Penny Harvey - Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion

There is broad acceptance across the humanities and social sciences that our deliberations on the social need to take place through attention to practice, to object-mediated relations, to non-human agency and to the affective dimensions of human sociality. This Companion focuses on the objects and materials found at centre stage, and asks: what matters about objects?

Objects and Materials explores the field, providing succinct summary accounts of contemporary scholarship, along with a wealth of new research investigating the capacity of objects to shape, unsettle and exceed expectations. Original chapters from more than 40 international, interdisciplinary contributors address an array of objects and materials to ask what the terms of collaborations with objects and materials are, and to consider how these collaborations become integral to our understandings of the complex, relational dynamics that fashion social worlds.

Objects and Materials will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, including in sociology, social theory, science and technology studies, history, anthropology, archaeology, gender studies, women's studies, geography, cultural studies, politics and international relations, and philosophy.

Penny Harvey is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and Director of CRESC, the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change.

Eleanor Conlin Casella is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University ofManchester.

Gillian Evans is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.

Hannah Knox is a Research Fellow at CRESC, the ESRC Centre for Research on SocioCultural Change at the University of Manchester.

Christine McLean is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.

Elizabeth B. Silva is Professor of Sociology at the Open University.

Nicholas Thoburn is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester.

Kath Woodward is Professor of Sociology at the Open University.

A new series from CRESC the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change

Professor Tony Bennett, Social and Cultural Theory, University of Western Sydney; Professor Penny Harvey, Anthropology, Manchester University; Professor Kevin Hetherington, Geography, Open University

Andrew Barry, University of Oxford; Michel Callon, Ecole des Mines de Paris; Dipesh Chakrabarty, The University of Chicago; Mike Crang, University of Durham; Tim Dant, Lancaster University; jean-Louis Fabiani, Ecoles de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales; Antoine Hennion, Paris Institute of Technology; Eric Hirsch, Brunei University; John Law, The Open University; Randy Martin, New York University; Timothy Mitchell, New York University; Rolland Munro, Keele University; Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter; Mary Poovey, New York University; Hugh Willmott, University of Cardiff; Sharon Zukin, Brooklyn College City University New York/Graduate School, City University of New York

The Culture, Economy and the Social series is committed to innovative contemporary, comparative and historical work on the relations between social, cultural and economic change. It publishes empirically-based research that is theoretically informed, that critically examines the ways in which social, cultural and economic change is framed and made visible, and that is attentive to perspectives that tend to be ignored or side-lined by grand theorising or epochal accounts of social change. The series addresses the diverse manifestations of contemporary capitalism, and considers the various ways in which the social', 'the cultural' and 'the economic' are apprehended as tangible sites of value and practice. It is explicitly comparative, publishing books that work across disciplinary perspectives, crossculturally, or across different historical periods.

The Series is actively engaged in the analysis of the different theoretical traditions that have contributed to the development of the 'cultural turn' with a view to clarifying where these approaches converge and where they diverge on a particular issue. It is equally concerned to explore the new critical agendas emerging from current critiques of the cultural turn: those associated with the descriptive turn for example. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity thus aims at enriching theoretical and methodological discussion, building awareness of the common ground that has emerged in the past decade, and thinking through what is at stake in those approaches that resist integration to a common analytical model.

Series titles include:

The Media and Social Theory (2008)
Edited by David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee

Culture, Class, Distinction (2009)
Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Bortolaia Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal and David Wright

Material Powers (2010)
Edited by Tony Bennett and Patrick Joyce

The Social after Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments (2010)
Edited by Matei Candea

Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu's Legacy (2010)
Edited by Elizabeth Silva and Alan Ward

Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human (2010)
Richie Nimmo

Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2010)
Edited by David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker

Migrating Music (2011)
Edited by Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck

Sport and the Transformation of Modern Europe: States, Media and Markets 1950-2010 (2011)
Edited by Alan Tomlinson, Christopher Young and Richard Holt

Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social (2012)
Edited by Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford

Understanding Sport: A Socio-Cultural Analysis (2012)
John Home, Alan Tomlinson, Garry Whannel and Kath Woodward

Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities (2012)
Edited by Tim Winter

Diasporas and Diplomacy: Cosmopolitan Contact Zones at the BBC World Service (1932-2012) (2012)
Edited by Marie Gillespie and Alban Webb

Making Culture, Changing Society (2013)
Tony Bennett

Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences (2013)
Edited by Andrew Barry and Georgina Born

Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion (2014)
Edited by Penny Harvey, Eleanor Conlin Casella, Gillian Evans, Hannah Knox, Christine McEean, Elizabeth B. Silva, Nicholas Thoburn and Kath Woodward

Rio de Janeiro: Urban Life through the Eyes of the City (forthcoming)
Beatriz Jaguaribe

Devising Consumption: Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending (forthcoming)
Liz Mcfall

Unbecoming Things: Mutable Objects and the Politics of Waste (forthcoming)
Nicky Gregson and Mike Crang

A Routledge Companion

Edited by Penny Harvey , Eleanor Conlin Casella , Gillian Evans , Hannah Knox , Christine McLean , Elizabeth B. Silva , Nicholas Thoburn and Kath Woodward

First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN