Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective (Materializing Culture)

Anthropology is usually associated with the study of society, but the anthropologist must also understand people as individuals. This highly original study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely distinct from psychology and other perspectives on the person. Contributors draw on approaches from material culture to create fascinating portraits of individuals, offering analytical insights that convey ethnographic encounters with often extraordinary people from Turkey, Spain and Britain to Albania, Cuba, Jamaica, Mali, Serbia and Trinidad. Exploring relationships to places and spaces such as social networking sites, to persons such as parents, to ethical concerns such as fairness and to concepts such as the ideology of struggle, Anthropology and the Individual shows how the study of the individual can provide insights into society without losing a sense of the particularity of the person. Contents......Page 6 Introduction......Page 12 1 Individuals and the Aesthetic of Order......Page 14 2 Trading in Fake Brands, Self-creating as an Individual......Page 36 3 ‘Making Things Come Out’: Design, Originality and the Individual in a Bògòlan Artisan Community......Page 48 4 Building and Ordering Transnationalism: The ‘Greek House’ in Albaniaas a Material Process......Page 62 5 The Christian and the Taxi Driver: Poverty and Aspiration in Rural Jamaica......Page 80 6 How Madrid Creates Individuals......Page 94 7 Aesthetics of the Self: Digital Mediations......Page 110 8 Unmaking Family Relationships: Belgrade Mothers and Their Migrant Children......Page 126 9 Fashioning Individuality and Social Connectivity among Yoruba Women in London......Page 142 10 Creating Order through Struggle in Revolutionary Cuba......Page 156 11 Food, Family, Art and God: Aesthetic Authority in Public Life in Trinidad......Page 170 Index......Page 190 Berg Publishers Contents 6 Introduction 12 1 Individuals and the Aesthetic of Order 14 2 Trading in Fake Brands, Self-creating as an Individual 36 3 ‘Making Things Come Out’: Design, Originality and the Individual in a Bògòlan Artisan Community 48 4 Building and Ordering Transnationalism: The ‘Greek House’ in Albaniaas a Material Process 62 5 The Christian and the Taxi Driver: Poverty and Aspiration in Rural Jamaica 80 6 How Madrid Creates Individuals 94 7 Aesthetics of the Self: Digital Mediations 110 8 Unmaking Family Relationships: Belgrade Mothers and Their Migrant Children 126 9 Fashioning Individuality and Social Connectivity among Yoruba Women in London 142 10 Creating Order through Struggle in Revolutionary Cuba 156 11 Food, Family, Art and God: Aesthetic Authority in Public Life in Trinidad 170 Index 190 ISBN-13:,9781847884947 This study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely distinct from psychology and other perspectives on the person. Contributors have drawn on approaches from material culture to create analytical portraits of individuals Highly original, this book provides a range of new approaches for understanding the individual in society. Edited By Daniel Miller. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.