Objects on the loose: Ethnographic encounters with unruly artefacts a foreword
Date
1999
Authors
George, Kenneth M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
The essays gathered for this special theme issue of Ethnos have to do
with things and their social circumstances. Though the contributors
and commentators in 'Objects on the Loose' work in different ethnographic
and disciplinary precincts, and draw from a diverse set of theoretical
writings, we share a common debt to the essays of Arjun Appadurai and those
of his collaborators in the Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(1986). As will become clear, our interests have less to do with formulating
critiques or theory-driven responses to this seminal work than with
setting out to explore possibilities for ethnographic expansions, revisions, and
variations on its themes, and for linking the 'social life of things' to questions
of modernity, nationalism, and transnational cultural projects and dilemmas.
In our discussions, we observe that as things become unmoored or dislodged
from their place of origin, manufacture, or intended use, they are inevitably
snared in new hierarchies of value, exchange, and recognition. Thus our discussions
have to do with the social and moral orbit of things that have broken
loose from some prior 'life,' or that mimic the lives of other objects. Different
scenes of exchange and consumption are clearly influential in the shaping of
such hierarchies. But so, too, are the national and international projects that
encourage social identities and anxieties to attach to certain kinds of objects.
For this reason, we have felt obliged to take a look at the moral debates and
crises of mourning that travel along with circulating objects.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Collections
Source
Ethnos
Type
Journal article
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
Downloads
File
Description