The Material Subject

Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist and curator of material culture and religion who researches textiles, practices and aesthetics in India and Indonesia. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK.

The Material Subject emphasises how bodily and material cultures combine to make and transform subjects dynamically. The book is based on the French Matière à Penser (MaP) school of thought, which draws upon the ideas of Mauss, Schilder, Foucault and Bourdieu, among others.

Introduction 1.Subjects, their bodies and their objects; Matter of work and technology 2. Making do and wanting: The professional diver's predicament; 3. 'Management' and its refuse; 4. Clothing choices and questioning the incorporation of habitus; Matter of heritage 5. Museum objects in motion: Colonial leftovers and French cultural politics; 6. The material shaping of women's subjectivities: Wild-silk textiles of the Marka-Dafing as a cultural heritage; Matter of politics 7. Politics matters: Matière à Politique; 8. Chronicles of a moral war: Ascetic subjectivation and formation of the Javanese state; Matter of religion 9. Opening and closing gestures: Weaving rituals that give and sustain life; 10. Devotion on the home altar as 'efficacious intimacy' in a Hindu group; Matter of knowledge 11. Anthropology of knowledge transmission beyond dichotomies: Learning and subjectivation among watchmakers in Switzerland; 12. The enskilled subject: Two paths to becoming a skilled person among the Paiwan indigenous people of Taiwan; 13 Afterword: Matter(s) of material culture