Sensible objects : colonialism, museums and material culture / edited by Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden and Ruth B. Phillips.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Edwards, Elizabeth, 1952-

Gosden, Chris, 1955-

Phillips, Ruth B. (Ruth Bliss), 1945-

Series:

Wenner-Gren international series

Wenner-Gren international symposium series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Material culture.

Senses and sensation.

Human body--Social aspects.

Human body.

Ethnological museums and collections.

Colonies.

Postcolonialism.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xiv, 306 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Edition:

English edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Berg, 2006.

Summary:

Anthropologists of the senses have long argued that cultures differ in their sensory registers. This groundbreaking volume applies this idea to material culture and the social practices that endow objects with meanings in both colonial and postcolonial relationships. It challenges the privileged position of the sense of vision in the analysis of material culture. Contributors argue that vision can only be understood in relation to the other senses. In this they present another challenge to the assumed western five-sense model, and show how our understanding of material culture in both historical and contemporary contexts might be reconfigured if we consider the role of smell, taste, touch and sound, as well as sight, in making meanings about objects.

Contents:

Enduring and endearing feelings and the transformation of material culture in West Africa / Kathryn Linn Geurts and Elvis Gershon Adikah

Studio photography and the aesthetics of citizenship in The Gambia, West Africa / Liam Buckley

Cooking skill, the senses, and memory : the fate of practical knowledge / David Sutton

Mata ora : chiseling the living face, dimensions of Maori tattoo / Ngahuia Te Akwekotuku

Smoked fish and fermented oil : taste and smell among the Kwakwaka'wakw / Aldona Jonaitis

Sonic spectacles of empire : the audio-visual nexus, Delhi-London, 1911-12 / Tim Barringer

The museum as sensescape : western sensibilities and indigenous artifacts / Constance Classen and David Howes

The fate of the senses in ethnographic modernity : the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples at the American Museum of Natural History / Diane Losche

Contact points : museums and the lost body problem / Jeffrey Feldman

The beauty of letting go : fragmentary museums and archaeologies of archive / Sven Ouzman.

Notes:

Papers derived from a Wennger-Gren symposium entitled Engaging all the senses : colonialism, processes of perception and material objects, Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2003, Sintra, Portugal.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1845203240

1845203232

OCLC:

62344836

Publisher Number:

9781845203245

9781845203238