Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell

Published by Berghahn Books 2013

Distributed Objects

Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell

Edited by: Liana Chua and Mark Elliott

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857457431

Overview
Contents

About this book

One of the most influential anthropological works of the last two decades, Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency is a provocative and ambitious work that both challenged and reshaped anthropological understandings of art, agency, creativity and the social. It has become a touchstone in contemporary artifact-based scholarship. This volume brings together leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and other scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue with Art and Agency, generating a timely re-engagement with the themes, issues and arguments at the heart of Gell’s work, which remains salient, and controversial, in the social sciences and humanities. Extending his theory into new territory – from music to literary technology and ontology to technological change – the contributors do not simply take stock, but also provoke, critically reassessing this important work while using it to challenge conceptual and disciplinary boundaries.

Author / Editor information

Liana Chua is Lecturer in Anthropology at Brunel University London. She works on conversion to Christianity, ethnic citizenship, landscape, resettlement and conservation in Malaysian Borneo, and on artifact-oriented theory and museology more broadly. She is the author of The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo (2012).

Mark Elliott is Senior Curator for Anthropology at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Trained as an anthropologist, he now works across archaeological and ethnographic collections, and was co-curator, with Anita Herle and Rebecca Empson, of Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination (2009-10). His research and teaching interests include histories of museum practice in South Asia and Britain, and visual and material representations of Adivasi peoples in India.

Liana Chua is Lecturer in Anthropology at Brunel University London. She works on conversion to Christianity, ethnic citizenship, landscape, resettlement and conservation in Malaysian Borneo, and on artifact-oriented theory and museology more broadly. She is the author of The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo (2012).

Reviews

“…profound scholarly reflections on the distributed effects of Alfred Gell’s endeavor to identify an anthropological theory of …a captivating pendant piece to Gell’s original publication. Itis not meant as a guidebook to understanding Gell’s work; rather it is a collection of complex studies that capture distinct engagements with Gell’s ideas around an anthropology of art.“ · Material World

“Chua and Elliott have pulled together an excellent volume to address a real problem in the interdisciplinary discussions of art… While I think the volume is most useful for those teaching arts-oriented disciplines, it is also a valuable volume for those thinking through curatorial choices in regard to ethnographic and art objects.” · Museum Anthropology

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION: ADVENTURES IN THE ART NEXUS Liana Chua and Mark Elliott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 1 THREADS OF THOUGHT Reflections on Art and Agency Susanne Küchler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
CHAPTER 2 TECHNOLOGIES OF ROUTINE AND OF ENCHANTMENT Chris Gosden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER 3 FIGURING OUT DEATH Sculpture and Agency at the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Tomb of the First Emperor of China Jeremy Tanner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
CHAPTER 4 THE NETWORK OF STANDARD STOPPAGES (C.1985) Alfred Gell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
CHAPTER 5 GELL’S DUCHAMP/DUCHAMP’S GELL Simon Dell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
CHAPTER 6 MUSIC Ontology, Agency, Creativity Georgina Born Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
CHAPTER 7 LITERARY ART AND AGENCY? Gell and the Magic of the Early Modern Book Warren Boutcher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
CHAPTER 8 ART, PERFORMANCE AND TIME’S PRESENCE Reflections on Temporality in Art and Agency Eric Hirsch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
CHAPTER 9 EPILOGUE Nicholas Thomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 232
Keywords: Anthropology (General); Museum Studies; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780857457431