Journal of Material Culture 

About: Journal of Material Culture is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Materiality (auditing) & Agency (philosophy). It has an ISSN identifier of 1359-1835. Over the lifetime, 552 publications have been published receiving 15855 citations.

The World On a Plate: Culinary Culture, Displacement and Geographical Knowledges

Abstract: This article uses claims about the local globalization of culinary culture to stage an argument about the character of material cultural geographies and their spaces of identity practice. It approaches these geographies in two ways. First, it views foods not only as placed cultural artefacts, but also as dis-placed materials and practices, inhabiting many times and spaces which, far from being neatly bounded, bleed into and mutually constitute each other. Second, it considers the geographical knowledges, or understandings, of foods' geo graphies, mobilized within circuits of culinary culture, outlining their pro duction through processes of commodity fetishism, and arguing for forms of critical intervention that work with the fetish rather than attempt to reach behind it.

Culture on the Ground The World Perceived Through the Feet

Abstract: Classical accounts of human evolution posit a progressive differentiation between the hands as instruments of rational intelligence and feet as integral to the mechanics of bipedal locomotion. Yet evolutionists were modelling pedestrian performance on the striding gait of boot-clad Europeans. The bias of head over heels in their accounts follows a long-standing tendency, in western thought and science, to elevate the plane of social and cultural life over the ground of nature. This tendency was already established among European elites in the practice of destination-oriented travel, the use of shoes and chairs, and the valorization of upright posture. It was further reinforced in urban societies through paving the streets. The groundlessness of metropolitan life remains embedded not only in western social structures but also in the disciplines of anthropology, psychology and biology. A more grounded approach to human movement, sensitive to embodied skills of footwork, opens up new terrain in the study of ...

Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things

Abstract: The degradation of cultural artefacts is usually understood in a purely negative vein: the erosion of physical integrity is associated with a parallel loss of cultural information. This article asks if it is possible to adopt an interpretive approach in which entropic processes of decomposition and decay, though implicated in the destruction of cultural memory traces on one register, contribute to the recovery of memory on another register. The article tracks the entanglement of cultural and natural histories through the residual material culture of a derelict homestead in Montana. In conclusion, the article suggests that deposits of degraded material, though inappropriate for recovery in conventional conservation strategies, may be understood through the application of a collaborative interpretive ethic, allowing other-than-human agencies to participate in the telling of stories about particular places.

Negotiating authentic objects and authentic selves: Beyond the deconstruction of authenticity

Abstract: Our understanding of authenticity in the material world is characterized by a problematic dichotomy between materialist and constructivist perspectives. Neither explains why people find the issue of authenticity so compelling, nor how it is experienced and negotiated in practice. There is strong evidence supporting the view that prevailing materialist approaches to authenticity are a product of the development of modernity in the West. The result has been an emphasis on entities and their origins and essences. However, when we look at how people experience and negotiate authenticity through objects, it is the networks of relationships between people, places and things that appear to be central, not the things in themselves. The author argues that these inalienable relationships between objects, people and places underpin the ineffable, almost magical, power of authenticity and explain why people employ it as a means of negotiating their place in a world characterized by displacement and fragmentation. She...