Dear colleagues,

This new volume - Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies - which will be published by OUP in August, may be of interest to list members.
Details are below, and more details are here - 
http://weweremodern.blogspot.com/2009/10/oxford-handbook-of-material-culture.html

Dan Hicks
Oxford University 

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THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MATERIAL CULTURE STUDIES
Edited by Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry
(OUP 2010, xviii+790pp, 98 figures, 2 tables).


'We don't just study things. We study with things, and create new things in the process. If ever proof were needed, it lies in this monumental volume. Ranging across archaeology, anthropology, geography and science and technology studies, its contributing authors have worked with all sorts of things to create a text that not only places material culture studies on a secure footing, but will serve as a landmark for years to come.' (Professor Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen)

'On the evidence of this Handbook, material culture studies has resisted becoming reduced to a staid academic discipline. In these essays, some assertive and combative, others reflective and inclusive, are found instead a remarkable enthusiasm that transcends traditional academic boundaries and topics to try and stay at the vanguard of intellectual debate. Whether through theories of exchange, or deposition, of art or personhood, contributors to this book seek new horizons that can also create bridges between historical disciplines such as archaeology and history with a whole range of social sciences such as anthropology and geography. There is the feeling that this is the moment in which understanding material culture, something central to humanity, its past and future, is being achieved at a level beyond anything that had previously been imagined: through what this volume effectively reveals is a huge amount of new research, which is complemented by a commitment to new thinking about the implications of this research. This is very exciting stuff.' (Professor Daniel Miller, UCL)


1: Dan Hicks & Mary C. Beaudry: Introduction. Material Culture Studies: a reactionary view 
[Introduction posted online at - 
http://weweremodern.blogspot.com/2010/05/material-culture-studies-introduction.html ]


I. Disciplinary Perspectives
2: Dan Hicks: The Material-Cultural Turn: event and effect
3: Ian Cook & Divya Tolia-Kelly: Material Geographies
4: Robert St George: Material Culture in Folklife Studies
5: Ann Stahl: Material Histories 
6: John Law: The Materials of STS 

II. Material Practices
7: Andrew Pickering: Material Culture and the Dance of Agency
8: Michael Dietler: Consumption 
9: Gavin Lucas: Fieldwork and Collecting 
10: Hirokazu Miyazaki: Gifts and Exchange 
11: Howard Morphy: Art as Action, Art as Evidence 
12: Rosemary Joyce with Joshua Pollard: Archaeological Assemblages and Practices of Deposition 

III. Objects and Humans
13: Kacy L. Hollenback & Michael B. Schiffer: Technology and Material Life 
14: Andy Jones & Nicole Boivin: The Malice of Inanimate Objects: Material Agency 
15: Chris Fowler: From Identity and Material Culture to Personhood and Materiality 
16: Zoe Crossland: Materiality and Embodiment 
17: Tatyana Hulme: Material Culture in Primates 

IV. Landscapes and the Built Environment
18: Lesley Head: Cultural Landscapes
19: Sarah Whatmore & Steve Hinchliffe: Ecological Landscapes 
20: Roland Fletcher: Urban Materialities: Meaning, Magnitude, Friction, and Outcomes 
21: Carl Lounsbury: Architecture and Cultural History 
22: Victor Buchli: Households and `Home Cultures' 

V. Studying Particular Things
23: Rodney Harrison: Stone Tools
24: Chandra Mukerji: The Landscape Garden as Material Culture: Lessons from France
25: Douglass W. Bailey & Lesley McFadyen: Built Objects
26: Carl Knappett, Lambros Malafouris & Peter Tomkins: Ceramics (as Containers)
27: Peter J. Pels: Magical Things: On Fetishes, Commodities, and Computers 

28. Afterword: Nigel Thrift: Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be: Thinking Through Material Thinking as Placing and Arrangement

Contributors: 
Douglass W. Bailey, San Francisco State University
Mary C. Beaudry, Boston University
Nicole Boivin, University of Oxford
Victor Buchli, University College London
Ian Cook, Exeter University
Zoe Crossland, Columbia University
Michael Dietler, University of Chicago
Roland Fletcher, University of Sydney
Chris Fowler, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Rodney Harrison, The Open University
Lesley Head, University of Wollongong
Dan Hicks, University of Oxford
Steve Hinchliffe, University of Exeter
Kacy L. Hollenback, University of Arizona
Tatyana Hulme, University of Kent
Andy Jones, Southampton University
Rosemary Joyce, University of California at Berkeley
Carl Knappett, University of Toronto
John Law, Open University
Carl Lounsbury, College of William and Mary
Gavin Lucas, University of Iceland
Lesley McFadyen, University of Leicester
Lambros Malafouris, University of Cambridge
Hirokazu Miyazaki, Cornell University
Howard Morphy, Australian National University
Chandra Mukerji, University of California at San Diego
Peter Pels, University of Leiden
Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter
Joshua Pollard, Bristol University
Robert St George, University of Pennsylvania
Michael B. Schiffer, University of Arizona
Ann Stahl, University of Victoria
Divya Tolia-Kelly, Durham University
Nigel Thrift, Warwick University
Peter Tomkins, Catholic University of Leiden
Sarah Whatmore, University of Oxford