Where Are We Heading:The Evolution of Humans and Things pdf

Ian Hodder est professeur d'archéologie de la famille Dunleavie à l'Université de Stanford. Membre de la British Academy, il a reçu de nombreux prix pour ses réalisations, dont la médaille Oscar Montelius de la Société suédoise des antiquaires, la médaille commémorative Huxley du Royal Anthropological Institute, le prix international Fyssen et la médaille d'or de l'Archaeological Institute of America, ainsi que des doctorats honorifiques des universités de Bristol et de Leiden. Hodder est l'auteur de nombreux livres, dont Symbols in Action (Cambridge, 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge, 1982) et Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (2012).

Where Are We Heading:The Evolution of Humans and Things pdf par Ian Hodder

In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on “entanglement,” the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Not only do humans become dependent on things, Hodder asserts, but things become dependent on humans, requiring an endless succession of new innovations. It is this mutual dependency that creates the dominant trend in both cultural and genetic evolution. He selects a small number of cases, ranging in significance from the invention of the wheel down to Christmas tree lights, to show how entanglement has created webs of human-thing dependency that encircle the world and limit our responses to global crises.