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The course consists of an introduction to the material and especially the technological basis of culture. General objectives: Understanding of the role of new technologies and media in the production of cultural meanings. Access to the main theories that interpret and explain this role. Specifically, the following competences will be developed: Understand the role of new technologies and media in the production of cultural meanings. To know and understand the main theories that interpret and explain this role. To acquire the conceptual and methodological tools necessary to understand and analyze the different factors that determine the role of new technologies in contemporary culture. To be able to analyze and critically judge the debates present in the different studies on the cultural role of new technologies. To know the relevant bibliography. To be able to use oral and written methods of study and criticism. Be able to produce academic texts, oral and written, related to the subject. Particular objectives: To understand material environments as environments in which identities are constituted. To know the main lines of material culture To understand the material bases of experience

The course will focus on the critical analysis of the material culture of our environment: the everyday and immediateness of personal life, the culture of design and consumption, the functional, aesthetic, moral and political aspects of our technological niches. The central objective will be the study of the various dimensions of objects: materials, formal, use, their symbolic aspects, the more or less appropriate technologies involved in the artifacts, the elements of identity and distinction that constitute the place of objects in social spaces. 1. Introduction to Artifact Theory and Material Culture 2. Appropriate appropriate technologies 3. Consumer theory: functional, moral and political elements 4. Brief history of the critique of everyday life.

The development of the subject will combine the schematic presentations of the teacher in theoretical classes with a permanent workshop in which students will present a critical analysis of objects chosen by them.