ABSTRACT

This volume comprises a curated conversation between members of the Material Culture Section of University College London Anthropology. In laying out the state of play in the field, it challenges how the anthropology of material culture is being done and argues for new directions of enquiry and new methods of investigation. The contributors consider the ramifications of specific research methods and explore new methodological frameworks to address areas of human experience that require a new analytical approach. The case studies draw from a range of contexts, including digital objects, infrastructure, data, extraterrestriality, ethnographic curation, and medical materiality. They include timely reappraisals of now-classical analytical models that have shaped the way we understand the object, the discipline, knowledge formation, and the artefact.

chapter 1|16 pages

Introduction

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chapter 2|16 pages

Extraterrestrial methods

Towards an ethnography of the ISS
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chapter 4|15 pages

‘Things ain’t the same anymore’

Towards an anthropology of technical objects (or ‘When Leroi-Gourhan and Simondon meet MCS’)
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chapter 5|14 pages

The object biography

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chapter 6|14 pages

A new instrumentalism?

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chapter 7|13 pages

Objects of desire

Sexwork and its objects
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chapter 8|13 pages

Digital devices

Knowing material culture
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chapter 9|14 pages

Rethinking objectification and its consequences

From substitution to sequence
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chapter 10|17 pages

Looking at things

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chapter 11|12 pages

Making things matter

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chapter 12|13 pages

Prophetic pictures

Or, What time is the visual?
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chapter 13|19 pages

Held in Amma’s light

The enchantment and political efficacy of gopurams in Tamilnadu
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chapter 15|13 pages

Data aesthetics

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chapter 16|17 pages

Place-objects

Anthropology of digital photography/s
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