Surfaces

In attending to surfaces as they wrap layer and grow within sentient bodies material formations and cosmological states this volume presents a series of ten anthropological studies stretching across five continents and in observation of earthly practices of making knowing living and dying. Through theoretically reflecting on time spent with Aymara and Mapuche Andean cultures; the Malagasy people of Madagascar; craftspeople and designers across Europe and Oceania; amongst the architectures of Australia and South Korea and within the folds of books screens landscape and the sea the anthropologists in this volume communicate diverse ways of considering working with and knowing surfaces. Together these writings advance a knowledge of the world which resists any definitive settlement of existential categories and rather seeks to know the world in its emergence and transformation as entities grow cohere shift dissolve decay and are reborn through the contact and exchange of surfaces persisting with varying time power and effect. The book principally invites readers from anthropology the creative arts and environmental studies but also across the wider humanities and social sciences as well as those in neighbouring scientific fields of archaeology biology geography geoscience material science neurology and psychology interested in the intersections of mind body materials and world. . Language: English