Materializing Culture
About the Book Series
This provocative series focuses on the social relations involved in material practices. The study of material culture has stimulated a new body of research which brings together areas as diverse as the artwork of record sleeves, shopping, bitter conflicts over ancient monuments, digital fonts, craft skills and the political economy of consumption. This series demonstrates the innovative and critical edge that a material culture perspective may bring to bear upon a wide range of academic concerns.
The Materiality of Nothing: Exploring Our Everyday Relationships with Objects Absent and Present
1st Edition
By Helen Holmes
November 28, 2024
The Materiality of Nothing explores the invisible, intangible and transient materials and objects of everyday life and the relationships we have with them. Drawing on over 15 years of original, empirical research, it builds on growing research on the everyday, and unites the established field of ...
Global Art in Local Art Worlds: Changing Hierarchies of Value
1st Edition
Edited
By Oscar Salemink, Amélia Siegel Corrêa, Jens Sejrup, Vibe Nielsen
October 04, 2024
This book explores the attribution and local negotiation of cultural valuations of artistic and art-institutional practices around the world, and considers the diverse ways in which these value attributions intersect with claims of universality and cosmopolitanism. Taking Michael Herzfeld’s notion ...
Urban Ghana and Privacy in the Digital Age: An Ethnographic Exploration
1st Edition
By Elad Ben Elul
January 29, 2024
This book explores privacy practices and the role of digital technologies in the lives of urban Ghanaians, considering how they use language, materiality, and culture to maintain sharp boundaries between the private and public. Focusing on the harbour town of Tema, it offers rich ethnographic ...
Ethics and Nationalist Populism at the British Seaside: Negotiating Character
1st Edition
By Ana Carolina Balthazar
January 09, 2023
Drawing on ethnographic research at the British seaside, this book offers an original and insightful anthropological contribution to the study of contemporary Britain and nationalism. The volume focuses on people who have retired from different parts of the UK to the seaside town of Margate and ...
Material Culture and Authenticity: Fake Branded Fashion in Europe
1st Edition
By Magdalena Craciun
November 07, 2013
The study of material culture demonstrates that objects make people just as much as people make, exchange and consume objects. But what if these objects are, in the eyes of others, only fakes? What kind of material mirror are people looking into? Are their real selves really reflected in this ...
The Japanese House: Material Culture in the Modern Home
1st Edition
By Inge Daniels
September 01, 2010
In the West the Japanese house has reached iconic status in its architecture, decoration and style. Is this neat, carefully constructed version of Japanese life in fact a myth? Inge Daniels goes behind the doors of real Japanese homes to find out how highly private domestic lives are lived in Japan...
Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective
1st Edition
Edited
By Daniel Miller
October 01, 2009
Anthropology is usually associated with the study of society, but the anthropologist must also understand people as individuals. This highly original study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely distinct from psychology and other ...
Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present
1st Edition
By Lynn Meskell
April 01, 2004
Egypt looms large in the Western imagination. Whether it is our attraction to pharaonic art, the pyramids or practices of mummification, Egypts unique understanding of materiality speaks to us across space and time. Is it because the ancient Egyptians fetishized material objects that we find their ...
Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifice
1st Edition
By Susanne Küchler
November 01, 2002
Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folkore Award 2003 Malanggan are among the most treasured possessions in the Pacific, yet they continue to confound anthropologists. Central to funerals in New Ireland, these ‘death' figures are intended to decompose as symbolic representations of the dead. ...
At Home with Computers
1st Edition
By Elaine Lally
July 01, 2002
New technologies are profoundly reshaping the world around us. Home computers - unheard of two decades ago - now play an intimate role as personal possessions in many people's lives. For some, computer games may be vital to winding-down after a busy day, while for others the home computer ...
Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum
1st Edition
By Sharon Macdonald
March 01, 2002
What goes on behind closed doors at museums? How are decisions about exhibitions made and who, or what, really makes them? Why are certain objects and styles of display chosen whilst others are rejected, and what factors influence how museum exhibitions are produced and experienced? This book ...
Death, Memory and Material Culture
1st Edition
By Elizabeth Hallam, Jenny Hockey
December 01, 2001
- How do the living maintain ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies? - How have the residual belongings of the dead been used to evoke memories? - Why has the body and its material environment remained so important in memory-making? Objects, images, practices, and places remind us...