Material Aspects of Culture

The material dimension of culture covers everything a group produces and uses by means of physical materials -- tools, technologies, machines, buildings, modes of transport, and the instruments people rely on for production and communication. It is the most visible and tangible of culture's three dimensions, and it is easy to see how pervasive it has become: in cities, everyday reliance on mobile phones, music systems, cars and buses, ATMs, refrigerators and computers signals just how much daily life now depends on technology. The dependence is not confined to cities either -- in rural areas, something as ordinary as a transistor radio, or an electric pump used to draw groundwater for irrigation, shows the same pattern of adopting technological tools to make daily life or production more effective. …