Geographies of embodiment, practice, affect and materiality.

"Writing as Material Practice grapples with the issue of writing as a form of material culture in its ancient and more recent manifestations, and in the contexts of production and consumption. Fifteen case studies explore the artefactual nature of writing — the ways in which materials, techniques, colour, scale, orientation and visibility inform the creation of inscribed objects and spaces, as well as structure subsequent engagement, perception and meaning making.

Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 BCE to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the chapters in this volume bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing materialities.

The authors also aim to place past graphical systems in their social contexts so they can be understood in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to writing and associated symbolic modes through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices."

In this paper, we reflect on the concept of nature that is presupposed in biomimetic approaches to technology and innovation. Because current practices of biomimicry presuppose a technological model of nature, it is questionable whether its claim of being a more ecosystem friendly approach to technology and innovation is justified. In order to maintain the potentiality of biomimicry as ecological innovation, we explore an alternative to this technological model of nature. To this end, we reflect on the materiality of natural systems and explore a natural model of nature, which is found in the responsive conativity of matter. This natural model of nature enables us to conceptualize biomimicry as conative responsiveness to the conativity of the biosphere.
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How do humans come to care for their environment and what turns them into conservationists are central questions in environmental politics. Recent scholars have turned to Foucault’s ideas of “governmentality” to understand how technologies of power intersect with technologies of the self to create “environmental subjects,” that is, people who display a sense of commitment to the conservation of the environment. In this article, I argue that the applications of governmentality tend to privilege technologies of power and pay insufficient attention to the role of affect, emotions, and embodied practices in shaping human subjectivities. I draw on Spinoza’s framework of affects and Hardt and Negri’s idea of “affective labor” to bring attention to the processes through which human beings make themselves and the role of affect and environmental care practices in shaping subjectivity. Using the example of community-based forest conservation efforts in Odisha, India, I argue that we need to look beyond economic and political rationalities to explain human action and behavior. I suggest that villagers’ efforts to regenerate degraded forests involve affective labor in which mind and body, reason and passion, intellect and feeling are all employed together. Through the daily practices of caring for the forest and helping the forests grow, villagers not only transform natural landscapes but also transform their individual and collective subjectivities. I conclude by elaborating on the “biopower from below” of these environmental care practices.

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

This paper argues that, in order to take place, space and scale more seriously in the study of our discipline, we have to complement the pervasive understanding of geography as a tradition of thought or an extended conversation with an understanding of our discipline as a tradition of practice, in which the main focus is on the becoming of geographers. It is argued that the theme of 'what it takes to be a good geographer' is a fertile way to study this process of becoming. The four main advantages of this approach are illustrated empirically in the body of the argument by the author's reflections on his socializing within two very different geographical traditions.

This article explores the genesis of the film Ten Canoes in the photographs taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson, in Arnhem Land, in the 1930s.  Thomson’s images profoundly informed the look and content of the film, and the paper traces this genealogy in order to identify a ‘cultural imaginary’ at work in the film. I argue that a close study of Thomson’s original photographs reveals an approach to photography and to culture that dramatically exceeds the boundaries of the detached anthropological/scientific gaze. Thomson’s vision is a highly tactile one. His images are as much an encounter with the light of the world as they are a document of a time, an environment and a culture; his lens is as much an organ of touch as an instrument of observation. In a remarkable example of what Tim Ingold has called ‘animate thought’, Thomson uses the materiality of photography to make manifest a life-world in which reeds, water and sky are as animate as human figures. Not easily accessible to established criteria for analysing ethnographic images, such as questions of self-reflexivity, Thomson’s polycentric images profoundly challenge the humanist assumptions of many contemporary approaches to reading images. This insight raises new questions about both ethnographic photography and the relationship between the photographs and Ten Canoes.

Reviews

“A welcome addition to fat appreciation, the contributions in this book highlight fat as a substance that slides, sizzles, glistens, oozes, lubricates, stains, melts, coats, congeals, and splats. The examples are compelling, the analysis is rich and the writing is entertaining. Upon reading this book, I had an insatiable urge to sip some cleansing olive oil tea and eat a barbequed pork chop.” – Don Kulick, University of Chicago, USA

“FAT: Culture and Materiality offers a compelling and insightful interdisciplinary exploration of the complexities, properties and potentialities of fat as a substance located both within and outside of bodies. The authors traverse a fascinating range of themes and, deftly reveal how the materiality of fat and oils interconnects with some of the most pressing issues of our time, from eating disorders, semiotic and religious qualities of oil, to the idea that fat can be productive and has 'biovalue'. It is a timely and unique contribution to related fields such as body studies, fat studies and critical weight studies.” –  Emma Rich, University of Bath, UK

"Fat: Culture and Materiality is a remarkable work of fat appreciation. In sourcing works with deep topical richness and methodological/theoretical diversity, Christopher E. Forth and Alison Leitch have created a volume as multifaceted as its subject. The importance of the materiality of fat comes to the fore, but also an understanding of what it is, was, will be, and signifies. This approach not only broadens our current and limited view of fat, but may also influence our perceptions of fat people. As Forth, in the introduction, suggests, 'If the material richness of fat defies casual attempts to simplistically denigrate this substance, then perhaps there is a way beyond the disgust that so often colors our views of fat bodies today.'" -- Sarah D'Andrea, Food, Culture & Society

"Fat: Culture and Materiality expands understandings of fat in new directions and invites more work in this area. The collection makes clear that we must seriously address the tactility of fat in understanding how it affects conceptualisations and experiences of bodies and substances, by its illustration of these effects in metaphors, beliefs, art, media, food, and lived experiences. How can we mobilise insights from this collection to best understand the myriad factors affecting the embodied experiences of people? This may serve as possible inspiration for further research, and this book is recommended for medical anthropologists and fat studies, feminist, and embodiment scholars." -- Andrea E. Bombak, The Australian Journal of Anthropology

“In examining the context of fat in culture, contributing authors present a multitude of fat concepts based on lived experiences; historical underpinnings; sociocultural significance; religious, biblical, and spiritual connections; political implications; societal standards; and health consequences. They explore the role of fat through a global and cultural lens, providing unique and fascinating dimensions that continue to influence human relationships with this shape-shifting substance through language, perceptions, and behavior. Editors Forth and Leitch have successfully brought together a variety of perspectives on how ideas of “fat” as a construct, lived experience, stigmatized identity, and health factor have influenced and continue to shape the manner in which people relate to each other and their environments. This innovative compilation of fat history, attitudes, and narratives will provide an excellent adjunct to upper-level disciplines with sociological, psychological, health science, gender, and cultural foci. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” –  R. James, Governors State University, CHOICE

“Fat: Culture and Materiality is a valuable volume for portraying a new way to think about a subject that, for most Americans, is only about 'obesity.' In keeping with the current state of the social sciences, it illustrates that we cannot think of fat -- or any other substance or object -- merely as an idea or symbol (to extend Beuys's point, substances and objects are not purely retinal or mental) but must attend to their felt (including tasted) qualities. To paraphrase (or overturn) Levi-Strauss, fat is not just good to think with but is also good or bad to experience-to have on and under your skin or on your tongue.” – David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

This bibliographic article gives an Introduction to the field of media aesthetics, refers to General Overviews, Journals, and Book Series. It outlines the Background for media aesthetics in terms of History and Theory, explicates Basic Concepts, such as the media aesthetic conceptions of Media and Aesthetics, and presents a map of a variety of media aesthetic Research Interests, such as Media as Environment, Media as Embodied Experience, Media as Matter, Histories of Media Technologies, and Media as System.

The very first introductory paragraph is available here: Media aesthetics is an interdisciplinary arena for research on media technologies, aesthetics (sense perception), and mediation. It does not belong to any one discipline, but is rather a set of perspectives that may inscribe themselves into a great number of disciplines and has done so most notably in media studies, art history, film studies, and to a certain extent, comparative literature and humanistic informatics, as well. Media aesthetics grew out of earlier attempts at theorizing about the reciprocal relations between aesthetics, technology, and media, such as media philosophy (Friedrich Kittler), media ecology (Marshall McLuhan), medium theory (Joshua Meyrowitz), mediology (Régis Debray), and critical theory (most notably Walter Benjamin), and is influenced by current, aesthetic theories of what has been termed new media (Mark Hansen) and visual culture (W. J. T. Mitchell). Media aesthetics emphasizes the importance of understanding sensuous perception as culturally and historically situated and insists on the continuity between so-called old and new media. Media aesthetics ties into what has been called digital humanities and seeks to take into account the high levels of technological mediation of the world today. By redirecting our attention to material and physical practices it also shares some ideas with the largely German tradition of cultural techniques. Media aesthetics also has overlapping interests with the emergence of new materialism (Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti) and seeks to contribute to rethinking the relationship of science and the humanities, approaching the questions of the two cultures through studies of visualization in science and everyday life as well as through studies of the visual arts in relation to the physical and biological sciences. The field of media aesthetics is multidisciplinary and heterogeneous. Consequently, an overview of media aesthetics cannot be limited to academic works where this term has explicitly been used. It is important to recognize work that shares the same research interests even though their authors may have used other terms and the works also can be sorted into areas with overlapping ideas and interests.

This text examines the effects of climate change on cultural ideas regarding the colonization of space. More specifically, this paper explores the ways which the looming danger of climate catastrophe has fueled the growth of post-planetary culture: a culture that dreams of a human destiny beyond the Earth. It takes as its object both science fiction texts and non-fiction futurological pronouncements by scientists and entrepreneurs. What emerges from this study is the observation that unlike climate skeptics, post-planetarists believe that climate change is real. Yet like climate skeptics, they subordinate climate action to other priorities, putting the construction of a means of escaping this planet above climate action. But why do these post-planetarists wish to fly? Via a close reading of David Brin's Earth, we argue that one of the key characteristics of post-planetary culture is a feeling of hatred and alienation towards the Earth. This hatred is both re-enforced by the ravages of climate change even as it contributes to this destruction by blocking post-planetarists from wholeheartedly engaging in climate action. In order to illustrate an antidote to this pathological cultural reaction to our current crisis, I present a close reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, exploring how this text is both a critique of post-planetarism and a guide to renewing our love for the Earth.

Star Trek has long used its unique situation as a socially and politically engaged television show to approach contemporary, historical, and futuristic ideas of race, labor, gender, nature, landscape, and place. The concept of alternate perceptions of history continues to provide engaging insights into historical representation. This paper explores how Star Trek, as an example of performance, media, and popular culture, contributes to dialogues of alternate pasts, presents, and futures. It builds upon these concepts to engage with and influence geographical dialogues of public space, nature, geopolitics, and societal structure. I explore examples from the television show and the wider universe, particularly two episodes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that are both influenced by historical figures and events and, through time travel, reveal their own historical narratives. While Star Trek continues to operate in fictional space, constructing an 'idealized' future and imagined landscapes, this paper recognizes that its influence shapes an experienced and an embodied sense of alternate past, present, and future.

In this article I examine the non-verbal dialogues between Siberian hunters and their prey in order to explore how empathetic relationships affect the integrity of the dialogical self. Based on the ethnographic accounts of the anthropologist Rane Willerslev (2002, 2004a, 2004b, 2007) I show how the hunter maintains his human identity while he imitates the movements of his prey and thereby “feels-into” the animal. Challenging the common idea that inner consistency and synthesis of voices holds the dialogical self together (e.g. Hermans and Kempen 1993), I argue that this case  demonstrates how integrity can be maintained through inconsistent and discordant voices. In this discussion I emphasise the role of the body within the dialogical self and
show how positions can be embodied in different parts and movements of the body. In order to clarify the significance of this case study for psychology, I then compare aspects of empathy and embodied positions in hunting with similar phenomena in Fogel et al.’s (2002) study of non-verbal dialogues in early infancy. Finally, this comparison invites us to re-consider the role of experienced-based, qualitative methods, such as participant observation, in studying the dialogical self.

This article explores the meaning of " resistance " and suggests a new path for " resistance studies, " which is an emerging and interdisciplinary field of the social sciences that is still relatively fragmented and heterogeneous. Resistance has often been connected with antisocial attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, unusual and sudden explosions of violence, and emotional outbursts. However, we wish to add to this conceptualization by arguing that resistance also has the potential to be productive, plural and fluid, and integrated into everyday social life. The first major part of the article is devoted to discuss existing understandings of resistance with the aim of seeking to capture distinctive features and boundaries of this social phenomenon. Among other things, we will explore resistance in relation to other key concepts and related research fields. We then, in the article's second major part, propose a number of analytical categories and possible entrances aiming at inspire more in-depth studies of resistance.

en Revista Bitácora, no. 30, número "Arquitectura, ciudad y emociones". Próxima publicación.

Palabras clave: espacio, atmósferas afectivas, comunidades emocionales, memoria, arquitectura, ciudad, embodiment, movimiento,Valparaíso, "Estado Público".


Keywords: space, affective atmospheres, emotional communities, memory, architecture, city, embodiment, movement, Valparaíso, "Estado Público".

Households are increasingly subject to environmental regulation and intervention in today's carbon-constrained world. Highlighting cross-disciplinary synergies between practice theory and material geographies, I illuminate the lived complexities of everyday energy-use in Singapore. Based on an ethno-graphic study of 8 households, it is apparent that energy practices are sustained and reproduced through the subjectivities of materialities, practical ethics, socialised rules and histories, embedded withinin the spatio-temporalities of the actually-existing household. For energy conservation policy and research, these findings suggest non-engagement with the complexities of household energy-use. By promoting a single normative vision of 'Green' energy practices, energy conservation initiatives risk alienating people with practices that do not resonate with household dynamics as they are lived. Instead, an enagement of 'practices' instead of 'behavior' opens up a more expansive field for research and policy engagement in the dynamic and path dependent processes of social normality, and more effective means of encouraging more sustainable ways of living.

Inspired by recent advances in the field of automobility, this article explores how families inhabit cars, and how daily automobilized family routines are accomplished interactionally in and through cars’ uniquely structured inner space(s). Following Urry’s (2006) notion of the “socially inhabited car,” the article assumes sociological and ethnomethodological sensibilities and sensitivities in researching in-car interactions. Specifically, a single strip of a familial dispute that takes place in the car on a routine trip to school is studied. The audiovisual data was taken from recordings of five urban families living in Jerusalem, Israel, during daily trips to school. A camcorder was supplied to the passengers — children of elementary school age — which served as a mobile recording device that captured the car’s interior spaces and the interactions therein. Studying up-close verbal and gestural interactions reveals how family members, including driver (in the front seat) and passengers (in both the front and back seats), make use of the unique material design of the car’s inner spaces as semiotic resources for communication and for affiliating and disaffiliating with the overall argumentative interaction. The article illuminates how an immediate physical context, in the shape of the car’s interior, acts simultaneously as a material given and as a socially emergent or accomplished semiotic environment.

Published 1996: Ethics and the Environment 1 (2): 91-102.

While articulating a philosophy of ecology that reconciles deep ecology with ecofeminism may be a laudable project, it remains at best unclear whether this attempt can be successful. I argue that one attempt, Carol Bigwood's feminized deep ecology fails in that it reproduces important elements of the deep ecologist's essentializing discourse that ecofeminists rightly argue is responsible for the identification with and oppression of women and nonhuman nature. I then propose an alternative model for conceiving and describing human and nonhuman nature modeled on Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks concerning anthropomorphizing.

Broadly speaking, my thesis examines the workings of grounded social, economic and political processes that have contributed, often in a conflicting manner, to the (re)definition of membership criteria in both the nation and the state. It does so in dialogue with two broad, interrelated bodies of literature, citizenship and transnationalism, which have examined issues of belonging, exclusion, mobility and access to rights among transnational migrants, while highlighting the renewed capacity of the state to regulate both people’s movements and migrants’ actual access to public entitlements. My dissertation challenges three sets of claims shaping research and policy agendas on migrant transnationalism and citizenship, and questions the hegemonic analytical and methodological approaches underlying them.
My research has been carried out at two distinctive analytical and empirical levels. On the one hand, I examine the “technologies of citizenship” (Ong 2003, Fujiwara 2008) deployed by the government to transform Argentina into a diverse, inclusive and Latin American nation over the past decade, paying particular attention to Kirchnerismo’s creation of a “new legality” for the Paraguayans, Bolivians and Peruvians in the country. On the other
hand, I analyze the “horizontal dimensions of citizenship processes” (Neveu 2005, Pickus and Skerry 2007, Gagné and Neveu 2009) among these migrants in urban, peripheral and rural
areas of the partido of La Plata. Namely, I study the extent to which migrants’ socio-economic circumstances have changed in tandem with their new legal status (as nationals of the
MERCOSUR in Argentina with rights equal to those of its citizens) and the “inclusive citizenship” policies deployed by the government.
My dissertation pays particular attention to the grounding and embodiment of rights by examining how migrants’ new legal status translates into everyday life depending on a) where
they live and work, and b) their perceived social status by other migrants and non-migrants. On the one hand, I look at urban, peripheral and rural areas of La Plata as zones of graduated
sovereignty (Ong 1999) where particular governmentality regimes have emerged in tandem with the settlement of often ethnically marked groupings, whose entitlements and obligations
differ from those in other zones. On the other hand, I examine how social status is produced through everyday social interaction by transposing socially constructed distinctions, such as race, class, gender and national origin, into formal systems of exclusion (Gregory 2007). My ethnographic analysis of what I shall call limítrofes’ experiences of legality demonstrates that
their formal equality vis-à-vis Argentinians, far from being merely given as a new legal status evenly guaranteed to all, is both unequally experienced by diverse migrants and differently
enforced in geographic areas governed by distinctive governmentality regimes (Foucault 1978).
Keywords : anthropology, socio-cultural anthropology, ethnography, transnationality, migration, regional integration, citizenship, state, MERCOSUR, Argentina.

De manière générale, ma thèse examine les mécanismes des processus sociaux, économiques et politiques ayant contribué, souvent de manière contradictoire, à la (re)définition des critères d’adhésion au sein de la nation et de l’Etat. Elle le fait par le
dialogue au sein de deux grands corps de littérature intimement liés, la citoyenneté et le transnationalisme, qui se sont penchés sur les questions d’appartenance, d’exclusion, de mobilité et d’accès aux droits chez les migrants transnationaux tout en soulignant la capacité accrue de l’Etat à réguler à la fois les déplacements de personnes et l’accès des migrants aux
droits. Cette thèse remet en question trois principes qui influencent la recherche et les programmes d’action publique ayant trait au transnationalisme et à la citoyenneté des
migrants, et remet en cause les approches analytiques hégémoniques et méthodologiques qui les sous-tendent.
L’étude a été menée à deux niveaux distincts d’analyse empirique et analytique. D’une part, nous examinons les « technologies de la citoyenneté » (Ong 2003, Fujiwara 2008) qui ont été développées par le gouvernement pour transformer l’Argentine en une nation latinoaméricaine diverse et inclusive pendant la dernière décennie, en nous intéressant particulièrement à la création, par le Kirchnerisme, d’une « nouvelle légalité » pour les Paraguayens, les Boliviens et les Péruviens résidant dans le pays. D’autre part, nous analysons la « dimension horizontale des processus de citoyenneté » (Neveu 2005, Pickus and Skerry 2007, Gagné and Neveu 2009) chez ces migrants dans des aires urbaines, périphériques et rurales du partido de La Plata. Plus spécifiquement, nous examinons dans quelle mesure les conditions socioéconomiques des migrants ont changé suite à leur nouveau statut légal (en tant que ressortissants du MERCOSUR en Argentine, dont les droits sont égaux à ceux des
citoyens) et aux politiques de « citoyenneté inclusive » déployées par le gouvernement.
Cette thèse se penche particulièrement sur les fondations et l’incarnation (« embodiment ») des droits en examinant comment le nouveau statut légal des migrants se manifeste au quotidien en fonction de a) où ils vivent et travaillent, et b) leur statut social
perçu par les autres migrants et non-migrants. D’une part, nous examinons les aires urbaines, périphériques et rurales de La Plata en tant que « zones de souveraineté graduée » (Ong 1999), où des régimes de gouvernementalité locaux spécifiques se sont développés en lien avec l’installation de groupes ethniques souvent distincts, et dont les droits et devoirs diffèrent de
ceux d’autres zones. D’autre part, nous étudions la façon dont le statut social est produit à travers les interactions sociales quotidiennes en transposant des distinctions construites
socialement telles que race, classe, genre et origine nationale, en systèmes d’exclusion formels (Gregory 2007). Notre analyse ethnographique de ce que nous appelons les « expériences de
légalité » des migrants démontre que leur égalité formelle vis-à-vis des Argentins, loin d’être simplement donnée comme un nouveau statut légal uniformément garanti pour tous, est à la
fois inégalement vécue par les divers migrants, et différemment respectée dans les zones géographiques dirigées par divers régimes de gouvernementalité (Foucault 1978).
Mots-clés : anthropologie, anthropologie socio-culturelle, ethnographie, transnationalité,
migration, intégration régionale, citoyenneté, État, MERCOSUR, Argentine

Sztuka w procesie / Proces w sztuce: Ku nowej filozofii ochrony dziedzictwa kultury, edited by Iwona Szmelter, 50-61. Warszawa: Akademia Sztuk Pieknych w Warszawie.

Czy możliwa jest konceptualizacja dzieł sztuki jako zdarzeń i procesów, to znaczy pod względem ich czasowości, ich transformacyjnej materialności? Przedstawiając tezy dotyczące względnego czasu trwania dzieł sztuki, niniejszy artykuł stwarza okazję do przemyślenia tradycyjnych paradygmatów teorii sztuki i ochrony dzieł. Zwłaszcza teoria ochrony odnosiła się przez długi czas do dzieł sztuki jako stałych, statycznych obiektów. Starano się je „zatrzymywać” w czasie, a dokonywane w nich zmiany były często konotowane negatywnie. W niniejszym tekście proponuję korektę tych wizji i próbę ujęcia dzieł sztuki w kontekście ich zmienności – nie tylko jako stwierdzenie faktu, ale jako warunek ich przetrwania.

This paper forms part of an endeavour to elicit the cultural-geo-politics of rapprochement tourism between China and Taiwan from a grounded approach. It seeks to examine cross-strait tourists’ travel experiences on ‘the other side’ through the lens of ‘border’, ‘materiality’ and ‘identity’ in an attempt to move beyond the often state-centric analyses of cross-strait ties. Discussion shows that travel documents that are close to the personal or those that are part and parcel of a touring experience are far from inert; they participate in the social and political lives of their owners, feature in bordering practices between the Chinese and the Taiwanese, and are often platforms through which identities are performed. Importantly too, as the various travel narratives reveal, the ubiquitous border certainly does not exist only in its physical form; imagined and perceived social borders are equally potent in (re)-shaping cross-strait relations. A study that captures the often neglected field of comparative tourists’ travel experiences is timely in the advent of a warming relationship between China and Taiwan and the unprecedented increase in tourism exchanges that ensues.

This article explores how the descendants of migrants expelled from their originary homeland engage with geographies of loss, and how travel serves as an active process of mediation. My focus is on Indies (Indonesian-Dutch) migrants and their descendants living in the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Drawing on rich ethnographic material I explore how migrants’ descendants associate colonial times and ancestral homelands with narrative strategies of exclusion and containment and tempo doeloe discourses (a nostalgic longing for the ‘good old days’) as generative of a collective victimhood. I seek to unravel how descendants explore agentic modalities of travel in order to reactivate, re-embody, and thus intervene in their families’ and collective histories. The article analyses how affective experiences of places of and far beyond the geographical locations of the Dutch East Indies have a potential to invigorate embodied Indies sensibilities. Thus, I write towards a theory of intergenerational transmission and felt dispositions in relation to old, multiracial diasporas such as Indies. I argue that searches for sensuous geographies of absence are a specific modality of genealogy work that serves as a vehicle through which to move across and among different times in order to destabilize postcolonial temporalities.

"Iconic Power is a collection of original articles that explores 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. "Visual sociology" is emerging as a separate field and prominent scholars announce the coming of "the pictorial turn." The methods and themes taken up in these studies respond to this shift in social scientific interest. Each contribution to this book carefully tests the analytic purchase and empirical implications of iconicity. If we can succeed in understanding the iconic, we should be able to know our culture much better.

As the Australian sociologist of art Eduardo de la Fuente pointed out, "Iconic Power" is "the strongest theoretical statement to yet come out of the 'strong program' in cultural sociology." He emphasized the importance of 'iconicity' as the concept that more than 'ritual' or even 'performance' promises to break free of economistic, linguistic, and other kinds of reductionisms that plague the cultural sciences. The British cultural sociologist David Inglis praised the book's wide empirical coverage. For these reasons, "Iconic Power" can serve as a guide on how to approach the tremendous social efficacy of the visual and other non-discursive symbols. "

This paper examines the emergence of increased hybridity in our experience of spatiality, in physical and virtual space. I argue that locative media acts as a cognitive extension of our mind and this realm of the so-called " extended mind " purported by Andy Clarke affords an extension to our body into the virtual realm. This reciprocal function between the extended mind and extended body allows for self-correction and self-consciousness in space and can be understood as a kind of feedback loop. Our interaction with locative media is perpetuated by this feedback loop that allows the body to adjust its operation according the interconnectedness between the actual and virtual. This synchronous feedback loops between three spaces: (1) mind or the mental space, (2) reality or the physical space, and (3) virtual space. My aim in this paper is to provide a new context in which to interpret the notion of geophilia – the love of the earth, by examining the geographical proximity of locative media. We shall then see wider aesthetic implications of the hybridity in locative art.

Egypt looms large in the Western imagination. Whether it is our attraction to pharaonic art, the pyramids or practices of mummification, Egypts unique understanding of materiality speaks to us across space and time. Is it because the ancient Egyptians fetishized material objects that we find their culture captivating today? And what exactly do Egyptian remains tell us about biography, embodiment, memory, materiality, and the self? Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt takes New Kingdom Egypt (1539-1070 BC) as its starting point and considers how excavated objects reveal the complex ways that ancient Egyptians experienced their material world. From life to death, the material world instantiated, reflected and influenced social life and existence for ancient Egyptians. Thus, in Meskells unique approach to the materiality and sensuousness of subjects and objects, we uncover the philosophical, spiritual and human meanings embedded in these cultural artefacts. Meskells book explores the fundamental existential questions that not only preoccupied ancient Egyptians, but continue to fascinate people today. What is the essence of persons and things? How might we understand the situated experiences of material life, the constitution of the object world and its shaping of human experience? How might objects successfully mediate between worlds? In the final analysis, Meskell moves forward through time and examines the consumption and appreciation of these Egyptian material objects in the contemporary world. Materiality is our physical engagement with the world, our medium for inserting ourselves into the fabric of that world and our way of constituting and shaping culture in an embodied and external sense. From that perspective it is very much the domain of anthropology and archaeology.Drawing on a wide range of objects, artefacts, and artwork, from the Valley of the Kings through to Las Vegas, Meskell provides an elegant analysis of the aesthetics of ancient Egyptian material culture.

Recent works by Steven Soderbergh present a symptomatology of contemporary economic culture in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. These films follow the peculiarities of the present crisis and what it feels like to inhabit a fraught economic culture. More specifically, Soderbergh pays close attention to the overinvestment of the self in vocation—what we are calling vocational embodiment—for the production of value that is never quite materialized and never quite paid out. In these films, the main protagonists embody future states of their own imagining, promises of self-realization that lead them to unwittingly enact their own subjectivization. RÉSUMÉ Les films récents de Steven Soderbergh présentent une symptomologie de la culture économique contemporaine pendant la crise la plus profonde depuis la Grande Dépression. Ces films décrivent les particularités de la crise actuelle et l'expérience vécue d'une culture économique tendue. Plus précisément, Soderbergh cible sur le sur-investissement en l'Être comme vocation—ce que nous appelons l'incarnation vocationelle—pour la production de valeur qui ne se matérialise jamais et qui ne paie jamais tout à fait. Dans ces films, les protagonistes incarnent les états futurs de leurs propres imaginations, les promesses de l'accomplissement personnel qui les mènent involontairement à la réalisation de leur propre subjectivisation. ¤ Recent works by Steven Soderbergh present a symptomatology of contemporary economic culture in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. 1 These films follow the peculiarities of the present crisis and what it feels like to inhabit a fraught economic culture. More specifically, Soderbergh pays close attention to the overinvestment of the self in vocation—what we are calling

This exhibition is about the physical environment and everyday life in Toxteth. It aims to enhance our understanding of the way urban dwellers, both locals (L) and migrants (M),experience belongingness to urban space, and the effect that aesthetics have on this dynamic. The exhibition as a whole celebrates the particularity of Toxteth as a locality, its key features in terms of human-spatial relations, and some of its distinct landmarks. The photos, quotes and captions derive from a British Academy funded project titled Bringing the aesthetics in: migrants' relationship with urban space in Toxteth. Fieldwork for this project took place in 2015 (June-November) and generated a substantial amount of visual material in the form of photos taken by both participants and the research team. The exhibition was prepared as part of Festival 31 and Refugee Week (June-July 2016) in Liverpool, with a focus on diversity and refugees in the city. Exhibition: This exhibition is about the physical environment and everyday life in Toxteth. It aims to enhance our understanding of the way urban dwellers, both locals (L) and migrants (M),experience belongingness to urban space, and the effect that aesthetics have on this dynamic. The exhibition as a whole celebrates the particularity of Toxteth as a locality, its key features in terms of human-spatial relations, and some of its distinct landmarks. The photos, quotes and captions derive from a British Academy funded project titled Bringing the aesthetics in: migrants' relationship with urban space in Toxteth. Fieldwork for this project took place in 2015 (June-November) and generated a substantial amount of visual material in the form of photos taken by both participants and the research team. The exhibition was prepared as part of Festival 31 and Refugee Week (June-July 2016) in Liverpool, with a focus on diversity and refugees in the city.

While all of our senses aid our first contact with material and form, arguably, it is the visual qualities of an object’s surface that first draws us in. It is only later, perhaps, that the other senses – touch, smell, taste, and hearing – become engaged. Different lighting conditions create varying surface effects from soft matte to shiny gloss – each suggesting its own set of meanings.  This paper is concerned with plotting a range of, often paradoxical, cultural and historical meanings of the slippery phenomenon of shininess – one dependent on perceptual instability and, arguably, lacking essence. Shininess suggests a multitude of historically specific meanings: from the pre-modern presence of ancestral spirits to the promise of modernity, from the threat to tradition to the superficiality of postmodernity. Shininess suggests inner health through the glow of radiant hair and skin. The alluring shine of gold attracts, while the disgusting shine of slime repels. Gleaming gold jewellery indicates wealth and permanence, whereas a shiny mass-produced product may seem cheap and disposable. Such superficial shine is strongly linked to postmodern theory, where surface experiences and effects are identified with the era of late-capitalism. However, shine is not always inherent in an object; but is sometimes a result of the owner’s labour or the labour of others. Thus, shined boots, polished silver, etc. can connote working class pride as well as leisured social status. Shininess affects the multitude of smooth-surfaced objects that reflect light: everything from gleaming stainless steel to bright plastic. While this paper will explore the slippage of meaning across a range of objects and eras, instability will be the constant fundamental lens through which we understand our subject, not just the unstable subjectivity of individual perception, but the ever shifting light and constant physical transformation of materials and surfaces.

Biographies:
Professor Tom Fisher, Nottingham Trent University
Tom Fisher has been Professor in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University since 2007. His academic background combines Art History and Sociology and he co-edited an edition of the Journal of Design History on Shininess in 2013 with Nic Maffei. He is a member of the Design Research Society Council and leads the Special Interest Group OPEN<http://www.designresearchsociety.org/joomla/sig2.html> (Objects, Practices, Experiences, Networks). He has led research funded by the AHRC on industrial heritage and Defra on sustainable clothing.

Dr. Nicolas P. Maffei, Norwich University of the Arts
Dr. Maffei is a Senior Lecturer at Norwich University of the Arts. He has written about modern American design as an avant-garde and popular expression. More recently he has focused on shine as a branding message connoting modernity in the post-war American steel industry. This work was part of a Special Issue he co-authored on shininess in design (Journal of Design History, Oxford University Press, 2013). Dr. Maffei will co-chair a panel entitled ‘Surface Affects and Shiny Things: Bringing Meaning to Light’, at the Association of Art Historians annual conference, University of East Anglia, April 2015. He is presently co-authoring a book on the impact of digital technology on traditional graphic design forms (Bloomsbury).

Fat is not only found on plates or in bellies.  Fat is on the news, on reality TV, in policy and in sewers.  The stuff of fat is a matter of concern:  it is too cheap, or possibly too expensive; consumers are eating too much of it to be healthy, or possibly not enough of the right sort.  Fat production is reported to be too animal based, too plantation based or too resource hungry to be sustainable; too entwined with opaque globalized networks to be fair.  Yet fat, particularly the yellow fats of butter and margarine are, for eaters of North European heritage, typically a routine part of daily life.  ‘Unpacking’ the mundane  encounters between eating and eaten bodies can work to make present the ways in which the world is understood, represented, framed and enacted.  In this article I draw on this premise to explore distaste as a means by which British participants in six ‘planned discussion groups’ negotiate encounters with yellow fats amidst multiple conflicting knowledges.  I demonstrate that for my research participants the distastefulness of a yellow fat did not rest in any straightforward way on a visceral disliking of the flavour of that same product.  I conclude by arguing that thinking with distaste is an ‘unpacking’ which extends discussions of the visceral to better theorize the complex interactions between embodied encounters, sense of self, and styles of valuing the stuff of fats.

Pictorial and visual elements are special types of archaeological data that transgress boundaries: between us and the past and between the material and immaterial. Traditionally, images have
been discussed in terms of what they represent, mean or symbolize. In this volume, the authors explore other ways in which images a!ect and engage the beholder and the modes in which
they are entangled in past worlds.

The articles comprise examples from various regions and time periods and include a diverse array of topics including northern European rock art of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, anthropomorphic aspects of ceramic pots and "gures in gold,
erotic themes on children’s burial vessels, and nineteenth-century rock art created by quarantined sailors in Australia.