Modes of Human Engagement with Materiality

Potentialities of Access to Things

抄録

From archeology-inspired accounts to multispecies ethnographies, recent research into materiality in anthropology has reaffirmed material rootedness of people's worlds, opening channels to holistically explore human experiences. Solid foundations have been laid to overcome agentic versus non-agentic dichotomy regarding human and nonhuman actors; non-relational perspectives facilitate the focus on how objects, in themselves, remain largely unknown to humans. This special issue aims to further develop and assess the applicability of these ideas, examining various modes of human engagement with materiality and potentialities of access to things. Scenes explored include silk-producing sites, cemeteries, pilgrims' paths, self-defense classes, care homes, and marine laboratories. Each author poses a question connected to how humans experience and understand various materialities through tangible interactions, and what meanings and forces these materialities generate in this process. The findings hint at new directions to understand and further study the meaning of being a human in-becoming in a material world.