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Series

Volume 45

Methodology & History in Anthropology

Reviews

“I consider this to be a brilliant piece of research creating a highly original intervention in material culture studies. In particular the debates on materiality and matter and the intellectual history of the concept of fetishism and its transformation of meaning in Europe from the 16th century to the present.” • Michael Rowlands, University College London

“[A book] with considerable value. It is a compelling read, that has some important interventions to make concerning the nature of the material within modernity.” • Jon Mitchell, University of Sussex

Description

A range of meaningful objects—exhibits of human remains or live people, fetishes, objects in a Catholic Museum, exotic photographs, commodities, and computers—demonstrate a subordinate modern consciousness about powerful objects and their ‘life’. The Spirit of Matter discusses these objects that move people emotionally but whose existence is often denied by modern wishful thinking of ‘mind over matter’. It traces this mindset back to Protestant Christian influences that were secularized in the course of modern and colonial history.

Subject: Anthropology of ReligionArchaeologyMuseum Studies

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Of Related Interest

Colonial Collecting and Display

Encounters with Material Culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Exchanging Objects

Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution

Crafting 'The Indian'

Knowledge, Desire, and Play in Indianist Reenactment