Books in the Materializing Culture series

Moving between the 1750s and the present, this work explores the powerful role of landscape in the formation of historical class relations and national identity. The author shows how the politics of access to open spaces has implications beyond the immediate geographical areas considered.

This fascinating study focuses on the material culture of food, demonstrating how food offers a means of shaping the self not simply through consumption but in everyday forms of production, through fine dining, shopping and blogging to TV and cookbooks.

In order to take the concept of material culture seriously, its capacity to carry the past - which defines its status as culture - must be examined. Focusing on the relationship of objects with memory, this text is an attempt to understand the intersection of memory and material culture.

Aims to enhance our understanding of the role of media and technology in everyday life. This book challenges the visual approaches to culture by proposing an auditory understanding of behaviour through an ethnographic analysis of personal stereo use. It is for those seeking an approach to urban studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and more.

Focusing on developments in the visual arts over the last 80 years but drawing extensively on historical precedents, this book shows that Marxism is far subtler than is commonly assumed.

From its earliest days, Hollywood glamour in the form of make-up, hairstyles and fashion was mimicked by women throughout Britain. This is an exploration of the influence of Hollywood on British style and design.

Sexy, hedonistic and hilarious - Ann Summers parties are the ultimate girls' night in. This book investigates what really goes on at these 'special' homosocial gatherings, where heterosexual women drink, laugh, shop, play party games and talk about sex. It analyses the ways heterosexual women identify with and against each other.

In order to take the concept of material culture seriously, its capacity to carry the past - which defines its status as culture - must be examined. Focusing on the relationship of objects with memory, this text is an attempt to understand the intersection of memory and material culture.

Offers an account of the ways in which, through time, the Stonehenge landscape has been used and re-used, invested with new meanings, and has given rise to stories. The book presents a range of views and provides insights into how people shape and are shaped by the landscape.

Presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. This book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions-observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body, and identity. It provides students of anthropology and fashion with a fresh perspective on the social issues and constraints.

What goes on behind closed doors at museums? How are decisions about exhibitions made and who, or what, really makes them? This book answers these searching questions by giving a privileged look behind the scenes at the Science Museum in London. The author shows in vivid detail how exhibitions are created and how public culture is produced.

Focusing on counter and sub-cultural contexts, this book investigates the role of dress in the creation and assertion of Black identity. From the home-dressmaking of Jamaican women, through to the Harlem Renaissance and contemporary streetstyles, Black Britons, African Americans and Jamaicans have been establishing a variety of Black identities.

Offering a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food, and memory, this book deals with anthropology's focus on issues of embodiment, memory, and material culture, in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture. It argues for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory.

Explores what happens when the often contradictory motivations behind style and survival strategies are brought together. Following the life stories of goods as they travel into and through second-hand sites, this book looks at the work of traders, as well as consumers' investments in second-hand merchandise.

Presents an examination of the role computers play in our domestic lives. This book deals with questions such as: do computers cause or help to resolve arguments? What role does gender play? Who spends the most time with the computer? And how does the importance of home computers change as we move from childhood through careers to retirement?

A cross-cultural analysis of tree symbolism. Drawing on ethnographic studies, the book explores the processes through which trees are used as metaphors of identity and continuity. The perceptions of trees in various cultures provide insights into how human societies conceptualize nature.

Examining Japanese parks in the context of historical examples of cultural display in Europe, the US and Australia, as well as other Asian examples, this book calls into question the easy adoption of postmodern theory as an ethnocentrically Western phenomenon. It shows that Japan has given theme parks a new mode of interpretation.

This text explores the construction of gender in Thailand and in particular the role Bangkok plays in establishing gender relations for the whole of the country. It examines the historical and cultural processes underlying Thai public culture, including historical theme parks.

Anthropology is usually associated with the study of society, but the anthropologist must also understand people as individuals. This highly original study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely distinct from psychology and other perspectives on the person.

Whether it is our attraction to pharaonic art, the pyramids or practices of mummification, Egypt's unique understanding of materiality speaks to us across space and time. This book explores the fundamental existential questions that not only preoccupied ancient Egyptians, but continue to fascinate people today.

The Acropolis has captured the imaginations of travellers for centuries. However, it is is viewed in the context of 5th-century BC Athenian society, while the many international meanings are overlooked. This book examines the site as an agent for negotiations of power on an international level.

From road rage in Western Europe to the struggles of cab driving in Africa to the emergence of Black identity in the US, this book examines the humanity of the car, which includes the jealousies, gender differences, fears and moralities that cars give rise to. It provides an informed sense of cars as a significant form of material culture.

Adopting a material culture perspective, this study examines the social and cultural history of the Soviet period, looking particularly at social relations and the way individuals variously appropriated architectural space and material culture in order to cope with daily life.

Photographs have had an integral and complex role in many anthropological contexts, from fieldwork to museum exhibitions. This book examines how approaching anthropological photographs as "history" can offer both theoretical and empirical insights into these roles.

From road rage in Western Europe to the struggles of cab driving in Africa to the emergence of Black identity in the US, this book examines the humanity of the car, which includes the jealousies, gender differences, fears and moralities that cars give rise to. It provides an informed sense of cars as a significant form of material culture.