Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Liana Chua ,  Mark Elliott
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.318kg
ISBN:  

9781782389132

ISBN 10:   178238913
Pages:   232
Publication Date:   01 March 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Preface List of Contributors Introduction: Adventures in the Art Nexus Liana Chua and Mark Elliott Chapter 1. Threads of Thought: Reflections on Art and Agency Susanne Kuchler Chapter 2. Technologies of Routine and Enchantment Chris Gosden Chapter 3. Figuring out Death: Sculpture and Agency at the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Tomb of the First Emperor of China Jeremy Tanner Chapter 4. The Network of Standard Stoppages Alfred Gell Chapter 5. Gell's Duchamp/Duchamp's Gell Simon Dell Chapter 6. Music: Ontology, Agency, Creativity Georgina Born Chapter 7. Literary Art and Agency? Gell and the Magic of the Early Modern Book Warren Boutcher Chapter 8. Art, Performance and Time(1)s Presence: Reflections on Temporality in Art and Agency Eric Hirsch Chapter 9. Epilogue Nicholas Thomas Bibliography Index

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

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

Author Information

Liana Chua is Lecturer in Anthropology at Brunel University London. She works on conversion to Christianity, ethnic citizenship, landscape, resettlement and conservation in Malaysian Borneo, and on artifact-oriented theory and museology more broadly. She is the author of The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo (2012).

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