Materiality : an introduction / Objects in the mirror appear closer than they are / A materialist approach to materiality / Some properties of art and culture : ontologies of the image and economies of exchange / Sticky subjects and sticky objects : the substance of African Christian healing / Does money matter? : abstraction and substitution in alternative financial forms / The materiality of finance theory / Signs are not the garb of meaning : on the social analysis of material things / Materiality and cognition : the changing face of things / Beyond mediation : three new material registers and their consequences / Things happen : or, from which moment does that object come? / Daniel Miller -- Lynn Meskell -- Michael Rowlands -- Fred Myers -- Matthew Engelke -- Bill Maurer -- Hirokazu Miyazaki -- Webb Keane -- Susanne Kuchler -- Nigel Thrift -- Christopher Pinney.
The essays in Materiality explore varied manifestations of materiality from ancient times to the present. In assessing the fundamental role of materiality in shaping humanity, they signal the need to de-center the social within social anthropology in order to make room for the material.