History of Material Culture and Economic History

Abstract

The relationship between the history of material culture and economic history has been debated since the founding of the Institute of History of Material Culture (PAN) and the launch of the Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej in 1953. The scope of the new discipline and its demarcation from economic history, the history of technology, and archaeology have not been resolved in a single theoretical synthesis.

This article defines material culture and its history, examines the relationship between the history of material culture and economic history, and identifies the five basic questions posed by the historian of material culture in the fields of production, exchange, and consumption.

The argument draws on Marxist theoretical foundations (Marx, Engels), programmatic publications of the Institute of History of Material Culture (PAN), the methodological work of Kula on economic history, and the author's own research on Neolithic heritage in 20th-century technology.

The analysis proposes that material culture be defined as that part of culture expressible by material products of work and by habits defining the attitudes of people using and multiplying those goods. Its five basic questions concern: (1) dependence of man on forces of nature and progress in mastering matter, energy, and space; (2) co-existence of past and present elements of materialized creative thought in contemporary productive forces; (3) regularity in the development of consumption and its increasing social character; (4) the confrontation of advantages and disadvantages accompanying the growth of civilization; (5) expression of abstract notions through material symbols and modifications of professional consciousness. The history of material culture thus complements economic history by covering problems on the borderland of technology, culture, and social material living conditions.