Routledge Studies in Cultural History

<p>With a focus on the object and where it is situated, in time (memory) and space (mobility), <i>Memory, Mobility, and Material Culture</i> embodies a multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach.</p><p>The chapters track the movement of the objects and their owner(s), within and between continents, countries, cities, and families. Objects have always been considered with an eye to their worth – economic, aesthetic, and/or functional. If that worth is diminished, their meaning and value disappear, they are just <i>things.</i> Yet things can still fulfil functions in our daily lives; they hold symbolic potential, from personal memory triggers, to focal points of public ritual and religion; from collectors’ obsession, to symbols of loss, displacement, and violence. By bringing into dialogue the work of specialists in ethnology, art history, architecture, and design; literature, languages, cultures, and heritage studies, this volume considers how displaced memory – the memory of refugees, migrants, and their descendants; of those who have moved from the countryside to the city; of those who have faced personal upheaval and profound social change; those who have been forced into exile or experienced major personal or collective loss – can become embodied in material culture. </p><p>This book is important reading to those interested in cultural and social history and cultural studies.</p>