The Inbetweenness of Things: Materializing Mediation and Movement between Worlds - Hardcover

Paul Basu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1474264778 ISBN 13: 9781474264778

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Synopsis

We habitually categorize the world in binary logics of animate and inanimate, human and non-human, natural and supernatural, self and other, authentic and inauthentic. However, these categories are based on false essentializations and overlook the indeterminacy that often animates social and material worlds. The Inbetweenness of Things rejects Western classificatory traditions which tend to categorize objects according to bounded notions of period, place and purpose and argues for the normalization of a paradigm in which objects are not one thing or another but a multiplicity of things at once. Adopting an object-centred approach, the book is conceived as an exhibition a cabinet of curiosities in which anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and other material culture specialists debate a series of objects that defy neat classification. In the process, they explore how things mediate and travel between conceptual worlds in diverse cultural, geographic and temporal contexts, and how they embody such mediation and movement in their form. Featuring an impressive range of international contributors, each essay grounds explorations in cutting-edge material culture theory in concrete case studies. An innovative, thought-provoking read for students and researchers in anthropology, archaeology, museum studies and art history which will transform the way readers think about objects.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Basu is Professor of Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1474264778
• ISBN 13: 9781474264778
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: Paul Basu