Material Cultures Migrations And Identities

Focusing on the experiences of Russian migrants to the United Kingdom, this book explores the connection between migrations, homes and identities. It evaluates several approaches to studying them, and is structured around a series of case studies on attitudes to homemaking, food and cooking, and clothing.

Focusing on the experiences of Russian migrants to the United Kingdom, this book explores the connection between migrations, homes and identities. It evaluates several approaches to studying them, and is structured around a series of case studies on attitudes to homemaking, food and cooking, and clothing.

Focusing on the experiences of Russian migrants to the United Kingdom, this book explores the connection between migrations, homes and identities. It evaluates several approaches to studying them, and is structured around a series of case studies on attitudes to homemaking, food and cooking, and clothing.

Material culture studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the relationships between people and their things: the production, history, preservation, and interpretation of objects. It draws on theory and practice from disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, such as anthropology, archaeology, history, and museum studies. Written by leading international scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive view of developments, methodologies and theories. It is divided into five broad themes, embracing both classic and emerging areas of research in the field. Chapters outline transformative moments in material culture scholarship, and present research from around the world, focusing on multiple material and digital media that show the scope and breadth of this exciting field. Written in an easy-to-read style, it is essential reading for students, researchers and professionals with an interest in material culture.

Material Culture and (Forced) Migration argues that materiality is a fundamental dimension of migration. During journeys of migration, people take things with them, or they lose, find and engage things along the way. Movements themselves are framed by objects such as borders, passports, tents, camp infrastructures, boats and mobile phones. This volume brings together chapters that are based on research into a broad range of movements – from the study of forced migration and displacement to the analysis of retirement migration. What ties the chapters together is the perspective of material culture and an understanding of materiality that does not reduce objects to mere symbols. Centring on four interconnected themes – temporality and materiality, methods of object-based migration research, the affective capacities of objects, and the engagement of things in place-making practices – the volume provides a material culture perspective for migration scholars around the globe, representing disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, contemporary archaeology, curatorial studies, history and human geography. The ethnographic nature of the chapters and the focus on everyday objects and practices will appeal to all those interested in the broader conditions and tangible experiences of migration.

With a focus on the object and where it is situated, in time (memory) and space (mobility), Memory, Mobility, and Material Culture embodies a multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach. The chapters track the movement of the objects and their owner(s), within and between continents, countries, cities, and families. Objects have always been considered with an eye to their worth – economic, aesthetic, and/or functional. If that worth is diminished, their meaning and value disappear, they are just things. Yet things can still fulfil functions in our daily lives; they hold symbolic potential, from personal memory triggers, to focal points of public ritual and religion; from collectors’ obsession, to symbols of loss, displacement, and violence. By bringing into dialogue the work of specialists in ethnology, art history, architecture, and design; literature, languages, cultures, and heritage studies, this volume considers how displaced memory – the memory of refugees, migrants, and their descendants; of those who have moved from the countryside to the city; of those who have faced personal upheaval and profound social change; those who have been forced into exile or experienced major personal or collective loss – can become embodied in material culture. This book is important reading to those interested in cultural and social history and cultural studies.

This dynamic Handbook unpacks the entanglements between the two notions of home and migration, which illuminate the lived experiences of (in)voluntary mobilities and the contested terrain of inclusion and belonging. Drawing on cross-disciplinary contributions from leading international scholars, it advances research on the social study of home in relation to migration, refugee, displacement, and diaspora studies. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

This book explores the function of the “everyday” in the formation, consolidation and performance of national, sub-national and local identities in the former socialist region. Based on extensive original research including fieldwork, the book demonstrates how the study of everyday and mundane practices is a meaningful and useful way of understanding the socio-political processes of identity formation both at the top and bottom level of a state. The book covers a wide range of countries including the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and considers “everyday” banal practices, including those related to consumption, kinship, embodiment, mobility, music, and the use of objects and artifacts. Overall, the book draws on, and contributes to, theory; and shows how the process of nation-building is not just undertaken by formal actors, such as the state, its institutions and political elites.