Distributed Objects

Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell

By: Mark Elliott (Editor), Liana Chua (Editor)

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eBook | 15 March 2013 | Edition Number 1

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One of the most influential anthropological works of the last two decades, Alfred Gell's Art and Agency is a provocative and ambitious work that both challenged and reshaped anthropological understandings of art, agency, creativity and the social. It has become a touchstone in contemporary artifact-based scholarship. This volume brings together leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and other scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue with Art and Agency, generating a timely re-engagement with the themes, issues and arguments at the heart of Gell's work, which remains salient, and controversial, in the social sciences and humanities. Extending his theory into new territory - from music to literary technology and ontology to technological change - the contributors do not simply take stock, but also provoke, critically reassessing this important work while using it to challenge conceptual and disciplinary boundaries.

Industry Reviews

"...profound scholarly reflections on the distributed effects of Alfred Gell's endeavor to identify an anthropological theory of ...a captivating pendant piece to Gell's original publication. Itis not meant as a guidebook to understanding Gell's work; rather it is a collection of complex studies that capture distinct engagements with Gell's ideas around an anthropology of art." · Material World

"Chua and Elliott have pulled together an excellent volume to address a real problem in the interdisciplinary discussions of art... While I think the volume is most useful for those teaching arts-oriented disciplines, it is also a valuable volume for those thinking through curatorial choices in regard to ethnographic and art objects." · Museum Anthropology