This week’s readings include Igor Kopytoff’s essay, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process.” Kopytoff is primarily concerned to destroy the binary of commodities, arguing that things can’t be only divided into commodities and not commodities. Instead, he proposes that things fall somewhere between the two extremes, and often shift quite drastically between the two at various points in their existence. He also posits that Western culture has the unique distinction of decommodifying people and struggling to keep them that way in direct opposition to economic forces which push for ever expanding commoditization.
He demonstrates this argument through the use of what he calls biographies of things. Much like the biographies of people, these begin with the object’s “birth,” and follow the object throughout its various uses in the various stages of its “life” until its eventual destruction. According to Kopytoff, these biographies can teach us much about the objects themselves but also about the cultures surrounding the objects. They also allow us to track the object’s slide to and from being a commodity or not. This idea provides an interesting new way to look at my wall gun. Tracing the commodification of my gun will require more research on its “life.” However, it has probably fluctuated a lot in its value as a commodity over time. I do not yet know how the Mughal army procured its weapons, but if it at all resembles the way contemporary Western armies procured their weapons, then the gun started life as a commodity, made by gunsmiths to be sold to the army. As a wall gun, it has no practical civilian application, and may have been made under contract for the government. In any case, it likely was a commodity with one specific buyer and user in mind—unless produced by the army at a state run arsenal, in which case all its component parts were commodities acquired by the government. Once under the army’s control, it would no longer be much of a commodity. While in service, the gun would be placed in an armory and stored until needed. It would be kept secure to prevent it from becoming a commodity by would-be thieves. It might earn a special name from the soldier operating it, who sees it as his loyal companion in warfare, intimately connected to his own survival. He might get attached to it as he cleans and maintains it, knowing his life depends on its reliability in combat. In Kopytoff’s language, this has pushed it away from being a commodity and instead singularized it, maybe even sacralized it too. However, once it became obsolete by advancements in military technology, the fall of the Mughal Empire, and the inroads of the British Empire it lost its monetary value, sliding further away from commodity. Perhaps it was preserved as a sacred object by a former soldier, leader, or commoner, or perhaps it lost its sacredness too and was abandoned in an armory or ruined fort. Whichever the case, it soon jumped across the commodity continuum when it was somehow rediscovered and traded or sold until it came to Theodore Newbold, who donated it to the ISM. At the museum it took back its sacredness as an antique, although misidentified as a punt gun. This error actually furthered its singularization since it fit perfectly into the ISM’s collection. My discovery of its actual identity as a punt gun has changed the trajectory of its “life” again, as it could potentially be deaccessioned from the museum. It may be commercialized and the profit used for preserving the rest of the ISM’s collection, or it may find a home at a more relevant collection at another museum, allowing it to remain relatively sacred and singular. Whatever happens, at the outset of this project I certainly did not expect to play a big role in the life of this gun. I hope it finds a home at a museum among other wall guns—because after all I am a product of my culture that has promoted its sacralization.
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