415050022 / 0415050022 / 0415050030.

Gearing, B. & Dant, T. (1990) 'Doing Biographical Research', in Peace, S. (ed), Researching Social Gerontology, London: Sage - ISBN: 0803982844 / 0803982852.

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Tim Dant - Last revised:  22.10.07