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Materials Against Materiality
Abstract
This article seeks to reverse the emphasis, in current studies of material culture, on the materiality of objects as against the properties of materials. Drawing on James Gibson's tripartite division of the inhabited environment into medium, substances and surfaces, it is argued that the forms of things are not imposed from without upon an inert substrate of matter, but are continually generated and dissolved within the fluxes of materials across the interface between substances and the medium that surrounds them. Thus things are active not because they are imbued with agency but because of ways in which they are caught up in these currents of the lifeworld. The properties of materials, then, are not fixed attributes of matter but are processual and relational. To describe these properties means telling their stories.
... Partiendo de estas ideas generales y siguiendo los planteamientos del enfoque teórico de la gobernanza interactiva, el presente artículo re toma el análisis del proceso de activación para la declaración de una reserva marina de interés pesquero (RMIP) en el entorno del puerto de Conil de la Frontera (Cádiz, España), llevado a cabo en un estudio publicado recientemente (Florido y Abbot, 2023), con el objetivo de mostrar cómo las imágenes que los sujetos/as involucrados tienen sobre la reserva marina influyen tanto en el proceso inicial del proyecto, aún no concluido y convertido en objeto de disputa, como en el caso de ser aprobado, en la forma en que se desarrollará su gobernanza. Dando un paso más allá del planteamiento de Jentoft, Pascual y De la Cruz (2012), lo que interesa señalar es que estas imágenes no sólo prescriben la manera en que los sujetos/as se posicionan y comportan frente a la RMIP, sino que emanan precisamente de sus posturas y conductas, a su vez determinadas por los intereses concretos sobre el área a proteger, en tanto que entre representaciones mentales y prácticas sociales existe una relación de correspondencia (Ingold, 2007). ...
Con más frecuencia de lo deseable, las Áreas Marinas Protegidas (AMP) resultan no ser tan eficaces como se esperaba cuando fueron concebidas, dando lugar a los llamados “parques de papel”. En este artículo, sostenemos que las razones de su fracaso no sólo deben buscarse en las características de su diseño y gestión, sino también en los momentos que preceden a su implementación y, de manera más concreta, en las imágenes que definen en la mente de los agentes afectados e interesados a esta figura de protección antes de su establecimiento. A partir del estudio de caso del proceso de activación para la declaración de una reserva marina de interés pesquero (RMIP) en el entorno marino de Cabo Roche (Cádiz, España), se muestra la importancia de analizar, negociar y conciliar las imágenes de los grupos de interés en las etapas previas a la declaración de una AMP para su gobernabilidad y, por tanto, su éxito.
... Given the influence of ecological psychology on archaeological and anthropological theory (e.g., Ingold, 2000Ingold, , 2007Knappett, 2004;Olsen, 2010;Young-Wolfe, 2015;Jung, 2020) perspectives similar to those found in EP DST have been attractive to archaeology. Furthermore, since EP DST physics is relational and relies on dynamic systems theory, it shares important aspects with relational archaeological schools of thought and those that rely on other dynamic systems theory philosophy (e.g., works inspired by DeLanda, 2016). ...
Stone Age hunter-gatherer weapon studies should hold a more central position within war studies since the vast majority of human weapons ever in existence were once used by these types of societies. Among these weapons, the projectile, or the weapon point, is arguably the most numerous and well-studied in both archaeological and ethnographical contexts. However, from a warfare and conflict perspective, the study of weapon points in Stone Age and hunter-gatherer societies is beset by two substantial and intertwined issues: (i) the problem of categorizing and defining violent activities and (ii) the problem of identifying functions for weapon points.
The thesis of this paper is that by turning to the ecological scale, i.e. the epistemology and ontology of Ecological Psychology and Dynamic Systems Theory (EP DST), these issues can be approached constructively. The ecological scale offers a consistent relational framework to quantitatively address weapon point property variation, covariation, historical and practical specificity, as well as experimental principles to quantitatively study emergent patterns in human-weapon point-environment relations. Archaeological studies and experiments with EP DST principles could potentially reveal how organisms, environment and emergent patterns affect the properties of a weapon point in traditional hunter-gatherer societies, given the typically intimate relationship between craft, body and usage. How this could be accomplished is exemplified with the Northern Eurasian inset point, an object that has been found in association with human bodies in Mesolithic Scandinavia. Hence, through EP DST perspectives and approaches, weapons points can be re-socialised in order to reveal their more specific or contextual conflict related dimensions.
... "Here the surface of the artefact or building is not just of the particular material from which it is made, but of materiality itself as it confronts the creative human imagination. Indeed, the very notion of material culture, which has gained a new momentum following its long hibernation in the basements of museology, rests on the premise that as the embodiments of mental representations, or as stable elements in systems of signification, things have already solidified or precipitated out from the generative fluxes of the medium that gave birth to them (Ingold, 2007)." ...
The creation of works of art by artists always involves forming a narrative that they want to convey to the audience. The narrative depends on the artist's interest in the chosen theme and how the theme is articulated through visual elements. Usually, narratives in works of art are realized through metaphorical forms that describe the idea or message to be conveyed. On the other hand, materials in the creation of works of art are often considered as supporting elements that complete the metaphor. This research aims to explore how materials in works of art can form their own narrative, not just as complementary objects. Materials are also entities that contribute to the overall meaning of the work. By analyzing the relationship between material and narrative, this research provides insight into how material can be interpreted as a visual language. Materials have narrative potential, revealing more than their function in the formal structure of the work of art.
... Tim Ingold's distancing critique of materiality and material agency highlights significant issues that the study of material culture must address. In his work (Ingold 2007(Ingold , 2008, Ingold defined materiality as a jargon with excessive and yet vague polysemic applications that overlook the essential role of materials in shaping objects and their affordances. As a more precise critique of material agency, he argues that "bringing things to life, then, is a matter not of adding to them a sprinkling of agency but of restoring them to the generative fluxes of the world of materials in which they came into being and continue to subsist" (Ingold 2007, p. 12). ...
The Eastern Minyag is a small community located east of Gangkar Mountain (Chinese: gongga shan) in Southwest China. Their complex rituals, performed by ritual specialists (sutcywu), serve various purposes: diagnosing the causes of individual psycho-physical ailments, investigating the misfortunes affecting entire families, making offerings to the ancestors, and banishing the ghosts of the deceased. While research on the ritual traditions of communities in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands often subsumes Eastern Minyag rituals under the general category of Tibetan Bon, this article adopts a context-oriented approach that highlights the environmental conditions and cosmology of the Eastern Minyag community. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in 2018–2019, the article examines the material aspects of Eastern Minyag rituals occurring in domestic spaces. Specifically, it first explores how natural elements of animal and plant origin are selected and manipulated to create ritual objects. Secondly, it offers an overview of the setups and processes involved in the vivi ritual. Lastly, it reflects on the temporary agency of ritual objects contingent upon their ephemeral materiality.
... Estas perspetivas, inerentemente simbólicas, têm limitações, pois descuram a complexidade dos processos históricos que levaram à construção, transformação e sobrevivência do palácio até aos dias de hoje (Warde 2014: 282). Neste sentido, há já alguns anos que sociólogos e antropólogos têm vindo a chamar a atenção para a necessidade de centrar a análise nas práticas dos indivíduos e na intersecção entre estrutura e agência individual (Johnson 1988;Ingold 2007;Warde 2014: 284-86). Para abarcar a complexidade institucional e social que enformou as residências reais enquanto género particular de habitação importa incluir, para além da própria materialidade do edifício, uma análise relacional entre a organização e composição formal dos compartimentos e as necessidades específicas dos seus ocupantes. ...
Este artigo analisa duas secções arquitetónicas do Paço de Sintra através das práticas de utilização dos agentes históricos com o objetivo de explicar o seu propósito no seio do complexo palatino. Esta necessidade advém do facto de a historiografia específica existente se encontrar centrada na alegada ação de um número muito limitado de reis e de a abordagem à história desta residência real estar marcada por uma forte interpretação simbólica e cultural, descurando a complexidade dos processos históricos que determinaram à sua configuração arquitetónica. No entanto, uma análise centrada nas necessidades específicas dos seus ocupantes, na forma como faziam uso do espaço, na sua relação com a estrutura orgânica e institucional da corte, e na sua relação com o tecido social em que estavam inseridos, permite gerar novas hipóteses de interpretação. Esta abordagem permitiu, assim, identificar a localização de uma inédita galeria palatina renascentista e antecipar a cronologia de grande parte do corpo arquitetónico habitualmente designado por «corpo manuelino».
... In practice, the program of research fell apart as such systematic relations be-tween structures could not be found, any more than those between ecological niches and social structure. The description of these failures became the theories that would dominate the 1990s and 2000s -for example the focus on "materiality" (Miller, 2005) or even "materials" (Ingold, 2007) as a response to the "materialism" of Marxist structuralism. ...
Experience, historical, aesthetic and ethnographic, as shifting grounds for knowledge often decried as mere belief, that is, as possibly invented or imagined, is a thread that runs through Peter Gow’s entire work. The point he was thereby trying to make had to do with what he considered to be the threat to anthropology’s raison d´être that had emerged with the so-called “crisis of representation” of the 1980s and only gained further ground thereafter until it had overtaken the entire discipline by the 2010s. Marxism and the 18th century were at the heart of what was being rejected by the post-moderns, and each because of the other. Crucially for Gow, what was being evacuated in the process was perhaps one of the most sophisticated product of both, and one foundational to Amazonian anthropology: Claude Levi-Strauss’s synthesis of pre-1950s anthropology (most prominently functionalism, diffusionism and Boasian historicism, see Salmon 2013) and a Marxian sense of historical consciousness, anchored in a recognition of the crisis of the Enlightenment in modernity. This article attempts to shed a light on this obscure nexus (art, knowledge and history, Amazonia and Scotland, Marx and the 18th century, with Levi-Strauss at its heart) which increasingly preoccupied Peter Gow and can help both to understand his work and to understand how it might be furthered in and beyon Amazonia.
... Cosmology creates links between exchange and value, allowing the politics of value (sensu Appadurai 1986) and its supply-and-demand extension to come into play. Commodities have agency (Hoskins 2006); materials have affordances (Ingold 2007) and affective qualities (Bennett 2010). ...
... Colonised by a Heideggerian philosophy in which only humans are capable of dying a meaningful death (cf. animals and plants merely 'perish'), we have established expectations around the mortality of objects: to not die (or live) at all (Ingold, 2007). Objects rot, break, and become 'useless' to the extent that they are disqualified as objects anymore (Heidegger & Gendlin, 1967) but cannot die because they are not meaningfully alive in the first place. ...
Young children engage with and discuss diverse childhood realities, including death. Routinely characterised as unknowledgeable based on normative developmentalist assumptions, children’s engagements with death are frequently dismissed as ‘magical’ and irrational, despite their close resemblance to normative cultural and religious narratives of death offered by adults. This work takes children’s wor(l)ds seriously. By showcasing children’s (5–7-year-old) engagements with death – collected using artistic, play-based, child-centred, and video-reflexive methods – this work ‘makes nonsense’ of death. Drawing on a Meillassouxean speculative philosophy, I radically depart from rational meaning-making and foreground death’s contingency. Methodologically, I innovatively draw on improv performance art traditions (e.g. ‘Yes, and … ’) to develop and operationalise improv analysis, attending to children’s dynamic engagements with death as improvisations emerged from their socio-material-relational expertise, instead of concrete representation of reality/-ies. Through this playful yet philosophically sound lens, I argue that children’s intra-actions with death matter philosophically as they afford death to be thinkable in itself – rather than being mere representations – through a speculative lens of contingency. Embodying artistic and philosophical traditions, this work constitutes a multidisciplinary methodological double move that attempts to bring philosophical innovation into existing ways of (un)knowing about death/s.
... Resource scarcity and climate impacts are only now raising awareness of the overall relevance and (re-)activity of the earth's systems and materials (Ingold 2007;Latour 2017) while also promoting interest in bio-based building materials and their 'regenerative' capabilities. Transitioning building materials to a lowcarbon future will require a change in all types of building materials, including a major shift away from concrete and cementbased materials to bio-based alternatives, as well as a significant increase in the use of recycled or reused materials (UNEP 2023, p. 15). ...
In the introduction, we discuss the need for a material transition in architecture and construction and the challenges it poses. Drawing on innovation research, the multi-level perspective (MLP), and thousands of years of building history, we identify the potential for change, the obstacles that need to be overcome, and the importance of standards, in particular of established industry standards. The introduction also includes a brief description of each article.
Este artigo sistematiza e atualiza as principais reflexões de minha tese de doutorado sobre processos de produção musical no contexto dos estúdios de gravação. Partindo da configuração institucional do campo fonográfico brasileiro, tendo em vista matrizes de referência anglo-americanas, analiso os ambientes mencionados, as categorias profissionais que neles atuam e os equipamentos em circulação como elementos de um ritual objetivador deste mundo sonoro. Utilizo como recursos metodológicos fontes bibliográficas, documentais, entrevistas com interlocutores ligados ao meio, bem como experiência etnográfica multisituada, conduzida especialmente entre 2017 e 2018, junto às camadas médias das cidades do Rio de Janeiro e de São Paulo, sudeste brasileiro. Ao problematizar os tópicos citados dentro do marco teórico dos sound studies, em diálogo com uma antropologia dos objetos e do ritual, apresento ainda uma cena de minha vivência no estúdio Space Blues argumentando que o fenômeno em relevo se espraia e materializa em redes que se entrecruzam, ganhando contornos locais específicos. Espera-se que o enfoque apresentado possa trazer subsídios para o campo da cultura material, os estudos sobre as relações de trabalho, a etnomusicologia, entre outros.
Through a case study of what are known as ‘relief models’—for example of areas of landscapes—this article approaches representational objects in and as practice. Such an approach implies following the multiplicity of practices that are gathered in representational objects to bring them into and maintain their existence, especially those that often remain unacknowledged by analytical attention. Most discussions of representational objects focus on their representational capacities and properties, paying less attention to the activities that ensure their ontological security as objects. Those activities concern not only the manufacture of representational objects, but also their maintenance—which is placed at the heart of this discussion. The maintenance of relief models manifests itself as a semiotic-material ecology. Entangled here are the ontological tact of the craftsperson, the affordances, resistances, and responsiveness of the materials, and the meaning-makings and stories that articulate and guide maintenance and repair. The practice of maintaining such objects, however, diverges from their production. Their production essentially accommodates metric distance since representation involves transporting a ‘thing’ through chains of reference. On the contrary, their maintenance aims to accommodate multiple temporalities. This involves not only the ways of being in time that are specific to each material that composes the object but also the idealized past of an unused object, its worn present, and its anticipated (repaired) future. By playing with the double meaning of the word ‘representing’, this article speculatively questions the extent to which practices of maintenance of, and care for, representational objects can inform a re-vision and rethinking of the relationships to what they are meant to re-present —that is, to what counts as nature.
This research investigates the strategic integration of mixed media techniques in painting and its impact on visual effects and viewer perception. It addresses the research question of how different mixed media approaches comparatively achieve specific aesthetic outcomes, considering their advantages and disad-vantages. Building upon the historical evolution of mixed media and theoretical frameworks of materiality and intermediality, the study identifies and catego-rizes common mixed media techniques used in painting. It analyzes the visual effects produced by specific media combinations, such as texture, color, and depth, and investigates how these techniques influence viewer perception and emotional response. The research employs a comparative analysis to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches in achieving aesthetic goals. Addressing gaps in existing research, which often lacks a comprehensive comparative analysis and empirical data on viewer perception, this study pro-vides a systematic investigation of mixed media in painting. The expected re-sults include a categorization of techniques, a detailed analysis of visual effects, empirical data on viewer response, a comparative framework for evaluating ap-proaches, and practical guidelines for artists. Ultimately, this research contrib-utes to a deeper understanding of the aesthetic and conceptual potential of mixed media in contemporary painting.
This article evaluates the important role that fashionability played during the COVID-19 pandemic in incentivizing the public to wear face coverings when mandated to do so. The digital screen is used as a framing device to examine what was communicated to fashion consumers and how this communication occurred during lockdown. Lockdowns accelerated the primacy of screens in fashion communication. While fashion communication encompasses a variety of practices, this article focuses on the marketing and online advertising approaches used by fashion brands to position face coverings as desirable accessories during the pandemic. Screens did not merely provide representations of face coverings, but through imagery, descriptions and links, they served as conduits to imagine the ways in which wearers might experience and style this new accessory. Fashion brands further emphasized how mask production or consumption contributed to responsible (corporate) citizenship and charitable initiatives, or related to sustainability. During the pandemic, these strategies responded to the criticism that the fashion industry was taking advantage of the demand for this new accessory for profit. However, in considering the mask’s materialization from screen to embodied experience, I also apply the other use definition of screen: to obscure or hide. This article argues that the emphasis of certain sustainable features of cloth masks drew attention away from the many other ways in which masks did not conform to circular design and that local and corporate initiatives obscured rather than addressed the worsened plight of garment workers. The ease with which digital fashion communication can be updated allowed fashion brands to remove references to initiatives once wearing masks became normalized and the market was saturated. I argue that the evidence reveals an industry practising business as usual, positioning itself in the best possible light through digital communication and marketing, rather than affecting systematic change: a lost opportunity for all.
The article introduces the concept of synthetic involvement to explore how participants in digital interactions navigate virtual and physical situations simultaneously. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on videoconferencing training courses and extending Goffman’s theory of performance, it conceptualises this simultaneity as a major performative challenge and source of uncertainty for participants. The training courses frame the juxtaposition of a virtual and physical situation as something to be actively managed by participants as they learn to see and use videoconferencing tools, their bodies and spaces in new and interconnected ways. The concept of synthetic involvement extends the phenomenological focus on the experienced and felt dimensions of digital co-presence, offering an understanding of digital co-presence as socio-technical performances. In doing so, it also opens up new perspectives on issues such as the planning of a ‘stage setting’ or privacy concerns in (work-related) videoconferencing.
Resumen: El presente artículo tiene por objeto determinar el origen y la conformación de la Exposición Retrospectiva de la Enseñanza, que tuvo lugar en 1941 en el Palacio de Bellas Artes de Santiago. La muestra permitió diagnosticar las demandas de la época relativas a la educación pública en Chile en dicho período, y a partir de los estudios críticos de la nueva museología, se vislumbrarán aquí sus efectos sociales, su recepción y su sentido museológico. Se analizarán asimismo sus antecedentes, objetivos, contenido (material, visual y discursivo) y sus efectos posteriores, a partir de un trabajo crítico documental que, en términos metodológicos, se basa en las propuestas de los estudios museales y en una contextualización histórica apoyada en bibliografía secundaria. Abstract: This paper aims to shed light on the origins and conformation of the «Retrospectiva de la enseñanza» exhibition, celebrated in 1941 at the Museum of Fine Arts of Santiago, Chile. Grounded on critical new museology, it is maintained that this show allows a unique moment of utterance which brings to the fore both diagnose and requirements related to public education in Chile during that set of time. Therefore, the background information of the exhibition, its main intentions, its content (material, visual and discursive) and its consequences will be determined here. In methodological terms, this paper is rooted in critical archival retrieval and in the frame statements of museum studies, as well as in historical reconstruction based on secondary bibliography.
The use of clay and ceramic mediums in contemporary art has received considerable attention in relation to their materiality. Materiality is generally understood within a given cultural perspective, referring to the perception of the physical qualities of an object that are related to its purpose, meaning and value in society. This representational possibility has attracted the interest of many artists to the mediums of clay and ceramic. However, material culture cannot fully explain material phenomena or their relationship to humans. The only way to understand a material is to be directly involved in making with it, as physical interaction with the material provides a deeper understanding and connection that cannot be achieved through cultural interpretation alone. Albert Yonathan Setyawan, an Indonesian artist based in Japan, is renowned for his predominantly clay and ceramic works. He creates palm-sized objects that are replicated innumerable times and installed in symmetrical patterns. Setyawan’s works exhibit spiritual dimensions through the use of repetition, order, meditation and transformational qualities. This article applies a phenomenological approach to understanding Setyawan’s practice through an examination of these objects and his experience with his materials. This article likewise discusses how making activity intercedes in the relationship between human artists and their materials. It also explores the way that making has contributed to Setyawan’s artist–maker sensitivity and knowledge of both material properties and the logics of specific forms and methods, as well as the metaphorical possibilities that shape the aesthetic qualities and concept of a given work. Interestingly, Setyawan’s practice is linked to various aspects of past human activity. The article concludes that an artist’s making influences attitudes, ways of thinking and the understanding of practices and the environment. In Setyawan’s practice, materials and making become active ways of engaging with the world and with the self.
This chapter introduces the reader to the particularities of the European landscape tradition before presenting different approaches to landscapes in social and cultural anthropology. They include hermeneutic-critical reconstructions of Eurocentric conceptions of landscape, which were also a mainstay of colonialism. Other lenses are provided by phenomenological perspectives that highlight embodied and experiential dimensions, and those that analyse multiple temporalities of landscapes. Finally, the ontological tension between nature and culture is illuminated with the concept of cultural landscape, before multispecies studies are introduced as one of the most recent perspectives on landscapes. Multifarious and versatile, landscapes defy any kind of disambiguation but constitute equally complex and insightful objects of research in environmental anthropology.
El objetivo del presente texto consiste en reponer los modos en que estudiantes de escuelas secundarias denuncian situaciones de vulneración asociadas a la contaminación y la precariedad que viven en sus barrios. Esta investigación utiliza métodos creativos basados en talleres de coproducción artística y audiovisual en y con escuelas de dos barrios de la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires (RMBA) caracterizados por la pobreza urbana y la degradación ambiental. En las producciones finales se lograron identificar modos de denuncia de las desigualdades cotidianas urbanas, una apuesta por una ciudad otra y un reclamo político por el derecho a la ciudad.
War is often viewed through the lens of strategy, statecraft, and technological progress. However, both war and violence in general are deeply rooted in social and cultural frameworks.
From Mesolithic conflicts to Early Modern naval warfare, this interdisciplinary anthology explores the practice and perception of various forms of violence in past societies, revealing patterns that prompt reflection on modern assumptions about war. Blending insights from Conflict Archaeology and War Studies, the work underscores the critical value of material culture in understanding the complexities of warfare, both theoretically and methodologically.
For Conflict Archaeology and war scholars, this work advances a perspective that situates violence and warfare within broader social and cultural contexts, emphasizing that war is more than just tactics and technology – it is a social reality embedded in both human action and material culture.
Knowledge of dung and manure materials in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mongol Iran was recorded in a variety of genres. This article engages primarily with Persian-language texts from the Ilkhanid period and examines political uses of gathering knowledge on manure and manuring practices during a crisis of sedentary agriculture. Focusing on a text rich in observations and local knowledge, the Ās̱ār va Aḥyāʾ ( Vestiges and the Living ) of Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī, the implications of authoring knowledge on manures are considered, contributing an agricultural perspective to a wave of recent scholarship on this figure. Engaging with methods and questions from waste and discard studies, wastes in the Ās̱ār va Aḥyāʾ are considered as materials between various fields of knowledge and practice. Manure was sometimes understood in the period as rejected nutriment in bodily cycles explained by natural philosophy, and at times in literary and religious uses as a mundane yet abject matter symbolic of worldly attachments. In the text of Rashīd al-Dīn, dung and manure are rather represented in terms of qualities, vital forces and local characteristics that manure producers and farmers observed and could manipulate in order to create and use more profitable manures. This case shows how, beyond a narrative of ‘wastes’ in a premodern context being treated as only resource materials for re-use, the putrid, fermenting and decomposing condition of particularly animal wastes in manuring was also very much kept in view. Knowledge of dung and manures in Mongol Iran was not static, but worked on in texts and practices embedded in local and transregional communities.
What was the social experience of work in the ancient world? In this study, Elizabeth Murphy approaches the topic through the lens offered by a particular set of workers, the potters and ceramicists in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Her research exploits the rich and growing dataset of workshops and production evidence from the Roman East and raises awareness of the unique features of this particular craft in this region over several centuries. Highlighting the multi-faceted working experience of professionals through a theoretically-informed framework, Murphy reconstructs the complex lives of people in the past, and demonstrates the importance of studying work and labor as central topics in social and cultural histories. Her research draws from the fields of archaeology, social history and anthropology, and applies current social theories --- communities of practice, technological choices, chaîne opératoire, cultural hybridity, taskscapes – to interpret and offer new insights into the archaeological remains of workshops and ceramics.
In West Africa, certain objects can act in the world and interact with people as subjects. Labeled “fetishes” by Europeans, these material things have generated centuries of debates on the nature of their agency. In this article, I rely on participant fieldwork as a student in a group of initiated donso hunters in Burkina Faso, which involved using my own fetishes as operator and other people's as client. Starting from this ethnography, I suggest that the agency of fetishes is neither primary to their materiality nor ascribed by humans. Instead, it arises by mediating a three‐way identification between the person who uses them and a spirit. Despite recent anthropological critiques of their use to explain away practices and beliefs, I propose using metaphors to make sense of the practical ways people enact such identification with powerful domains of being. Often found alongside metonymies, these enacted metaphors are at work in sacrifice, in embodiment, and in the sharing of substances, where a fetish acts as the body of a normally intangible spirit. While rejecting a symbolic reading of fetishes, I propose reevaluating metaphors as tools to practice relatedness and expand the limits of one's life‐world.
The Living and Dying gallery opened at the British Museum five years ago. Praised by critics, this award-winning exhibition is one of the most well attended exhibitions at the Museum. A visit to the gallery makes it apparent that it is the contemporary art installation, Cradle to Grave, that is particularly attractive to the visitors. The aim of this article is to explore why this installation is so effective. However, rather than evaluating visitor responses to the installation, this article analyses the fundamental premises that make it so successful. Using three different theories of ‘proximity’, ‘presence’ and ‘flow of materials’ I thereby attempt a deeper understanding of the installation’s particular intensity. Thus, this article presents a type of exhibition analysis that tries to incorporate the ‘meaning production’ potential of an exhibition, i.e., what an exhibition tells, along with the exhibition’s capability to produce ‘presence’ and ‘material grounding’, i.e., what it does.
A perceptual study of different styles of prehistoric Galician ceramics (from 6000 to 2000 BP) conducted by eye-tracking, underpins the material engagement of mind by showing that the visual world fosters the entangle-ment between doing, seeing, and designing through history. This text examines how materialisations of human practices relate to cognition and to socio-cultural contexts. By combining evidence on the relationship between material culture and perceptual reactions, our text aims to understand the entanglement between the mind, objects and the world. We apply measurable and numeric techniques, providing an archaeometric approach to cognitive topics by combining neurosciences with interpretive and reflective research. This research provides new insights into the material culture, contributes to the understanding of the relationship between mind and the material world, and accounts for the transitive engagement between the way of thinking, seeing and making things. Thus, the text contributes to an understanding of the material forces driving perception and thought.
This special issue, Vital Waste, tackles the trajectories and perceptions of substances originating from human and animal bodies that were excreted, expelled, cut, removed, and/or used, in a period and contexts ranging from Medieval Iran to contemporary South India. We approach the substances in question through the lenses of history of science and technology in addition to anthropology, re-examining the conceptual frameworks of “afterlives,” and “signs of life,” and analyzing the meaning of life in bodily substances. Five articles demonstrate how different communities created, explored, and evaluated materials as both related to the “body integral” and disintegrated from it. Such ex-corporated substances, they show, are potent and stay active enough to mobilize human and nonhuman actors to act, often with a tendency to reduce proximity and move them away. This approach offers a new understanding of bodily waste as a vital material which preserves traces of life and whose connections with the body of origin either disturb or are highly desirable. This vitality contained within bodily materials is our focus. Traces or signs of life constitute potencies, both material and emotional, which are life-lasting and have to be framed as a value or a threat. Ultimately, the contributions that make up this special issue complicate our understanding of both waste and bodily boundaries.
Islam burst forth from Arabia in the seventh century and spread with astonishing speed and force into the Middle East, Asia and northern Africa and the Mediterranean. While its success as a dominant culture has often been attributed to military strength, astute political organization, and religious factors, this Element focuses on the environmental conditions from which early Islamic societies sprang. In the belt of arid land that stretches from Iran to the Maghreb (Spain and Morocco)-i.e. the territories of early Islam-the adaptation of natural water systems, landforms and plant varieties was required to make the land habitable and productive.
This paper draws from the author’s direct experience with material care, adaptation, renewal, and disposal made while working within Himalayan and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner communities as a museum professional, conservator, and object-based researcher. It considers the function and utility of Buddhist tantric religious objects in terms of their care and capacity for practitioner engagement. In addition to exploring specific examples of what is referred to here as ‘devotional maintenance’, this paper will discuss how these strategies for object custodianship are related to Tibetan and Himalayan religious life and the specific epistemological and soteriological paradigm in which these actions are performed. Working from the perspective of a non-practitioner and material specialist, this research builds on observations of material care-taking to engage with local concepts of continuity, value, and longevity, including practices of accumulation, renewal, or disposal. Thinking critically about the methods and standards of heritage preservation provokes a discussion of how they can be interpreted as acts of care. At the same time, this paper will explore material custodianship through the cultivation of merit and an object’s capacity to transmit ‘blessings’ or the gift of beneficial influence (byin rlabs).
This paper examines the recent marketing and development of fish-inspired waste drones, designed to “take a bite out of water pollution” by collecting litter from urban waterways. Swimming in canals, rivers, and harbors from Florida to Hong Kong, AI-powered trash-eaters like the WasteShark and Jellyfish-Bot are posited as a solution to the plastic waste problem, modeling aquatic food chains through their marketing as animal-like drones. But are these cleaners truly a form of ecological AI, as their developers tell us, or is this vision of a new technospecies merely a means of skirting around the most pressing structural issues behind aquatic pollution? While much of the scholarship on autonomous technology has fixated on its implications for human labor, fewer have examined how AV infrastructures remediate ideas of environment. My approach, informed by multispecies ethnographies, queer ecologies, as well as work in environmental media studies, traces a throughline between the use of sterilized fish employees for weed management to the current crop of waste-eating fish-bots. In particular, I consider how imaginaries of hunger and waste resourcing frame ideas of environmental and multispecies relation. I ultimately argue that the biomimicry of waste drones serves as a form of circumventive remediation, extending existing paradigms of disposability and bottomhood while only superficially engaging with the social, technological, and natural entanglements of a refuse ecology.
Biomaking and other bio-oriented creative approaches are beginning to gain traction in education. Operating at the intersections of arts and sciences, they represent a field of integrative practices that involve creative making with the biological. In educational contexts, however, bio-oriented creative practices have been studied primarily from hylomorphic perspectives that do not account for the roles of different non-human organisms or other materials that participate in the processes. Drawing on theories of sociomateriality and material agency, and utilising multispecies microethnography, the paper attends to the specificities of making, makers, materials and artefacts in biomaking. It explores a case of a Finnish upper secondary school workshop implemented as part of the school's art curriculum within a larger educational development initiative. In the workshop, makers engaged with webcap mushrooms to extract, use and experiment with their pigments. The analysis builds on constructed operational sequences of the workshop activities, and a scrutiny of their interconnections, stages and participants. The paper shows how making, emergent artefacts and interplays of makers’ intentions and materialities can instate moments of relationality and learning, and thus build makers’ material awareness of the more-than-human organisms around them. The study proposes making with the biological as an attunement to our enmeshment with the environment.
This article examines how cooperative supermarkets attempt to scale up alternative food networks whilst creating distinctive consumer experiences that challenge conventional retail practices. Through atmospheric analysis of Spanish co-op supermarkets, I show how these hybrid organisations navigate key tensions between conventional retail efficiency and alternative food values. Using ethnographic methods, the research identifies five interconnected challenges that shape these organisations’ transformative potential: differentiating their consumer experience, aligning consumer-material ethics, fostering community engagement, managing professional-amateur tensions and expanding their consumer base. Whilst these challenges reveal the inherent difficulties of scaling up alternative food practices, the article suggests that co-op supermarkets represent a feasible hybrid model for transforming food consumption. By creating distinctive consumer practices, these initiatives demonstrate how alternative food networks can expand beyond niche activism whilst maintaining their commitment to environmental sustainability and community values during times of increasing ecosocial pressures.
The article focuses on the integration of a frame-analytic approach into the research field of the biography of material objects, whose main representatives were originally situated in classical anthropology and archaeology. The main aim of the article is the introduction of a sociological perspective to the study of the history of things. To achieve this goal, frame analysis is used as a tool of conceptual translation, based on a synthesis of key assumptions of existing approaches. The article is divided into two parts. The primary part undertakes a review of existing biographical concepts in disciplines related to sociology. Among their shortcomings is the anthropomorphizing of the biography of an object, which leads to linearity and the desire to establish the beginning and end of its ‘life’. We argue that a thing can have ‘a number of different simultaneous lives’ without specific dates. In addition, in the presented approaches, exchange appears to be the primary means of endowing an object with meaning, although it is not the only possible way. In contrast, we highlight the concept of ‘itineraries of an object’ as a preferable alternative. The first part of the work also formulates the epistemic horizon of a frame-analytical biography of the material. The unit of analyzing the history of a thing — its biographical event — is the transformation of the frame of the social situation given by the object under study. In the second part of the paper, the conceptual points are illustrated by the ‘life’ stories of several telephone booths: their transposition into a city Wi-Fi hotspot, their reframing into a work office, and their transposition into a complex facility at a scientific conference. It is argued that frame theory has a conceptual apparatus relevant for explaining changes in biography, which considers the relationality of meaning-making, the qualities of a thing per se, and the dispersed (as opposed to linear) nature of these changes.
Resumen Esta investigación es deudora de la teoría de las potencialidades (affordances) desarrollada por el psi-cólogo James Gibson (2015) durante los años setenta, quien defiende la capacidad cognitiva de recibir el estímulo del medio ambiente sin construcción cognitiva previa. En lugar de material-mente, Gibson propone un entorno formado por sustancias, superficies y medio ambiente, una «psicología ecológica» que se activa a través de la intersección entre los observadores en movimiento y el entorno. Por ello, las cosas son percibidas según su potencialidad activándose unas propiedades u otras según la actividad desarrollada. Mientras el concepto gibsoniano de las potencialidades se ha incorporado eficazmente al diseño industrial y tecnológico, es menos reconocido en otras áreas próximas como el diseño de moda. Esta comuni-cación se centra en la aplicación de las potencialidades de los wearables, prendas tecnológicas entre el arte, la ciencia, la moda y el diseño. A través del estudio de caso de tres diseñadoras-Annouk Wippre-cht, Yin Gao y Behnez Farahi-se pone el foco en los materiales y su agencia. Prendas ultra-sensibles, como Caress the Gaze de Behnez Farahi, son capaces de transformarse en pieles tecnológicas interac-tuando con factores externos medioambientales y las emociones internas de la usuaria. Dichas prendas, creadas con medios innovadores como impresoras 3D, extienden los límites y las propiedades de los materiales transformando su dureza, densidad y comportamiento para adaptarse a situaciones sociales de riesgo reales o percibidas. Inspirándose en el mundo marino, la diseñadora Ying Gao y sus vestidos autónomos reaccionan a la mirada del otro con sinuosas luces, delatando a los intrusos y protegiendo la intimidad. Por último, la neerlandesa Annouk Wipprecht incide en la defensa con el Vestido-Araña, un exoesqueleto con sensores biométricos con capacidad para atacar quien invada el espacio personal de quien lo porta. En definitiva, estas tres diseñadoras exploran de forma lúdica e inquisitiva los materiales, y sus wearables cobran un papel discursivo y crítico frente a la sociedad, situándose más cercanos al ámbito especulativo que al utilitario propio del diseño.
This article examines nomadism through the conceptual framework of philosopher Rosi Braidotti, analyzing its implications for contemporary artistic practices. By focusing on case studies, including Italian artist Mario Merz’s igloos and Peruvian artist Jimena Kato’s perilous constructions, this article explores material precariousness and material agency as a means of engaging politically with topics such as migration, diasporic cultures, and the contested notion of home. It seeks to elucidate the dynamic interplay between balance and imbalance, revealing the transformative essence of being. Central to this discussion are three key concepts drawn from Braidotti’s work: (1) the nomadic subject, (2) performativity, and (3) potentiality. These categories are crucial for understanding how nomadism, as both a theoretical and practical approach, redefines subjectivity and materiality in art. The analysis suggests that these artistic practices embody a nomadic ontology, where movement and instability become generative forces for creation, challenging traditional notions of fixed identity and static form. The article contributes to the ongoing discourse concerning the intersection of philosophy and contemporary art, proposing that nomadism offers a valuable lens through which to view the evolving relationship between the artist, their materials, and the broader socio-cultural context.
A partir dos pressupostos mais-que-representacionais este artigo epistemológico visa analisar os impactos dos ritmos e direções para o comportamento humano e, de retorno, para o arranjo do próprio espaço. Para tanto, apropria-se das relações afetivo-performáticas para construir um arcabouço teórico que apresenta o espaço e a categoria lugar dialética e concomitantemente como palcos e subprodutos das relações de poder. Para além das considerações teóricas, acerca da manipulação afetiva, por intermédio do controle dos ritmos e das direções, o artigo abre outra possibilidade de avaliação: considerando a natureza espaço-temporalmente sitiada da experiência, conclui-se que é plausível inferir que controles rítmicos e vetoriais impactem, remotamente, na constituição dos lugares.
This article focuses on how the monks of Mount Athos embody its unique timescape in their presentation of the monastic self in everyday life, as it emerges out of the musicality of the Athonian landscape. The article unfolds the embodied dialectics in play between the experience of messianic time and its spiritual affordances against which one's bodily resilience is sociomaterially tested in and by the ‘Here and Now’, following the metronomic measuring of time and its historical affordances. By comparing two ways of measuring each ‘hour’, the article further investigates the use value given to one's personal time as an experiential means of teaching the ‘ techne of time’ for cultivating a monastic ‘self’ within and against a ‘world’ out there. The article draws three overlapping nested temporal cycles in terms of per‐forming the ‘self’ within the organic community and the institution, through which one naturalizes, synchronizes, and interiorizes the horologion with the tempos of everyday life. Finally, it argues that the crossing from the secular to the monastic timescape disrupts the continuity of common life and its expectations, by opening a self‐revelatory time rupture revealing Eternity in every instance of one's paradoxical presence in the present moment in and out of time.
Set in a wide open plain, the monolith of Uluṟu (‘Ayers Rock’) has become an internationally recognizable symbol for the Australian outback, currently attracting hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. Promoted since the 1950s as an exotic tourist destination, one of the major activities has been the ‘conquest’ of Uluṟu by completing the steep climb to the top. Always disapproved by the Aṉangu, the Indigenous Australian community of the area, and actively discouraged since 1990, the climb became an extremely contentious issue in the final two years before it was permanently closed to tourists on 26 October 2019. Given that climbing Uluṟu as a tourist activity has become an event of the past, this paper will examine the nature, materiality, and potential heritage value of the portable material culture associated with the climb. The background to the history of climbing Uluṟu in the context of European invasion (‘exploration’), the nature of tourism at Uluṟu and the role climbing played in this, as well as the management decisions that led to the closure of the climb can be grouped into four thematic periods: the beginnings of settler colonialist ascents (1873–1950), the ‘heroic’ age of Uluṟu tourism (1950–1958), lodges in a National Park (1958–1985), and joint management and the eventual closure of the climb (1985–2019). Based on a description of the material culture associated with the climb, particularly badges, patches and certificates, and drawing on the methodologies of historic and material culture studies, this paper will discuss the various interpretations of climbing Uluṟu and how the portable material culture reflects or exemplifies climbing as a conquest and heroic deed, as a spiritual ritual, and as a violation of cultural rights. After examining the materiality of the wearable material culture, we conclude by exploring which of these portable items are culturally significant and which, if any, should be curated in public collections.
Artikkelen er skrevet frem med utgangspunkt i en undervisningssituasjon sammen med en gruppe barnehagelærerstudenter og store mengder kassert ull fra norsk villsau. Med a-r-t-ografi som forskningsmetodologi og pedagogisk strategi undersøker vi hvordan vi kan (med)virke forskende, lærende og skapende i egen undervisning med ull, filting, studenter og steder, og på hvilke måter a-r-t-ografien bidrar til å utvide vår tenkning om undervisning når vi flytter verkstedet ut i friluft. Undersøkelsen er forankret i prosessfilosofi, posthumane perspektiver og kunstbasert forskning. Foto: Ann-Hege Lorvik Waterhouse, Kari Carlsen og Trude Iversen
Reflections on a (New Materialist) Conceptualization of Sorbian Digital Culture Contemporary culture is characterized by the omnipresence of digital technology in all areas of life, all around the world. The Sorbs also use digital technology intensively, leading to the development of a Sorbian digital culture over time. However, this has not yet been researched, leaving many unanswered questions, the most fundamental of which is how to define Sorbian digital culture. This article offers reflections on this question by reviewing definitions of both Sorbian culture and digital culture. It shows that considering the material infrastructure of digital technology is a precondition for defining Sorbian digital culture. New materialism is introduced as a possible approach, and examples are provided to support this argument.
Synteettiset jalokivet ovat ihmisen valmistamia mineraaleja, jotka vastaavat ominaisuuksiltaan lähes täydellisesti luonnossa syntyneitä esikuviaan. Niiden kaupallinen tuotanto jalokivialaa varten alkoi 1900-luvun alussa. Vuosisadan edetessä synteettiset kivet muodostivat jatkuvasti kehittyvän tuoteryhmän, jonka vaiheita jalokivien parissa toimivien täytyi seurata aktiivisesti. Lähilukemalla kultasepänalan ammattioppaita ja jalokivikirjoja artikkeli tutkii, mitä suomalaiset jalokiviasiantuntijat kirjoittivat synteettisistä jalokivistä vuosina 1900–1969. Miten he suhtautuivat jalokiven synteettisyyteen, synteettisten jalokivien kaupalliseen merkitykseen ja mahdollisuuksiin erottaa ihmisen valmistamat jalokivet luonnossa syntyneistä? Miten suhtautuminen muuttui ajan kuluessa? Tutkimusjakson alussa synteettisiin jalokiviin liittyvä jalokiviasiantuntijuus nojasi silmämääräisiin havaintoihin ja kokemukseen. Niiden merkitys alkoi kuitenkin vähitellen väistyä ja 1960-luvulle tultaessa gemmologisten tutkimuslaitteiden tuottamat, varmoina pidetyt, tutkimustulokset saivat yhä enemmän painoarvoa. Asiantuntijoiden mukaan synteettisillä jalokivillä oli oma paikkansa jalokivikaupassa ja niiden kaupallinen merkitys oli suuri. Tarve tunnistaa synteettisyys ja erotella synteettiset jalokivet aidoista vauhditti uuden toimijaryhmän – gemmologien – muodostumista Suomessa. Samalla gemmologiasta kehittyi erityisala, joka ei enää täysin auennut muille jalokivien parissa toimiville.
This creativecritical essay investigates the author’s object-oriented mania and her anticipatory relationship to “happy objects” (Ahmed, 2010) through the lens of her obsessive-compulsive disorder, shadowed by memories around inheritance, a family propensity toward hoarding and the empty promise of capitalism under a “regime of crisis ordinariness” (Berlant, 2011). The chaos of the hoard, in which objects congeal rather than circulate, suspends the hoard in a time outside of time, similar to Kristeva’s (1982) chora (Lepselter, 2011). While the hoarder as artist manifests a “poetics of accumulation” (Falkoff, 2021), a writer as hoarder amasses a citational hoard via reference manager. This essay applies Zinman and Reese’s “critical-mess theory” (qtd. in Singer, 2001) to creative writing, arguing that critical mess literature demands a collaged form where one might draw conclusions from patterns made evident by the accumulated, intertextual, polyvocal hoard. It poses citations managers as a modern tool of Lévi-Strauss’s (2021) bricoleur. In “stringing up a narrative” of things (Juckes, 2017), the author puts word-things into place through object recollection, curation and citation, forming an interweb of narrative objects to demonstrate the application of critical mess theory with and through life writing.
This article examines the challenges encountered and insights gained in the curatorial process of ‘Asian youth in public spaces’ (2021), a photography exhibition based on the project GENEsYs (ULB). More specifically, I engage in a blend of reflective practice and retrospective theorising concerning the curation and circulation of the exhibition. Firstly, I delve into the challenges of managing and arranging the curated materials, a heterogeneous group of 41 photographs taken by researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds. Theoretical and ethical dilemmas arose during the process, requiring careful negotiation to ensure that the exhibition served as a platform for critical engagement rather than perpetuating harmful stereotypes or misunderstandings. Secondly, I explore two aspects of curatorial inquiry that emerged as the exhibition travelled to various institutions, namely “curatorship as research” and “exhibitions as research”. Shown to different academic communities, ‘Asian youth in public spaces’ served as a dynamic platform for discussion and debate, generating a “research surplus” also due to the events that surrounded its circulation. This article aims to shed light on the intricacies involved in both curating and disseminating the exhibition, underscoring its capacity as a space for critical examination and intellectual interaction.
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