Description
Book SynopsisPresenting ethnographic case studies from across the globe, the contributors to
Anthropos and the Material question and complicate long-held understandings of the divide between humans and things by examining encounters between the human and the nonhuman in numerous social, cultural, technological, and geographical contexts.
Trade Review“This book underscores that the Anthropocene poses challenges that far exceed disciplinary or methodological boundaries, just as they exceed the bounds of the anthropos or the material. The contributors take us far in imagining analytical frameworks, sensibilities, and political possibilities that are ‘more than human’ at a time when anthropocentrism is confronting the consequences of its hubris.” -- Nidhi Subramanyam * Geographical Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction / Penny Harvey, Christian Krohn-Hansen, and Knut G. Nustad 1
Part I: Materializing Structures
1. Uncommoning Nature: Stories from the Anthropo-Not-Seen / Marisol de la Cadena 35
2. Contemporary Capitalism and Dominican New Yorkers' Livery-Cab Bases: A Taxi Story / Christian Krohn-Hansen 59
3.
Anthropos and
Pragmata: On the Shape of Things to Come / Ingjerd Hoëm 81
Part II: Material Potential
4.
Tabu and Bitcoin: Fluctuating (Im)materiality in Two Nonstate Media of Exchange / Keir Martin 103
5. Sperm, Eggs, and Wombs: The Fabrication of Vital Matters through Legislative Acts / Marit Melhuus 122
6. Lithic Vitality: Human Entanglement with Nonorganic Matter / Penny Harvey 143
7. Traces of Pasts and Imaginings of Futures in St Lucia, South Africa / Knut G. Nustad 161
Part III: Material Uncertainties and Heterogeneous Knowledge Practices
8. Matters that Matter: Air and Atmosphere as Material Politics in South Africa / Rune Flikke 179
9. The Ghost at the Banquet: Ceremony, Community, and Industrial Growth in West Norway / Marianne Elisabeth Lien and John Law 196
10. When the Things We Study Respond to Each Other: Tools for Unpacking "the Material" / Anna Tsing 221
Contributors 245
Index 249
