Abstract
In the consumption society, the relationships between people, things and meanings extend across vast and diverse territories. In this article, we emphasize the ontological construction that occurs between people and things, reciprocally, beyond symbolic, collective and public exchanges in consumption practices. We reflect upon relationships that people establish with things in contexts of mourning. By mourning, we refer not only to the feeling associated with someone’s death but broadly, to the feeling of loss of materialities. Methodologically, Daniel Miller’s contribution lies in the anthropological and ethnographic approach to the dialectical and mutual relationships between people and things, which we discuss here departing from concepts such as “objectification”, “humility of objects” and “agency”.
Keywords:
Daniel Miller; material culture; people; things; mourning