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In: Objects and visual analyses

Dr Jenny Newell, Curator, Oceania (Polynesia), Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum Tonga, 1967, 39 x 29 cm. Donated by Noelle Sandwith Oc,1994,01.64 This wall hanging was made in Tonga to commemorate the royal coronation on 4 July 1967. I selected this object partly asContinue Reading

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In: Exhibition reviews

Larissa Hjorth, Games and Digital Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. 1. Snapshots: Portrait of the mobile explores the ways in which we imbue mobile technology as an extension of ourselves; both in terms of self-expression and self-identification but also as an object inflected by the particularities of the socio-cultural.Continue Reading

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In: Conferences and other events, From the editors, Topics for Discussion

Daniel Miller, Anthropology UCL A Congress of different cultures: the General Assembly of the United Nations (in lieu of a conference photograph from the AAA) Last week I attended the annual meetings of the AAA held at San Jose. I went along with a group of students, staff and ex-studentsContinue Reading

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Mikkel Bille, University College London Light: From old English leoht, meaning luminous, from Indo-European leuk-, to shine, to see. Light has been studied as metaphor for truth in Philosophy, and within Science in terms of lumen (as external and objective matter) and lux (as subjective and interior; as sight andContinue Reading

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In: Book Reviews

Review: “Brain of the Earth’s Body: Art, Museums, and the Phantasms of Modernity,” by Donald Preziosi (2003); University of Minnesota Press Sharon Macdonald teaches at the University of Manchester Donald Preziosi’s “Brain of the Earth’s Body: Art, Museums, and the Phantasms of Modernity” (2003, University of Minnesota Press) is theContinue Reading

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In: Good Links

Museums on the web are, in general, rather disappointing. At worst a selection of digital images with directions for how to get to the institution, at their best, they use the potentials of the internet to create new online visitor constituent (see the Brooklyn Museum’s Myspace page for instance, http://www.myspace.com/brooklynmuseum.Continue Reading

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In: From the editors, Good Links

Haidy Geismar, NYU Map showing the location of the last 100 viewers of Materialworldblog, source www.statcounter.com Alongside this site, there are several recent additions to the Museum/Anthropology blogosphere which are definitely worth checking out (any other good links, please add to the comments below!). http://museumanthropology.blogspot.com The bi-annual journal, Museum Anthropology,Continue Reading

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In: Book Reviews

García Canclini, Néstor (2001) Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. University of Minnesota Press In Consumers and Citizens, García Canclini suggests the necessity to consider how the changes in modes of consumption have altered the possibilities of citizenship in the Latin American context. Through several essays the author proposesContinue Reading

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In: Notes from the Field

An Exploration of Its Presence in a European Periphery Magda Craciun, PhD Student in Material Culture, University College London  e.craciun@ucl.ac.uk A widespread phenomenon, re-production is morally and legally contested and combated, culturally derided, and socially dismissed as belonging to the lower social strata. I am interested in approaching it inContinue Reading

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In: Conferences and other events

The Death of Taste, ICA, London November 23-24 2006, examines the work of making, styling and fashioning taste within the context of increasingly speeded-up fashion trends and the constant plundering of the recent past. It combines academics from the fields of material culture, sociology and fashion history with leading figuresContinue Reading