Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond
Edited by Philipp Schorch, Martin Saxer, and Marlen Elders
Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond provides a new look at the old anthropological concern with materiality and connectivity. It understands materiality not as defined property of some-thing, nor does it take connectivity as merely a relation between discrete entities. Somewhat akin to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it sees materiality and connectivity as two interrelated modes in which an entity is, or more precisely – is becoming, in the world. The question, thus, is how these two modes of becoming relate and fold into each other.
Throughout the four-year research process that led to this book, the authors approached this question not just from a theoretical perspective; taking the suggestion of 'thinking through things' literally and methodologically seriously, the first two workshops were dedicated to practical, hands-on exercises working with things. From these workshops a series of installations emerged, straddling the boundaries of art and academia. These installations served as artistic-academic interventions during the final symposium and are featured alongside the other academic contributions to this volume. Throughout this process, two main themes emerged and structure Part II, Movement and Growth, and Part III, Dissolution and Traces, of the present volume, respectively. Part I, Conceptual Grounds, consists of two chapters offering conceptual takes on things and ties – one from anthropology and one from archaeology.
As interrelated modes of becoming, materiality and connectivity make it necessary to coalesce things and ties into thing~ties – an insight toward which the chapters and interventions came from different sides, and one in which the initial proposition of the editors still shines through. Throughout the pages of this volume, we invite the reader to travel beyond imaginaries of a universe of separate planets united by connections, and to venture with us instead into the thicket of thing~ties in which we live.
Praise for Exploring Materiality and Connectivity in Anthropology and Beyond
'Throughout the collection, issues related to refugees, indigenous culture, practices religions, environment, networks and markets, technologies, family relationships, memory and many other complex, transversal, mixed themes that are so present in social reality. The book is, in itself, made of the intertwining of knowledge and research interests stimulated by a constant movement of things and ideas that link and, therefore, also mobilize us as subjects in affections and broader relationships, close and remote, shuffling our temporalities and our interests of research around constant change.'*
Campos
'a great read for anthropologists and other social scientists, both junior and senior, with interests in how daily objects in our lives connect with the relations we have and make.'
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
Philipp Schorch is Professor of Museum Anthropology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany, where he leads an ERC project on ‘Indigeneities in the 21st Century’. Philipp is lead co-author of Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses (University of Hawai’i Press, In Print), and co-editor of Curatopia: Museums and the Future of Curatorship (Manchester University Press, 2019).
Martin Saxer leads the ERC project ‘Remoteness & Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World’ at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany. Martin is co-editor of the special issue The Return of Remoteness: Insecurity, Isolation and Connectivity in the New World Disorder (Social Anthropology 2019) and the Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands (2018). He has made three documentary films and co-curated the exhibition ‘Highland Flotsam – Strandgut am Berg’ (highland-flotsam.com).
Marlen Elders completed her MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology with a thesis on exploring aesthetics and sensory perception, experimenting with creative research methods. Since 2016, she is part of the research project ‘Remoteness & Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World’, currently working on the exhibition ‘Highland Flotsam – Strandgut am Berg’ (highland-flotsam.com) and her first documentary film 'Murghab'.
Introduction: Materiality and Connectivity
Martin Saxer and Philipp Schorch
Part 1 Conceptual Grounds
1 In the Gathering Shadows of Material Things
Tim Ingold
2 Doing/Changing Things/Us
Philipp W. Stockhammer
Part 2 Movement and Growth
3 Becoming Imperial: The Politicisation of the Gift in Atlantic Africa
Julia Binter
4 How Pilgrimage Souvenirs Turn to Religious Remittances and Powerful Medicines
Catrien Notermans and Jean Kommers
5 Invocating the Gods or the Apotheosis of the Barbie Doll
Natalie Göltenboth
6 Stallions of the Indian Ocean
Srinivas Reddy
7 Labelling, Packaging, Scanning: Paths and Diversions of Mobile Phones in the Andes
Juliane Müller
8 Establishing Intimacy through Mobile Phone Connections
Anna-Maria Walter
Part 3 Dissolution and Traces
9 Smoky Relations: Beyond Dichotomies of Substance on the Tibetan Plateau
Gillian G. Tan
10 What Remains: The Things that Fall to the Side of Everyday Life
Marc Higgin
11 Apocalyptic Sublimes and the Recalibration of Distance: Doing Art-Anthropology in Post-Disaster Japan
Jennifer Clarke
12 Towards a Fragmented Ethnography? Walking Along Debris in Armero, Colombia
Lorenzo Granada
13 Remembering and Non-Remembering Among the Yanomami
Gabriele Herzog-Schröder
14 The Matter of Erasure: Making Room for Utopia at Nonoalco-Tlatelolco, Mexico City
Adam Kaasa
15 Refugee Life Jackets Thrown Off but Not Away: Connecting Materialities in Upcycling Initiatives
Elia Petridou
16 Tamga Tash: A Tale of Stones, Stories, and Travelling Immobiles
Lisa Francesca Rail
Index
'a great read for anthropologists and other social scientists, both junior and senior, with interests in how daily objects in our lives connect with the relations we have and make.'
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
'Throughout the collection, issues related to refugees, indigenous culture, practices religions, environment, networks and markets, technologies, family relationships, memory and many other complex, transversal, mixed themes that are so present in social reality. The book is, in itself, made of the intertwining of knowledge and research interests stimulated by a constant movement of things and ideas that link and, therefore, also mobilize us as subjects in affections and broader relationships, close and remote, shuffling our temporalities and our interests of research around constant change.'
Campos
Format: Open Access PDF
41 colour illustrations
Copyright: © 2020
ISBN: 9781787357488
Publication: March 30, 2020
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