The Value of Things

The Value of Things argues that society's priorities, its notions of value, are still informed by our relationship with physical objects, even though we have entered an age characterized by technological abstraction. The book examines how modern life is saturated with and defined by things, as the need to acquire, exchange and display objects is intensified by consumerism. Authors Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska use a provocative mix of text and photography to describe the way in which two institutions, the department store and the museum, are central to the story of society's access to material things.