Download or read book Elusive Archives written by Martin Brückner and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-27 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays that comprise Elusive Archives raise a common question: how do we study material culture when the objects of study are transient, evanescent, dispersed or subjective? Such things resist the taxonomic protocols that institutions, such as museums and archives, rely on to channel their acquisitions into meaningful collections. What holds these disparate things together here are the questions authors ask of them. Each essay creates by means of its method a provisional collection of things, an elusive archive. Scattered matter then becomes fixed within each author’s analytical framework rather than within the walls of an archive’s reading room or in cases along a museum corridor. This book follows the ways in which objects may be identified, gathered, arranged, conceptualized and even displayed rather than by “discovering” artifacts in an archive and then asking how they came to be there. The authors approach material culture outside the traditional bounds of learning about the past. Their essays are varied not only in subject matter but also in narrative format and conceptual reach, making the volume accessible and easy to navigate for a quick reference or, if read straight through, build toward a new way to think about material culture.
Download or read book Toward a New Culture of the Material written by Frank Bauer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-09-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was wäre, wenn wir das multistabile, ambivalente und anpassungsfähige Verhalten aktiver Materie als offenen Gestaltungsspielraum verstehen? Die Beiträge dieses Bandes erkunden das formbildende Potenzial des Prozessua-len und Unverfügbaren - von mikrobi-ellem Co-Design über morphogeneti-sche Experimente und atmosphärische Kreationen bis hin zu Plastizität und Lebendigkeit in Architektur, Kunst und Begriffsentwicklung. Im Grenzgang zwischen analogen und digitalen For-men überschreiten die hier vorgestell-ten 19 Perspektiven disziplinäre und methodologische Grenzen und zielen darauf ab, ein neues Paradigma des Materiellen zwischen den Kulturen der Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften und des Designs zu begründen. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu aktiven Strukturen, adaptiven Materialien und Nachhaltigkeit Analoge Codes und Praktiken im Zeitalter des Digitalen Forschungsergebnisse des Exzellenzclusters "Matters of Activity. Image Space Material" an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Download or read book Toward a New Culture of the Material written by Frank Bauer and published by de Gruyter. This book was released on 2024-07-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when we begin treating multi-stable, ambivalent and adaptive behaviors of active matter as a formative principle? The contributions of this volume investigate the potential of the processual and untamable -- ranging from microbial co-designing, morphogenetic experimentation and atmospheric creation to plasticity and liveliness in architecture, history of art and scientific concepts. Walking the line between analog and digital forms, the 19 perspectives from the Cluster of Excellence "Matters of Activity" not only cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries, but also aim at installing a new material paradigm between the epistemic cultures of sciences, humanities and design. Investigating a new culture of the material Interdisciplinary views on active structures, adaptive materials and sustainability
Download or read book Material Culture Studies in America written by Thomas J. Schlereth and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 1999 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The country's leading authority on use of artifactual evidence in historical research collects twenty-five classic essays and gives his overview of the field of material culture.
Download or read book Medical Materialities written by Aaron Parkhurst and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical Materialities investigates possible points of cross-fertilisation between medical anthropology and material culture studies, and considers the successes and limitations of both sub-disciplines as they attempt to understand places, practices, methods, and cultures of healing. The editors present and expand upon a definition of ‘medical materiality’, namely the social impact of the agency of often mundane, at times non-clinical, materials within contexts of health and illness, as caused by the properties and affordances of this material. The chapters address material culture in various clinical and biomedical contexts and in discussions that link the body and healing. The diverse ethnographic case studies provide valuable insight into the way cultures of medicine are understood and practised.
Download or read book Superfluous Things written by Craig Clunas and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1991 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book, presented here with a new preface, examines the history of material culture in early modern China. Craig Clunas analyzes "superfluous things" - the paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics, carved jade, and other objects owned by the elites of Ming China - and describes contemporary attitudes toward them. He informs his discussions with references to both socio-cultural theory and current debates on eighteenth-century England concerning luxury, conspicuous consumption, and the growth of the consumer society." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book The Material Culture of Failure written by David Jeevendrampillai and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-27 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What 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 first anthropological study dedicated to theorizing failure, this innovative collection offers fresh insights based on the latest scholarship. Destined to stimulate a new area of research, the book makes a vital contribution to material culture studies and related social science theory.
Download or read book Toward a New Psychology of Gender written by Mary M. Gergen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from a brilliant array of voices primarily from psychology, but also from other social sciences and humanities, this unique reader of creative and intellectually provocative essays investigates the social construction of gender. For the past several decades, those involved with the study of the psychology of women and gender have been struggling for recognition within the framework of psychology. This volume brings together the writings from psychology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, women's studies, education and sociology that critique mainstream thinking and exemplify new ways of creating inquiry.
Download or read book Iconic Power written by J. Alexander and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-01-02 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of original articles that explore social aspects of the phenomenon of icon. Having experienced the benefits and realized the limitations of so called 'linguistic turn', sociology has recently acknowledged a need to further expand its horizons.
Download or read book Thinking with Things written by Esther Pasztory and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At its heart, Pasztory's thesis is simple and yet profound. She asserts that humans create things (some of which modern Western society chooses to call "art") in order to work out our ideas - that is, we literally think with things. Pasztory draws on examples from many societies to argue that the art-making impulse is primarily cognitive and only secondarily aesthetic. She demonstrates that "art" always reflects the specific social context in which it is created, and that as societies become more complex, their art becomes more rarefied."--Jacket.
Download or read book Cultural Studies and Political Economy written by Robert E. Babe and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the notorious split between the two fields of cultural studies and political economy. Drawing on the works of Harold Innis, Theodor Adorno, Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and other major theorists in the two fields, Robert E. Babe shows that political economy can be reconciled to certain aspects of cultural studies, particularly with regards to cultural materialism. Uniting the two fields has proven to be a complex undertaking though it makes practical sense, given the close interaction between political economy and cultural studies. Babe examines the evolution of cultural studies over time and its changing relationship with political economy. The intersections between the two fields center around three subjects: the cultural biases of money, the time/space dialectic, and the dialectic of information.
Download or read book Biocultural Creatures written by Samantha Frost and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Biocultural Creatures, Samantha Frost brings feminist and political theory together with findings in the life sciences to recuperate the category of the human for politics. Challenging the idea of human exceptionalism as well as other theories of subjectivity that rest on a distinction between biology and culture, Frost proposes that humans are biocultural creatures who quite literally are cultured within the material, social, and symbolic worlds they inhabit. Through discussions about carbon, the functions of cell membranes, the activity of genes and proteins, the work of oxygen, and the passage of time, Frost recasts questions about the nature of matter, identity, and embodiment. In doing so, she elucidates the imbrication of the biological and cultural within the corporeal self. In remapping the relation of humans to their habitats and arriving at the idea that humans are biocultural creatures, Frost provides new theoretical resources for responding to political and environmental crises and for thinking about how to transform the ways we live.
Download or read book Toward New Democratic Imaginaries stanbul Seminars on Islam Culture and Politics written by Seyla Benhabib and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law.
Download or read book Toward a Composition Made Whole written by Jody L. Shipka and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many academics, composition still represents typewritten texts on 8.5" x 11" pages that follow rote argumentative guidelines. In Toward a Composition Made Whole, Jody Shipka views composition as an act of communication that can be expressed through any number of media and as a path to meaning-making. Her study offers an in-depth examination of multimodality via the processes, values, structures, and semiotic practices people employ every day to compose and communicate their thoughts. Shipka counters current associations that equate multimodality only with computer, digitized, or screen-mediated texts, which are often self-limiting. She stretches the boundaries of composition to include a hybridization of aural, visual, and written forms. Shipka analyzes the work of current scholars in multimodality and combines this with recent writing theory to create her own teaching framework. Among her methods, Shipka employs process-oriented reflection and a statement of goals and choices to prepare students to compose using various media in ways that spur their rhetorical and material awareness. They are encouraged to produce unusual text forms while also learning to understand the composition process as a whole. Shipka presents several case studies of students working in multimodal composition and explains the strategies, tools, and spaces they employ. She then offers methods to critically assess multimodal writing projects. Toward a Composition Made Whole challenges theorists and compositionists to further investigate communication practices and broaden the scope of writing to include all composing methods. While Shipka views writing as crucial to discourse, she challenges us to always consider the various purposes that writing serves.
Download or read book Living Books written by Janneke Adema and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative--not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project--not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make.
Download or read book The Lives of Objects written by Maia Kotrosits and published by Class 200: New Studies in Religion. This book was released on 2020 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Judaism and Christianity as condensed illustrations of how people across time struggle with the materiality of life and death. Speaking across many fields, including classics, history, anthropology, literary, gender, and queer studies, the book journeys through the ancient Mediterranean world by way of the myriad physical artifacts that punctuate the transnational history of early Christianity. By bringing a psychoanalytically inflected approach to bear upon her materialist studies of religious history, Kotrosits makes a contribution not only to our understanding of Judaism and early Christianity, but also our sense of how different disciplines construe historical knowledge, and how we as people and thinkers understand our own relation to our material and affective past"--
Download or read book Attitudes Toward History Third Edition written by Kenneth Burke and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1984-06-05 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book marks Kenneth Burke’s breakthrough in criticism from the literary and aesthetic into social theory and the philosophy of history. In this volume we find Burke’s first entry into what he calls his theory of Dramatism; and here also is an important section on the nature of ritual.
