The inbetweenness of things : materializing mediation and movement between worlds / edited by Paul Basu. - London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. - 304 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

We habitually categorise the world in binary logics of 'animate' and 'inanimate', 'human' and 'non-human', 'natural' and 'supernatural', 'self' and 'other', 'authentic' and 'inauthentic'. However, these categories are based on false essentialisations and overlook the indeterminacy that often animates social and material worlds. This work rejects Western classificatory traditions - which tend to categorise objects according to bounded notions of period, place and purpose - and argues for the normalisation of a paradigm in which objects are not 'one thing or another' but a multiplicity of things at once. Adopting an 'object-centred' approach, the book is conceived as an exhibition - a cabinet of curiosities - in which anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and other material culture specialists debate a series of objects that defy neat classification.

9781474264778 (hbk.) : £65.00


Material culture--Philosophy.
Society.

GN406

306 BAS