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.
Author(s): Timothy Carroll, Antonia Walford, Shireen Walton
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge | Taylor & Francis Group
Year: 2021
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 303
Tags: Material Culture: Research: Methodology; Material Culture: Case Studies
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Figures
Tables
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
MCS at UCL, its foundations and threads
Bringing the object back (again) – from lineages to advancements
Self, personhood, (post-)humanism
Time: futures, histories, presentness
Scales, space(s), topologies
Representation: aesthetics, signs, semiotics
Participation, politics, people
Notes
2 Extraterrestrial methods: Towards an ethnography of the ISS
The ISS
Quotidian attunement
Humans have always already been going to space
Dialogic worlding
Space from the armchair
New material cultures
Spatiotemporal distantiation
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
3 Being, being human, becoming beyond human
The ‘cyborg’ as post-human
The cyborg and transcendence
The twenty-first/first-century body
Discussion
4 ‘Things ain’t the same anymore’: Towards an anthropology of technical objects (or ‘When Leroi-Gourhan and Simondon meet MCS’
Introduction: the printer, the car and the doll
The functioning of technical objects vs. their function
Inside and outside the technical object: at the intersection of milieus
The politics of technical objects and the object of technical politics: removal and isolation
Conclusion: towards a ‘technography’ of objects?
Acknowledgements
Notes
5 The object biography
What is this method?
The life of a toothbrush
Reflections on the life of a toothbrush
Conclusion: Why not object biographies?
Acknowledgements
Note
6 A new instrumentalism?
From material culture to digital anthropology
From writing culture to digital ethnography
A case in point: learning from social media in the field
Social media as community?
Camden Rules
Conclusion: social media imaginaries, failing methods, and the limits of objects
Acknowledgements
Notes
7 Objects of desire: Sexwork and its objects
Introduction
The context of the shows
The shows
Objects, sexwork and material culture theory
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
8 Digital devices: Knowing material culture
Introduction
Digital devices
Detecting digitally
Knowing with devices
Materialisations of knowledge
Productive devices
Conclusion
Note
9 Rethinking objectification and its consequences: From substitution to sequence
The life of working models
Polymodality: geometry, transformation, and translation
Conclusion
10 Looking at things
Object analysis
Case study one: object K.0050
Case study two: the Inuit collection
Case study three: the Fijian collection
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
11 Making things matter
From ‘meaning’ to ‘mattering’
From ‘us’ to ‘them’
Beyond impact
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
12 Prophetic pictures: Or, What time is the visual?
Raphael’s Prophetic Messenger
‘Ominous’ hieroglyphics
‘Imagality’: the interpretability of the visual
Social theory and temporality
Conclusion: the photograph, a small window on the future
Notes
13 Held in Amma’s light: The enchantment and political efficacy of gopurams in Tamilnadu
Political lineage as luminance
Making, aesthetics, and affect
The materiality and affordances of light
Corporeal vision and the technology of enchantment
Image regimes, morality, and ‘Amma’
Amma in light: the political efficacy of gopurams
Notes
14 A curatorial methodology for anthropology1
Curating to the curatorial
The curatorial as model
The curatorial in practice
Curating tidal/temporal movements
The curatorial as anthropological method
Notes
15 Data aesthetics
A feeling for the data
Algorithmic vision
Notes
16 Place-objects: Anthropology of digital photography/s
Introduction
The digital photograph in MCS: materiality and practice
Materiality
Practices
Place
Representing place: photoblogging in/of Iran
Place-objects beyond representation: digitally (re-)engaging the senses
Digital geo-locations
Methodological implications for MCS
Analysis: place-object and their socialities
Digital photography/s: towards a new object status
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
