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Canonical Affordances: The Psychology of Everyday Things
Oxford Handbooks Online

Canonical Affordances: The Psychology of Everyday
Things
Alan Costall and Ann Richards
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World
Edited by Paul Graves-Brown, Rodney Harrison, and Angela Piccini
Print Publication Date: Oct 2013 Subject: Archaeology, Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Online Publication Date: Dec 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199602001.013.047
Abstract and Keywords
Psychologists have had very little to say about things. Things are one thing, people are
another. There is now, however, a growing recognition of the importance of things within
human psychology. But, in cognitive theory, the meanings of things are usually radically
subjectivized. ‘Their’ meanings are really ‘our’ meanings that we mentally project upon
them. James Gibson’s concept of affordances was an attempt to avoid subject–object
dualism by defining the meanings of things-what we can do with them-as properties of the
object but defined relative to the agent. Critics have rightly objected that Gibson himself,
nevertheless, overly objectified or reified affordances. Yet the affordances of many objects
in the human world are objective, or, better, impersonal. The present chapter, however, is
concerned with such ‘canonical affordances’-the things that things are for. But, as it
argues, this kind of ‘objectivity’ must itself be understood in relation to other objects and
events, and other people.
Keywords: affordances, canonical affordances, mutualism, archaeology, autism
…subject and object antithetically defined can have logically no transactions with
each other.
(Dewey 1958 [1925]: 239)
…things are objects to be treated, used, acted upon and with, enjoyed and
endured, even more than things to be known. They are things had before they are
things cognized.
(Dewey 1958 [1925]: 21)
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6.1 Introduction
PSYCHOLOGISTS have a ‘thing’ about things. If anything, they would prefer, for reasons we
will explain, to have nothing to do with them. However, in 1989, the cognitive
psychologist Donald Norman published a book with the eye-catching title, The Psychology
of Everyday Things. For him, the whole point of the title was to make clear that
‘inanimate objects had a psychology’ (Norman 1998: vii). The book sold well and to a
readership well beyond psychologists—so much so, that a second edition appeared. But
the new edition had the much less eye-catching title—The Design of Everyday Things
(1998). Norman’s new publishers, and his own inquiries among potential readers,
convinced him that the original title would only cause confusion.
The idea that ‘inanimate objects’ do not have a psychology is prevalent within psychology.
This cannot be put down entirely to the unworldliness of psychologists. The division of
people and things is institutionalized within the structure of modern academic disciplines.
The natural sciences have, as Joerges nicely put it, constructed a ‘material world’
independent of human concerns, and the human sciences, in turn, created ‘a world of
actors devoid of things’ (Joerges 1988: 220).
Scientists, and especially psychologists, usually put the blame for this dualism of
(p. 83)
the objective and subjective upon a single philosopher, René Descartes, and then proceed
as though it has nothing to do with themselves as clear-headed, no-nonsense scientists.
(In fact, Descartes himself made important contributions to science, not least, the system
of Cartesian coordinates.) But, ever since the time of Galileo and Kepler, mind–body
dualism had been fundamental to the project of physical science.
The dualistic idea of matter was designed explicitly as a pure Object to balance
the pure Subject. It was incapable of life because, for dualism, life, along with
subjectivity, was an alien extra, something spiritual which God infused only into
human beings, leaving the rest of the natural world as inanimate machinery. Yet
now, when theorists dropped the idea of spirit, this thin, inert kind of matter was
supposed to be the only reality left in the world and thus, of course, the only
possible subject-matter for science. Life and subjectivity were either mere surface
phenomena or some kind of illusion.
(Midgley 2006: 10; emphases added)
Of course, the Darwinian revolution, and also developments within physics (such as quantum
theory and special relativity) challenged the dualist ontology of mechanistic physics (on Darwin,
see Dewey 1910; on physics, see Whitehead 1926; Burtt 1954 [1923]; Koyré 1965; Toulmin 1982;
Bohm 1988). The radical implications of these scientific developments were widely
acknowledged around the turn of the twentieth century. As the philosopher Arthur Bentley
neatly put it:
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Since the ‘mental’ as we have known it in the past was a squeeze-out from
Newtonian space, the physicist may be asked to ponder how it can still remain a
squeeze-out when the space out of which it was squeezed is no longer there to
squeeze it out.
(Bentley 1938: 165)
Yet scientific dualism has somehow remained remarkably entrenched, and, in relation to ‘the
psychology of inanimate things’, there have been two consequences:
1. Things have mainly failed to figure on the scientific agenda of psychologists, or
even other social scientists.
2. To the limited extent that things have figured within psychological discourse, their
meaning has been radically subjectivized.
This chapter is about ‘what things are for’ and will draw upon James Gibson’s concept of
‘affordances’ to rematerialize—but also problematize—the meaning of things.
6.2 Meaning as Representation

The standard line within traditional physical science has been that meaning (along with
sensory qualities such as colour and warmth, the so-called ‘secondary qualities’) does not
exist in the real world but in our minds instead. (Descartes, of all people, was a notable
exception; he regarded sensations as both mental and physical; see Cottingham 1985.)
That meaning is subjective, not objective, is now widely regarded as proven scientific fact,
along the lines of the following curious argument:
it used to be thought that perceptions, by vision and touch and so on, can give
direct knowledge of objective reality….But, largely through the physiological study
of the senses over the (p. 84) last two hundred years, this has become ever more
difficult to defend….ultimately we cannot know directly what is illusion, any more
than truth—for we cannot step outside perception to compare experience with
objective reality.
(Gregory 1989: 94; emphasis added)
That this line of argument has, from the time of Galileo, seemed so compelling to otherwise
highly intelligent scientists is truly astonishing. For the argument presupposes what it claims to
deny: that people—well, scientists, at least!—can, indeed, come to know what things are like in
the world, in this case, the nature of the physiology of the senses.
This dualism of objects and subjects is the basis of ‘the representationalist theory of
mind’: the world as we experience it does not correspond to the real world, but as it is re-
presented within our minds. Long before representationalism became a central dogma
within psychology in the 1950s, it had been essential to the ‘metaphysics’ of physical
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science, and already subject to fundamental criticism by, for example, the philosophers
David Hume, E. B. Holt, and George Herbert Mead:
In general, the connections between the experiencing individual and the things
experienced—conceived in their physical reality—were reduced to a passive
conditioning of states of consciousness by a mechanical nature. Into such a mind
was carried…whatever in nature could not be stated in terms of matter in
motion….The result of this was to force upon the mind the presentation of the
world of actual experience with all its characters, except, perhaps, the so-called
primary characters of things. Mind had, therefore, a representational world that
was supposed to answer to the physical world, and the connection between this
world and the physical world remained a mystery.
(Mead 1938: 359, emphasis added; on Hume, see Palmer 1987; on Holt, see
Costall 2011)
Fundamental problems with representationalism have long been recognized within psychology
itself (see, for example, Bickhard and Richie 1983; Costall and Still 1987; Harnad 1990; Button et
al. 1995; Shaw 2003). Yet, somehow, representationalism continues to create the impression that
it not only is, but has to be ‘the only game in town’ (to use Jerry Fodor’s smug expression). So,
according to representationalist theory, the meaning of things could not inhere in the things
themselves but must, instead, be projected onto them on the basis of how we happen to
represent them subjectively or ‘cognitively’:
Representation is a fundamental process of all human life; it underlies the

development of mind, self, societies and cultures….The reality of the human world
is in its entirety made of representation; in fact there is no sense of reality for our
human world without the work of representation.
(Jovchelovitch 2006: 10; emphasis added).
This representationalist view of the meanings of things is not restricted to psychology. It is

prevalent within the study of so-called ‘material culture’, and became influential when
archaeologists came to draw not only upon hard-core cognitivist theory, but also structuralism
and post-structuralism (see Thomas 1999; Jones 2004; see also Marcoulatus 2003). To the extent
there are differences between disciplines, it concerns the ‘location’ of the meaning of things—as
either in individual, private minds, or else in collective representations or ‘discourse’:
Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems—

concepts and signs….According to [the social constructionist] approach, we must
not confuse the material world, where things and people exist, and the symbolic
practices and processes through which representation, meaning and language
operate. Constructivists do not deny the (p. 85) existence of the material world.
However, it is not the material world which conveys meaning: it is the language
system or whatever system we are using to represent our concepts.
(Hall 1997: 25; emphasis added; cf. Danziger 2003, on ‘discourse reductionism’!)
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So, according to representationalism, the meanings of things are, one way or another, in ‘us’ and
not in things. They are either in our individual minds or our ‘group minds’. The mistake of
representationalism—a direct consequence of its dualistic foundation—is to suppose that there is
no skill or intelligence in action outside of representation. Yet, the intelligent use of rules and
representations depends upon an intelligence that is not itself embodied in explicit rules and
representations. Skilful action and judgement precede reflective knowing (Ryle 1949; Merleau-
Ponty 1962; Dewey 1983 [1922]; Schön 1991; Burkitt 2002).
6.3 Gibson’s Concept of Affordances

One influential argument for the representationalist approach to the meaning of things
has been that any thing could, in principle, mean anything. Thus, an apple can be eaten,
but it can also be used as a missile, to make cider, a target for archery practice, as a
brand image, etc., etc., etc. The deeply ambiguous nature of things has also been
deployed as an influential argument against James Gibson’s theory of affordances.
The fundamental point of Gibson’s concept of affordances is that we need to take things
themselves much more seriously in our account of their meaning precisely because,
although we can do many different things with any thing, we cannot do anything with
anything. Objects can object to certain ways of being used:
I have coined this word [affordances] as a substitute for values, a term which
carries an old burden of philosophical meaning. I mean simply what things
furnish, for good or ill. What they afford…1after all, depends on their properties.
(Gibson 1966: 285; emphasis added; see also Hutchby 2001)
In our view, the theory of affordances was the only serious attempt within modern psychology to
reconcile subjects and objects—agents and their resources for action. (For an excellent account
of Gibson’s ‘ecological approach’, see Heft 2001; for discussion of Gibson from the perspective of
archaeology and anthropology, see Ingold 2000; Knappett 2004.)
According to Gibson, the affordances of things are real, but they come into being in
relation to particular agents and their activities and capacities. Gibson defined an
‘affordance’ as ‘a combination of physical properties of the environment that is uniquely
suited to a given animal—to his nutritive system or his action system or his locomotor
system’ (Gibson 1977: 79). Gibson’s purpose was to undermine the dualism of subjectivity
and objectivity that keeps trapping us into locating the meaning of things exclusively
within ourselves. The meaning of things is a relation:
An affordance is not what we call a ‘subjective’ quality of a thing. But neither is it

what we call an ‘objective’ property of a thing if by that we mean that a physical
object has no (p. 86) reference to any animal. An affordance cuts across the
dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. The
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affordances of the environment are facts of the environment, not appearances. But
they are not, on the other hand, facts at the level of physics concerned only with
matter and energy with animals left out.
(Gibson 1977: 69–70; emphasis added)
For example, food really is there in the world—indeed it is an essential biological resource—but
only in relation to those animals with the capacities to access and digest it. So the fundamental
point is that affordances ‘have unity relative to the posture and behavior of the animal being
considered’ (Gibson 1979: 127–8; emphasis added). Thus grass constitutes food for cows but not
for humans, and it only became food—and indeed evolved, as it were, to take this into account
(Bateson 1973: 128)—with the advent of grazing animals. Essentially the same point had been
made by the philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
Already the mere presence of a living being transforms the physical world,
bringing to view here ‘food’, there a ‘hiding place’, and giving to ‘stimuli’ a sense
which they have not hitherto possessed. A fortiori does this apply to the presence
of man in the animal world. Behaviour creates meanings which are transcendent
in relation to the anatomical apparatus, and yet immanent to the behaviour as
such.
(Merleau-Ponty 1962: 189)
The theory of affordances is an account of meaning that can exist prior to the development of
language, symbolization, and categorization. For this reason, the concept of affordances has
long been dismissed as both universalist and reductionist. For example, George Lakoff, although
generally sympathetic to the thrust of Gibson’s ecological approach, complained that ‘the
Gibsonian environment is monolithic and self-consistent and the same for all people’, and that
his approach ‘cannot make sense of experiential or cultural categories’ (Lakoff 1987: 216).
In fact, the theory of affordances is a challenge to the non-developmental, ahistorical, and
unworldly foundation of modern cognitive theory. Cognitive theory is non-developmental
and ahistorical precisely because it takes the specific human practices of representation,
rule-following, and categorization for granted as universal, and as the starting point
rather than as a problem for psychological theory, not only in relation to human activity in
general but to other animals as well (see Brooks 1991 for an important critique). The
theory of affordances, far from being reductionist, is an attempt to define the conditions
of possibility for the evolution and development of language and representational systems
(see Reed 1991).
One real limitation of Gibson’s concept of affordances is that although it is relational, the
relation is restricted to the agent–object dyad. Yet the affordance of any artefact is not
confined to that object in isolation, but depends on a ‘constellation’ (Keller and Keller
1996) or ‘utensil-totality’ (Gurwitsch 1979: 82–3) of not only other objects but also events.
A group of archaeology students at Copenhagen University excavating the camp area
attached to the annual rock music festival at Roskilde were reported to be finding plenty
of used condoms and beer cans, a few food wrappers, and a single hash-pipe. The
students, however, were mainly impressed by what their excavation was failing to reveal
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—the event that was holding these different artefacts together. ‘We cannot see the music
in the festival’s soil’ (‘man ikke kan se musikken i festivalens muld’) (Skyum-Nielsen
2007: 25). We think Gibson’s ‘dyadic’ approach is a serious limitation, but not an issue
that, as far as we are aware, has been previously raised by psychologists.
However, we want to focus upon a related criticism: that Gibson seems to be

(p. 87)
presenting an entirely static account of affordances, of meanings inhering in objects just

waiting to be ‘discovered’. In many of our spontaneous interactions with things, as John
Shotter has emphasized, their meanings come into being within the flow of activity:
the beings in Gibson’s world are depicted merely as observers, not as actors, i.e.
not as beings able to provide for themselves, by their own actions, conditions
appropriate to support their action’s continuation. They may move about, but they
do not act; thus rather than ‘makers’, they are presented merely as ‘finders’ of
what already exists. Such a view, I would argue, fails to recognize the peculiar
form-producing character of activity in a biological and social world; it fails to
assign a proper role to time and to processes of growth and development.
(Shotter 1983: 20)
So, according to Shotter, it seems that everything must be in flux. We can never ‘step’ into the
same flow of affordances twice.
6.4 Canonical Affordances

In fact, Gibson himself was blatantly inconsistent in his account of affordances, at times
acknowledging their fundamentally ‘open’, relational status, and, at other times, ‘lodging’
affordances in an ‘objectivated world’ (Noble 1991: 204). This confusion derives from
Gibson’s insistence upon the continuity between human artefacts and ‘natural’ objects in
general:
It is a mistake to separate the natural from the artificial as if there were two
environments; artifacts have to be manufactured from natural substances. It is
also a mistake to separate the cultural environment from the natural environment,
as if there were a world of mental products distinct from the world of material
products. There is only one world, however diverse, and all animals live in it,
although we human animals have altered it to suit ourselves.
(Gibson 1979: 130)
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Although Gibson was right to stress the materiality of the artificial and the cultural, it does not
follow that artefacts do not also have a special psychological status. Gibson’s treatment of the
affordances of artefacts in much the same terms as ‘natural’ objects has led to two important
problems. The first is the one identified by Shotter and Noble: the objectification of affordances
in general—by unwittingly generalizing from the special case of artefacts. The second problem is
the failure of Gibson (and, indeed, Shotter and Noble) to recognize that the meanings of things
can become objectified. Artefacts already embody human intentions.
A chair is for-sitting-on whether or not anyone happens to be using it for that purpose.
And it remains a chair even when someone is standing on it to change a light-bulb. Its
‘canonical affordance’—the thing it is for (Costall 1995)—is objective, or better,
impersonal (Morss 1985): ‘one sits on chairs’. Nevertheless, canonical affordances still
imply us, but in the plurality rather than the singular. As is the case for other ‘social
facts’, the impersonality of canonical affordances is ‘an ongoing accomplishment of the
concerted activities of daily life’ (Garfinkel 1967: vii).
Contrary to Shotter’s general claim, therefore, artefacts—humanly constructed

(p. 88)
objects—would seem to be an exception. Their users do not normally relate to these kinds
of objects as ‘makers’ but mainly (although, as we shall argue, not exclusively) as
partakers. In relation to the things they are for, and the routine practices into which they
enter, objectification is not a fallacy but a fact of life.
6.5 The Play of Things

There is no problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right
way, does not become ever more complicated.
(After Poul Andersen)
So far we have drawn a distinction between the ‘canonical affordances’ of artefacts, and the
affordances of other kinds of things. But things are more complicated than that. First of all,
‘natural’ objects, and not just artefacts, can become incorporated into standard practices and
attain a conventional or normative significance. Furthermore, any object with a canonical
affordance still also affords, in principle, limitless other uses and meanings.
The classic research by Karl Düncker on ‘functional fixedness’ suggests that once we
come to understand the ‘real’ or ‘proper’ function of something we can become ‘blinded’
to its other possible uses (Düncker 1945: 85ff.). Experiments on ‘functional fixedness’
present people with a choice of objects which they can use to solve a problem set to them,
but where some of the objects will need to be used in a non-standard way, e.g. using a box
not as a container but turned upside down as a supporting surface, or pliers not as a tool
but a pendulum bob. German and Defeyter (2000) have shown that the onset of
‘functional fixedness’ occurs relatively early. Children of school age already face
difficulties on such creative problem-solving tasks, in contrast to younger children.
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Functional fixedness is, however, difficult to reconcile with the everyday fact that people
improvise in their use of conventional objects. Düncker (1945: 88) himself considered
whether it might arise from a ‘bias in the subjects’ rather than ‘in the objects’, but
dismissed as rationalization the claims of some of the participants in his study that they
thought that they were not allowed to use the box in which the other objects had been
presented. It is important to note that the school-age children, in the study by German
and Defeyter, and related research, have been tested at school, and therefore under the
somewhat repressive ‘regimes’ of such places. When, for example, children are asked to
solve a multiplication problem, they are not supposed to use a calculator or phone a
friend.
It is certainly the case that, out of school, even school-age children are seriously into the
business of ‘misusing’ things. An obvious example is symbolic or pretend play, where
objects with a conventional meaning are used in amusingly different ways, such as
wearing a colander as a helmet, or kneading a pillow as though it were bread dough.
According to Alan Leslie, all this playing about with the meanings of things is paradoxical
given that it is occurring at just the time children are also supposed to be discovering the
‘real’ meaning of things:
The perceiving, thinking organism ought, as far as possible, to get things right. Yet
pretense flies in the face of this fundamental principle. In pretense we deliberately
distort reality.
(Leslie 1987: 412)
(p. 89)Much of the recent research on play has adopted a remarkably unworldly cognitive
approach and almost completely disregarded the nature of the play objects themselves. In
contrast, Ágnes Szokolsky (2006), adopting an affordance approach, has found that young
children’s pretend play is, in fact, nicely tuned to the affordances of the available play objects,
even if the affordances are not immediately obvious to anyone else. Her own son once
announced, unpromisingly, that his discarded sock was a gun, but then, to her surprise, he
stretched it taut between his hands and ‘aimed’ it at her (see Costall and Dreier 2006: 4).
Contrary to Leslie’s cognitivist view of play, she concludes:
Pretend play is imaginative, but not by turning away from the real world. Children
perceive and use affordances while they play and this is surely part of the
developmental process.
(Szokolsky 2006: 83; emphasis added)
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Furthermore, even as adults, we routinely ‘misuse’ things, appropriating them into the flow of
our activity in non-standard ways. Paper clips are hardly ever used for their intended function,
but used instead, among many other things, as toothpicks, nail and ear cleaners, makeshift
fasteners for blouses, nylons, and bras, and decorative chains (Petrovski 1993: 51). Sometimes,
these improvised uses ‘take on’ the status of an additional canonical affordance. Opened-out
paper clips became the approved way to remove computer discs stuck in disc drives. The now
defunct, alkaline ‘blue bags’, used in laundry for whitening clothes, also served as a widely
recognized, ready to hand remedy for bee stings. Aspirin, initially ‘designed’ for pain relief, is
now also used to enhance blood circulation.
Sometimes, these alternative affordances require adopting a quite different ‘angle’
towards the object, or attending to characteristics that are incidental to its main function.
As we discovered as students, the so-called ‘mini-computers’ of the 1970s (in fact, power-
hungry giants) could serve as highly effective heaters when the university central heating
system was switched off at the weekends. Using an upturned glass as a pastry cutter
requires disregarding its ‘contain-ability’, and attending instead to the cutting ability of
its edge. In some parts of rural China, the baskets used to transport pigs to market are
also used as a standard part of the local looms. It is the outer surface of the baskets in
these ‘pig-basket’ (or ‘pig-cage’) looms that is then functional, where it serves to support
and maintain the sequence of pattern sticks (Ågren 1992).
There is a psychological test of creativity that requires people to think of as many

different possible uses they can of a commonplace object, such as a brick. The problem,
of course, in this particular context, is to forget that the thing is a brick. Indeed,
according to Susanne Langer, it is only when we stop looking at things with ‘the economy
of practical vision’ that ‘their suppressed forms and their unusual meanings emerge for
us’ (Langer 1951: 239). However, in everyday life, our creativity usually occurs in
practice, when, within the flow of activity, we appropriate things, often unthinkingly, in
novel ways to achieve our current goals. We do not work backwards from the possible
uses of objects, as in a creativity test, but forwards from what it is we are trying to do.
Such improvisation can lead to an interesting interplay between designers and producers,
on the one hand, and users. Here is Donald Schön’s account of the ‘career’ of Scotch
Tape:
Shortly after World War II, to take one rather celebrated example, the 3M
Corporation put on the market a clear cellulose acetate tape, coated on one side
with pressure-sensitive adhesive, which they called Scotch Tape. They had
intended it for use as a book-mending material, a way of preserving things that
would otherwise have to be thrown away; hence (p. 90) the name Scotch. But in
consumers’ hands, the product came to be used in many different ways, most of
which had nothing to do with mending books. It was used to wrap packages, to
fasten pictures to the wall, to make labels, to decorate surfaces, even to curl hair.
3M’s managers did not regard these surprising uses as a failure of their initial
marketing plan, nor did they merely accept them as a happy accident. They
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noticed them and tried to make sense of them as a set of messages about potential
markets. The company began to market types of Scotch Tape specially designed
for use in such applications as packaging, decorating, and hair curling.
3M’s marketing managers treated their product as a projection test for

consumers….Their marketing process was a reflective conversation with
consumers. (Schön 1991: 245; see du Gay et al. 1997, on the similar fate of the
Sony Walkman)
The extent to which any object is used in more than just one way depends on many factors,
including its personal and monetary value, and its vulnerability to damage if used in the non-
standard way. When, for example, we use a chisel as a screwdriver, we can impair its future use
as a chisel, even though, in this case, we ‘handle’ the object in more or less the same way. There
are also cultural differences. Visiting English kitchen shops, we are struck by the absurd degree
of specificity of the various utensils, especially given the small size of most English kitchens. In
contrast, within Zapotek communities in Mexico, for example, objects are used in many different
conventional ways. The gourds, baskets, and stools are routinely ‘inverted’ to cover food,
constrain the movement of chickens, or to serve as pot-holders. Given their multiple uses, there
is no single canonical orientation for these objects, and this is reflected in Zapotek children’s
performance on spatial imitation tasks (Jensen de López 2006).
6.6 Conclusion
In their classic text, The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckman presented
the following wonderfully reassuring account of the archaeological interpretation of the
meaning of things:
I am constantly surrounded by objects that ‘proclaim’ the subjective intentions of

my fellowmen, although I may sometimes have difficulty being quite sure just
what it is that a particular object is ‘proclaiming’, especially if it was produced by
men whom I have not known well or at all in face-to-face situations. Every
ethnologist or archaeologist will readily testify to such difficulties, but the very
fact that he can overcome them and reconstruct from an artifact the subjective
intentions of men whose society may have been extinct for millennia is eloquent
proof of the enduring power of human objectivations.
(Berger and Luckman 1971: 50)
Unfortunately, as we have been arguing, ‘the enduring power of human objectivations’ would not
seem to provide a sufficient warrant for the interpretation of ‘subjective intentions’ from
artefacts, even artefacts belonging to modern industrial societies, where the trend has certainly
been towards a greater specialization of function.
First of all, the affordance of an object is not neatly self-contained within the agent–object
dyad, but implicates a ‘constellation’ of other objects and events (Keller and Keller 1996).
Secondly, even commonplace objects can end up being for more than one thing. (p. 91)
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Thirdly, as Shotter and Noble rightly emphasized, there can also be a good deal of ‘play’
in the flow of everyday use: ‘the Spiel of usability’ (Keller 2005). And this is where new
possibilities are realized:
an affordance is only completely specified as the affordance it is when the activity

it affords is complete.
(Shotter 1983: 27)
In such cases, affordances are not simply discovered, but nor are they mentally projected upon
inherently meaningless things. They are negotiated. In such cases, the verb, ‘affording’ rather
than the noun, ‘affordance’, is, therefore, by far the more appropriate term. But then, of course,
from a wider historical and archaeological perspective, this is true of canonical affordances as
well (see de Léon, this volume, and also 2006). Over successive ‘generations’ of production, the
things themselves are in flux, as they, in turn, newly resource, and thereby reconstruct, human
agency.
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Notes:
(1) We have deleted Gibson’s own term here, ‘observer’, here. Gibson’s later work shifted
from his earlier focus on perception or observation to the resources for agency:
information and affordances (see Costall 2003).
Alan Costall
Alan Costall, Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth.
Ann Richards
Ann Richards, Independent Researcher.
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Canonical Affordances: The Psychology of Everyday Things

Oxford Handbooks Online

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: affordances, canonical affordances, mutualism, archaeology, autism

(Dewey 1958 [1925]: 239)

(Dewey 1958 [1925]: 21)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

(Midgley 2006: 10; emphases added)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

(Bentley 1938: 165)

6.2 Meaning as Representation

(Gregory 1989: 94; emphasis added)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

Representation is a fundamental process of all human life; it underlies the

(Jovchelovitch 2006: 10; emphasis added).

This representationalist view of the meanings of things is not restricted to psychology. It is

Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems—

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

6.3 Gibson’s Concept of Affordances

(Gibson 1966: 285; emphasis added; see also Hutchby 2001)

An affordance is not what we call a ‘subjective’ quality of a thing. But neither is it

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

(Gibson 1977: 69–70; emphasis added)

(Merleau-Ponty 1962: 189)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

However, we want to focus upon a related criticism: that Gibson seems to be

presenting an entirely static account of affordances, of meanings inhering in objects just

(Shotter 1983: 20)

6.4 Canonical Affordances

(Gibson 1979: 130)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

Contrary to Shotter’s general claim, therefore, artefacts—humanly constructed

6.5 The Play of Things

(After Poul Andersen)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

(Leslie 1987: 412)

(Szokolsky 2006: 83; emphasis added)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

There is a psychological test of creativity that requires people to think of as many

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

3M’s marketing managers treated their product as a projection test for

I am constantly surrounded by objects that ‘proclaim’ the subjective intentions of

(Berger and Luckman 1971: 50)

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

an affordance is only completely specified as the affordance it is when the activity

(Shotter 1983: 27)

Bateson, Gregory. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. London: Paladin.

Bentley, Arthur F. 1938. Physicists and Fairies. Philosophy of Science 5: 132–65.

Brooks, Rodney A. 1991. Intelligence without Representation. Artificial Intelligence 47:

Burtt, Edwin A. 1954. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science.

Costall, Alan. 1995. Socializing Affordances. Theory and Psychology 5: 467–81.

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

——— 2011. Against Representationalism: James Gibson’s Secret Debt to E. B. Holt. In A

Cottingham, John. 1985. Cartesian Trialism. Mind, ns 94: 218–30.

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-

German, Tim P. and Defeyter, Margaret A. 2000. Immunity to Functional Fixedness in

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018

——— 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Hall, Stuart. 1997. The Work of Representation. In Representation: Cultural

Jones, Andrew. 2004. Archaeometry and Materiality: Materials-Based Analysis in Theory

Jovchelovitch, Sandra. 2006. Knowledge in Context: Representations, Community and

Studies 28: 173–204.

Subscriber: National University of Singapore; date: 06 May 2018