Mark Kurlansky has done a brisk business in this kind of biography-of-a-thing, Salt, and Cod were the first two books I thought of when I read your post, but he's also got books called Salmon and Paper that I haven't read.

I think that I would put those books under the broad heading of social histories, which is a genre. You may also look for "microhistories", and here's a list of them:

https://www.librarything.com/tag/microhistory