Sensitive Objects: Affects and Material Culture

Some objects stand out as personal and important to us. A packed suitcase, an inherited vase, the remains from a humanitarian aid package - things can induce affects. In this book the authors focus on material culture and on practice - on what affect does. Some of them place the issue of sensitivity in a wider from of professional interest in innovation and culture-tourism. The volume is a contribution to the upcoming field of affect research that has so far has been mainly explored psychology and cultural studies. In their texts the ethnologists and anthropologists involved show how established ways of analysing culture benefit from achievements in this field. They use fieldwork to examine how people project affects onto material objects and explore how objects trigger affects. The editors hope that this book will be read across disciplines, not only to promote the value of ethnographic work, but also to encourage theoretically informed creative empirical approaches to affect and material culture.