Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective

193 Pages·2009·3.34 MB·English

by  Daniel Miller (ed.)

Anthropology and the Individual
MATERIALIZING CULTURE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Series Editors: Paul Gilroy and Daniel Miller
Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space
Gen Doy, Materializing Art History
Laura Rival (ed.), The Social Life of Trees: Anthropological Perspectives on Tree
Symbolism
Victor Buchli, An Archaeology of Socialism
Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley (eds), Material
Memories: Design and Evocation
Penny Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand
Michael Bull, Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management
of Everyday Life
Anne Massey, Hollywood beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture
Wendy Joy Darby, Landscape and Identity: Geographies of Nation and Class
in England
Joy Hendry, The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display
Judy Attfi eld, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life
Daniel Miller (ed.), Car Cultures
Elizabeth Edwards, Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums
David E. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food
and Memory
Eleana Yalouri, The Acropolis: Global Fame, Local Claim
Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture
Sharon Macdonald, Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum
Elaine Lally, At Home with Computers
Susanne Küchler, Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifi ce
Nicky Gregson and Louise Crewe, Second-hand Cultures
Merl Storr, Latex and Lingerie
Lynn Meskell, Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past
and Present
Sophie Woodward, Why Women Wear What They Wear
Anthropology and the Individual
A Material Culture Perspective
Edited by
Daniel Miller
Oxford • New York
First published in 2009 by
Berg
Editorial offi ces:
First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Daniel Miller 2009
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84788 495 4 (Cloth)
ISBN 978 1 84788 494 7 (Paper)
Typeset by Apex CoVantage, LLC, Madison, WI, USA
Printed in the UK by the MPG Books Group
www.bergpublishers.com
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction 1
1 Individuals and the Aesthetic of Order 3
Daniel Miller
2 Trading in Fake Brands, Self-creating as an Individual 25
Magdalena Crăciun
3 ‘Making Things Come Out’: Design, Originality
and the Individual in a Bògòlan Artisan Community 37
Bodil Birkebæk Olesen
4 Building and Ordering Transnationalism: The ‘Greek House’
in Albania as a Material Process 51
Dimitris Dalakoglou
5 The Christian and the Taxi Driver: Poverty and Aspiration
in Rural Jamaica 69
Daniel Miller
6 How Madrid Creates Individuals 83
Marjorie Murray
7 Aesthetics of the Self: Digital Mediations 99
Heather A. Horst
8 Unmaking Family Relationships: Belgrade Mothers
and Their Migrant Children 115
Ivana Bajić-Hajduković
9 Fashioning Individuality and Social Connectivity
among Yoruba Women in London 131
Julie Botticello
– v –
vi • Contents
10 Creating Order through Struggle in Revolutionary Cuba 145
Anna Pertierra
11 Food, Family, Art and God: Aesthetic Authority
in Public Life in Trinidad 159
Gabrielle Hosein
Index 179
List of Illustrations
Figures Page
3.1 A schematic rendition of a piece of cloth and its patterns,
consisting of fi ve pieces of strip-cloth. 42
3.2 An example of how stencils circulate between workshops,
and kinsmen and neighbours. 43
3.3 Another example of how stencils circulate between workshops,
and kinsmen and neighbours. 44
3.4 An example of innovation-through-copying. 45
3.5 Koti’s model, made shortly after Hawa fi nished the model
depicted in Figure 3.4. 45
4.1 The coffee-table in the home in Athens. 54
4.2 An identical table as sofra in the home in Albania. 54
4.3 The table moved in front of the sofa where we are sitting. 55
4.4 The ‘Greek house’ in Albania. 57
4.5 The swimming pool and the vegetable garden. 61
6.1 Madrid’s Metro tunnel from the train. 93
6.2 Innocent boy in a bar. 94
7.1 Ann’s desk and bulletin board. 102
7.2 Ann’s bedroom, one week before leaving for college. 103
7.3 Ann checking her Facebook page. 106
8.1 Kitchen in Vladimir’s house. 119
8.2 A detail from Vladimir’s room. 119
9.1 An England fl ag worn as a head scarf during the 2006 World Cup. 137
9.2 Fellow market workers, adorned in red gele, assemble their
dollars to engage in the spraying. 140
11.1 The line of legitimacy. 163
11.2 One woman, one vote. 165
11.3 Higher authority. 166
11.4 King of the Road. 170
– vii –

Notes on Contributors
Ivana Bajić-Hajduković is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Weber Programme, Euro-
pean University Institute.
Julie Botticello is an Honorary Research Associate, Department of Anthropology,
University College London.
Magdalena Crăciun is a PhD student, Department of Anthropology, University
College London.
Dimitrios Dalakoglou is a Lecturer in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology,
University of Sussex.
Heather A. Horst is Associate Project Scientist, Humanities Research Institute, Uni-
versity of California.
Gabrielle Hosein is a lecturer at The Centre for Gender and Development Studies,
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
Daniel Miller is Professor of Material Culture, Department of Anthropology, Uni-
versity College London.
Marjorie Murray is a Lecturer in Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Pontifi -
cia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Bodil Birkebæk Olesen is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropol-
ogy, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Anna Pertierra is a Research Fellow in The Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies,
University of Queensland.
– ix –