The articles in this volume were originally presented in a panel entitled ‘Material Methodologies’ at the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans (November 2002). The panel was devised to tie theoretical advances in the study of the material with the possibilities of fieldwork practices. Through detailed ethnographic , we highlighted the ways in which a focus on a material world enabled us to discover new perspectives on themes within the discipline of social anthropology. Each participant’s focus was fundamentally material, from photographs in the Islands, to English trees, and Jamaican tombstones. Together, articles reflect the salience of materiality to academic analysis and life, acknowledging material forms as a potential bridge domains of knowledge and experience, and therefore as crucial tools.
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Geismar et al. (2004) studied this question.