Materiality

Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology at University College London. He is the author of many books, including The Sari (with Mukulika Banerjee); Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach; A Theory of Shopping; and The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (with Don Slater). He is the editor, most recently, of Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors and Car Cultures.

Materiality: An Introduction / Daniel Miller 1 Objects in the Mirror Appear Closer Than They Are / Lynn Meskell 51 A Materialist Approach to Materiality / Michael Rowlands 72 Some Properties of Art and Culture: Ontologies of the Image and Economies of Exchange / Fred Myers 88 Sticky Subjects and Sticky Objects: The Substance of African Christian Healing / Matthew Engelke 118 Does Money Matter? Abstraction and Substitution in Alternative Financial Forms / Bill Maurer 140 The Materiality of Finance Theory / Hirokazu Miyazaki 165 Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things / Webb Keane 182 Materiality and Cognition: The Changing Face of Things / Susanne Kuchler 206 Beyond Meditation: Three New Material Registers and Their Consequences / Nigel Thrift 231 Things Happen: Or, From Which Moment Does That Object Come? / Christopher Pinney 256 Contributors 273 Index 277

"There have been many recent stabs at the idea of materiality. With both authority and intellectual generosity, these anthropologists and their colleagues take us beyond 'things' and 'objects' to ask about concrete presences, qualities, surfaces, and the formation of phenomena. A magisterial and highly original collection."--Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge "A milestone collection. Of all of the recent works on material culture available, this is the one that exposes the complete range of perspectives and theoretical strategies that the most noted scholars are trying out and the interdisciplinary connections and alliances that are shaping the field."--George Marcus, Rice University "This is first-class scholarship: lively, consequential, engaging, informed, and lucid. Daniel Miller and his colleagues explore--with imagination, ethnographic insight, and remarkable clarity--a range of related issues central to current debates within and beyond cultural anthropology."--Donald Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz "Throughout the chapters, the analyses are of high quality. The authors know their cases and present them well. At the same time, they connect to the broader issues the volume intends to raise and to the rising literature on 'materiality...'"--Peter Wagner, American Journal of Sociology "This is an important book that readers of Technology and Culture should find both challenging and rewarding..." --Marcia-Anne Dobres, Technology and Culture "For museum scholars, careful consideration of materiality--and of the ideologies of the material world conveyed by museum practice--is imperative. This volume will be an important resource for such a project." --Jessica Cattelino, Museum Anthropology "A lively volume... This book makes the reader engage with a range of old and new arguments on materiality and pushes their boundaries in a way that makes it important reading for a broad anthropological public."-- Francesca Merlan, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "This book makes the reader engage with a range of old and new arguments on materiality and pushes their boundaries in a way that makes it important reading for a broad anthropological public."--Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute