Journal ArticleDOI
Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this article, the authors track the entanglement of cultural and natural histories through the residual material culture of a derelict homestead in Montana, and suggest 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.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.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
On Geography and Materiality
Ben Anderson,John Wylie +1 more
TL;DR: In the context of human geography's encounter with the problematics that surround matter and materiality, the authors offers a principle that works towards a distinctive material imagination. This principle states that our image of matter should be multiplied, so that it can be attended to as taking place with the properties and capacities of any element or state.
Journal ArticleDOI
Landscape, absence and the geographies of love
TL;DR: In this paper, an account of landscape in terms of absence and the non-coincidence of self and world is developed, based on an encounter with a series of memorial benches at Mullion Cove, Cornwall.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mortal questions Geographies on the other side of life
TL;DR: The authors explored the possibilities of attending to geographies on the other side of life by drawing upon resources from philosophy, sociology, history, and anthropology, and explored the possibility to attend to the world from a different perspective.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reckoning with ruins
Caitlin DeSilvey,Tim Edensor +1 more
TL;DR: The authors assess a broad selection of the resulting literature and identify several key themes, such as how ruins may be used to critically examine capitalist and state manifestations of power, the way in which ruins may challenge dominant ways of relating to the past, and how they may complicate strategies for practically and ontologically ordering space.
References
More filters
Book
The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill
TL;DR: The Perception of the Environment as discussed by the authors is a collection of essays focusing on the procurement of livelihood, what it means to "dwell" and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before.
BookDOI
The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective
TL;DR: Farriss and Reddy as discussed by the authors presented a cultural biography of things: commoditization as process Igor Kopytoff Part II, and two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands William H. Davenport and William M. Cassanelli Part V.
Posted Content
The Social Life of Things
TL;DR: The authors examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past, focusing on culturally defined aspects of exchange and socially regulated processes of circulation, illuminate the ways in which people find value in things and things give value to social relations.
Book
The Arcades Project
TL;DR: Translators' Foreword Exposes Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century (1935) "Paris, the City of the Twenty-First Century" (1939) Convolutes Overview First Sketches Early Drafts "Arcades" "The Arcades of Paris" 'The Ring of Saturn" Addenda Expose of 1935, Early Version Materials for the Expose and Exposition of 1935 Materials for Arcades' "Dialectics at a Standstill," by Rolf Tiedemann "The Story of Old Benjamin," by Lisa Fitt