Objects and Everyday Life, Spring 2018

In class we talked extensively about aluminum lawn furniture, primarily focusing on it's functionality and location in the american household. However, while the material of aluminum is important in determining the functionality of the product due to it's hardness and light weight, making the furniture easy to more around, it's presence and position as a popular fad may be associated with it's prior scarcity. Before the Hall-Heroult process was developed, aluminum was extremely hard to refine, despite being one of the most common metals in the earth's crust, it's elemental form is extremely uncommon, making it both rarer and more expensive than gold, due to this it was used for expensive silverware, and even the top of the Washington monument. This process utilized electrolysis to produce aluminum metal in an industrial setting and at an industrial scale. Aluminum's new availability may be compared to if a new scientific process made gold a common material, ...

We have thought about how objects influence our daily life, but rarely do we think about how objects have gotten us to do their bidding for them. For example, the apple has become a staple in the households and diets of not only many Americans but also people all around the world. But do humans have too tight a grip on the existence of apple? From the reading, “In Search of the Primeval Apple Forest” in the book Apples by Frank Browning, I have learned that the apple has traveled throughout history by being transported by humans and other mammals. But I’ve also learned that science and the search for sweetness has changed and stopped the way the fruit evolves. Farmers now grow only a select few types of apples that can easily be marketed and sold to the public. But scientists realized that this technique could eventually kill the apples, and have tried to keep up the evolution of the apple by visiting the start of its history: the apple forests of Kazakh. I think it’s important to re...

I have two thoughts for my final paper topic, these include my Blundstone work-boots and toothpaste.  Clearly two very different approaches. Initially Blundstone boots came to my mind because they are a daily staple of my wardrobe.  As Viticulture and Enology Student here at Davis, it is almost a necessity to own a pair of these boots.  They have become the symbol of the California working winemaker, and owning a pair puts you in the know.  Wearing scuffed up boots proves that you have worked a wine harvest, and therefore have earned your right of passage into the industry. They are gender neutral so working men and women wear the same model.  I could discuss the history of the brand, about the boot's social role in the industry, and the leather/other materials they are made of. Alternatively, I could talk about toothpaste and how it is now a completely necessary and habitual object in our society.  I could talk about how it was invented and how...