Material Turn Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by
- •
- Museum Studies, Archaeological Musealization, Material Turn

For the published version, see Adam Bursi, "Mijn poep, mijn zelf. Identiteit en religie door de lens van ontlasting," in Wie is er bang voor religie? Waarom kennis van religie belangrijk is, ed. Joas Wagemakers and Lucien van Liere (Almere: Parthenon, 2019), 246-252. Please be aware that the published and the preprint version are not 100% the same. This preprint version is deposited under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) licence. This means that anyone may distribute, adapt, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes, subject to full attribution.

In enger Zusammenarbeit von Vertretern aus Archäologie, Geschichtswissenschaft und Kunstgeschichtsforschung wurden im DFG-Netzwerk "Neue alte Sachlichkeit – Realienkunde des Mittelalters in kulturhistorischer Perspektive" methodisch innovative Wege der kulturhistorischen Interpretation erprobt, bei denen die Sachüberlieferung selbst den Ausgangspunkt historischer Erkenntnis bildet. Gemäß dem Leitsatz "mundus in gutta" galt es, die im Wassertropfen des Objekts repräsentierte Wirklichkeiten in einem analytischen Dreischritt in ihrer historischen Dimension wieder sichtbar werden zu lassen. Die so behandelten Objektbeispiele wie etwa Gebäude, Fahnen, Pilgerzeichen oder Kleidungsstücke spannen dabei einen großen Bogen zwischen sehr verschiedenen Objekttypen. Der Sammelband bietet insbesondere fortgeschrittenen Studierenden verschiedener Fachrichtungen eine erste Orientierung über methodische Ansätze und liefert ein breites Spektrum an Fallbeispielen.

This chapter examines the integral role that conservation plays within fashion curation.

- by Sarah Scaturro
- •
- History, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Labor Economics

In this paper, two dialectically related lines of argument will be pursued. On the one hand, build- ing upon the model of the Achaemenid «imperial paradigm» recently laid out by Wouter Henkelman, it con- tends that a corpus of luxury tableware allegedly coming from Bactria might provide further archaeological evidence for the «institutionalization process» of the empire’s Far East which is implied by the steadily grow- ing evidence coming from Persepolis. On the other hand, particular attention shall be paid to the sociopoliti- cal role played by the objects discussed, both from the standpoint of the Persian (royal as well as satrapal) court, which this tableware most likely produced and circulated through the whole empire, and from that of the individuals who made use of it. The comparison of the Bactrian evidence with parallel finds known from other satrapies across the imperial domains, from Egypt to Armenia and from Chorasmia to Gāndḥārā, will provide the background against which to explore the human-thing entanglements that the consumption of these culturally dense objects set in motion and mediated, as well as the consequences of said entangle- ments for the history of Achaemenid power in Bactria. It will in fact be argued that, if on the one hand they played a paramount role in consolidating the position of the imperial ruling class – and in expanding its members’ social networks both on the regional and the broader, imperial scale, on the other, both the objects per se and their social affordances (what they did as well as what they enable the owners to do) also opened up significant sociopolitical space for the local élites in order to negotiate their status both within the wider Achaemenid world and, what perhaps matters most, in that of the Central Asian societies in which they lived.

- by Marco Ferrario
- •
- Bactria (Archaeology), Achaemenid History, Material Turn, Agency of objects
- by Caroline Heitz and +11
- •
- African Studies, Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Ethnography

This review article addresses current controversies and opportunities in research on the roles, uses, and meanings of “Egypt” in ancient Roman visual and material culture. Accordingly, the article investigates problems of definition and interpretation; provides a critical review of current scholarly approaches; and analyzes the field’s intersections with current intellectual developments in the broader fields of archaeology and art history. It is argued that research on Roman Aegyptiaca can gain much from, and is poised to contribute substantially to, (1) 21st-century archaeology’s “material turn”; (2) the construction of new interpretive frameworks for cross-cultural interactions and “hybridization”; and (3) increased attention to the relationships among artifacts, contexts, and assemblages. Roman visual representations of Egypt provide a rich testing ground for research on intercultural exchange, the lived experience of empire, and the complex entanglement of people, things, and images.

- by Caitie Barrett
- •
- Archaeology, Classical Archaeology, Egyptology, Egyptian Art and Archaeology

Die Texte dieses Bandes legen ausgehend von griechischen und römischen Kunstwerken dar, wie Leistungen des menschlichen Intellekts in unterschiedlichen Medien und zu verschiedenen Zeiten eine konkrete erlebbare Form erhalten haben und welche Wirkmacht sie gerade durch die Ausgestaltung entfalten konnten.
Antike Artefakte wie Statuen, Reliefs oder Gemälde gaben Vorstellungen und Wissen eine sinnlich erfahrbare Form, machten sie anschaulich, überzeugend und dauerhaft. Zugleich veränderten sie intellektuelle Leistungen, indem sie bestimmte Aspekte betonten, präzisierten oder neu kombinierten, andere aber reduzierten oder ganz wegließen. Das Buch untersucht ihre Entstehung als materielle Konkretisierung epistemischer Elemente und die medialen Bedingungen der Gestaltungsprozesse ebenso wie die Auswirkungen der gewordenen Form. Es legt den dafür entwickelten methodischen Ansatz des Internationalen Kollegs Morphomata dar und verbindet Fallstudien aus der Klassischen Archäologie mit Überlegungen zu zentralen Aspekten der materiellen Kultur.

- by Dietrich Boschung
- •
- Material Culture Studies, Ancient Art, Augustus, Fragment
- by Dan Hicks and +1
- •
- Archaeology, Anthropology, Ontology, Social Anthropology

In recent years, the “material turn” has gained prominence in the humanities and social sciences, and it has also stimulated a shift toward a rediscovery of materiality in the scientific study of religion\s. The material turn aims to dissolve conventional dichotomies and, by emphasizing the concept of assemblage, insists that humans and things are fundamentally co-constitutive. This “New Materialism” addresses ontological alterity, and it radically decenters static anthropocentric arrangements and the position of the human subject as such. The insider–outsider distinction, however, as well as the emic–etic categorization, is based on fundamental dichotomies between the researcher and the researched, and between descriptive and analytical understandings of human beings. This article discusses the possibility and significance of a non-anthropocentric approach to religion, and examines to what extent it is analytically helpful to apply the insider–outsider and emic–etic distinctions while pursuing the goal of dissolving hierarchical and binary thinking. It furthermore argues that these issues can be properly answered only with reference to their methodological implications.

- by Peter J. Bräunlein
- •
- Posthumanism, Material Religion, Religious Studies, New Materialism

This article seeks to excavate and mobilize Activity Theory (AT) for a conversation with recent trends in contemporary philosophy that attempt to overcome the relativism of the linguistic turn while accepting the latter's core critique of Enlightenment conceptions of the human and nonhuman. Specifically, it focuses on Ilyenkov's concept of the thinking body as a useful contrast to the ascription of agency to matter, and instead helps to illuminate the social practices that animate the material world.

Ancient artifacts such as statues, reliefs, and paintings gave tangible form to knowledge and abstract ideas, making them vivid, convincing, and lasting. At the same time, they emphasized, concretized, and combined only certain aspects of the ideas in question, while reducing or omitting others. The book examines the emergence of artifacts as material manifestations of epistemic elements and the medial conditions of these shaping processes, as well as the effects of the resulting form. It combines case studies from Classical Archaeology with reflections on central aspects of material culture. With this approach, the book offers new perspectives on famous Greek and Roman works of art.

- by Dietrich Boschung
- •
- Iconography, Fragment, Systems of Knowledge, Intellect

This edited volume deals with the mobility of humans, materials and things. Pottery studies of ancient Europe and contemporary Africa are taken as examples to illustrate how pottery vessels were made in different ways. Whether they were used, sold, given away or passed on over generations, they participated in human practices and mobil-ities, ranging from everyday life to single long-term migration events. By studying the making and the mobility of pots, potters, pottery mongers and pottery users, the focus shifts from ideas of one-sided notions of stable 'cultures' to ideas of appropriations, transformations and thus the negotiation of cultural forms. In the book's first section, the relationship between anthropology and archaeology is illuminated and the disciplines' different takes on 'culture', 'practice', 'mobility' and 'things' throughout major paradigmatic shifts are addressed. The second section unites empirical, object-centred archaeological case studies in which the examination of materials and pottery styles reveals that notions of fixed cultural entities are empirically untenable. The contributions in the third part argue from more actor-centred or symmetrical perspectives. It can be shown how humans and things are intertwined through practices and various rhythms of movement and mobility. Thus, they offer alternative ways to approach the (re)production, negotiation and transformation of cultural practices and their material forms.

- by Caroline Heitz and +1
- •
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Practice theory, Pottery (Archaeology)
- by Anna Henkel
- •
- Niklas Luhmann, Systemtheorie, Helmuth Plessner, Material Turn

This paper is particularly concerned with ‘alive, yet dead’ portraits in the nineteenth century and how these images can invite specific readings. Extraordinary about this type of portrait photography is that it shows the dead sitter as a living person. The evidence of deadly signs on the body is hidden in a body of ambivalence – a body which fluctuates between a status of life and death. By examining particular cases of ‘alive, yet dead’ portraits, this paper will analyse aspects of temporal arrangements, visible and invisible signs in the image and how the bodies of evidence and ambivalence are constructed.

- by Patrizia Munforte
- •
- Art History, Memory Studies, History of photography, Material Turn

Why do people in the UK read and collect books when there are so many other sources of information and forms of story-telling available? What are the material and experiential bases of book love? People are attached to books because books are icons: they embody and enable the realisation of sacred cultural goods. Books do not simply communicate or signal social values or ideas. Aesthetic immersion in books’ materiality allows for these values to be realised. On the basis of the qualitative analysis of 43 interviews and 60 responses to the UK’s Mass Observation project this article advances the cultural sociology of reading by bridging theories of iconicity and attachment and placing materiality at the centre of the analysis. The data are used to illustrate the powerful appeal of the practical fusion of three elements: the material, surface properties of books; the highly valued cultural goods that books represent and realise; and the act of reading.

- by María Angélica Thumala Olave
- •
- Cultural Sociology, Reading, Attachment Theory, Iconic Turn

Memory matters. It matters because memory brings the past into the present and opens it up to the future. But it also matters liter- ally because memory is mediated materially. Materiality is the stuff of memory. Meaningful objects that we love (or hate) function not only as aide-mémoire but are integral to memory. Drawing on previous scholarship on the interrelation of memory and materiality, this book applies recent theories of new materialism to explore the material di- mension of memory in art and popular culture.

- by Liedeke Plate and +1
- •
- Memory Studies, New Materialisms, Material Turn

Die Analyse von Experimentalfilmen erfordert ein Bewusstsein für mediale
Differenz, das mit der Konvertierbarkeit aller Medien in digitale Daten verloren
zu gehen droht. Der vorliegende Beitrag plädiert für einen filmanalytischen
Zugang, der den medialen Spezifika analoger künstlerischer Praktiken Rechnung
trägt und Fragen von Ästhetik, Materialität und Technik verschränkt. Die filmischen
Beispiele sind um drei Problemfelder gruppiert (Produktionsdispositiv,
Material, Filmton), die in der Analyse von Avantgardefilmen besonderer Aufmerksamkeit
bedürfen.

- by Gabriele Jutz
- •
- Film Sound, Film Analysis, Film and Media Studies, Andy Warhol

In this essay, I question current models of central European Neolithic societies that are informed by concepts of sedentarism and cultural homogeneity. Based on pottery styles, they miss out two fundamental conditions of human life: the constant oscillation between movement and stasis and the ongoing engagement with materials. Drawing on T. Ingold's thoughts on the 'making' of things and P. Bourdieu's habitus-theory, I argue that everyday human action like the making of a pot (1), unfolds in spatially and temporally bounded movements and mobilities and (2), emerges from an engagement of humans with their material and social landscapes. Hence, the features of pottery vessels comprise histories of their becoming that intertwine the itineraries of geological materials and their human makers. Some vessels are made and used at the same place ('local vessels'), others are transported over various distances ('translocal vessels'). When humans and things are on the move, encounters with otherness can trigger creative processes , which might also become materialised in pottery ('inbetween vessels'): the appropriation of new materials, different techniques, styles etc. To follow the itineraries of things thus offers an entry point to a deeper understanding of past peoples' mobilities and the negotiation and transformation of temporarily stable cultural forms. I will develop my approach on the pottery of the Neolithic settlement of Hornstaad-Hörnle IA at Lake Constance (DE) (3918-3902 BC).

- by Caroline Heitz
- •
- Creativity, Pottery (Archaeology), Mobility/Mobilities, Material Culture Studies

The study of the movement of ‘things’ — the exchange of objects as gifts or through trade, the itineraries that they followed when on the move, and their changing importance from location to location — can offer unique insights into our understanding of past societies; and archaeology plays a vital role in allowing such movements to be traced. Nonetheless the circulation of objects across time, and between peoples and places, has long been neglected as a field of research in its own right. This volume aims to address this gap in scholarship by drawing on recent archaeological research to provide a detailed study of the moment of objects across Europe in the late medieval and early modern period. The contributions gathered here trace the interactions between peoples, ideas, and objects in order to explore the impact of movement both on the material things themselves, and on the people who manufactured, exchanged, or used such goods. The volume draws on a wide range of archaeological evidence to explore subjects as varied as production and transport, modes of trade, the connections between trade and religion, and the emotional connections between things and people. Together, they offer a pioneering approach to our understanding of objects and their movement in the past.

- by Omar W. Nasim
- •
- Visual Studies, Photography, Material Culture Studies, Visual Culture

Introduction to the special issue of the journal Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions, "La force des objets: matières à expériences"

- by Charlotta Krispinsson
- •
- Critical Theory, Visual Studies, Fetishism, Connoisseurship

Tekst ma na celu zaprezentowanie horyzontu teoretycznego — zwrotu ku rzeczom w odniesieniu do wystaw archeologicznych. Refleksja nad przydatnością perspektywy zwróconej ku rzeczom rozpoczyna się od krótkiego scharakteryzowania nurtu, reprezentowanego przede wszystkim przez B. Olsena, M. Shanksa, J. Thomasa, T. Webmoora i Ch. Witmore’a na gruncie archeologii, a także zwięzłego wprowadzenia do studiów nad materialnością w muzeach. W dalszej części tekst stanowi opis wiodących trendów ekspozycyjnych w muzeach archeologicznych i prezentuje związaną z nimi problematykę w oparciu o podział na wystawy artystyczne i kontekstualne zaproponowany przez P. Vergo. Wiodące schematy ekspozycyjne zwracają uwagę na, często, bardzo wąskie rozumienie zabytków archeologicznych, które zgodnie z postulatami badaczy zwróconych ku rzeczom winny być widziane jako narzędzia z przeszłości, używane, funkcjonalne, o określonych właściwościach, wartościach i indywidualnej historii. Głęboka koncentracja na materialności obiektu ma ujawniać możliwości tworzyw, z których został stworzony, technikę, opracowanie, wkład pracy w produkcję przedmiotu. Ten rodzaj perspektywy zbliża do zabytku archeologicznego, pozwala na wykroczenie poza zwykłą muzealną etykietkę, rzadko zrozumiałą dla zwiedzającego nie-specjalisty. Czy zatem aplikuje się zwrot ku rzeczom w muzeach archeologicznych? Na jakich zasadach koncentracja na materialnym aspekcie obiektów wprowadzana jest do muzeów? I przede wszystkim — co to oznacza dla zwiedzającego? Niniejszy tekst ma na celu refleksję nad wpływem popularnego trendu humanistycznego na konstruowanie w muzeum relacji widz-eksponat.

- by Monika Stobiecka
- •
- Archaeology, Museum Studies, Biography of Objects, Archaeological Museums

Dioramas are devices on the frontier of different disciplines: art, anthropology, and the natural sciences, to name a few. Their use developed during the nineteenth century, following reforms aimed at developing the educational dimension of museums. This book examines anthropological dioramas of two North American museums in the early twentieth century: the American Museum of Natural History in New York (whose Life Groups were assembled by the German anthropologist Franz Boas), and the New York State Museum (whose Groups were overseen by the Seneca archaeologist Arthur C. Parker). While dioramas with human figures are now the subject of harsh criticism and are gradually being dismantled, a thorough study of the work of artists and scientists who made them helps shed light on their genesis. Sites of creation and mediation of knowledge, combining painting, sculpture, photography, and material culture, dioramas tell a story that is always political. They create visions of otherness but also of ancestry that blurs space and time within the museum.

- by Noémie Etienne
- •
- Native American Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Indigenous Studies

Die sozialtheoretischen Diskussionen der letzten Jahrzehnte haben zu neuartigen Anforderungen an eine allgemeine Sozialtheorie geführt.
Wie muss eine allgemeine Theorie des Sozialen aussehen,
• die den Kreis legitimer Akteure als historisch variabel, d.h. als kontingent, begreift, statt ihn selbstverständlicherweise auf den Kreis lebendiger Menschen zu beschränken?
• die die Natur-Kultur-Unterscheidung nicht als gegeben voraussetzt, sondern als eine mögliche Ordnung des Zugangs zur Welt begreift?
• die Ordnung nicht nur als eine Ordnung des Sozialen analysiert, sondern auch Materialität und die Dimensionen von Raum und Zeit einbezieht?
• die Gewalt als ordnungsbildende Kraft begreifen kann?
• die eine Perspektive für die Formulierung einer Gesellschaftstheorie erschließt?
Mit Blick auf die allgemeine Theoriedebatte werden in diesem Buch drei Diskus-sionstränge zusammengeführt: Zum einen das Konglomerat an Debatten um die Notwendigkeit theoretischer Neuorientierungen (»turns« oder »Wenden« wie z.B. linguistic turn, material turn, body turn, pictorial turn oder spatial turn); zum anderen die Problematisierung der Grenzen der Sozialwelt bzw. des Akteursstatus nichtmenschlicher Entitäten; drittens die immer wieder aufflackernden Auseinandersetzungen um die Bedeutung von Gewalt für die Gestaltung sozialer Prozesse.
Die Theorie der Weltzugänge führt diese Aspekte zu einer Theorie mehrdimensionaler Ordnungsbildung zusammen und entwickelt dabei zugleich eine Perspektive für die Ausarbeitung einer Gesellschaftstheorie. Dieser Schritt ist theoriearchitektonisch notwendig, denn dadurch lassen sich die Sozialtheorie und damit auch die durch sie angeleiteten Forschungen reflexiv historisch situieren – dies ist die Voraussetzung für eine rationale Theoriekonstruktion.

- by Gesa Lindemann
- •
- Social Theory, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Violence

The chapter addresses the material dimension of the Bible in the discourse and practice of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. According to surveys commissioned by the American Bible Society, announcements from big Bible Publishers, and my own observations among contemporary Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians in America, digital Bibles and Bible Apps are on the rise. The transition from print culture to digital culture has not gone uncontested and the discussions among Christians about the appropriateness of digital Bible media for religious practices points towards a contestation of the materiality of the medium through which God’s Word, and thereby God, is made present to religious practitioners. Thus the first part of the chapter introduces the frame of material culture studies and the approach to materiality in the study of religion. The second part will discuss an analytic model suggested by material religion scholar David Morgan along which a material analysis of religious objects should be developed. It will subsequently be applied to explore the relation between the Bible and its concrete materiality with a comparative focus on print and digital versions of the Bible.

- by Katja Rakow
- •
- Religion and Technology, Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Material Religion

The paper is an attempt to trace the traditions that formed leading trends of displaying objects in archaeological museums. The main point of interest is the meaning of archaeological artifact in past collections. It is proposed to understand an archaeological artifact as a nostalgic souvenir that accumulates past, according to Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s notions about aesthetics of fragment and ruin. Also described is the scientific significance of archaeological object that complies with the pre-modern theory of archaeology (typology and evolutional development). Finally, archaeological artifact is framed by the processes of commoditization that had taken place when the 19th century antiquarian market was in the peak of its popularity. The main thesis suggests that all perceptional models held archaeological artifact in the realm of aesthetics and this well-grounded tradition contributed to establishing the everlasting paradigms of exhibiting. The text also aims at underlining the wider sense of archaeological artifact – not only understood in terms of artistic or historic value, but above all – framed as a tool, functional past thing with rich biography reaching not only to the phase of usage, but also encompassing the post-depositional context. Methodologically, the paper is inspired by concepts manifested and promoted by new materialists.

- by Monika Stobiecka
- •
- Archaeology, Museum Studies, Material Turn

- by Caitie Barrett
- •
- Archaeology, Classical Archaeology, Egyptology, Egyptian Art and Archaeology
- by Andrea Witcomb
- •
- Museum Studies, Heritage Studies, Museums, Material Turn
- by Katja Rösler
- •
- Archäologie, Material Turn
- by Eva Sänger
- •
- Feminist Theory, Postcolonial Studies, NatureCultures, Material Turn

"Design verfügt nicht nur durch seine gestalterischen Artefakte, sondern auch anhand der ihm zur Verfügung und zu Grunde liegenden Begrifflichkeiten über das Potenzial, soziale Ungleichheiten entweder festzuschreiben oder aber zu... more

- by Tom Bieling
- •
- Design, Actor Network Theory, Design Theory, Design Research

Dans cet article, je propose d’aborder la question de la matérialité des œuvres non comme une problématique historique, méthodologique ou théorique (un problème de chercheur), mais comme un problème pratique : celui des professionnels de la conservation, qui, dans le cours de leurs activités ordinaires avec les œuvres, sont amenés à négocier, déterminer, redéfinir les propriétés matérielles des œuvres dont ils ont la responsabilité. En m’appuyant sur des observations faites lors d’une enquête ethnographique auprès des professionnels du Musée national d’art moderne en charge des œuvres contemporaines des collections, j’examine en particulier les opérations effectuées sur une œuvre (Le Magasin de Ben). Ce cas me permet de montrer comment cette question (quelle sorte d’entité matérielle est une œuvre ?) trouve des réponses toujours particulières et situées, qui rendent compte des multiples perspectives sous lesquelles les œuvres d’art sont envisagées et des différentes activités par lesquelles elles sont constituées dans l’institution muséale.

- by Yaël Kreplak
- •
- Museum Studies, Installation Art, Ethnography, Heritage Conservation