Lineages and Advancements in Material Culture Studies

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.

Timothy Carroll is principal research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at University College London, UK. Antonia Walford is lecturer in Digital Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at University College London, UK. Shireen Walton is lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

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