Material culture Books

Book SynopsisLooking beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary social interactions, The Moral Power of Money investigates the forces of power and morality at play, particularly among the poor. Drawing on fieldwork in a slum of Buenos Aires, Ariel Wilkis argues that money is a critical symbol used to negotiate not only material possessions, but also the political, economic, class, gender, and generational bonds between people. Through vivid accounts of the stark realities of life in Villa Olimpia, Wilkis highlights the interplay of money, morality, and power. Drawing out the theoretical implications of these stories, he proposes a new concept of moral capital based on different kinds, or "pieces," of money. Each chapter covers a different "piece"—money earned from the informal and illegal economies, money lent through family and market relations, money donated with conditional cash transfers, political money that binds politicians and their supporters, sacrificed money offered to the church, and safeguarded money used to support people facing hardships. This book builds an original theory of the moral sociology of money, providing the tools for understanding the role money plays in social life today.Trade Review"Wilkis set out to study the power and politics in greater Buenos Aires, but what he discovered was money: money's morality, variegation, and fragmentation. This remarkable ethnography opens a window into everyday popular politics and solidarities, offering lessons beyond the case of Argentina and into people's moneyworlds and moral orders more broadly." -- Bill Maurer * author of How Would You Like To Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money *"Thanks to Ariel Wilkis for bringing compelling insight into our understanding of how money really works. Gracefully blending theoretical analysis with fascinating ethnographic observation, The Moral Power of Money makes a stellar contribution to economic and cultural sociology. A book that will inspire researchers and fascinate general readers." -- Viviana A. Zelizer * Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, author of The Social Meaning of Money and Economic Lives *"Ariel Wilkis offers a richly detailed ethnographic exploration of all the different and co-existing ethical frames within which money is judged by the poor, and on 'how money connects them.' We hear many people's own moral language, in their own life situations. These accounts will provoke yet further research in many other places, and Wilkis's approach will become exemplary." -- Jane I. Guyer * Johns Hopkins University *"The primary material makes the book an engaging read. One of the effects of looking at the various pieces of money important to villeros is that it gives us a better understanding of how interdependent they are in real life, and how individuals and families strategize. The attention to family is welcome and helps highlight relations of cooperation, power, and hierarchy on the ground; not just between poor communities and the larger society, but also within these homes and communities....The book will be of interest in the fields of international development, sociology, and anthropology....The book will be of interest to scholars of Argentina, money, the urban poor, and grass roots politics. It is suitable both for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses." * Lindsay DuBois *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Money and Moral Capital chapter abstractMoney is an insightful way of understanding the relations between macro-social processes and the experiences of the poor. Understanding these dynamics helps to identify the current conditions for social integration among those who have the least to benefit from processes like globalization, financialization and neoliberalism. This book reveals that sociology is interested in the social realities money helps to shape. Money is morally ubiquitous because it has a hand in social orders, moral hierarchies and power relations. No piece of money is more moral than the next: all revolve around the efforts to establish, appropriate and accumulate moral capital. Money appears as a conceptual and methodological tool. This book offers a new focus for interpreting the multiple power relations that configure the world of the poor. The moral dimension of money plays a critical role in forging economic, class, political, gender and generational bonds. 1Lent Money chapter abstractBy examining how consumer credit began expanding to low-income sectors in 2003, this chapter unveils the moral hierarchies rooted in the circulation of lent money. This chapter shows the moral ubiquity of money lent in heterogeneous situations, both formal and informal where money circulates. It also reveals how moral capital becomes a guarantee that sustains the power relations at the core of these situations. For those with scarce economic and cultural assets, the daily management of finances involves fighting to have their values acknowledged. Moral capital is their passport. However, like all forms of acknowledgment, it is rare and thus can become a form of domination that some are forced to accept in order to access the material benefits capitalism has to offer. 2Earned Money chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes how the underground economy operates as a moral space of income. This exploration will reveal the dynamics of questioning and legitimizing what has to be done to earn money. The concept of moral capital is a useful instrument for understanding how this piece circulates or is taken out of circulation in response to a moral assessment of people's actions. Having moral capital is the way in to these economic transactions that are not regulated by law. Informal and illegal markets are moral spaces where the legitimacy of money earned comes into play. To get involved in these transactions, moral hierarchies are established among participants and they are the also the prerequisites for successful participation. 3Donated Money chapter abstractConditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become the paradigm of the struggle against poverty. These programs have progressively expanded to around thirty countries in the region that has come to be known as the Global South. This expansion changed the household budgets of the poor and became a focus of public debate. The use of money donated by the State became a way to morally discredit the poor. This chapter reconstructed the place of money donated by the state in different hierarchies of money. It identifies the different strategies individuals use to elude the biases associated with this type of money such as stigma cleansing rituals, exclusion strategies and silence in response to such judgments. The reconstructed scenes show how monetary hierarchies uphold power relations among those who have the authority to judge and those who must acquiesce to such biases. 4Political Money chapter abstractThrough the processes of democratization in Argentina (and most of Latin America) that began at the beginning of the 1980s, political scientists and sociologists began examining money in political life through the financial of political parties and the political clientelism. This chapter goes beyond a narrative of money's instrumental use in politics. Has the monetization of political activities dissolved values, commitments, and loyalties among the poor? Is this corruption or an ethical exchange among people who lack cash but possess moral capital? This chapter explores how politics involves power relations that can be understood through the moral dimension of money. This chapter shows how residents of a slum made political money the accounting unit to acknowledge the fulfillment of political obligations that bind leaders and their followers together in relationships of power. To put it more succinctly, this community places political money at the core of its collective life. 5Sacrifice Money chapter abstractThis chapter narrates the competition between political and religious leaders of Villa Olimpia. It shows how these power struggles are rooted in the accumulation of moral capital associated with the pieces of money. Both religious and political networks create social distinctions among their members. While circulating, political and sacrificed money carry a series of social orders and hierarchies of money that often overlap. Each piece is indecipherable outside of the hierarchy of money and at the same time projects a social hierarchy. Between the two pieces, there is fiery competition for the range of objects and people involved. These two puzzle pieces, regulated by specific systems of feelings and perspectives, compete with one another. 6Safeguard Money chapter abstractThe pieces of money produce a hierarchy among family members to determine each family's ranking in the social order. The different pieces of money form a unit that allows us to observe and understand the family universe. On the one hand, they help us understand intergenerational relations. This piece of money shows how people create and recreate the family social order in the sphere of money, which involves both mutual assistance and conflicts, helping complete family projects or tearing them apart. On the other hand, they help us understand gender relations as well. Safeguarded money's circulation carries gendered obligations. Poor women are viewed positively when they safeguard their households both emotionally and economically. In the hands of women money had to be used to guarantee family continuity. Any other use of the money would be questionable, transforming the safeguarded money into suspicious money. Conclusion: Conclusion chapter abstractThis book analyzes the way in which social orders founded on money come into being. Each chapter of this book contributes to a better understanding of the moral sociology of money, which in turn contributes to other areas of knowledge within sociology. These contributions from the moral sociology of money stem from an ethnographic reconstruction of the everyday life of poor people who live in Villa Olimpia. This work identified and assembled the pieces of money that best captured the dynamics of solidarity and conflict that characterized social bonds. However, this book takes the arguments, concepts and empirical evidence presented in the hope of reimagining economic sociology outside Villa Olimpia and the world of the poor. The moral sociology of money that is a theoretical and methodological toolbox that can be applied to other social worlds, establishing bridges with other areas of knowledge in sociology.

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Book SynopsisLooking beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary social interactions, The Moral Power of Money investigates the forces of power and morality at play, particularly among the poor. Drawing on fieldwork in a slum of Buenos Aires, Ariel Wilkis argues that money is a critical symbol used to negotiate not only material possessions, but also the political, economic, class, gender, and generational bonds between people. Through vivid accounts of the stark realities of life in Villa Olimpia, Wilkis highlights the interplay of money, morality, and power. Drawing out the theoretical implications of these stories, he proposes a new concept of moral capital based on different kinds, or "pieces," of money. Each chapter covers a different "piece"—money earned from the informal and illegal economies, money lent through family and market relations, money donated with conditional cash transfers, political money that binds politicians and their supporters, sacrificed money offered to the church, and safeguarded money used to support people facing hardships. This book builds an original theory of the moral sociology of money, providing the tools for understanding the role money plays in social life today.Trade Review"Wilkis set out to study the power and politics in greater Buenos Aires, but what he discovered was money: money's morality, variegation, and fragmentation. This remarkable ethnography opens a window into everyday popular politics and solidarities, offering lessons beyond the case of Argentina and into people's moneyworlds and moral orders more broadly." -- Bill Maurer * author of How Would You Like To Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money *"Thanks to Ariel Wilkis for bringing compelling insight into our understanding of how money really works. Gracefully blending theoretical analysis with fascinating ethnographic observation, The Moral Power of Money makes a stellar contribution to economic and cultural sociology. A book that will inspire researchers and fascinate general readers." -- Viviana A. Zelizer * Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, author of The Social Meaning of Money and Economic Lives *"Ariel Wilkis offers a richly detailed ethnographic exploration of all the different and co-existing ethical frames within which money is judged by the poor, and on 'how money connects them.' We hear many people's own moral language, in their own life situations. These accounts will provoke yet further research in many other places, and Wilkis's approach will become exemplary." -- Jane I. Guyer * Johns Hopkins University *"The primary material makes the book an engaging read. One of the effects of looking at the various pieces of money important to villeros is that it gives us a better understanding of how interdependent they are in real life, and how individuals and families strategize. The attention to family is welcome and helps highlight relations of cooperation, power, and hierarchy on the ground; not just between poor communities and the larger society, but also within these homes and communities....The book will be of interest in the fields of international development, sociology, and anthropology....The book will be of interest to scholars of Argentina, money, the urban poor, and grass roots politics. It is suitable both for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses." * Lindsay DuBois *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Money and Moral Capital chapter abstractMoney is an insightful way of understanding the relations between macro-social processes and the experiences of the poor. Understanding these dynamics helps to identify the current conditions for social integration among those who have the least to benefit from processes like globalization, financialization and neoliberalism. This book reveals that sociology is interested in the social realities money helps to shape. Money is morally ubiquitous because it has a hand in social orders, moral hierarchies and power relations. No piece of money is more moral than the next: all revolve around the efforts to establish, appropriate and accumulate moral capital. Money appears as a conceptual and methodological tool. This book offers a new focus for interpreting the multiple power relations that configure the world of the poor. The moral dimension of money plays a critical role in forging economic, class, political, gender and generational bonds. 1Lent Money chapter abstractBy examining how consumer credit began expanding to low-income sectors in 2003, this chapter unveils the moral hierarchies rooted in the circulation of lent money. This chapter shows the moral ubiquity of money lent in heterogeneous situations, both formal and informal where money circulates. It also reveals how moral capital becomes a guarantee that sustains the power relations at the core of these situations. For those with scarce economic and cultural assets, the daily management of finances involves fighting to have their values acknowledged. Moral capital is their passport. However, like all forms of acknowledgment, it is rare and thus can become a form of domination that some are forced to accept in order to access the material benefits capitalism has to offer. 2Earned Money chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes how the underground economy operates as a moral space of income. This exploration will reveal the dynamics of questioning and legitimizing what has to be done to earn money. The concept of moral capital is a useful instrument for understanding how this piece circulates or is taken out of circulation in response to a moral assessment of people's actions. Having moral capital is the way in to these economic transactions that are not regulated by law. Informal and illegal markets are moral spaces where the legitimacy of money earned comes into play. To get involved in these transactions, moral hierarchies are established among participants and they are the also the prerequisites for successful participation. 3Donated Money chapter abstractConditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become the paradigm of the struggle against poverty. These programs have progressively expanded to around thirty countries in the region that has come to be known as the Global South. This expansion changed the household budgets of the poor and became a focus of public debate. The use of money donated by the State became a way to morally discredit the poor. This chapter reconstructed the place of money donated by the state in different hierarchies of money. It identifies the different strategies individuals use to elude the biases associated with this type of money such as stigma cleansing rituals, exclusion strategies and silence in response to such judgments. The reconstructed scenes show how monetary hierarchies uphold power relations among those who have the authority to judge and those who must acquiesce to such biases. 4Political Money chapter abstractThrough the processes of democratization in Argentina (and most of Latin America) that began at the beginning of the 1980s, political scientists and sociologists began examining money in political life through the financial of political parties and the political clientelism. This chapter goes beyond a narrative of money's instrumental use in politics. Has the monetization of political activities dissolved values, commitments, and loyalties among the poor? Is this corruption or an ethical exchange among people who lack cash but possess moral capital? This chapter explores how politics involves power relations that can be understood through the moral dimension of money. This chapter shows how residents of a slum made political money the accounting unit to acknowledge the fulfillment of political obligations that bind leaders and their followers together in relationships of power. To put it more succinctly, this community places political money at the core of its collective life. 5Sacrifice Money chapter abstractThis chapter narrates the competition between political and religious leaders of Villa Olimpia. It shows how these power struggles are rooted in the accumulation of moral capital associated with the pieces of money. Both religious and political networks create social distinctions among their members. While circulating, political and sacrificed money carry a series of social orders and hierarchies of money that often overlap. Each piece is indecipherable outside of the hierarchy of money and at the same time projects a social hierarchy. Between the two pieces, there is fiery competition for the range of objects and people involved. These two puzzle pieces, regulated by specific systems of feelings and perspectives, compete with one another. 6Safeguard Money chapter abstractThe pieces of money produce a hierarchy among family members to determine each family's ranking in the social order. The different pieces of money form a unit that allows us to observe and understand the family universe. On the one hand, they help us understand intergenerational relations. This piece of money shows how people create and recreate the family social order in the sphere of money, which involves both mutual assistance and conflicts, helping complete family projects or tearing them apart. On the other hand, they help us understand gender relations as well. Safeguarded money's circulation carries gendered obligations. Poor women are viewed positively when they safeguard their households both emotionally and economically. In the hands of women money had to be used to guarantee family continuity. Any other use of the money would be questionable, transforming the safeguarded money into suspicious money. Conclusion: Conclusion chapter abstractThis book analyzes the way in which social orders founded on money come into being. Each chapter of this book contributes to a better understanding of the moral sociology of money, which in turn contributes to other areas of knowledge within sociology. These contributions from the moral sociology of money stem from an ethnographic reconstruction of the everyday life of poor people who live in Villa Olimpia. This work identified and assembled the pieces of money that best captured the dynamics of solidarity and conflict that characterized social bonds. However, this book takes the arguments, concepts and empirical evidence presented in the hope of reimagining economic sociology outside Villa Olimpia and the world of the poor. The moral sociology of money that is a theoretical and methodological toolbox that can be applied to other social worlds, establishing bridges with other areas of knowledge in sociology.

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Book SynopsisWhen people encounter consumer goods—sugar, clothes, phones—they find little to no information about their origins. The goods will thus remain anonymous, and the labor that went into making them, the supply chain through which they traveled, will remain obscured. In this book, Tad Skotnicki argues that this encounter is an endemic feature of capitalist societies, and one with which consumers have struggled for centuries in the form of activist movements constructed around what he calls The Sympathetic Consumer. This book documents the uncanny similarities shared by such movements over the course of three centuries: the transatlantic abolitionist movement, US and English consumer movements around the turn of the twentieth century, and contemporary Fair Trade activism. Offering a comparative historical study of consumer activism the book shows, in vivid detail, how activists wrestled with the broader implications of commodity exchange. These activists arrived at a common understanding of the relationship between consumers, producers, and commodities, and concluded that consumers were responsible for sympathizing with invisible laborers. Ultimately, Skotnicki provides a framework to identify a capitalist culture by examining how people interpret everyday phenomena essential to it.Trade Review"A path-breaking work. This book contributes significantly to scholarship on consumer society and to broader debates about how to understand the economic culture of capitalism."—Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame"This fascinating comparative account reveals striking similarities and interesting differences between three social movements across two centuries. Skotnicki relates these to the form of capitalism itself, thus making the book an excellent companion for teaching Marx's Capital."—Andreas Glaeser, The University of Chicago"This book is a joy to read for many reasons, but mostly for its careful work in identifying the moral appeals of consumer activism and what the sympathetic consumer tells us about capitalism."—Caroline Heldman, American Journal of SociologyTable of Contents1. The Rise of the Sympathetic Consumer 2. Abolitionist Visions 3. Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Visions 4. Practicing Sympathetic Consumption 5. Moral Arguments 6. The Sympathetic Consumer, Challenged 7. Whither the Sympathetic Consumer?

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Book SynopsisEvery day we are inundated by propaganda that claims life will be better once we are connected to digital technology. Poverty, famine, and injustice will end, and the economy will be “green.” All anyone needs is the latest smartphone. In this succinct and lively book, Maxwell and Miller take a critical look at contemporary gadgets and the systems that connect them, shedding light on environmental risks. Contrary to widespread claims, consumer electronics and other digital technologies are made in ways that cause some of the worst environmental disasters of our time – conflict-minerals extraction, fatal and life-threatening occupational hazards, toxic pollution of ecosystems, rising energy consumption linked to increased carbon emissions, and e-waste. Nonetheless, a greener future is possible, in which technology meets its emancipatory and progressive potential. How Green is Your Smartphone? encourages us to look at our phones in a wholly new way, and is important reading for anyone concerned by the impact of everyday technologies on our environment.Trade Review“In this broad, informative, and surprisingly searing look into ‘smart’ systems, Maxwell and Miller make a compelling case for rethinking and redesigning digital technologies.”Devra Davis, author of Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation “Rigorously researched and acutely argued, this provocative book promises to take readers beyond their comfort zones, into the domain of environmental justice and sustainable development.”Jack Qiu, Chinese University of Hong Kong “How green is your phone? Encourage us to look at mobile phones from a new perspective, and also have important reference significance for thinking about the impact of daily life technology on the environment.”China Media Research “The strength of How Green Is Your Smartphone? is its critical examination of a wide range of issues generated through smartphone production and consumption. ... certainly left me thinking about the global impact generated by my own smartphone use.”Media International Australia “In How Green is your Smartphone?, the various issues around labour, environment and political economy are distilled clearly and concisely with a sharp focus. For teaching purposes, this is the book I have been waiting for. … In the spirit of a manifesto, Maxwell and Miller deploy snappy, no-nonsense language to alert us to the urgency of their call to action, namely the creation of a greener communication system.”PrometheusTable of ContentsIntroduction 1 Outsmart Your Smartphone 2 The Greatest Smartphone is the One You Already Own 3 Calling Bullshit on Anti-Science Propaganda Conclusion: What Next? References Index

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Book SynopsisThis is a detailed analysis of how understanding of health management past, present and future has transformed in the digital age. Since the mid-20th century, we have witnessed ‘healthy’ lifestyles being pushed as part of health promotion strategies, both via the state, and through health tracking tools, and narratives of wellness online. This marks a seismic shift from a public welfare state responsibility for health towards individualised practices of digital self-care. Today health has become representative of ‘lifestyle correction' which is performed on social media. Putting the spotlight on neoliberalism and digital technology as pervasive tools that dictate wellness as a moral obligation, Rachael Kent critically analyses how users navigate relationships between self-tracking technologies, social media, and everyday health management.Table of Contents1. Transformations of Health in the Digital Society 2. Understanding Our Bodies through Datafication 3. Surveillance Cultures of the Digital Health Self 4. Discipline and Moralism of Our Health 5. Health ‘Disciples’: Technology ‘Addiction’ and Embodiment 6. Sharing ‘Healthiness’ 7. Future Directions for the Digital Health Self

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Book SynopsisThis book is about machines: those that have been actualized, fantastical imaginal machines, to those deployed as metaphorical devices to describe complex social processes. Machines argues that they transcend time and space to emerge through a variety of spaces and places, times and histories and representations. They are such an integral fabric of daily reality that their disappearance would have immediate and dire consequences for the survival of humanity. They are part and parcel to our contemporary social order. From labor to social theory, art or consciousness, literature or television, to the asylums of the 19th century, machines are a central figure; an outgrowth of affective desire that seeks to transcend organic limitations of bodies that whither, age and die.Machines takes the reader on an intellectual, artistic, and theoretical journey, weaving an interdisciplinary tale of their emergence across social, cultural and artistic boundaries. With the deep engagement of various texts, Machines offers the reader moments of escape, alternative ways to envision technology for a future yet to materialize. Machines rejects the notion that technological innovations are indeed neutral, propelling us to think differently about those “things” created under specific economic or historical paradigms. Rethinking machines provides a rupture to our current technocratic impetus, shining a critical light on possible alternatives to our current reality. Let us sit back and take a journey through Machines, holding mechanical parts as guides to possible alternative futures.

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Book SynopsisThis book is about machines: those that have been actualized, fantastical imaginal machines, to those deployed as metaphorical devices to describe complex social processes. Machines argues that they transcend time and space to emerge through a variety of spaces and places, times and histories and representations. They are such an integral fabric of daily reality that their disappearance would have immediate and dire consequences for the survival of humanity. They are part and parcel to our contemporary social order. From labor to social theory, art or consciousness, literature or television, to the asylums of the 19th century, machines are a central figure; an outgrowth of affective desire that seeks to transcend organic limitations of bodies that whither, age and die.Machines takes the reader on an intellectual, artistic, and theoretical journey, weaving an interdisciplinary tale of their emergence across social, cultural and artistic boundaries. With the deep engagement of various texts, Machines offers the reader moments of escape, alternative ways to envision technology for a future yet to materialize. Machines rejects the notion that technological innovations are indeed neutral, propelling us to think differently about those “things” created under specific economic or historical paradigms. Rethinking machines provides a rupture to our current technocratic impetus, shining a critical light on possible alternatives to our current reality. Let us sit back and take a journey through Machines, holding mechanical parts as guides to possible alternative futures.

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Book SynopsisThroughout life black Africans in the Bahamas worked, voluntarily or not, and possessed material items of various degrees of importance to them and within their culture. St. Matthews was a cemetery in Nassau at the water's edge--or sometimes slightly below. This project emerged from archaeological excavations at this site to identify and recover materials associated with the interred before the area was completely developed. The area has been -collected- for decades--both professionally and by interested citizens, and Dr. Turner, a native Bahamian, coupled the results of her research excavations with the collections and archival material, to provide insight into the lives and deaths of the interred.

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Book SynopsisFrom early department stores in Cape Town to gendered histories of sartorial success in urban Togo, contestations over expense accounts at an apartheid state enterprise, elite wealth and political corruption in Angola and Zambia, the role of popular religion in the political intransigence of Jacob Zuma, funerals of big men in Cameroon, youth cultures of consumption in Niger and South Africa, queer consumption in Cape Town, middle-class food consumption in Durban and the consumption of luxury handcrafted beads, this collection of essays explores the ways in which conspicuous consumption is foregrounded in various African contexts and historical moments.In 1899, Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’ to describe status-seeking in the obscenely unequal world of late-nineteenth century America. Many of the aspects he described in The Theory of the Leisure Class are still evident in our world today. While Veblen’s crude denunciation of material extravagance finds echoes in media exposés about the lifestyles of the rich worldwide, it is particularly recognisable in reporting on Africa. Here, images of conspicuous consumption have long circulated in local and global media as indictments of political corruption and signs of moral depravity.The essays in Conspicuous Consumption in Africa put Veblen’s concept under robust critical scrutiny, drawing on theorists like Mbembe, Guyer and Bayart by way of critique or addition. They delve into the pleasures, stresses and challenges of consuming in its religious, generational, gendered and racialised aspects, revealing conspicuous consumption as a layered set of practices, textures and relations. The authors resist the trap of easy moralisation, pointing to more complex ethical and political registers of analysis and judgement. This volume shows how central and revealing conspicuous consumption can be to fathoming the history of Africa’s projects of modernity, and their global lineages and legacies. In its grounded, up-close case studies, it is likely to feed into current public debates on the nature and future of African societies – South African society in particular.Trade ReviewThis fascinating, nuanced and persuasive volume combines sophisticated theoretical expositions with a high level of empirical inquiry. Taken together, the essays provide an important entry into the study of consumption in Africa, and indeed make a serious intervention into current socio-political concerns. — Robert Ross, Professor of African History Emeritus, Leiden University, the Netherlands. This volume offers a summary of the relevance of consumption as a terrain of meaningmaking to South African public debates. It will convince readers that much more is going on with consuming practices than the media sometimes solicits. In particular, it brings attention to an abiding tension in discussions around `consumption’: normative expectations of societal values entailed in such phenomenon as `conspicuous consumption’ are set against the symbolic practices illustrated through the performative, visual presentation of status (and claims and counterclaims to it). — Bridget Kenny, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgTable of Contents Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Thinking with Veblen: Case Studies from Africa’s Past and Present - Deborah Posel and Ilana van Wyk Chapter 2 Changes in the Order of Things: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Cape Town – Deborah Posel Chapter 3 Conspicuously Public: Gendered Histories of Sartorial and Social Success in Urban Togo – Nina Sylvanus Chapter 4 Etienne Rousseau, Broedertwis and the Politics of Consumption within Afrikanerdom – Stephen Sparks Chapter 5 Recycling Consumption: Political Power and Elite Wealth in Angola – Claudia Gastrow Chapter 6 Chiluba’s Trunks: Consumption, Excess and the Body Politic in Zambia – Karen Tranberg Hansen Chapter 7 Jacob Zuma’s Shamelessness: Conspicuous Consumption, Politics and Religion – Ilana van Wyk Chapter 8 Precarious ‘Bigness’: A ‘Big Man’, his Women and his Funeral in Cameroon – Rogers Orock Chapter 9 Young Men of Leisure? Youth, Conspicuous Consumption and the Performativity of Dress in Niger – Adeline Masquelier Chapter 10 Booty on Fire: Looking at Izikhothane with Thorstein Veblen – Jabulani G Mnisi Chapter 11 Conspicuous Queer Consumption: Emulation and Honour in the Pink Map – Bradley Rink Chapter 12 The Politics and Moral Economy of Middle-Class Consumption in South Africa – Sophie Chevalier Chapter 13 Marigold Beads: Who Needs Diamonds?! – Joni Brenner and Pamila Gupta Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThis collaborative collection considers the packaging, presentation and consumption of medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Europe 1350–1550. It showcases innovative research on the history of the book from a range of established and younger scholars from the US and Europe in the fields of English and French Studies, History, Music, and Art History. The collection falls naturally into three sections: • Packaging and Presentation: The physical context of the manuscript and printed book including its binding, visual presentation and internal organization • Consumers: Producers, Owners, and Readers • Consuming the Text: The experience of the audience(s) for books These three strands are interdependent, and highlight the materiality of the manuscript or printed book as a consumable, focusing on its ‘consumability’ in the sense of its packaging and presentation, its consumers, and on the act of consumption in the sense of reading and reception or literal decay.Trade ReviewReviews 'The individual essays are all very well contextualised within their own specific fields, and, significantly, they are aided very substantially by the construction of this volume... This book forms a very valuable contribution to current scholarship in the field of medieval and early modern book production, consumption and reception.'Elisabeth Salter, English Historical Review'This volume highlights the wealth of research output from a number of different fields, as well as the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in producing synergistic outcomes.'Erin Connelly, Nottingham Medieval StudiesTable of Contents Acknowledgements - Emma Cayley and Susan Powell Preface - Derek Pearsall List of Figures Section I: Packaging and Presentation: The Materiality of the Manuscript and Printed Book • Anne Marie Lane: ‘How can we Recognise “Contemporary” Bookbindings of the Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries?’ • Matti Peikola: ‘Guidelines for Consumption: Scribal Ruling Patterns and Designing the mise-en-page in later Medieval England’ • Kate Maxwell: ‘The Order of the Lays in the “Odd” Machaut MS BnF fr. 9221(E)’ • Sonja Drimmer: ‘Picturing the King or Picturing the Saint: Two Miniature Programmes for John Lydgate’s Lives of SS Edmund and Fremund’ • Yvonne Rode: ‘Sixty-three Gallons of Books: Shipping Books to London in the Late Middle Ages’ Section II: Consumers: Producers, Owners, and Readers • Anna Lewis: ‘“But solid food is for the mature, who …have their senses trained to discern good and evil”: John Colop’s Book and the Spiritual Diet of the Discerning Lay Londoner’ • Anne Sutton: ‘The Acquisition and Disposal of Books for Worship and Pleasure by Mercers of London in the Later Middle Ages’ • Martha Driver: ‘“By Me Elysabeth Pykeryng”: Women and Printing in the Early Tudor Period’ • Shayne Husbands: ‘The Roxburghe Club: Consumption, Obsession and the Passion for Print’ Section III - Consuming the Text: Writing Consumption • Carrie Griffin: ‘Reconsidering the Recipe: Materiality, Narrative and Text in Later Medieval Instructional MSS and Collections’ • Anamaria Gellert: ‘Fools, “Folye” and Caxton’s Woodcut of the Pilgrims at Table’ • John B. Friedman: ‘Anxieties at Table: Food and Drink in Chaucer’s Fabliaux Tales and Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Der Ring’ • Mary Morse: ‘Alongside St. Margaret: The Childbirth Cult of SS Quiricus and Julitta in Late Medieval English Manuscripts’ • Emma Cayley: ‘Consuming the Text: Pulephilia in Fifteenth-Century French Debate Poetry’ Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisUses the collections of ephemera popular in the late seventeenth century as a way to understand the reading habits, publishing strategies and thought processes of late Stuart print culture. Cheap' genres of print such as ballads, almanacs and playing cards were part of everyday life in seventeenth-century society - ubiquitous and disposable. Toward the end of the century, however, individuals began to preserve, arrange and display articles of cheap print within carefully curated collections. What motivated this sudden urge to preserve the ephemeral? This book answers that question by analysing the social, political and intellectual factors behind the formation of cheap print collections, how these collections were used by their owners, and what this activity can tell us about 'print culture' in the early modern period. The book's central collector is John Bagford (1650-1715), a shoemaker who became a dealer of prints and other 'curiosities' to important collectors of the time such as Samuel Pepys, Hans Sloane and Robert Harley. Bagford's own rich and largely unstudied collection is afascinating study in its own right and his position at the centre of commercial and intellectual networks opens up a whole world of collecting. This world encompasses later Stuart partisan political culture, when modern parties and the 'public sphere' first emerged; the 'New Science' and 'virtuoso culture' with its milieu of natural philosophers, antiquaries and artisans; the aural and visual landscape of marketplaces, streets and alehouses; and developing practices of record-keeping, life-writing and historical writing during the long eighteenth century.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on Conventions List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Tradesmen, Collecting Networks and Curious Ephemera 2. Visual Culture, Medleys and Partisanship 3. Popular Politics, Ballads and the Tragic Revolution 4. Historical Collections, Impartiality and Antiquarian Nostalgia 5. Advertisements, Life-Writing and Scrapbooks Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisInnovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics. In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesised that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics. Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize. Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana): University of Johannesburg PressTrade ReviewAn innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and post-colonial politics. * Zimbabwe Review *This very important book offers valuable contributions to our understanding of the everyday politics of the dead in Zimbabwe. The author's theorization and discussion of the typologies of death, bones, and human remains are useful to a wider audience, within and beyond Zimbabwe, including academics and graduate students within the field of anthropology and sociology of death, political and contemporary history of Zimbabwe, and spirituality and religious studies. -- Death StudiesBeyond doubt, this is a 'must-have' work for all interested in the relationship between death and the broader, intriguing Zimbabwean past. -- Journal of Southern African StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Changing death and human corporeality across Africa and beyond The politics of the dead in Zimbabwe The power of uncertainty Sources and structure of the book 1 Liberation Heritage: Bones and the politics of commemoration The burial of Gift Tandare Heritage and commemoration Heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe Liberation heritage Unsettling Bones 2 Bones & Tortured Bodies: Corporealities of violence and post-violence Resurfacing bones Emotive materiality, affective presence and transforming materials Tortured bodies Towards 'healing' and 'reconciliation' during the GNU 2009-2013 Conclusions 3 Chibondo: Exhumations, uncertainty and the excessivity of human materials The Chibondo exhumations Too 'fresh', 'intact', fleshy, leaky and stinky? The torque of materiality and the excessive potentiality of human remains The politics of uncertainty Conclusions 4 Political Accidents: Rumours, death and the politics of uncertainty The death of Solomon Mujuru Factionalism, rivalries and murky business dealings The inquest A particular kind of death Conclusions 5 Precarious Possession: Rotina Mavhunga, politics and the uncertainties of mediumship Rotina Mavhunga - the diesel n'anga Precarious occupation 6 Mai Melissa: Towards the alterity of spirit and the incompleteness of death Towards the alterity of spirit Conclusions 7 After Mugabe Burying Bob Conclusions Bodies and spirits, change and continuity AIDS, cholera, Congo, prisons, Chiadzwa, diaspora, FTLR, and charismatic Pentecostalisms New directions for liberation heritage Ambuya Nehanda returns? Exhuming Bob?

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Book SynopsisInnovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics. In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesised that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics. Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize. Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana): University of Johannesburg PressTrade ReviewAn innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and post-colonial politics. * Zimbabwe Review *This very important book offers valuable contributions to our understanding of the everyday politics of the dead in Zimbabwe. The author's theorization and discussion of the typologies of death, bones, and human remains are useful to a wider audience, within and beyond Zimbabwe, including academics and graduate students within the field of anthropology and sociology of death, political and contemporary history of Zimbabwe, and spirituality and religious studies. -- Death StudiesBeyond doubt, this is a 'must-have' work for all interested in the relationship between death and the broader, intriguing Zimbabwean past. -- Journal of Southern African StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Changing death and human corporeality across Africa and beyond The politics of the dead in Zimbabwe The power of uncertainty Sources and structure of the book 1 Liberation Heritage: Bones and the politics of commemoration The burial of Gift Tandare Heritage and commemoration Heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe Liberation heritage Unsettling Bones 2 Bones & Tortured Bodies: Corporealities of violence and post-violence Resurfacing bones Emotive materiality, affective presence and transforming materials Tortured bodies Towards 'healing' and 'reconciliation' during the GNU 2009-2013 Conclusions 3 Chibondo: Exhumations, uncertainty and the excessivity of human materials The Chibondo exhumations Too 'fresh', 'intact', fleshy, leaky and stinky? The torque of materiality and the excessive potentiality of human remains The politics of uncertainty Conclusions 4 Political Accidents: Rumours, death and the politics of uncertainty The death of Solomon Mujuru Factionalism, rivalries and murky business dealings The inquest A particular kind of death Conclusions 5 Precarious Possession: Rotina Mavhunga, politics and the uncertainties of mediumship Rotina Mavhunga - the diesel n'anga Precarious occupation 6 Mai Melissa: Towards the alterity of spirit and the incompleteness of death Towards the alterity of spirit Conclusions 7 After Mugabe Burying Bob Conclusions Bodies and spirits, change and continuity AIDS, cholera, Congo, prisons, Chiadzwa, diaspora, FTLR, and charismatic Pentecostalisms New directions for liberation heritage Ambuya Nehanda returns? Exhuming Bob?

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Book SynopsisThe cross-cultural usage of a particular cloth type – blueprint – is central to South African cultural history. Known locally as seshoeshoe or isishweshwe, among many other localised names, South African blueprint originated in the Far East and East Asia. Adapted and absorbed by the West, blueprint in Africa was originally associated with trade, coercion, colonisation, Westernisation, religious conversion and even slavery, but residing within its hues and patterns was a resonance that endured. The cloth came to reflect histories of hardship, courage and survival, but it also conveyed the taste and aesthetic predilections of its users, preferences often shared across racial and cultural divides. In its indigenisation, isishweshwe has subverted its former history and alien origins and has come to reflect the authority of its users and their culture, conveying resilience, innovation and adaptation and above all a distinctive South Africanness.In this beautifully illustrated book Juliette Leeb-du Toit traces the origins of the cloth, its early usage and cultural adaptations, and its emerging regional, cultural and aesthetic significance. In examining its usage and current national significance, she highlights some of the salient features associated with histories of indigenisation.

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Book SynopsisRitual has long been a central concept in anthropological theories of religious transmission. Ritual, Performance and the Senses offers a new understanding of how ritual enables religious representations - ideas, beliefs, values - to be shared among participants.Focusing on the body and the experiential nature of ritual, the book brings together insights from three distinct areas of study: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the anthropology of the senses. Eight chapters by scholars from each of these sub-disciplines investigate different aspects of embodied religious practice, ranging from philosophical discussions of belief to explorations of the biological processes taking place in the brain itself. Case studies range from miracles and visionary activity in Catholic Malta to meditative practices in theatrical performance and include three pilgrimage sites: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the festival of Ramlila in Ramnagar, India and the mountain shriTrade Review"Bull and Mitchell provide a truly thought-provoking collection of essays by renowned authors widely influential in the fields of performance studies, sensory/sound studies, and cognitive neuroscience/neurophysics. It is a must-read for all interested in ritual plain and simple as well as for all interested in the complex interplay of cognition, senses, and performance. - Reading Religion This is an excellent collection of articles that are both theoretically and empirically rich and offer innovative approaches to long-standing concepts. - Religion and Society: Advances in Research The book is highly recommendable to anthropologists working on all fields ... It provides a productive entry into debates that will probably shape the future of our discipline as it moves beyond the constraints of a 'science of culture'. - Anthropos [This] book has been carefully curated to ensure that the points of interest ... speak to readers from across the fields of performance studies, anthropology, neuroanthropology and beyond. - HARTS & Minds"Table of ContentsIntroductionJon P. Mitchell and Michael Bull, University of Sussex, UKRitual Action Shapes Our Brains: an Essay in NeuroanthropologyRobert Turner, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, GermanyPlace-making in the 'Holy of Holies': the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, JerusalemTrevor Marchand, School of Oriental and African Studies, UKThe Importance of Repetition: Ritual as Extension of MindGreg Downey, Macquarie University, AustraliaDivine Intervention: Ontology, Cognition and Performance in Maltese Visionary PhenomenaJon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex, UKMaking 'Sense' in Embodied/Enactive Modes of Actor Training and PerformancePhilip Zarrili, University of Exeter, UKRamlila and SpaceRichard Schechner, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, USAExploring the Andean Sensory Model: Knowledge, Memory and the Experience of PilgrimageZoila Mendoza, University of California, Davis, USASensation and TransmissionDavid Howes, Concordia University, CanadaAfterwordSarah Pink, Loughborough University, UKBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFrom Oaxacan wood carvings to dessert kitchens in provincial France, Critical Craft presents thirteen ethnographies which examine what defines and makes craft' in a wide variety of practices from around the world. Challenging the conventional understanding of craft as a survival, a revival, or something that resists capitalism, the book turns instead to the designers, DIY enthusiasts, traditional artisans, and technical programmers who consider their labor to be craft, in order to comprehend how they make sense of it. The authors' ethnographic studies focus on the individuals and communities who claim a practice as their own, bypassing the question of craft survival to ask how and why activities termed craft are mobilized and reproduced. Moving beyond regional studies of heritage artisanship, the authors suggest that ideas of craft are by definition part of a larger cosmopolitan dialogue of power and identity. By paying careful attention to these sometimes conflicting voices, this collTrade Review"Critical Craft is an effective contribution to the anthropology of craft, of work, and of 'thing' or objects. It clearly demonstrates that there is more to crafts of all sorts than 'tradition,' expertise, and 'authenticity.' Anthropologists and others must be wary of assumptions about who does what kind of work or possesses what kind of knowledge, and we must be, like the authors of these quality essays, aware of the (unequal) agency of individuals and groups as they struggle within the field of any particular craft industry. - Anthropology Review Database - Jack David Eller [The book] has extended my understanding of craft as an integral part of contemporary global change ... It puts forward a convincing case for craft as a fruitful topic of study for social science scholars. - International Journal of Education Through Art"Table of Contents1: Introduction: Taking Stock of Craft in AnthropologyAlicia Ory DeNicola, Oxford College of Emory University, USA and Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber, Washington State University Vancouver, USAPart I: Contentions2: Who Authors Crafts? Producing Woodcarvings and Authorship in Oaxaca, MexicoAlanna Cant, University of Oslo, Norway3: Forging Source: Considering the Craft of Computer Programming Lane DeNicola, Emory University, USA4: American Beauty: The Middle Class Arts and Crafts Revival in the United States Frances E. Mascia-Lees, Rutgers University, USA5: Designs on Craft: Negotiating Artisanal Knowledge and Identity in IndiaClare M. Wilkinson-Weber, Washington State University Vancouver, USA and Alicia Ory DeNicola, Oxford College of Emory University, USA6: Nomadic Artisans in Central America: Building Plurilocal Communities through Craft Millaray Villalobos, Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería, Costa RicaPart II: Conundrums7: Number in Craft: Situated Numbering Practices in Do-It-Yourself Sensor SystemsDawn Nafus and Richard Beckwith, Intel Corporation, USA8: Crafting Good Chocolate in France and the US Susan Terrio, Georgetown University, USA9: Creativity, Critique and Conservatism: Keeping Craft Alive among Moroccan Carpet Weavers and French Organic Farmers Myriem Naji, University College London, UK10: Refashioning a Global Craft Commodity Flow from the Central PhilippinesB. Lynne Milgram, OCAD University, CanadaPart III: Conflicts11: ConflictingIdeologiesof the DigitalHand: Locating the Material in a Digital AgeDaniela Rosner, University of Washington, USA12: Materials, the Nation and the Self: Division of Labor in a Taiwanese CraftGeoffrey Gowlland, University of Oslo, Norway13: Craft, Memory and Loss: Hand-Embroidery in Zaria City, NigeriaElisha Renne, University of Michigan, USA14: Crafting Muslim Artisans: Agency and Exclusion in India’s Urban Craft CommunitiesMira Mohsini, Kalamazoo College, USANotesReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisWhat happens when objects behave unexpectedly or fail to do what they should'? Who defines failure? Is failure always bad? Rather than viewing concepts such as failure, incoherence or incompetence as antithetical to social life, this innovative new book examines the unexpected and surprising ways in which failure can lead to positive and creative results. Combining both theoretical and ethnographic approaches to failure, The Material Culture of Failure explores how failure manifests itself and operates in a variety of contexts. The editors present ten ethnographic encounters of failure from areas as diverse as design, textiles, religion, beauty, and physical failure covering Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and the Arabian Gulf. Identifying common themes such as interpersonal, national and religious articulations of power and identity, the book shows some of the underlying assumptions that are revealed when materials fail, designs crumble, or things develop unexpectedly.The firstTrade Review"At last, we have here a thoughtful and provocative series of essays, along with an excellent theoretical introduction, on how failures illuminate the contexts that produce and define them. Noting that failure is everywhere, both in traditional and contemporary societies, the authors reveal how failures in technology, ritual, politics and design are always productive, though usually not in the ways that we anticipate. - Arjun Appadurai, New York University, USA Material failure is disappointing, sometimes grotesque, always inevitable. But as the contributors to this diverse and engaging anthology suggest, material failure can open creative space for subjects on the ground and productive ruminations for the anthropologists who witness them, claiming fresh ground for the study of material culture. - Laurel Kendall, American Museum of Natural History, USA This inspiring book is essential reading for all researchers and students interested in material culture. What happens when we take failure seriously? What happens when things go wrong? From these simple questions the contributors to this volume open up an entrancing new world for us all to explore. - Oliver Harris, University of Leicester, UK"Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgmentsForeword: Failure and Fragility: Towards a Material Culture of the End of the World as We Knew ItDimitris Dalakoglu, Vrije University Amsterdam, Netherlands1. Introduction: Toward a General Theory of FailureTimothy Carroll, David Jeevendrampillai, and Aaron Parkhurst, University College London, UK2. Miracles and Crushed Dreams: Material Disillusions in the Design IndustryCamilla Sundwall, University College London, UK3. When Krishna Wore a Kimono: Deity Clothing as Rupture and InefficacyUrmila Mohan, University College London, UK4. Whitened Anxiety: Bottled Identity in the EmiratesAaron Lee Parkhurst, University College London, UK5. Holy Water, Healing and the Sacredness of KnowledgeAlexandra Antohin, Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, UK6. Haredi (Material) Cultures of Health at the 'Hard to Reach' Margins of the StateBen Kasstan, Durham University, UK7. Failure as Constructive Participation? Being Stupid in the SuburbsDavid Jeevendrampillai, University College London, UK8. Destruction of Locality: On Heritage and Failure in 'Crisis Syria'Julie Shackelford, University College London, UK9. Axis of Incoherence: Engagement and Failure Between Two Material Regimes of ChristianityTimothy Carroll, University College London, UK10. The Materiality of Silence: Assembling the Absence of Sound and the Memory of 9/11Pwyll ap Stifin, University College London, UKAfterwordVictor Buchli, University College London, UKIndex

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Book SynopsisPart materialist manifesto, part empirical case study, and part methodological guide, The Matter of History develops a radical new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past that explains how powerful organisms and things pushed diverse nations and cultures towards a global 'Great Convergence'.Trade Review'In this original, important, and beautifully written book, LeCain develops a neo-materialist theory of history to illuminate the environmental histories of seemingly disparate subjects: copper mines, silkworms, and longhorn cattle. Using insights from evolutionary theory, animal studies, and the anthropocene, LeCain shows how the cultural and the material are deeply interwoven in every aspect of resource extraction.' Nancy Langston, Michigan Technological University'By putting things front and center, LeCain challenges us to rethink our most basic assumptions about how we write history in the twenty-first century. He offers us both a lucid guide to a wide range of materialist theories and a set of fascinating examples.' Linda Nash, University of Washington'The Matter of History constitutes the first successful attempt to create an historical narrative truly grounded in a non-anthropocentric ethos, both in terms of its theoretical premises and of its methodological choices … a valuable example of an historical research able to interpret past events in order to read the present time.' Claudio de Majo, Global Environment'[A] profound and provocative book … thoughtful critique of antimaterialist history with an equally thoughtful summary of recent scholarship … [LeCain] argues convincingly that giving animals, plants, and minerals credit for shaping the world will allow us to write a more accurate and interesting history.' Steven Lubar, Technology and Culture'[The Matter of History] easily counts among the ten most fascinating books that I have read over the last decade.' Stefan Berger, Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements'A fresh, provocative, and profound book … [The Matter of History] pushes environmental-history methodology to a new level of engagement with all actors of the material world.' Anne Norton Greene, Journal of Interdisciplinary History'The Matter of History constitutes the first successful attempt to create an historical narrative truly grounded in a non-anthropocentric ethos, both in terms of its theoretical premises and of its methodological choices.' Caludio de Majo, Global EnvironmentTable of Contents1. Fellow travelers: the non-human things that make us human; 2. We never left Eden: the religious and secular marginalization of matter; 3. Natural born humans: a neo-materialist theory and method of history; 4. The longhorn: the animal intelligence behind American open range ranching; 5. The silkworm: the innovative insects behind Japanese modernization; 6. The copper atom: conductivity and the great convergence of Japan and the West; 7. The matter of humans: beyond the Anthropocene and towards a new humanism.

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Book SynopsisOffering a broad and vivid survey of the culture of collecting from the French Revolution to the Belle Époque, The Purchase of the Past explores how material things became a central means of accessing and imagining the past in nineteenth-century France. By subverting the monarchical establishment, the French Revolution not only heralded the dawn of the museum age, it also threw an unprecedented quantity of artworks into commercial circulation, allowing private individuals to pose as custodians and saviours of the endangered cultural inheritance. Through their common itineraries, erudition and sociability, an early generation of scavengers established their own form of ''private patrimony'', independent from state control. Over a century of Parisian history, Tom Stammers explores collectors'' investments not just financial but also emotional and imaginative in historical artefacts, as well as their uncomfortable relationship with public institutions. In so doing, he argues that privatTrade Review'Creatively conceptualized, deeply researched, and elegantly written, The Purchase of the Past provides an original and convincing account of the crucial role of material culture and private collecting in negotiating the past and constructing historical narratives in nineteenth-century France. Beautifully-wrought case studies of the 'private patrimonies' assembled by individual collectors detail how the practices and meanings of collecting changed in this period.' Leora Auslander, University of Chicago'Stammers immerses the reader in the fascinating world of the nineteenth-century Parisian collector, with a huge array of sources and a lively prose style. His historical approach usefully emphasizes the links between private collectors and French political and social life, notably their role in the rise of public museums and in the shaping of national memory.' Colin Heywood, Emeritus Professor of Modern French History, University of Nottingham'This outstanding work emerges from the intuition that the French Revolution, and its aftermath, can provide a historical framework for the analysis of diverse collecting practices as they come to acquire social and political significance, as well as illuminating their aesthetic dimensions. Through vindicating this precious insight, Stammers has produced a model of cultural criticism that will stand the test of time.' Stephen Bann CBE FBA, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, University of Bristol'A magisterial and highly original study exploring the world of nineteenth-century French collecting from three interlocked vantage points: the political upheavals of the 1790s, the collection of the material culture emerging from that era and the wider development of a historical consciousness that sought to make sense of it. Erudite but written with brio, The Purchase of the Past will durably impact on the way we think about French national and cultural identity.' Colin Jones CBE FBA, Queen Mary University of London'Focusing on revolutionary Paris through the 19th century, Stammers (Univ. of Durham, UK) contends that art collectors significantly fashioned French and Western modernity … The author argues that post-1789 dispersals of objects and Jacobin disregard for the past crucially impressed collectors, who often identified order, taste, values, and heritage with old regime material culture … Highly recommended.' L. A. Rollo, Choice'The Purchase of the Past thoroughly explores how both private collectors and the general public can be understood to have profited from the disarray generated by the events of the French Revolution, with Stammers doing an excellent job of identifying and interrogating the ways in which the former might have benefited more overall than the latter. Stammers's chapters are simultaneously expansive and meticulously researched, and his book will serve as a productive resource for historians for many years to come.' Caitlin Doley, University of York, The British Journal for the History of Science'This book, by one of its most dynamic champions, is an indispensable and highly readable volume for anyone interested in French nineteenth-century history and collecting.' Kate Heard, Journal of the History of CollectionsTable of ContentsIntroduction. Collection, recollection, revolution; 1. Amateurs and the art market in transition (c.1780–1830); 2. Archiving and envisioning the French Revolution (c.1780–1830); 3. Book-hunting, bibliophilia and a textual restoration (c.1790–1840); 4. Salvaging the gothic in private and public spaces (c.1820–70); 5. Royalists versus vandals, and the cult of the old regime (c.1860–1880); 6. Allies of the Republic? Inside the sale of the century (c.1870–1895); Conclusion. The resilience and eclipse of curiosité.

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Book SynopsisRazzall offers close readings of literary texts alongside artefacts from chests to book-bindings and reliquaries, to reveal the importance of the box as object and idea in early modern culture. This book is for students and researchers in English Literature, History, and Art History, as well as book historians and librarians.Table of Contents1. Chests of the Mind in Early Modern England; 2. The Renaissance of the Box: Metaphors of Interpretation; 3. The Word in a Box: Reforming the Book; 4. How to Read a Reliquary; 5. 'Because This Box We Know': Embodying the Box.

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This Element focuses on the 'content' of illustrations and its adaptation within the framework of a new medium; case studies examine the use across different media of illustrations of three eighteenth-century works. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Book SynopsisAn original and thought-provoking study of the material objects produced, acquired and treasured by those who worked for the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, or at least felt strong nostalgia for its passing, in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Trade Review'Neil Guthrie presents an impressive range of subject matter and a wealth of learning in this original, erudite, and perceptive book. He is not only well-versed in eighteenth-century history and literature, but also knows the relevant fields of law - necessary for an understanding of the limited room for manoeuvre available to Jacobites - and Latinity, the medium for so many tags, allusions and inscriptions in Jacobite literature.' Colin Kidd, University of Glasgow'Neil Guthrie's book is an excellent introduction to the wide-ranging world of Jacobite material culture. … Guthrie's highlighted themes and robust bibliography point the way forward for those who want to delve further into specificities of the subject matter.' Jennifer Novotny, Northern Scotland JournalTable of ContentsIntroduction; 1. 'By things themselves': the danger of Jacobite material culture; 2. 'Many emblems of sedition and treason': patterns of Jacobite visual symbolism; 3. 'Their disloyal and wicked inscriptions': the uses of texts on Jacobite objects; 4. 'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis': phases and varieties of Jacobite material culture; 5. 'Those who are fortunate enough to possess pictures and relics': later uses of Jacobite material culture; Bibliography.

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