Journal of Material Culture current issue

Subject and Object in a Vanuatu Social Ontology: A Local Vision of Dialectics

Rio, K. — 2009-07-27

In this article, the author addresses the social effects of material exhibitions in Melanesia. He suggests that people in Vanuatu perceive subjects and objects within a totalizing mode of production, in which the material object takes on the capacity of encompassing social relations. He introduces the Vanuatu case as countering some of the analytical problems with materiality, especially efforts to dismantle the subject/object distinction or to understand the role of agency and will in objects.

Materializing Resistant Identities Among the Medieval Peasantry: An Examination of Dress Accessories from English Rural Settlement Sites

Smith, S. V. — 2009-07-27

This article examines metal dress accessories from a range of late medieval English rural settlement sites. It is argued at the outset that medieval archaeology has been very slow to consider the concept of resistance when interrogating the material culture of the peasantry and that items of dress are particularly amenable to such consideration given the close relationship between personal appearance and social power in this period. The dress accessories from seven excavated sites are investigated and interpreted as revealing the use of `infra-political' power by members of the medieval peasantry as they deployed this aspect of their material lives in re-fashioning and resisting the identities imposed on them by the medieval elite.

Tournaments of Value: Argentina and Brazil in the Age of Exhibitions

Andermann, J. — 2009-07-27

The `Age of Exhibitions' included the newly independent Latin American nation-states almost from the very outset. This article studies the complex strategies of material and visual display, architecture and writing through which representations of Argentina and Brazil were fashioned at the world fairs. It argues that, as peripheral affiliates of the emergent capitalist world-system, Latin Americans had to negotiate the material and symbolic value of their commodities and cultural samples with a host of agents, including not just foreign audiences but also exhibition organizers, artists, architects, and so on. National pavilions, therefore, rather than being seen as material texts authored by state governments, could be understood as `contact zones', performative spaces for the exchange of objects, gazes and words. The article concludes by comparing the world fairs with trade and industry exhibitions held in Brazil and Argentina themselves. In these, it observes the emergence of a dissident figure of national modernity as `development', challenging hegemonic regimes of value.

The Material Culture of Children and Childhood: Understanding Childhood Objects in the Museum Context

Brookshaw, S. — 2009-07-27

This article examines the issues and problems surrounding the material culture of children and childhood, with the aim of making children more visible within material culture studies. It presents results from recent research examining such material culture within the accredited museum collections of mainland Britain, and compares the data from this study to expectations and statements made in the small body of existing literature in this field. Evidence is offered to both challenge and confirm ideas, and new perspectives on this area are offered, notably that `the material culture of children' and `the material culture of childhood' should be considered distinguishable and separate entities.

The `Social Death' of Unused Gifts: Surplus and Value in Contemporary Japan

Daniels, I. — 2009-07-27

This article investigates the circulation and consumption of gifts in contemporary, urban Japan. It sets out to challenge key anthropological debates about gifting that, firstly, focus on the inalienable connection between the donor and the gift and, secondly, emphasize the symbolic potential and historical depth of things. The Japanese gifts under discussion, employed in the production and reproduction of the social, cosmic and economic order, are commodities. They can be easily disentangled from the donor and are imbued with the spirit of the recipient through everyday consumption. Moreover, because these gifts are supposed to disappear through use, this article also draws attention to the significance of material loss in the creation of value.