NOT-SO-TRIVIAL PURSUITS : A SOCIOLOGY OF COLLECTING IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Collectors are an anomaly. By this statement, I mean that they pose a great puzzle to anyone attempting to situate their activity using conventional epistemological categories. The placement of a 'collectible' in the world of goods is just as problematic. Collecting is fundamentally powerful in that it not only reflects the social values regarding person-object values and relations, but also qualitatively impacts upon them. Individual collecting entails personal freedom but also requires social recognition best exemplified in the market of collectibles. There is a dialectical interplay of factors that ultimately makes collecting dialectically derived, experienced and actively transforming. This in itself merits a sociology of collecting. In understanding collecting both empirically and theoretically, I examine the wider system of meaning and values, i.e. collecting is situated in a field, the personality system of individual action, practice and subjectivity, and eventually, the consequences of collecting on both the individual and wider system of meaning.