Material Encounters

<p>This topical and conceptually innovative book proposes new perspectives on the theme of materiality which since the 1980s has animated work across and within disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences.</p><p>The particular focus of the chapters in this volume is the materiality of knowledge produced through embodied encounters between people places and things in the Pacific Islands New Guinea Australia and Myanmar. The authors consider how materiality mediates the ways in which knowledge is generated or acquired in encounters and becomes expressed through things and material forms of inscription – charts and maps; journals letters and reports; drawings; objects; human remains; legends cartouches captions labels marginalia and notes; and published works of all kinds. The essays further address processes whereby materialized knowledge is archived conserved distributed restricted or dispersed – through serendipity excess loss silence absence and suppression.</p><p>This book will be of great interest to upper-level students researchers and academics in History Anthropology and Oceania Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of <i>History and Anthropology.</i></p>