Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

Author: Dennis Day

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2019-07-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1788924541

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What role do material objects play in the in-situ, embodied and spatial circumstances of interaction? How do people organize their embodied conduct with regard to such objects, and how is this consequential in and for their work practices? In this volume, contributors focus on these questions in terms of connections between ongoing courses of interaction within work practices, object materiality and mobility in space, bodily movement and manipulation of objects, and language. The chapters in this book address a broad range of settings and actions (including dressmaking, foreign language teaching, international business meetings and forklift driving) where a variety of objects become relevant.


The Material Subject

The Material Subject

Author: Urmila Mohan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000185400

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Material Subject emphasises how bodily and material cultures combine to make and transform subjects dynamically. The book is based on the French Matière à Penser (MaP) school of thought, which draws upon the ideas of Mauss, Schilder, Foucault and Bourdieu, among others, to enhance the anthropological study of embodiment, practices, techniques, materiality and power. Through theoretical sophistication and empirical field research, case studies from Europe, Africa and Asia bring MaP’s ideas into dialogue with other strands of material culture studies in the English-speaking world. These studies mediate different scales of engagement through a sensori-motor, affective and cognitive focus on practices of making and doing. Examples range from the precarity of professional divers in French public works to the gendered subjectivity of female carpet weavers in Morocco, from the ways Swiss watchmakers transmit craft knowledge to how Hindu devotees in India make efficacious use of altars, and from the enskilment of Paiwan indigenous people in Taiwan to the prestige of women’s wild silk wrappers in Burkina Faso. The chapters are organised according to domains of practice, defined as 'matter of' work and technology, heritage, politics, religion and knowledge. Scholars and students with an interest in material culture will gain valuable access to global research, rooted in a specific intellectual tradition.


Practicing Materiality

Practicing Materiality

Author: Ruth M. Van Dyke

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0816532338

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is little wonder that relationships between things and humans are front-and-center in the contemporary social sciences, given the presence of technologies in every conceivable aspect of our lives. From Bruno Latour to Ian Hodder, anthropologists and archaeologists are embracing “thing theory” and the “ontological turn.” In Practicing Materiality, Ruth M. Van Dyke cautions that as anthropologists turn toward animals and things, they run the risk of turning away from people and intentional actions. Practicing Materiality focuses on the practical job of applying materiality to anthropological investigations, but with the firm retention of anthropocentrism. The philosophical discussions that run through the nine chapters develop practical applications for material studies, including Heideggerian phenomenology, Gellian secondary agency, object life histories, and bundling. Seven case studies are flanked by an introduction and a discussion chapter. The case studies represent a wide range of archaeological and anthropological contexts, from contemporary New York City and Turkey to fifteenth-century Portugal, the ancient southwest United States, and the ancient Andes. Authors in every chapter argue for the rejection of subject/object dualism, regarding material things as actively involved in the negotiation of power within human social relationships. Practicing Materiality demonstrates that it is possible to focus on the entangled lives of things without losing sight of their political and social implications.


Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark

Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark

Author: Sarah Croix

Publisher:

Published: 2021-05-29

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9782503594163

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark' stresses the significance of the sensory, dramatic enactment that moved the soul, body, heart and mind of the medieval faithful and proposes to revisit and pave the way ahead for research in religious material culture in medieval Denmark.00From bread and wine to holy water, and from oils and incense to the relics of saints, the material objects of religion stood at the heart of medieval Christian practice, bridging the gap between the profane and the divine. While theoretical debates around the importance of physicality and materiality have animated scholarship in recent years, however, little attention has been paid to finding solid, empirical evidence upon which to base such discussions.00Taking medieval Denmark as its case study, this volume draws on a wide range of different fields to explore and investigate material objects, spaces, and bodies that were employed to make the sacred tangible in the religious experience and practice of medieval people. The contributions gathered here explore subjects as diverse as saints? relics, sculptures, liturgical vessels and implements, items used for personal devotion, gospel books, and the materiality of Christian burials to explore the significance of objects that moved the souls, bodies, hearts, and minds of the faithful. In doing so, they also open new insights into religion and belief in medieval Denmark.


The material body

The material body

Author: Elizabeth Craig-Atkins

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2024-02-20

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1526152770

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume explores the possibilities of studying embodied subjects in the past through the sources and approaches of archaeology, history and material culture studies. It draws on collections of human remains, material culture and documentary evidence from Britain during the period 1700–1850, considering the themes of gender, rank, age, disability and maternity. Each chapter looks at the lived experiences of the material body, bringing together disciplines that share an interest in the material or embodied turn. Combining archaeological and historical data to reconstruct embodied experiences, the volume represents the first collection of genuinely collaborative scholarship by historians and archaeologists.


Bodies in Conflict

Bodies in Conflict

Author: Paul Cornish

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-17

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1317916905

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Twentieth-century war is a unique cultural phenomenon and the last two decades have seen significant advances in our ability to conceptualize and understand the past and the character of modern technological warfare. At the forefront of these developments has been the re-appraisal of the human body in conflict, from the ethics of digging up First World War bodies for television programmes to the contentious political issues surrounding the reburial of Spanish Civil War victims, the relationships between the war body and material culture (e.g. clothing, and prostheses), ethnicity and identity in body treatment, and the role of the ‘body as bomb’ in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. Focused on material culture, Bodies in Conflict revitalizes investigations into the physical and symbolic worlds of modern conflict and that have defined us as subjects through memory, imagination, culture and technology. The chapters in this book present an interdisciplinary approach which draws upon, but does not privilege archaeology, anthropology, military and cultural history, art history, cultural geography, and museum and heritage studies. The complexity of modern conflict demands a coherent, integrated, and sensitized hybrid approach which calls on different disciplines where they overlap in a shared common terrain - that of the materiality of conflict and its aftermath in relation to the human body. Bodies in Conflict brings together the diverse interests and expertise of a host of disciplines to create a new intellectual engagement with our corporeal nature in times of conflict.


Materiality

Materiality

Author: Petra Lange-Berndt

Publisher: Whitechapel: Documents of Cont

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780262528092

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Materiality has reappeared as a highly contested topic in recent art. Modernist criticism tended to privilege form over matter--considering material as the essentialized basis of medium specificity--and technically based approaches in art history reinforced connoisseurship through the science of artistic materials. But in order to engage critically with the meaning, for example, of hair in David Hammons's installations, milk in the work of Dieter Roth, or latex in the sculptures of Eva Hesse, we need a very different set of methodological tools. This anthology focuses on the moments when materials become willful actors and agents within artistic processes, entangling their audience in a web of connections. It investigates the role of materiality in art that attempts to expand notions of time, space, process, or participation. And it looks at the ways in which materials obstruct, disrupt, or interfere with social norms, emerging as impure formations and messy, unstable substances. It reexamines the notion of "dematerialization"; addresses materialist critiques of artistic production; surveys relationships between matter and bodies, from the hierarchies of gender to the abject and phobic; explores the vitality of substances; and addresses the concepts of intermateriality and transmateriality emerging in the hybrid zones of digital experimentation." -- Publisher's description.


The Body as Material Culture

The Body as Material Culture

Author: Joanna R. Sofaer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-02-16

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1316584097

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bodies intrigue us. They promise windows into the past that other archaeological finds cannot by bringing us literally face to face with history. Yet 'the body' is also highly contested. Archaeological bodies are studied through two contrasting perspectives that sit on different sides of a disciplinary divide. On one hand lie science-based osteoarchaeological approaches. On the other lie understandings derived from recent developments in social theory that increasingly view the body as a social construction. Through a close examination of disciplinary practice, Joanna Sofaer highlights the tensions and possibilities offered by one particular kind of archaeological body, the human skeleton, with particular regard to the study of gender and age. Using a range of examples, she argues for reassessment of the role of the skeletal body in archaeological practice, and develops a theoretical framework for bioarchaeology based on the materiality and historicity of human remains.


Visuality/Materiality

Visuality/Materiality

Author: Divya P. Tolia-Kelly

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-11

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1317001117

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Two of the key theoretical shifts over the past two decades of critical work have been the 'visual turn' and the 'material turn'. This book argues that these hitherto distinct fields should be understood as in continual dialogue and co-constitution and focuses on reconceptualising the visual as an embodied, material, and often politically-charged realm. This edited volume elaborates this conceptual argument through a series of contemporary case studies, drawn from the disciplines of Architecture, Sociology, Media Studies, Geography and Cultural Studies. The case studies included are paired around four themes: consumption, translation, practice and ethics. As well as exploring the bringing together of visuality and materiality studies, the contributors raise questions of social identity and social critique, and also focus on the ethics of material visualities.