Lineages and Advancements in Material Culture Studies

<p>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.</p> <p>1. Introduction</p><p>Timothy Carroll, Antonia Walford, andShireen Walton</p><p>2. Extra-terrestrial methods: toward an ethnography of the ISS </p><p>Victor Buchli</p><p>3. Being, being human, becoming beyond human</p><p>Timothy Carroll and Aaron Parkhurst</p><p>4. ‘Things ain’t the same anymore’: Toward an anthropology of technical objects (or ‘When Leroi-Gourhan and Simondon meets MCS’)</p><p>Ludovic Coupaye</p><p>5. The object biography</p><p>Adam Drazin</p><p>6. A new instrumentalism?</p><p>Haidy Geismar</p><p>7. Objects of desire: Sexwork and its objects</p><p>David Jeevendrampillai, Julia Burton, and Eva Sanglante</p><p>8. Digital devices: Knowing material culture</p><p>Hannah Knox</p><p>9. Rethinking objectification and its consequences: From substitution to sequence</p><p>Susanne Küchler</p><p>10. Looking at things</p><p>Delphine Mercier</p><p>11. Making things matter</p><p>Daniel Miller and Laura Haapio-Kirk</p><p>12. Prophetic pictures: Or, What time is the visual?</p><p>Christopher Pinney</p><p>13. Held in Amma’s ight: The enchantment and political efficacy of <i>gopurams</i> in Tamilnadu</p><p>Jill Reese</p><p>14. A curatorial methodology for anthropology</p><p>Rafael Schacter</p><p>15. Data aesthetics</p><p>Antonia Walford</p><p>16. Place-objects: Anthropology of digital photography/s</p><p>Shireen Walton</p>