Life Materials

The Social Life
of Materials
The Social
Life of
Materials
Studies in materials
and society
Edited by Adam Drazin
and Susanne Kchler
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
L ON DON N E W DE L H I N E W Y OR K SY DN EY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of
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First published 2015
Adam Drazin and Susanne Kchler, 2015
Adam Drazin and Susanne Kchler have asserted their rights under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work.
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-9263-7
PB: 978-1-4725-9264-4
ePDF: 978-1-4725-9265-1
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Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Contents
List of figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Preface
viii
x
xiv
xvi
Part1 Introduction
To live in a materials world
Adam Drazin
Part2 On materials innovation
29
Whats in a plant leaf? a case study of materials

innovation in New Zealand
31
Graeme Were
Pharmaceutical matters: The invention of informed

materials
Andrew Barry
Toward designing new sensoaesthetic materials:

The role of materials libraries
Mark A. Miodownik
The science of sensory evaluation: An ethnographic

critique
David Howes
49
69
81
vi
Contents
Part3 From substance to form

6
Wild silk indigo wrappers of Dogon of Mali:

An ethnography of materials efficacy and design
Laurence Douny
Fashioning plastic
Tom Fisher
Dressing God: Clothing as material of religious

subjectivity in a Hindu group
99
101
119
137
Urmila Mohan
Part4 The subversion of form by

substance
153
Introducing Fairtrade and Fairmined gold: An attempt

to reconfigure the social identity of a substance
155
Peter Oakley
10
Subversive plasticity: Materials histories and

cultural categories in the Philippines
175
Deirdre McKay, with Padmapani Perez, Ruel Bimuyag and

Raja Shanti Bonnevie
11

Diamonds, machines and colours: Moving materials

in ritual exchange
193
Filipe Calvo
Part5 Ecologies of materials

social lives
209
12
Sustainability and the co-constitution of substances

and subjects
211
Sarah Wilkes
Contents
13
The peony and the rose: Social change and fragrance

marketing in Chinas bath market
Chan Chow Wah
14
The woollen blanket and its imagined values:

Material transformations of woollen blankets
in contemporary art
vii
227
245
Fiona P. McDonald
Part6 Conclusion
265
15
Materials: The story of use
267
Susanne Kchler
Index
283
List of figures
1.1 In the Economic Botany Collection, Kew, with Mark Nesbitt
1.2 In the Sustainable Materials Library, Kingston, with Jakki Dehn

acting as a human mediator to the collection
1.3 In the Design Materials Library, Central St Martins, London
1.4 In the Institute of Making Materials Library
11
4.1 Figure showing scale, structure, psychophysical properties and

physical properties
75
6.1 Dogon gwara dyer showing a tombe toun wrapper worn

by old women as it contains few stripes of silk (here mixed
with cotton)
102
6.2 After being boiled and dried, wild silk lumps are thoroughly
beaten to remove dust (remaining dried gum and potash)
105
6.3 Inside of a goro dialen cocoon showing caterpillars and moths
107
6.4 Crushed indigo leaves made into balls are used to dye cloth
and as medicine
111
6.5 Dogon wild silk wrappers (mixed with cotton) on young women
and displaying batono ti ban (left), meaning the usefulness of
a mother never ends, and an Obama girl (right) wearing
pin ba da fila (the stripe with two white extremities) and
moyo le zama daa ben (tolerance brings people together)
113
8.1 Priests greeting deities in the morning with mirror and perfume,
Mayapur, 2013
139
8.2 Students practising turban construction, Mayapur Academy, 2012 142

8.3 Student dressing mannequins of Krishna and Radha, Mayapur
Academy, 2012
143
8.4 Women and children working in the sewing room, Mayapur, 2012
146
10.1 Everyday Objects exhibition postcard, 2012
176
10.2 Replica Kalinga bongeh in plastic, Lubuagan, Kalinga, April 2012
186
List of figures
ix
13.1 Liushen soap
227
13.2 Michael Edwards fragrance wheel
230
13.3 Hanfu fans in Singapore
239
14.1 Queens Coronation Hudsons Bay Point Blanket
248
14.2 Marie Watt Blanket Stories Blanket Stories: Three Sisters,

Cousin Rose, Four Pelts, and Sky Woman, 2005
253
14.3 Tracey Williams. MY SHIP | Tnei Wakahra, 2009
256
Andrew Barry is professor of Human Geography at University College London.

His research interests centre on the political geography of materials, social
and anthropological theory and the role of the natural sciences in political
and economic life. His most recent books are Material Politics: Disputes along
the Pipeline and Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural
Sciences (ed. with Georgina Born).
Filipe Calvo is an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of International
and Development Studies in Switzerland. His PhD is from the University of
Chicago. He has published on value, diamonds and corporate mining in the
journal Anthropological Theory and in edited volumes.
Laurence Douny is an honorary research fellow and former postdoctoral
Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at UCL Anthropology. Since 2008, she has
been conducting research on wild silk and indigo dyeing materials, techniques
and design in West Africa among the Dogon and Marka-Dafing of Mali and
Burkina Faso as well as the Hausa of Northern Nigeria.
Adam Drazin lectures in the Department of Anthropology at UCL, where he
coordinates the MA in Materials, Anthropology and Design. He has worked at
several universities as well as for multinational companies as a design anthropology consultant, including HP Labs and Intel; and he is external examiner at
Glasgow School of Art, department of product design. This career has resulted
in a diverse range of research experience. He has mainly published on the material culture of the Romanian home, and on issues of practice and training in
design anthropology. His most recent publication is a paper on design concepts
in Design Anthropology (ed. Wendy Gunn, Ton Otto and Rachel Smith), and an
edited volume Exhibit Ireland: Ethnographic Collections in Ireland, published by
Wordwell Press.
Tom Fisher is professor in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent
University, where he coordinates research. After study in art and design and
some years running a small craft business, he earned his PhD at the University
of York in Sociology, concentrating on the role of plastics in consumption
xi
experiences. His work draws on his background in craft practice and stresses
the materiality of our interactions with things, and therefore their design. It has
led to a book on the everyday reuse of packaging, as well as funded research
on sustainable clothing (Defra) and industrial heritage (AHRC). His current work
is focusing on embodied knowledge; the ethics of design and technologies; and
design, culture and innovation.
David Howes is an anthropologist based at Concordia University, Montreal and
the director of the Centre for Sensory Studies. The Centre provides a collaborative interdisciplinary platform for research in the social life and history of the
senses, multisensory aesthetics, and the development of technologies for
expanding the sensorium in innovative ways. A pioneer of the anthropology of the
senses, Howes has carried out field research on medicine and the five senses
in Northwestern Argentina, the sensory life of things in the Pitt Rivers Museum,
Oxford, and the comparative study of sensory orders in Melanesia. An important
further branch of his research concerns the application of sensory ethnography to market research. Howes is one of the founding editors of The Senses
and Society journal, co-author of a widely acclaimed (and translated) book on
the cultural history and anthropology of smell called Aroma and the author of
Sensual Relations. He recently published Ways of Sensing: Understanding the
Senses in Society (with Constance Classen).
Susanne Kchler is professor in Anthropology and Material Culture at
University College London. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Papua
New Guinea and Eastern Polynesia over the past 25years, studying creativity,
innovation and futurity in political economies of knowledge from a comparative
perspective. Her more recent work on the history of the take-up, in the Pacific, of
cloth and clothing as new material has focused on social memory and material translation, and on the epistemic nature of materials and its role in long-term
social change. Over the past five years she has extended the comparative remit
of this research to science based materials innovation, commodification and
consumption. Working from within material culture studies, her work is ethnographic in orientation and is influenced by a close reading of German and French
writing on epistemology and the culture of things.
Fiona P. McDonald completed her PhD at University College London in 2014
in the Department of Anthropology (Material Culture and Visual Anthropology).
She is currently a researcher at New Knowledge Organization, a non-profit
academic think-tank in New York City (United States). Her research on woollen
blankets builds upon her graduate studies in Art History (Canada) and Ma-ori
xii
Material Culture (Aotearoa New Zealand) to consider the social specificity of the
aesthetic transformations of materials in contemporary art, craft, and customary Indigenous regalia. Fiona is a founding member of the curatorial collective,
Ethnographic Terminalia; a group that curates exhibitions at the intersection of
art and anthropology. Fionas areas of interest are: Indigenous material and
visual culture, contemporary Indigenous art, museum studies, Mori Taonga,
Tlingit At.owu, material culture theory, ethnographic object analysis, curatorial
studies, and performance theory.
Deirdre McKay is a senior lecturer in Social Geography at Keele University,
and was previously at the Australian National University. Her research work
has focused on place-based experiences of globalization and development,
especially in the Philippines. Her books, Global Filipinos (Indiana 2012) and
Archipelago of Care (Indiana, 2016) explore the affective texture of the global
in the daily lives of Filipino migrants. With her colleague and collaborator
Padmapani Perez (University of the Philippines, Baguio), she has only recently
started exploring the social significance of materials.
Padmapani Perez is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the
Philippines, and co-owner of the Mountain Cloud bookstore. Ruel Bimuyag is
an Ifugao cultural practitioner, musician, award-winning photographer and ecoguide. Based in Baguio City, he guides visitors across the Philippine Cordillera
Central and collects plastic art, as well as making his own plastic crafts. Raja
Shanti Bonnevie, drummer and eco-guide for the Baguio City region, is completing his Masters in Development Studies at the University of the Philippines.
Mark A. Miodownik is professor of Materials and Society and director of
Institute of Making at UCL where he teaches and runs a research group. He
received his PhD in turbine jet engine alloys from Oxford University in 1996, and
since then has published more than 100 research papers. His current research
interests include smart materials, innovative manufacturing, and sensoaesthetic
materials. Prof Miodownik is a broadcaster and writer: he gave the 2010 Royal
Institution Christmas Lectures, and regularly presents BBC TV programmes on
engineering and materials. In 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy
of Engineering.
Urmila Mohan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, University
College London. She has a Masters degree in Art (Pennsylvania State University,
United States) and undergraduate degrees in design (National Institute of Design,
India) and anthropology (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand). She is
interested in the philosophy and use of materials in art, craft and design as well
as how these practices relate to sociality and identity.
xiii
Peter Oakley is research leader for the School of Material at the Royal College
of Art. His research interests cover: the manufacture and retail of luxury goods,
specialist manufacturing clusters and communities, the technical analysis of
substances and the management, presentation and commercial exploitation
of heritage. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, an Honorary
Research Fellow at UCL and a member of the advisory boards for the Sustainable
Luxury Forum and Making Futures. He is currently conducting research on the
fine jewellery and watch industries and its supply chains and on interactions
between craft practice and digital technologies.
Chan Chow Wah has a Masters of Science in Social Anthropology from London
School of Economics. He is an independent scholar with research interests
in consumption, marketing, religion and history of Singapore and Overseas
Chinese. His recent book and documentary is Light on the Lotus Hill, documenting a forgotten dimension of Singapore wartime history.
Graeme Were is senior lecturer in anthropology and museum studies at the
University of Queensland, Australia. He has conducted extensive research on
material innovation in Melanesian society as well as the significance of pattern
across the Pacific. His book Lines That Connect was published with University
of Hawaii Press in 2010, and he was co-author of Pacific Pattern (Thames and
Hudson 2005). He has guest-edited, and published in a range of journals including Textile, Journal of Material Culture, and Journal of Visual Communication.
Sarah Wilkes is the research manager and post-doctoral researcher at the
Institute of Making, University College London. She completed her PhD in the
Department of Anthropology at UCL, in collaboration with industrial partners at
the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3). Her current work focuses on
the ways in which perceptions of risk, health and sustainability inform the selection and use of materials in the United Kingdom. Research interests include the
governance of materials, the relationship between materials and personhood,
and interdisciplinary engagement between materials research and design.
Acknowledgements
This book has taken several years to come together and the work it contains
has taken even longer. The work has arisen from the ideas, suggestions and
contributions of a wide range of people and networks who have been pushing the concerns of cultures of materials forward in recent years. The editors
would like to acknowledge in particular the wide range of people who over the
years have contributed to the study of materials at University College London.
These various materials experts have included Linda Barron, Margaret Pope,
Jakki Dehn, Mark Nesbitt, Sophie Thomas, Kaori OConnor, Geoff Hollington,
Glenn Adamson, Zoe Laughlin, Lucy Norris, Sevra Davis, Dinah Eastop, Camilla
Sundwall, Chris Lefteri, and Victor Buchli. We would also like to thank Anais
Bloch, who worked through various early drafts of the book cover.
Graeme Were would like to acknowledge the kind support of Scion Research
for the work presented in Chapter2, especially Professor Roger Newman who
provided invaluable assistance and knowledge of harakeke and materials
innovation.
Chapter 3 was previously published in Theory, Culture and Society 22:1
(2005), and is reprinted here with permission. Andrew Barry would like to thank
Georgie Born, Monica Greco, Mariam Fraser, Sarah Kember, Mick Halewood
and Celia Lury; the referees of Theory, Culture and Society for their comments
on an earlier draft of the article; and Alan Blackwell of Crucible for his support
and collaboration. Thanks also to ArQule and Camitro and, in particular, Mike
Tarbit, Matt Segall, Mark Ashwell and Steve Gallion for the support, interest and
comments.
Chapter 4 was previously published in the journal Pure and Applied Chemistry
(2007) Vol. 79(10): 163541, and is reprinted here with permission. Mark A.
Miodownik wishes to thank UCL and all members of the Institute of Making, past
and present.
An earlier draft of the first half of Chapter 5 was published in the Proceedings
of the Ethnographic Practices in Industry (EPIC) 2013 conference (Howes
2013). David Howes wishes to thank the copyright holder of this material, the
American Anthropological Association, for allowing its reproduction here. In
Acknowledgements
xv
being transposed, however, it has been substantially modified and expanded.

The cultural history of plastic presented in the concluding section of this essay
derives in large part from his introduction to A Cultural History of the Senses in
the Modern Age, 19202000 (Howes 2014).
The first part of Laurence Dounys ongoing research on West African wild silk,
presented in Chapter 6, was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (20092012) and
supervised by Dr Claude Ardouin at The British Museum (19502011). Dr Douny
is grateful to Dr Guindo and Dr Maiga at the CNRST and Mamadou Diawara and
Dr Sissoko at Point Sud in Bamako; Dr Some, Dr Basile Guisson and Dr Assimi
Salawu at the CNRST Ouagadougou from whom she obtained research permits
and research affiliation. She would like to thank Salif Sawadogo, Hamadou Djibo
and all her Dogon and Marka-Dafing informants in Mali and Burkina Faso and
Violet Diallo (GAP/Bamako) for copy-editing.
Tom Fisher gratefully thanks Mara Jos Ossandn for permission to refer in
detail to her blog La Vie en Plastique.
More than one funding body provided support that facilitated the research
in this volume. Urmila Mohans fieldwork in India was partially funded by a
20122013 India Travel Award by the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Peter Oakleys fieldwork was undertaken
with financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Sarah Wilkes would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the AHRC, who
funded the research presented in Chapter 12.
Filipe Calvo would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments,
SSRC-IDRF and FCT/MCT for funding different moments of this research, as well
as Tracey Rosen, Susan Gal, Claudia Cruz Leo, and the Semiotics Workshop
at the University of Chicago for insightful criticism on previous versions of this
chapter.
Fiona P. McDonald dedicates Chapter 14 to all of the international artists that
work and have worked with woollen blankets in their art. In particular, sincere and
warm thanks are due to Marie Watt and Tracey Williams for sharing their material
experiences so openly.
Preface: Materials
transformations
Adam Drazin
Why conduct ethnographic studies of materials and society?

What disciplinary approaches are there to materials?
What anthropological approaches are there to materials?
What terms and terminologies can be used?
Why conduct ethnographic studies

of materials and society?
We may be in the midst of a materials revolution, a historical moment of innovation and change in the diversity of materials available to us, and in the constitution
of the materials which already surround us. Professional fields such as materials science, engineering, manufacturing and design are feeling the impact of
this revolution at the moment, which could compare with the digital revolution
in its implications. It is however not only a revolution in science but a social and
cultural revolution.
As they have emerged into public consciousness, it is increasingly being
realized how important materials are to many dimensions of policy, economics, ethics and the public sphere in general (Hudson 2011). This is for several
reasons, which concern the macro-politics, the micro-politics, and the experience of materials. At a global level, certain specific materials have come to be
crucial ingredients in modern technologies. Mobile phones and touchscreens,
for example, depend upon iridium and other very specific substances. Many
such materials have very limited sources in the world, or even a single source.
Frequently, these sources are located in zones of political and economic
disturbance, or places where there is a risk of war or revolution. The worlds
contemporary dependence on certain materials heralds repetitions of historical cycles of conflict. If we recall how in recent years global conflicts have
Preface: Materials transformations
xvii
been linked to global dependence on, and interests in, oil and petrochemical
materials, then why should not similar conflicts happen in future around other
comparable materials? Materials usage is not politically or economically neutral
and especially in material monocultures.
Materials do not only have macro-politics and geopolitics, but micro-politics.
They are one of the media through which corporate involvement in everyday
life can be felt. Corporations are beginning to own certain kinds of substances,
those which it can be claimed have been either created or discovered. It is not
only products and things which are owned in our lives, but increasingly the stuff
itself of which things are made. Some companies (as David Howes notes in this
volume) are also tightening their grip on materials through their branding of, and
intellectual property ownership of, certain sensations and senses.
Moving away from private corporations, materials have also become more of
a focus for NGOs and social movements. The aspiration for something called
sustainability has grown ever more powerful in everyday life and made people
more aware of materials. As more people profess to consider and examine their
worlds in terms of sustainability, they perceive more clearly the materials and
substances of which the world comprises.
In terms of individual experience and imagination, this moving territory, ranging from uniform grey goo to exciting rainbows of possible substances, can be
problematic. A putative materials revolution means that a person can no longer
be certain of what things are made from. If you have ever washed something at
the wrong temperature, printed the wrong ink onto the wrong paper, used the
wrong kind of flour in a recipe or melted new kitchen implements and then felt
that this was a mistake on your part, then you will have experienced a changing
materials world. Our capacity to fulfil tasks and live up to our responsibilities to
others can depend upon knowing how substances behave. Materials innovation
reveals and challenges those doxic material mappings we carry around with us
and makes us reconsider experience.
In materials innovation, there is a particular gap between the conception of a
material, existing as raw stuff, and the moment when it comes to be a part of
life as something used. Materials, new or old, can be seen to succeed or fail in
this sense (Kchler, this volume). Very many materials have not yet succeeded,
the kinds of materials that are exciting laboratory oddities. In some ways, we
are experiencing a political divide around materials. On one side are those who
favour monocultures of mass-produced, known materials. On the other side is
a strange coalition of different groups who celebrate materials diversity through
science, art, laboratory work, crafts, design, historical discovery, localism or
simply playfulness.
xviii
The subject of materials is a pervasive one, not one which can be easily relegated to specific domains of life, or contained behind certain boundaries. People
are constituted in materials. Information is constituted in materials. Objects are
constituted in materials, some more evidently and some less, from televisions
to touchscreens to jeans to wedding rings to bricks. In this sense, the study of
materials transcends the study of any individual material. It is a field that reaches
into questions of ontology and being, epistemology and knowledge.
However, materials have historically proved an evasive topic of study for
social science. Often, materials have seemed un-social, the raw stuff from which
people would be able to shape cultural and social life, but in themselves not
cultural. Materials have been subject (and victim) of the worship of pure nature.
In this volume, we relocate materials. In social terms, they are no longer raw.
There is therefore a need for an academic ecosystem of diverse ideas and
approaches around materials. Social studies of materials and society, as are to
be found in this volume, are just one of the diverse ways in which we need to
look at materials. They amount to a socially empirical approach. There is the risk
of being over-dependent on laboratory-based and studio-based approaches
to materials, which conceive of them as having inevitable intrinsic properties
that will determine social and cultural implications or effects. We here celebrate
socially empirical studies, and especially ethnographic studies, because they
are the only way in which we can begin to observe what actually happens around
materials, test whether our ideas apply and see just why materials matter. It is
important to ask what is it that materials actually do?
Throughout this book, different authors present their own observations and
studies of certain materials. What they also do is explore different ways of thinking about materials. There are a wide range of ways in which one can think about
materials, and we need to find more such approaches. Through this book, hopefully every reader can begin to ask for themselves whether they are confident
they know what materials are, and what their own approach is. And if they do not
yet know, they can be helped to see some possible answers for themselves.
What disciplinary approaches

are there to materials?
A number of disciplines have responded to the prospect of a materials revolution
by outlining more focused approaches to what they are and what they do. Such
approaches have particular characteristics, and show something of the variety
of ways in which materials can be conceived and approached epistemologically.
xix
We cannot attempt any kind of comprehensive bibliography here, just a few

windows into different relevant areas of work.
Materials science and engineering is evidently a key field, where a scientific
perception and analysis of materials is prevalent and well developed. There are
a number of different approaches within this discipline. In Cambridge, one influential approach is provided by the team coalescing around Mike Ashby (Ashby
and Johnson 2009), and popularized and promulgated with particular software
tools known as CEU EduPack. Within engineering, there is a particular attention to the chemical composition of materials and structure at different levels
(atomic, nano-, crystalline, etc.). Materials science often groups materials by
category. The categories may in some sense overlap, or be sorted into macroand micro- categories, but have a utility and commonsense nature about them.
Hence stones, foams, metals, ceramics, plastics could be deployed. One
can also consider more abstract categories such as natural materials, when it
is difficult to distinguish such materials as wood, resin, rubber, or shell, and such
categories reveal the grey areas of engineerings approach where more flexibility is required. The field also has difficulty deciding how to incorporate many
phenomena that other disciplines would consider very important as materials,
such as textiles.
The capacity exists within engineering to define and measure materials properties and to map and locate materials according to such properties as acoustic
qualities, density, tensile strength and so forth. In this sense, practically anything
that can be quantitatively measured can be seen as a property. Another implication is that practically anything physical in the world can fit into the schema.
From an engineering point of view, you can take any observed situation and
reduce it to its constituent materials and their properties. No particular aspect of
a situation is more or less of a material, unlike within many cultural paradigms
where certain things at certain times are seen as materials more. There is also a
strong degree of comparability, and in some cases even substitutability, of materials in engineering work. It is possible to begin to see materials as the answer
to a utilitarian problem. If you need a material for a task, which needs to have a
certain density, strength, and thermodynamic properties, then through a quantitative analysis of these properties, one may produce a selection of possible
alternatives.
While the greatest, significant contribution of products such as CEU Edupack
has been to classify and categorize properties, it is very explicit that the people
who have developed and use it do not consider this kind of intrinsic properties approach to be sufficient in itself. Most engineers acknowledge the need
to mitigate the more positivist tendencies of engineering. The quest for finding
xx
the right material or materials is not a journey, for them, which necessarily has
a right answer, but rather a journey in which one can avoid wrong answers
and deploy measurements and modellings to get a much better-engineered
result. Hence Ashby advocates taking several approaches in materials work,
among them Synthesis, Similarity and Innovation. By this, he means that one
should experiment with, compare and contrast, artistically experience and play
with materials, as a part of their exploration. Mark A. Miodownik (this volume) is
also one of a number of engineering voices who advocate much broader, and
socially informed, approaches.
Mainstream engineering approaches to materials have provided especially
powerful ways to model sustainability in materials. The definition of what is
sustainability here must be very specific (see Wilkes, this volume), often seen
through an analysis of the measured energy implications if a particular thing or
product is engineered in a particular way. An analysis of the energy implications
of using a material must take account of, among other things, transport, lifespan,
origins and production. This universalizing approach to the energy implications
of a material is exceptionally powerful and is an important weapon in making our
world more environmentally attuned.
Within design (which is as diverse a field as is engineering, ranging from
industrial design to service design, to arts, to graphic design), an entirely different set of paradigmatic approaches applies. The design literature is full of large,
glossy books, which are not so much analyses as catalogues of materials to
which a designer can turn for ideas or inspiration (Lefteri 2006; Howes and
Laughlin 2012). Unlike in engineering, the physical image or presence of materials comes to be very important and an appreciation of the aesthetic properties
of materials. It is impossible to produce anything remotely comprehensive, and
so there is a balance between presenting materials that are in some sense
typical of a category (e.g. a ceramic) and those that are somehow innovative
materials.
Many designerly materials would not from an engineering point of view be
considered as materials but rather as composites. Hence materials such as
textiles, various kinds of sculpted cardboard or layered wood are also materials
from a design point of view. These types of thing-manifested materials expose
the fallacy of the idea that a complete distinction can be made between form
and substance. They are convergent. Likewise, design concerns itself equally
with the experience of people who use and work with designed products and
services. Materials often speak for themselves, and there is a resistance to
explaining them in terms for example of abstract properties. Hence experience
is ever more as an entry point into materials and categories of materials (Karana
xxi
etal. 2014). Where an engineer may distinguish the material as thing from the
material properties, using the one to explain the other, in design this distinction
may be less clear.
Both engineering and design are especially concerned with certain macrocategories of materials, which are not definitive but ways of considering
significant issues in contested ways. Such categories may include sustainable
materials, natural materials, bio materials, innovative materials, smart materials.
The persistent tropes of naturalness, artificiality, and smartness, help to translate the implications of the incipient materials revolution into design-suggestive
social or cultural terms.
Like engineering and design, philosophy has begun to address the implications of the putative materials revolution. The most common suggestion is that
experience of materials is changing at an ontological level. In the past, in a world
where materials were only rarely invented or discovered, where many materials
were locally sourced and the possibilities for mixing and reinventing them was
likewise relatively slow, you could be fairly sure of knowing the properties of any
particular material you encountered. This predictability rendered materials as in
some sense reactive. Their properties would be what Leibniz would call passive,
appearing in pre-determined and pre-intended uses in reaction to human action.
For a number of reasons, however, we can no longer depend on the predictability of materials. The conception of materials as active (Bennett 2010), as agentic,
and as much more causal in social and epistemological situations, can be seen
as a vitalist materialist perspective:
Is it not possible to imagine matter quite differently: as perhaps a lively materiality that is self-transformative and already saturated with the agentic capacities
and existential significance that are typically located in a separate, ideal and
subjectivist realm? (Coole 2010: 92)
Coole and Frost (2010) explore the range of philosophical presentations of

this phenomenon, which comprises one of the contemporary challenges to
the notion of the Kantian subject (Poe 2011). If materials are something which
can help constitute subjectivity, then this reverses some of the philosophical
assumptions of the past two centuries. Materials come to be active ontologically,
and in political participation.
All three of these disciplines Engineering, Design and Philosophy are lacking in empirical observations of materials in everyday human situations, because
they depend upon experimentation, studio work and the academy. The immense
literatures within archaeology, art, and craft (which, with apologies, we cannot
broach here) each take a much more hands-on approach to specific materials.
xxii
Anthropological approaches meanwhile are the main concern of this volumes

contributors.
What anthropological approaches

to materials are there?
As well as setting out ethnographic studies of materials, the contributors to this
volume present a range of new epistemological approaches to materials, largely
from an anthropological perspective. Their work is however based on a longerterm tradition of studies of materials in social science. Historically, a number of
approaches are particularly worth mentioning.
Leroi-Gourhan (1943, 1945)provides the starting point for a modern cultural
appreciation of materials and matter, and reveals both positive aspects and difficulties with an anthropology of materials. Leroi-Gourhan is concerned with the
question of the universality of technical tendencies in objects, being strongly
concerned with archaeology and a material culture approach to society. LeroiGourhans method involves the conundrums of how to approach social questions
through things which are material, which exist in anthropology both as social
artefact and as social data. Through an exploration of the technical domain, he
proposes one is able to conceive of the interrelation of human groups with environments and produce subjective modellings of operational sequences, which
produce particular material and social forms.
Leroi-Gourhans ideas are very contemporary in the ways in which they deal
with the social problematics of materials. Leroi-Gourhans notion of matter (la
matire) correctly clouds any clear distinction between conceptual and material.
His approach is also admirably processual. However, in spite of his intentions
there arises still a certain dualism, in which a need arises to deconstruct notions
of nature and environment. In Leroi-Gourhans terms, materials still fall somewhere between the category of the environmental or natural, and the category of
the technical or resource. There remains the notion of materials as raw, unprocessed, awaiting the human hand as the magic ingredient that is to render them
somehow cultural.
Through the mid-twentieth century, within the Anglo-American tradition of
anthropology, the study of materials declined a little, as semiotic and linguistic approaches in anthropology, alongside an emphasis on production within
economic anthropology, gained the ascendancy to the detriment of some
other aspects of material culture. The revival of material culture interests from
the 1980s at first occurred with an emphasis on objects and goods, more than
xxiii
materials (Hahn and Soentsen 2011). Wagner describes the 1990s, for example,
as a period of marginalization of materials (2001; cited in Hahn and Soentgen
2011: 24). From the 1990s, however, a range of work brought concepts back
on the radar which opened the door to a better appreciation of materials, especially work on properties and embodiment. One important earlier example in the
Scandinavian tradition is Fredrik Barths work (1990), which provided detailed
localized ethnographies demonstrating the ways in which making with different
materials can be generative of meaningfulness. Barth discusses materials as
ways to significantly rework structures and categories of meaning in embodied
acts.
The French praxeological tradition of examining the notion of technical action,
begun by Leroi-Gourhan, also remained very active and unfolded through
several generations of critics in journals such as Techniques et Culture. Pierre
Lemonniers work (2012) has in particular placed emphasis on the role of materials within the understanding of social action, techniques and skills. This school
of anthropological approach has always advocated ways of approaching cultural
and social contexts that take account of materials intrinsically as a part of modelling action. Hence materials are situated as one of the foci of anthropological
and ethnographic activity, and one of the lenses through which one begins to
perceive culture itself.
From the late 1990s, the work of Michael Taussig and Marilyn Strathern, in very
different ways, proved beneficial to exploring materials. Through an emphasis
on properties, both of these thinkers advance and problematize intersections
between notions of knowledge and experience, between global and local. For
Taussig (2008), an understanding of localized conceptions of what properties
do, is one of the ways to resituate anthropological understandings of experience as, rather, understandings of potentially oppressive socioeconomic forces
of globalizing capitalism. This argument is most coherently advanced in his work
on indigo, the substance and the colour. The glorious colour of indigo, he argues,
has a literally magical subversive capacity, and in many ways the Western world
works to suppress its dangers.
Marilyn Strathern has also helped to shift anthropological conceptions of
materials. While we cannot in a short space summarize her ideas in themselves,
we can consider some of their implications. One of the fundamental questions
that Stratherns work addresses is What makes a person? Rather than considering such entities as given, she points out how persons can be dependent
upon the convergence of substances, properties and property relations in society (Strathern 1999). The science of new reproductive technologies (Strathern
1992)is one example of the prior anticipation of persons through perception of
xxiv
materials. Like Taussig then, Strathern models one way in which material properties and property relations intersect and are evidenced in social effects. Second,
she addresses the problematic inclination for material aspects of social life to
be seen to represent universalizable qualities, while the quality of diversity is
ascribed to human groups (Leroi-Gourhans ideas, among others, imply this
difficulty). By contrast, Stratherns work has enabled anthropology to scrutinize
how notions of universality and of diversity are themselves culturally negotiated.
Hence, she draws attention to questions about when cultures see themselves
as pluralistic or monolithic, and how a diversifying world of properties may relate
to reconceiving society.
A range of work through the 1990s and since 2000 moves attention from
properties and more towards materials themselves. Tilley (1999) is one of
these thinkers. He develops arguments to reconsider the cultural effectiveness
of materials when they are categorized as types of matter and conceptually
interconnected in metaphorical relationships. Rendered as metaphors, materials come to be not only ways of doing but ways of thinking and understanding,
becoming a part of the architecture of ontologies and cosmologies. A second
pillar of Tilleys work, also developed by other archaeologists and anthropologists (see Bradley 2000)challenges the notion of materials as separable from
things that are artefactual or artificial. There is a long tradition in anthropology of deconstructing the notion of the natural, especially within rethinkings of
gender. Tilley brings this critique into material culture studies, by challenging
distinctions made between, for example, different stones in an archaeological
landscape those which previously were seen as artefactual or monumental,
and those which were seen as not worked upon by people and hence natural. By contrast, Tilley considers a landscape or environment which comprises
in materials with which people engage in different ways. This leads towards
a phenomenological position on culture (Tilley and Bennett 2004).Taking a
more phenomenological approach challenges the idea that biographical
approaches are adequate for a study of materials, and undermines some
of Leroi-Gourhans initial work in the field. Recent studies do not necessarily
appreciate materials by asking where they come from, what their social journeys are, or what happens first and what happens next. If it can be deceptive
to divide the natural from the artefactual, then of what relevance is the domain
of the technical? Similarly, and perhaps counter-intuitively, this kind of work
moves in a different direction from some work on properties by people such
as Strathern and Taussig, because it begins to undermine the relevance of
notions of exchange relationships around materials. In this sense, the anthropology of materials has fundamentally moved to critique the notion of the
social life of things (Appadurai 1986)being the key paradigm through which to
xxv
approach the material world. When one focuses on materials before objects,
different concerns, tensions and problems emerge.
Tim Ingold (2012, 2007)has done perhaps more than anyone to put materials
per se back on the map of social science, as subjects of inquiry in themselves.
Materials are an integral aspect of what Gosden refers to as Ingolds ecological perspective, looking at the rhythms that exist in different areas of life which
help create and grow things within a series of echoing forms (2006: 430). In
this work, notions of social life as experiential, and the idea of flow, are integral.
Ingold retains a sense of environment as universalizable in description, such that
similar materials in different places matter, coupled with a localist poetics. In a
2012 article, he argues that the study of materials in anthropology will rebalance
a past emphasis in the discipline on discrete material object forms, which has
among other things helped to undermine the appreciation of persons as material
entities. Re-awakening our sensibilities to the fact that we experience the world
as a knitted fabric of textures, colours, and properties which are embedded in a
materials consciousness, Ingolds work has opened the space of debate about
how social scientists can, and should, appreciate materials. The contributors to
this volume, in different ways, respond to this call.
In brief, at the time of writing, an anthropologist, or other social scientist, has a
choice of intellectual tools to engage with materials. One can look first at techniques,
often with the implication of an emphasis on acts of making in the world; one can
discuss material properties as social and cultural phenomena, in which substances
and materials are often the means by which material properties, social property,
and intellectual property, are conveyed, exchanged and demonstrated in politicized
networks and frameworks; one can consider material metaphors and explore the
experience of materials and convergent categories; and one can draw on notions
of flow, experience and phenomenology in ethnographic work to aspire to a more
cosmological approach to materials. The long and the short of it is, however, that one
must first conduct some kind of empirical research, to observe materials, substances,
properties and senses. The role of the anthropologist is often to ground theory and
knowledge through convergent acts of observation and interpretation.
What terms and terminologies can be used?

This history of ideas has resulted in a specific set of terminologies, which it is
important to outline. Each discipline works with materials in an utterly different
environment, and each anthropologist has wrestled with local and particular
words and terms for materials; so the authority of particular materials languages
can depend on where you are standing. Nonetheless, it is important to propose
the ways in which we can communicate because, in exploring the kinds of terms
xxvi
that are professionally used, one also begins to perceive what the issues and
points of difference may be.
When we talk of material stuff in general, the word matter is appropriate, and
does not distinguish much between types of matter. Materials, meanwhile refers
to slightly more specific categories of matter. They may be distinguished in a
number of different ways: by chemical atomic composition, chemical or crystalline structure, origins, or the ways in which they are used in a particular place.
The recognition of materials may be a question of etymology not chemistry, but
nonetheless it is the notion of discreteness among types of matter which is often
important. The term substance particularly tends to be used for material when a
material is in a dialogue with the notion of form.
When we talk of material properties, this then means the ascription of the
quality of having material effects. We have ascribed this ability to the substance
of which a thing comprises. Recent debates have focussed on discussions as
to whether properties primarily are a function of the relationships around things,
or are intrinsic and essential to things. The notion of material properties, as a
subset, then particularly focuses on the material substance.
Effects can of course take many different forms. Gell (1998) in particular
placed an emphasis on effects, meaning the cognitive and social impacts arising from an encounter with a material thing. The idea of effects thus is useful
partly because it is not very specifically defined but rather denotes a particular idea of how change happens between entities and in their engagement at
discontinuous moments, rather than continuously. The notion of effects is handy
for describing situations where change is seen to be connected to particular
happenings or events.
The word properties tends to imply that there is a sense of inevitability about
the effects or uses of materials, as if cotton must always be clothes, or plastic
always kitsch, which is not correct. Alternatively therefore, we can choose to
deploy the term tendencies, to describe and connote the sense of possibility
or probability which surrounds properties. Leroi-Gourhan (1943) distinguishes
tendencies (tendances) of materials from the facts (faits) of materials, to describe
how materials are understood as doing things actively in the world, or may be
considered as neutral and reactive in this respect. An active tendency of glass
is to conduct light into a building and also to acquire dirt and become more
murky unless cleaned. Those are active tendencies, and the glass causes the
light to be a certain way. It also may shatter and create many sharp edges, but
this latter tendency is a passive possibility, if you happen to want a sharp edge.
Tendencies can themselves be described as intrinsic or extrinsic to a thing for
example, people with a scientific education see light as an extrinsic or reactive
property. Light is in the atmosphere, and some things may reflect it, and have
xxvii
the property of shininess. Others may ascribe the lightness to the object itself,
representing this light property as intrinsic to a thing, such that a mirror might be
described as a light or bright object.
Stratherns work on properties (1999) indicates how the term typically situates the specific qualities of a thing or material in a wider set of social relations.
It is not enough in many cases to specify that a particular sensory quality exists;
rather there is the need to explain where such properties come from. Material
properties and property relations are here intermingled for the purposes of the
examination of many social environments.
The terms senses, sensoriness, or sensoriality are also frequently useful
in this domain. This terminology comes to be useful within a paradigm which
emphasizes perception and experience, either as social phenomena, or as the
prime methodological tools by which a researcher comes to examine the material world. Phenomenological approaches are especially useful here.
In practice, then, one may encounter or use the terms materials, properties, and senses, within this field and yet placing more emphasis on each
of these three terms tends to carry with it a different set of paradigmatic
assumptions.
The book
In the chapters that follow, we elaborate on these various themes. By examining particular interdisciplinary approaches, and a range of specific instances
of materials, we aim to pull apart what this territory of the study of materials
and society comprises. We set out social and cultural interpretations and understandings that arise from a focus on materials, and we criticize and problematize
those that do not fit, with reference to grounded, observed examples. If a materials revolution is impending or occurring, we hope this book will point to some
possible responses to the challenge and assist materials innovators, designers,
engineers, artists, archaeologists, makers, anthropologists and others to rise to
the choices that we face.
References
Appadurai, A. (ed.) (1986), The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ashby, M. and K. Johnson (2009), Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material
Selection in Product Design. London: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Barth, F. (1990), Cosmologies in the Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Bradley, J. (2000), An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge.
xxviii
Coole, D. and S. Frost (2010), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Gell, A. (1998), Art and Agency. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gosden, C. (2006), Material Culture and Long-Term Change, in C. Tilley, W. Keane, S.
Kchler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer (eds), Handbook of Material Culture, pp.425442.
London: Sage.
Hahn, H. P. and J. Soentgen (2011), Acknowledging Substances: Looking at the Hidden Side
of the Material World, in Philosophy of Technology, 24: 1933.
Howes, P. and Z. Laughlin (2012), Material Matters: New Materials in Design. London: Black
Dog.
Hudson, R. (2011), Critical Political Economy and Material Transformation, in New Political
Economy, 17: 373397.
Ingold, T. (2007), Materials against Materiality, in Archaeological Dialogues, 14(1): 116.
Ingold, T. (2012), Towards an Ecology of Materials, in Annual Review of Anthropology, 41:
427442.
Karana, E., O. Pedgley and V. Rignoli (eds) (2014), Materials Experience: Fundamentals of
Materials and Design. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heineman.
Lefteri, C. (2006), Materials for Inspirational Design. Hove: Rotovision.
Lemmonier, P. (2012), Mundane Objects: Materiality and Non-Verbal Communication. London:
Left Coast Press.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1943), Evolution et Techniques I: lHomme et la Matire. Paris: Albin Michel.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1945), Milieu et Technique. Paris: Albin Michel.
Poe, A. (2011), Review Essay: Things-Beyond-Objects, in Journal of French and
Francophone Philosophy, XIX(1): 153164.
Strathern, M. (1992), Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive
Technologies. London: Routledge.
Strathern, M. (1999), Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and
Things. London: Continuum.
Taussig, M. (2008), Redeeming Indigo, in Theory, Culture and Society, 25(3): 115.
Tilley, C. (1999), Metaphor and Material Culture. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Tilley, C. and W. Bennett (2004), The Materiality of Stone. Oxford: Berg.
Wagner, M. (2001), Das Material der Kunst: eine andere Geschichte der Moderne. Mnchen:
Beck.
Part1
Introduction
Chapter1
Adam Drazin
The atoms of men have already spent infinity

as part of something else and all your human fudge
is the passing of a thread through the surface of a light.
(Jack Underwood, Death Says)
Imagining a materials world

The importance of materials in the social imagination has risen and fallen
historically at particular times, and especially in reaction to enlightenment
ideas of knowing and dominating a material world through the power of mind
and body (Kchler, Chapter 15, this volume). The enlightenment and industrial revolution eras tended towards homogeneity of a few materials in society,
based on abstracted measurements and functions, while by contrast medieval
alchemy and the Romantics each celebrated a diversity of materials and material transformations. The modern technical capacity to turn lead into gold at a
molecular level, for example, would be at a conceptual level no surprise to a
medieval alchemist. Ours is therefore not necessarily the first era when matter
has been seen as potentially vibrant or living (Bennett 2010). In the following
chapters, we flesh out the reasons why materials demand special attention at
the current social moment in history and explore what ethnographic or sociocultural studies of a material look like. These studies provide examples of the
ways in which society tries to find ways to perceive and scrutinize materials,
examine the cultural implications of changes in materials uses and shifts in
the kinds of materials used, outline how notions of use itself have changed
(Kchler, this volume) and give examples of the networks and structures that
can arise around a specific material.
The Social Life of Materials
This introduction argues that a paradigm shift of knowledge can occur, in

which one sees the world as comprised of materials more than of objects
(Brown 2004). This perceptual act I consider to be the materials world, a
sub-set of the more commonly used term material world. I argue that the
materials world, as well as being deliberately evoked in academic acts or
when learning about materials in places such as materials libraries, comes
to be evident at particular moments in everyday life. There are times in many
ethnographically observed contexts when a transformation occurs between
perceiving surroundings as an agglomeration of forms or seeing them as an
agglomeration of substances.
Tim Ingold draws on James Gibsons work to describe a world of materials,
which conceives of flows and material properties coming to the fore:
Supported by the ground, the inhabitants of Gibsons account are not so much
composites of mind and body, participating at once in the material world and
the world of ideas, as immersed in a world of materials comprising earthly
substances and the aerial medium. (Ingold 2011: 116, citing Gibson 1979: 16)
Materials in practice have no absolute ends, only transformations (Hahn

and Soentgen 2011: 30)in which some aspects always remain while others
change. A materials world is one in which all is potentially a resource, a
world of potentially endless making and resistance to making. The materials
world is hence fundamentally uneasy, and to imagine it is often an act of
problematization as much as explanation. It is not necessarily a question of
existing or even becoming in the world in a fluid sense, or that materials form
a part of cosmology. Some communities such as hunter-gatherer communities may be best described as existing in such a state of becoming, with a
highly developed capacity for materials knowledge and perception of their
surroundings, as Ingold evokes. There may also be places such as craft
studios where acts-of-making can be contained and controlled. However,
in many instances the materials world is unexpected, and in an ontological sense can be deeply disturbing. Many materials demand some kind
of social control because of their uneasiness. Materials are experienced
at best like exciting curiosities, slightly disfigured, and at worst like gaping
wounds in the fabric of social life, when the perceived separation of the
noumenal and the phenomenal (Kchler, this volume) collapses. Materials
as social phenomena happen not only when wood becomes a table, or
paper becomes money, but when your table is wood, your money is paper,
and your body is flesh.
Materials libraries and the materials world

The world is a materials library, commented Zoe Laughlin as she showed us, a
group of anthropologists, around the library at the Institute of Making in London.
She was implying that the experience of visiting her library should not be simply
a visit, an experience that begins and ends at the door. It should be a lasting
personal change, enabling an enduring potential paradigm shift in ones knowledge and perception. Rather than the library being an echo of the world, into
which one goes in order to find answers, it is here rather a lens through which
one perceives the world differently and potentially changes it.
At the time of writing there are a growing number of materials libraries in
London, in the United Kingdom and in the world. Miodownik (this volume)
details many. They do not all have Zoe Laughlins philosophy, but they are all
vehicles for thinking about materials: what materials are, why they are important
and how we come to know them. Each has its own philosophy in other words.
In the London area, institutions that incorporate what might be termed a materials library, and which I visited in 20112014, include the Institute of Making, the
sustainable materials library at Kingston University, the design materials library
at Central St Martins and the economic botany collection at Kew Gardens.
Many museums meanwhile have a strong consideration of kinds of materials in
the ways their collections are organized, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum,
the British Museum, Science Museum and the Horniman Museum with its large
textiles collection, to mention but a few. Several commercial enterprises present
themselves as materials libraries in London shops, as well as online.
The idea of a materials library promises a great deal. Like the original
Alexandrian conception of a library as a bringing together of all knowledge, one
has the impression that somewhere there must exist a large, imposing building
or room, within which samples of the entirety of creations substances has been
brought together. You can imagine finding every kind of substance across the
globe and through history in a materials library adobe clays and reinforced
concrete, silicon wafers and plastic polymers, liquid mercury and silk and walnut
wood and flesh and bone and water and ... and ... and....
The ideal materials library does not exist of course, perhaps because it is
the world itself. It is rather like Borges story of a map, which, in becoming an
absolute representation of the world, is at last the same size as the world. Even
if one considers an individual object, the perception of the substance from
which it is made, as independent from the thing itself, is an act of fragmentation.
Substance and form are not separate. Brown (2004) compares objects in this
fashion to windows, shapes through which one begins to glimpse some part of
what things are actually made of.
But nonetheless the ideal materials library is being evoked in a range of institutions and places, each with its own kind of formulation, self-conception, history
and physical organization. Visiting a materials library, incorporating the moment
when you encounter the curator and are brought into a space, is a moment of
discovery of the library alongside the materials themselves. Visiting such a place
produces many questions, and I will describe some of my own such visits.
In October 2012, the Institute of Making was in the process of moving its
materials collection, but Zoe Laughlin had drawn out a set of materials which
were intended to show our visiting group of anthropologists what the library
contained. The display area being constructed for the library was planned in a
way to deliberately reduce the possibility of categorizing the samples, so that it
would be difficult to reduce them to types. The Institute proposes that we can
make great strides in knowledge by taking an experimental approach to materials, engaging physically and playfully with them. In this way, and not by trying
to pre-define certain uses or even presuming that pre-determined properties
are limiting, we may find all sorts of new uses for materials, things they can do,
as well as new structures and combinations of materials. The Institute was thus
planning to use open shelves for its exhibits, and a system of electronic tags to
track down samples as they move around. The library catalogue is not according to substance, use, appearance, or property, but simply numbered in order of
acquisition. Other information about the material is to be found in the catalogue
under this simple numbered sequence.
A visit to the Economic Botany Collection at Kew is an entirely different experience. With a group of students, I entered a modern, concrete building and
descended a ramp into the noticably cooler, temperature-controlled collection
space. A huge warehouse-size hangar greeted us, with row upon row of collection shelves (see Figure1.1). This looks like a proper materials library. At the end
of each row, a large circular handle enabled the curator, Mark Nesbitt, to move
the huge sets of shelves and enter in between. He explained how the Economic
Botany Collection is not a materials library in the strict sense. It originated in
the aspiration to explore how plants from across the world might be exploited
commercially. The hundreds of shelves house specimens that take many forms.
Old victorian jars, labelled in spidery handwriting, accompany plastic trays,
bundles of leaves and flowers, large bulbous black growths and long pieces
of wood or bark. The items in the collection, which could be called specimens
or materials or samples equally, are organized mainly by botanical genus. This
means that for some parts of the collection, they look similar a genus of plants
Figure 1.1 In the Economic Botany Collection, Kew, with Mark Nesbitt. Arrays of collected
samples demonstrate the concept of materials. Photo by Adam Drazin.
where most members take the form of trees means a row of comparable wood
samples. In other parts, a plant genus may include tree forms, small shrubs, or
flowers, and may have a bewildering diversity of forms.
Three key points need to be made here. First it is not clear what a materials
library is in an abstract sense, because they are all different, although you do
know it when you see it. They are attempts to materialize what a library is, and
simultaneously an experience of knowing. Second, it is not completely evident
what a material is. Third, and importantly, materials are more evident in the
evocation of transformations than of stasis. Transformations here occur of different kinds.
Materials libraries then are discovered as much as made. Many institutions have historically held collections organized, intentionally or unintentionally,
according to the kinds of substances they comprise. Clothing collections
and museums comprise fabrics, sometimes according to type. Design and
art exhibitions may be divided up into products of stone, ceramics or wood.
Archaeology commonly works with categories of substance. Hence the Kew
Gardens economic botany collection has only recently come to be seen as
a materials library. Likewise, when Jakki Dehn in Kingston began to collect
Figure1.2 In the Sustainable Materials Library, Kingston, with Jakki Dehn acting as a human
mediator to the collection. Photo by Adam Drazin.
together samples of sustainable materials, her aim was primarily to help

students think about and work on sustainability (Figure1.2). Subsequently, this
collection too came to be recognized as a materials library, but the term materials in that instance makes no sense without the qualifier sustainable. One
exception might be Margaret Pope, currently of Central St Martins, who has
been a pioneer in this field, deliberately establishing and maintaining a materials collection for designers when she was at the Royal College of Art beginning
some decades ago.
The negotiability of the term materials is likewise related to the perceptual
paradigms of discovery and making. Everything comprises materials, and at the
same time in any particular moment certain things are recognizable as materials while others are not. For many engineering contexts, fabrics, for example,
are not evidently materials. A material may be cotton, for example, while the
weave of the cotton is not the material itself but the structure. By contrast, in a
design school such as Central St Martins (Figure1.3), items such as corrugated
cardboard, netting or chipboard comprise materials in the sense that they are
resources for design work and design thinking. Some things, in some contexts,
are seen as composites or mixtures of two or more materials, while in other
contexts they are themselves seen as a unified material.
Figure 1.3 In the Design Materials Library, Central St Martins, London. The materials invite
physical engagement. Photo by Adam Drazin.
Hence different materials libraries present different things as materials. The

fact of the existence of this thing called a materials library is itself a defining
framework for what lies within. Asking what is this material is a question that
must run in parallel with what is this library, or, what is knowledge of this material? I suggest that the growth of these types of collections globally London is
only one place in the world where this phenomena is developing is indicative
of a widespread shift in the ways that professional cultures are perceiving and
relating to material culture.
If both materials and libraries are so evasive to define, how is it that these
places actually manage to put them on display? What do we see or experience
when we see a material? Often, we see a transformation by which I mean here
a material demonstration of a change. For example, some exhibits manifest a
material through a negotiation on uselessness and usefulness. If you want to
take an object and present a material, then a broken object does the job much
better. Fragmentation is also achieved in samples and swatches, such as
rows of square pieces too small to be used for anything.
10
Transformation can be addressed in different ways. In Kew, at the Economic

Botany Collection, individual exhibits are often arranged in arrays or sequences.
For example, the notion of rubber may at first seem to be adequately presented
by a piece of rubber. However, it is more effective to present several pieces: a
ball of raw rubber as historically collected in the Amazonian forest, followed by
pieces of processed rubber and jars of sap, followed by artefacts fashioned
from pieces of rubber, such as early hot water bottles. Some of these artefacts
represent the kinds of experimentation people undertook when exploring the
range of possible uses of rubber for example, rubber wall tiles, which never
emerged as viable commercial products. In this sequence, neither a hot water
bottle nor a large hard black ball of stuff really communicates the idea of rubber.
The sequence of processing and transformation, through which you can imagine the material changing form, and to a certain extent substance, is much more
effective in conveying rubber. In this kind of context, if rubber exists, it does not
wholly exist as a thing but rather as the idea of a material process. The process is one which is particular to that material, with material properties which
only become apparent in processualized moments of action and reaction. To
a certain extent, in this area, the material-as-process has referents and placedness. The processing of rubber comprises a global and historical journey
evoking specific sites.
This means that materials do not necessarily have consistency, even of
substance. A fibre such as cotton may undergo significant processing from
the moment of harvesting from the plant, to taking form as clothes. It has not
only changed in terms of the structure of the fibres, but has been washed and
treated in ways which affect the substance itself. And yet it remains the material
cotton throughout.
Another mode of manifestation is by transformation between forms, in a
way which expresses the meta-transformation between form and substance.
For example, the idea of cork is represented in the Institute of Making through
pieces of cork, which are raw bark from cork oak trees and from which corks
for bottles have been punched (Figure1.4). The implicit transformation in this
object conveys the idea of cork as material. It combines a sense of the work
of processing, with a transformation of utility, a commentary on the natural, as
well as a transformation between form and formlessness. On the one hand,
you have a lump of something that is not really cork per se, but rather is
a piece of tree bark from a cork oak. On the other hand, you have a bottle
top. Straddling these two forms and in between them you can apprehend the
substance as an alternative to form. Trees are cut down and bottle tops briefly
used, but materials persist.
11
Figure 1.4 In the Institute of Making Materials Library. A sample that transforms between
corks and cork oak bark demonstrates the material cork. Photo by Adam Drazin.
In some sense, the act of going into a library and coming out is being
constructed as an act of transformation between form and substance. Within
the library, materials exist. Outside the library is a world which by implication has
form. But as a learning experience, the purpose of going into the library is to be
enabled to perceive and understand this world which has shape in a different
way. As well as deepening knowledge of particular materials, their properties
and behaviours, and as well as perhaps finding a material you can use, one is
also educating oneself through the capacity for a knowledge paradigm shift.
Materials libraries can be more about knowledge paradigms than about getting
to know materials. In this sense, they are about ways of getting to know the world
through materials, which necessitate getting to know the world as materials. One
expectation people have in visiting libraries is that they will acquire knowledge:
knowledge of specific, discrete kinds of materials, easily-identifiable, separable,
fungible materials, which have definable and measurable properties which can
be learned about. And, that they will acquire skills, the ability to better match
12
certain kinds of materials to certain kinds of uses. Of course, in visiting libraries

you do acquire knowledge and to a certain extent new skills. However, the curators of many such libraries do not themselves, surprisingly, subscribe to a single
paradigm of a world which you can simply get to know and understand. Counterintuitively perhaps, the person who engages in knowing the world as comprising
materials is not necessarily a skilled figure, a person characterized by their skills
in knowing materials or in making but rather a figure who becomes schooled in
knowing the problems of materials better.
Hence the work of evocation of a materials world is difficult and not necessarily what you might expect. It is however important work. The problem in
some ways can be seen as the opposite of what confronted people dealing
with the digital revolution around new information technologies since the 1990s.
Appreciation of the digital in sociocultural terms used to be severely hampered
by immaterial parallelism ideas of cyberspace, or parallel domains of experience, somehow unrooted from material existence. Notions of an overdetermined
digital world led to idealist utopian and dystopian interpretations about how
digital technologies might liberate people from social and material bounds. In
fact, digital technologies are profoundly material (Miller and Horst 2012)but are
easy to imagine as immaterial. Studies of materials face the opposite problem in
many ways. Imagining the materials world is difficult, because one simply cannot
see the wood for the trees except through deliberate acts of distantiation.
What notions of transformation can we use to help us to perceive and study
materials? One might think that Heideggers (1978) discussion would be useful
here of the difference between a tool that is present-at-hand, lying on a table,
and ready-to-hand when it is being used. As the tool is taken up, a perceptual
shift occurs where the tool comes to be unconsciously a part of the embodied
craftsperson. Heidegger is illustrating a perceptual shift by reference to tools,
hence rendering the material world as tool-like. Hahn and Soentgen (2011)
consider this kind of appropriation as important to appreciating what materials
do in society.
While transformations between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand are relevant, the materials world can also present a somewhat deeper problem. If we
want to work with wood, we can use a saw to experience and make the wood;
or we can use a screwdriver to engage with the metal of screws. How are we
to perceive the screwdriver or the saw as themselves materials? I do not wish
to attempt to explain the materials screwdriver in terms, for example, of the
fungible way it uses materials with particular properties or in terms of our prior
knowledge of metals and wood or that by using the thing we experience it in
an embodied way. A different order of anthropological thinking is required here
13
to account for materials. We live at a time when the screwdriver may shortly no
longer be made of metal and wood, but different materials. The things that are
currently put together using screws may be made of materials that do not require
screws but attach differently.
These kinds of changes are happening all the time. I myself am currently
having to force myself to use the range of colourful silicone cooking utensils
in the kitchen, which seem to me things that should immediately melt if I place
them in an oven or in contact with a hot pan. I feel more secure with metal utensils. I experience difficulties washing clothes, as the types of textiles and their
combinations proliferate. To be able to perceive and understand the material, as
well as form, can be tricky.
Such materials shifts are happening in textiles, biomaterials and in other
domains. What we wish to do in this book is to heighten our ability to problematize the screwdriver and its context through imagining the materials world. It
has always been to a certain extent inadequate to conceive of material things
as tool-like; it is doubly inadequate to see them as forms. We wish to, not so
much propose other ways of understanding, but in the main to try to elaborate
on this materials problem. The imagination of a materials world is not necessarily
an act of explanation but can be an act of problematization, a challenge to the
inevitability or given-ness of the composition of the world. What is the problem of
materials exactly, in instances where the material comes to the fore?
I now present the bones of an approach to a social science of materials (or,
more specifically, an anthropology of materials), which means recognizing their
transformational aspects. I also outline how the chapters of this volume illustrate
and help us constitute the imagination of the materials world.
The study of materials and society

This book suggests that an anthropology of materials comprises the empirical
observation and interpretation of the sociocultural implications of those moments
when a transformation between form and substance is manifest.
This suggestion means moving away from some alternative propositions.
Materials need different kinds of approaches from objects or things. The book
proposes that the anthropology of materials should not be exclusively, or
even predominantly, about moments of making. We wish to move away from
approaches which would simplistically elide acts of knowing and of making
(which often overlap, but need not be similar), and of approaches which consider
the material world itself only in terms of praxis or embodiment. Our work takes a
14
materialist approach, but does not consider there to be one materialist approach
(certainly not only a Marxist materialism, a vitalist materialism nor only an
approach to materialism orientated towards consumer society discourses), but
a plurality of potentially conflicting materialisms, which nonetheless encompass
praxis and discourse as subdomains, since both practice and discourse have
material form. The implication of this is that explorations of materials and materiality are best employed in social science as vehicles to problematize ideas of
knowing and doing rather than knowing and doing being vehicles to understand
the material world better.
The social life of materials implies a wholly different phenomenon from the
social life of things (Appadurai 1986). While the social life approach is one of the
most significant contemporary approaches within material, it is aimed primarily at understanding objects rather than materials. The social life of materials
is much less about biographies, birthless and deathless as materials are, and
rather about types of transformations (see Frow 2004). The life of materials
concerns questions about how materials are vitalist (Bennett 2010), what they
do and how they have effects, how they have meaning, how they are known and
what social and cultural forms happen through and around them.
This volume is divided into subsections that explore what happens around
moments of transformation between form and substance.
On materials innovation
The first section presents some historical overviews and theoretical viewpoints
on materials from different disciplinary points of view. We begin with Graeme
Weres study of harakeke, or New Zealand flax, which sets the scene for what a
social study of a material may look like. The story of harakeke (or, New Zealand
flax) incorporates many elements that can be seen to typify why materials are
interesting. For more than a century, harakeke has been the subject of attempts
at innovation, of technical change and of cultural contestation. Harakeke has
been the focus of repeated attempts to use and develop its fibres in evermore interesting and exciting ways. It is a potentially organic replacement for
fibreglass, ideal to make, for example, a surfboard. It is also a face cream or
a piece of clothing. It is also a traditional treasure of Maori culture, something
claimed as traditional property and collective intellectual property. The chapter
demonstrates how binarisms, such as modern versus traditional, culture versus
science and success versus failure, can be simply dissolved or seem irrelevant
in the face of a social study of a material. Were situates the notions of innovation
and discovery within long-term historical frameworks, moving beyond them to
15
an analysis that draws on Gell (1998) to examine the agencies involved in and
around New Zealand flax. He proposes a type of analysis and understanding
that develops the material expressivity of a material.
Following this typical materials and society study, Andrew Barrys chapter
then draws on human geography to expand on some alternative ways in which
one can consider this phenomenon of what might be loosely termed a popular
chemistry, a culture of materials that is beyond professional scientific circles.
Barry offers here one of the prime paradigms that we can use to study materials by considering pharmaceutical molecules as informed materials. He thus
opens up a range of new possibilities for the social study of materials, bringing
into the equation the ability to work not only with actually existing pharmaceutical substances, or the social relations around them, but the various ways in
which the conceptualization of those relations happen. In the understanding of
materials, he proposes, we should in most cases not see ourselves as inventing
materials. Rather, we should consider the work as discovery or innovation (the
same notion that Were situates culturally and historically in Chapter 2). Barrys
critique of invention (which is extended by Kchler in the conclusion) highlights
the large philosophical baggage that the idea implies, and he shows how if we
talk of invention, or innovation, we in doing so infer presuppositions as to what
relations between people through things comprise. If we recognize at least some
materials as informed, they are seen to be part of a potentially immense scaffold of knowledge and communication between people.
If Andrew Barry offers us an alternative voice from within human geography,
Mark A. Miodownik offers us one from engineering. For some years, Miodownik
has been a strong advocate for more profound academic attention to the study
of materials in society and culture. His contribution here is to begin to frame the
problems of materials. He specifies two of the most important challenges that
materials present us with, which are both essentially extensions of his central
point that materials do not definably exist except in terms of the scalability of
matter. First, we have the problem of how to know materials, whether through
forms of scientific empiricism based on deduction and experimentation or
through artistic empiricism based on experience. We know materials not in one
way, but through conflicting knowledge paradigms. Within materials science,
materials emerge somehow in the panoply of different scalarities within the
structure of substances if one is studying crystalline structures, then the material is about how crystalline structures and atomic compositions interact; while
if one is studying molecular forms, the materials may seem to comprise the
range of ways similar molecules may be structured. Hence even for a scientist,
or perhaps especially for a scientist, materials do not exist in a reliable fashion.
16
Second, Miodownik highlights the problem of multiplicity and complexity.

The sheer breadth of the topic of materials is astounding, from every aspect of
the material world, from steel girders to jeans to the foam on baths, to scents
and senses, to just experience. And every aspect of materials descends into
ever-more complicated subdivisions, such that one has no sooner started to
study concrete than one must study concretes. Materials comprise one of those
topics that grows and proliferates at a pace faster than one is able to study it.
We will always feel as if we are lagging behind. But this is no reason to deter
us; rather it is what makes materials interesting to study. By way of signposting
the methodological ways forward, as well as sociocultural studies of materials,
Miodownik advocates materials libraries and artistic work as ways to help understand materials.
In the last chapter of our introductory section, David Howes brings us back to
anthropological territory. One of the implications of Weres and Barrys arguments
in particular is that we find it increasingly difficult to maintain distinctions between
professional and popular knowledges developed around materials, and Howes
chapter travels the contemporary territory between these two, from product
development testing centres through the commercial networks to consumption.
The spread of notions of experience and of the senses into commodity branding
and sales signifies a move towards understanding of goods as conveyers of
material properties.
Howes argument as regards the sensory turn in anthropology provides a
brief outline of one of the most significant approaches to materials that anthropology has to offer. In Howes work, people are veritable vehicles of sensation,
entities that move through the world soaking up experience. This emphasis on
the sensory aspects of humanity, an emphasis that is not necessarily a universal
but also produced by contemporary corporate and scientific cultures, contrasts
with the kinds of emphasis that Were evokes of knowledge and agency. By
throwing light on the science of sensory evaluation, Howes unpacks fixed ideas
of material properties, and especially challenges the idea that intrinsic properties
in materials are their most important features. Instead, he develops the extrinsic properties and associations around materials. In doing so, he evokes the
metaphysics of association, which Barry discusses for informed materials, and
yet Howes places much more emphasis on the social context than does Barry.
Sensory experience is social experience is one of the main lessons we learn.
All four of these theorists in our introductory section are seeking alternative
knowledge paradigms in order to think about materials. At first, they may appear
very similar, because they share the same target. All are critiquing the idea of
materials as fixed, definable, with measurable and specifiable properties and
17
open to a process of invention. Of course, no one questions that it is certainly

possible to work with materials in a positivist, scientific fashion, but these thinkers are questioning whether such an approach is adequate. Where they differ
is in the alternative approaches which they advocate. With differing emphasis
on agency, knowledge, making and doing or experience, together these thinkers offer a wide spectrum of possibilities to advance our critical approaches
to materials in society. The implications of their work is that in response to the
complexity of the materials world we begin to consider more widespread, historically informed network-type analyses of the assortment of transformations and
relationships that occur around materials networks that can be infused with
material knowledges and experiences of properties. These four chapters situate
our approach to materials as strongly concerned with various dimensions of
embodied cognition: knowing, remembering, communicating and imagining.
Exploring transformations from substance to form

The notions of making and craft are at the heart of a lot of contemporary work
on materials. Some authors posit craft as fundamentally moral and potentially
an economically and politically redeeming activity (Sennett 2008). While we think
too much emphasis on making and crafting can be limiting to understanding
materials, in the sense of being unbalanced, it is certainly important.
Laurence Dounys chapter gives us some insights into the wide-ranging
implications of the consideration of the world as a kind of immense resource of
materials for potential acts of making. Douny is an anthropologist who has been
working for some years on various different materials within West African life and
is known for her provocative thinking about the cosmological pervasiveness of
materials. In Dogon areas of West Africa, the study of silk reveals how silk and
the properties of silk infuse many states of being. As a material, something called
silk can be found in many different locales gathered from the environment as
cocoons, within a range of stages of making processes and in finished artefacts.
Understood as a carrier and conveyer of a particular kind of power (daoula),
silk material is at the heart of many processes of social becoming. The silk is
not only subject to techniques of making but enables those techniques as well,
and Douny proposes that a focus on the properties of silk, its visual sheen, can
help us to transcend these dualities. This comprises one of the most complete
studies in existence of the idea of sheen and its social relevance. The ways in
which the sheen of silk comes to be a part of clothes and artefacts constitutes
material aphorisms or truths. The material comes to constitute moral values
and legitimize social relations.
18
For many people, perceiving the cultural nature of silk in West Africa may
be easier than perceiving how plastics in their own homes may be subject to
very similar, and equally glorious, cultural processes. Tom Fisher is a wellpublished expert on plastics within design and design history. His arguments
about plastics are comparable to Dounys, in that he suggests that they
provide the material ground for a plasticity out of which individuals may fashion themselves. While the process of becoming may be different from West
Africa, the sentiment is similar. Fishers arguments for the constructiveness
of plastics are in some ways controversial, for they run against the current of
arguments about plastics association with inauthenticity, which McKay (this
volume) also discusses. The celebration of plastic utopianism in a plastic
age rings very true.
The third chapter on transformations from substance to form, and on ways
of making, also concerns fashion. Urmila Mohans work defies any idea that
fashion culture must be the domain of the purely human, or is secular. Materials
in her work can be essentially, profoundly religious. Here she studies a workshop environment in which people make clothes for iconic deities in a temple
in Northern India. Far from being a passive template on which social relations, identities, consciousnesses and beliefs are imposed, the materials used
are here constitutive of such phenomena. Mohan develops Warniers (2001,
2009)notions of material consciousness and material religion to understand
this situation.
These pieces of research all indicate moments of transformation from
substance to form, within the wider constitution of social and cosmological
orders. The materials are considered important in very different ways in each
case however: for example, an actual materialized power in Dogon areas,
contrasts with a dematerializing ontology in Hindu India, which downplays the
material as a separate phenomena from spirituality.
All three studies challenge some of the common assumptions of what
materials are and show how cultures of materials differ. Some approaches
would situate materials as significant purely for how they facilitate making,
or craft, and as objects for people to work their magic upon through intentional acts. By contrast, these three studies are more cosmological than
they are ontological, representing materials rather than people as the
prime conveyers of ideas. The social relations surrounding the materials
(Sennett 2011) are pre-eminent in this research, beyond individual work,
and it shows how materials can produce an exaggerated sense of value
around objects.
19
Exploring the subversion of form by substance

The central section of the book examines moments of less certainty, in which the
truths that materials convey are not channelled into the made forms that people
and communities necessarily intend. Rather, they examine those times when
legitimate forms are undermined by their deliberate or unexpected reversion into
substances, and social orders can seem similarly challenged.
Peter Oakley, an anthropologist at the Royal College of Art in London, examines the promotion of a new material, fairtrade gold, a gold proposed as
materially constituted in a different fashion from other kinds of gold. However,
Oakley shows how a material can present many contradictory meanings and
paradigms. Some of the contradictions around gold may occur among different
groups, while other contradictory thoughts can be held consecutively by one
person. At the same time, at another level, the immanence of gold presents an
integrity that resists attempts to categorically differentiate gold into types.
Oakleys work demonstrates how an inherent tension exists in the treatment
of gold in particular. Fairtrade practices of tracing provenance come into conflict
with the historically established practices of gold traders who use mass-balancing methods in perceiving gold. The attempt to rethink or reimagine gold
ultimately fails against what people are used to doing with gold, revealing a gulf
of thought and action.
Deirdre McKay (et al.)s work also evokes a sense of uneasiness as the
concept of plastik in the Philippines is made evident in plastic artefacts that
aspire to be art. McKay emphasizes how value is here not only being imparted
by the agency of makers, or by skill, or by the form of artefacts but also by the
undeniability of the material of which things comprise. Far from being a material
that can be taken for granted, plastic is shot through with uneasiness wherever it
appears, questioning authenticity, art, value, individual identity and class identity.
As a material that epitomizes certain aspects of Filipino identity (just as Fisher
suggests for modernist identities), plastic is a problem as the material of poverty,
problematic in attempts to aestheticize it or use it in art and problematic in its
deployment for middle-class or classless purposes. Plastic beads are here also
disturbing in that, through use of plastic, the material itself comes to the fore.
Rather than being beads, these objects suddenly comprise evidently of stuff.
Different materials will lead social research in very different directions. If one
material leads to an ethnography of identity, another leads to religion, and yet
another to power. Filipe Calvos discussion of diamond-trading rooms in Angola
means consideration of global macro-issues, the imagined representations of
the global market, witnessed within small rooms. Diamond trading is founded on
20
assumptions of how the intrinsic material properties of a diamond have value. In

practice these truths about diamonds are negotiated, accessed through certain
technologies and terminologies, and implicated in trades that, ultimately, are
about a lot more than a particular diamond. Calvo reminds us of how global
orders such as capitalism may themselves depend on how particular materials
are valued and perceived. To consider diamond as a substance with particular
properties and in particular terms, in spite of the variability of individual diamonds,
is to help produce a potentially global set of hierarchies and orders. It is no small
statement to assert that diamond is a potentially valuable substance.
These three studies are all evidence of what ethnography may do, and
observe, which other methodologies may not. This is hard-won fieldwork, for
which these researchers invested time, work and patience to place themselves
in the situations and among the communities which they describe. Literally years
were spent on these pieces of fieldwork.
Materials are, in all three of these studies, rendered as somehow foundational of a social order and of a particular way in which the world should be.
At the same time, however, the properties of a material itself are in point of fact
not reliable and consistent, but negotiable. Those moments in which things are
scrutinized for their substance are, in point of fact, often destabilizing. Such acts
of scrutiny are of wider relevance. The issues of tracking and tracing are presenting themselves to us ever more frequently, for example, in food scares in which
one slab of beef is not the same as another, but the modes of acquisition and
purchase of meat depend on material commensurability. It is profoundly disquieting that what you thought might be one material might suddenly turn out to be
something else entirely.
Since, as we have seen, materials do not exist in a universal sense, but as a
cultural, perceptually scalable and comparative category of understanding of the
world, the different approaches indicated by Oakley, McKay and Calvo also present
us with potential ways of defining and approaching materials. We could consider
a material to be defined by its particular, unchanging properties as with mass
balancing for gold. We might alternatively consider the provenance and biography
of a particular mass of stuff such that, for example, free range organic meat might
be a different material from meat from cage-reared animals, or British wool might
be a different material from New Zealand wool. Alternatively, as McKay suggests,
we might see a material as a cross-cutting meaningful category, interconnecting
the consideration of the world as a resource for value, and artefactual forms.
In sum, what this section does in the main is show the potentially disruptive
agency of materials in moments where substance subverts form and a sense of
harsh reality emerges into the social consciousness.
21
Exploring ecologies of materials

As the first three sections of the book suggest, the study of materials necessarily
comprises the study of relations and associations, which constitute the transforming and transformative life of materials. The fourth section of the book contains
studies that move beyond particular transformations in particular contexts, to
examine wider mappings of processes, relations and associations around materials; in which the sense of life around materials (their agency, effects, vibrancy
and reactivity) build into wider social phenomena. What are the implications and
contextualizations of materials social lives? We call these ecologies, which is a
fairly loose, metaphorical use of a biological term for the study of life-in-context.
Strictly speaking, an ecology implies the sum total of living relations around one
material, while if you look at the intersections of interrelations of many materials,
it is a materials ecosystem.
In Chapter 12, we explore an example of a legislative and disciplinary regime
that responds to an emergent materials world within the United Kingdom.
Sustainability is a powerful and undeniable modern imperative, at the forefront
of many peoples concerns about materials. Whatever one thinks sustainability
means, it has become a key measure to evaluate the world we live in. Sarah
Wilkes critical commentary on cultures of sustainability and regulation demands
that we consider not only materials innovation, but what happens next? And
she asks questions that are crucial for the many professionals and disciplines
involved with materials at the present time. Wilkes demonstrates how sustainability is interesting not only because it can have a range of potentially conflicting
meanings but also because it is part of the general attempt to conceive of the
slippery and evasive notion of materials per se. Conceived of as a question about
the world, sustainability proposes a materials world paradigm, and Wilkes work
synthesizes many of the issues raised in preceding chapters, and shows how
these issues are not just philosophical, but actively being addressed in everyday
life. The world of goods is coming to be perceived as an interconnected chemical and energy-constituted environment, and there is an increasing pressure to
regulate and legislate for situations in which the substances that surround us may
be harmful or simply out of place. Materials in the environment are considered
in terms of their effects on the young, the elderly, the weak and the exposed and
reinforce normative mappings of social power, capacity and privilege.
Chan Chow Wah meanwhile presents an alternative history of materials and
the senses, which reveals the ways in which cultures of fragrance and scent intersect with colonial and postcolonial global mappings. The history of fragrance is
commonly written as a unitary, global human universal, much as Howes notes in
22
Chapter 5. This history is in fact here revealed as a Western or European history,

but the Chinese experience presents the possibility of an entirely different history.
The pertinence of this alternative is testified to by the ways that Chinese companies have managed to supersede the marketing-led behemoths of Unilever and
Procter & Gamble in the Chinese bath products market, through the scents in
their products.
The topic of fragrance is especially interesting, because it is testament to an
instance in which the properties of a material (such as soap) are demonstrated
to be detachable and negotiable. Soap and scents are different materials in the
industry. The possibility of a movement between form and substance, the existence of materials in other words, is what makes properties detachable. Chow
Wahs work instantiates points made both by Howes and by Barry. The kinds
of substance used for fragrance, which infuse soap products, are perceived
to be intrinsic, semi-magical essences. But these essences are chemicals,
which are manufactured, traded and negotiated along their own networks. A
trade in fragrance materials is also to a certain extent a trade in possibility and
Platonic ideals of things, as well as a trade in the senses themselves. Moving
far beyond the localism of earlier chapters, Chow Wah is also exploring a global
web of materials whereby the mass-manufactured chemical blanks of material
properties are commandeered, shipped, reshaped and sold and appropriated
en mass across many different places and social locales. The scale of such a
materials-based network is immense, and its cultural implications profound.
Lastly, in Chapter 14, our final ethnographic study, Fiona P. McDonalds work
concerns the mnemonics of the senses that happen around woollen blankets,
providing a highly politicized reading or mapping of historical processes. Colonial
encounters across the world have through history been contextually associated
with blankets made from wool, and are evoked by the particular sensation of the
blanket. Contemporary artists deploy the properties of such blankets to manifest,
and then reappropriate, such political commentaries. She shows how it is the
experience of the material, and especially the particular sensoriality associated
with it, that enables people to locate themselves within history. The materials
paradigm here functions to historicize and politicize the self and self-consciousness. More importantly, she stresses the capacity of materials to reveal, to clarify
and to challenge social relations, especially historicized ones. The blankets that
she studies, within an art context, are in some ways social life made manifest. In
this sense, their political role is highly nuanced, a point which Susanne Kchler
expands in more detail in the conclusion.
These three studies of materials ecologies, or of networks of the social lives of
materials, build the points that previous chapters have made into understandings
23
of wider social contexts. Materials ecologies offer for us new kinds of social forms
and structures. Sets of relations and institutions based around a material or a
property are closely linked to notions of social change, and related pressures
towards social control, discipline and regulation. There is also the consideration
that those moments when materials come to be evident in the world compel the
exercise of authority and the mobilization of those people and entities who would
see themselves as being in control.
In the concluding chapter, Susanne Kchler brings our discussion of materials back to the themes of innovation and invention, which Were broaches in
Chapter 2. She traces the changing ways in which materials in general have
been perceived and evaluated, especially within the European tradition. The
moment when materials are seen as potentially useful is the cultural equivalent
of dynamite, and ushers in a whole new era of conceiving materials as designed,
an era when the burden of utility lies not with objects, but with the substance of
which they are made. Her analysis is an antidote to the euphoric optimism that
sometimes surrounds materials innovation. The notion of materials-by-design
may indeed usher in more crafting and making, but does not necessarily imply
greater sustainability nor necessarily a move away from our undeniable reliance
on minerals and petrochemical materials.
Situating the study of materials and society within a history of ideas, Kchler
makes us aware of the contemporary era in which we live, the cultural moment
within which the putative materials revolution is happening, and she leaves us
with questions that demand a response.
Raw no more: The social study of materials

All of the various studies of materials and society in this volume manage to look
at particular transformational moments when materials come to be evident. While
we could do a study of materials in the world in general attempt to actually see
the world in its entirety as a materials library the remit of such a study would
be impossible, and its academic benefit questionable. Some focus is necessary. The remit of a good social study is typically delineated by a material and
perhaps a related community, locale or activity. All of these researchers are not
so much attempting to explain materials, as wrestle with the ways in which they
are problematic. Their methodologies for this achievement are varied, including
combinations of using historical approaches, looking at networks, contrasting
conflictual and contradictory viewpoints, considering the cosmology and power
of materials, looking at the techniques and technologies of perceiving materials,
24
analysing materials as categories of knowledge and focusing on property and

on certain material properties.
Disturbing and disruptive as they are, materials provoke responses.
Materials happen at moments when the material world manifests purposelessness, inviting us to rush in with intentions to fill the void. Materials happen are
perceived at moments of the genesis and destruction of forms that are familiar
to us. And yet they have effects as if they act, and not only as smart materials.
Their shifting qualities manifest in every object and person the slow evidence
of quick or gradual ruination, substances changing over time to subvert the
consistency of the social world. In a materials world, we are all incipient creations and ruins.
As Wilkes comments, among many materials scientists, materials are no
longer thought of as raw, physical matter (Wilkes, this volume). It is tempting to
retain the fiction that inherently uneasy materials are raw, acultural and unsocialized stuff. All of the authors in this volume resist this temptation and attack
the myth of rawness. First, we challenge the mistaken notion that materials are
more natural than objects. This comprises an ideology of nature that has been
attacked and deconstructed for some decades with anthropology, most pertinently within thinking on gender (see Strathern and McCormack 1980; Bradley
2000). For those who think ideology to be too strong a term, it may be more
true to say that nature exists as a social fact not scientific fact, and that materials
are especially subject to being constructed as natural, and hence acultural until
appropriately processed into a particular form.
Second, we challenge the misconception that materials are antithetical to
information. Andrew Barry undermines this idea most strongly by pointing out
that materials are informed. Chow Wahs discussion of the globalized trade
in fragrances closely evokes the same discussion. In other chapters, materials
are presented as things that are, in Gells (1998) sense of the term, cognitively
sticky. Materials are carriers of a range of forms of information. They may, in
different instances or contexts, convey data, imagination, meaning, knowledge,
beliefs and truths.
A third pillar of the mythology of rawness relates to skill. Skill is an increasingly important topic of academic study, and rightly so (Grasseni 2007; Ingold
2013). However, the study of skill, crafts, and artisanal knowledge can detract
from the appreciation of what materials can do. Skill is not distributed equally
in a community, and it often does not function to make materials evident. Good
craftsmanship often defies or conceals materials. A focus on skill, and craftsmanship can exaggerate peoples knowledges above objectified knowledges
(Bourdieu 1990), including siliconized information (Horst and Miller 2012). Skill
25
therefore, while important, is not sufficient and entire in itself. Materials should
not be considered as only resources for skills to be exercised.
The mistaken notion of the rawness of materials therefore arises from a number
of specific presumptions. Traditionally, social studies of knowledge, practices
and even of material culture, have each not quite taken enough account of materials. Because of this, materials have often been seen as all the bits left over in
social life, once you have studied ways of knowing, ways of doing, and the forms
of artefacts and objects. In fact, to some degree, materials comprise all of these
fields of social life, and this is beginning to be recognized.
Beyond things: Reimagining stuff

Those people near the top have the power to make things durable and to make
things transient, so they can ensure that their own objects are always durable
and that those of others are always transient ... Only if one remains within
severe cultural and temporal confines can one sustain the commonsense
belief that rubbish is defined by intrinsic physical properties. Step outside
these limits and one sees that the boundary between rubbish and non-rubbish
moves in response to social pressures. (Thompson 2004: 295)
We can return to the problem of perceiving the screwdriver as materials. In the

development of material culture, the engagement between materials and minds
has traditionally been seen to be the form, or shape, of objects and artefacts.
Frequently it is making and doing that have been seen as the point of articulation
between minds and materials. Hence the study of stuff has come primarily to be
understood as production, making, crafting, creating, designing, consumption,
accumulation, appropriation, of objects. We need to add to these understandings in the social study of materials, because they are not sufficient. We need
to reimagine stuff in frameworks other than form and praxis, and particularly
through examining transformations of stuff.
As several of us have observed, especially Miodownik and Kchler, the
enlightenment provided a primary moment of intellectual fracture around how
materials and minds engage. Looking back at, and reflecting on, this enlightenment moment, a great deal of social science effort has been directed to critiquing
the notions of the Cartesian mind and of the material world as simply the object
of human understanding and control. A significant moment in this respect was
social constructivisms rise from the 1960s, and its related approaches, critiquing
the idea of knowledge as a fixed body of truth, and rather highlighting processes
and activities of making knowledges. Its influence has been widespread, but it
26
has not been good for the social study of materials. In some ways, constructivism simply takes the idea of doing in all its specificity, and imports it wholesale
into the project of knowing. Knowing is like doing or making. As a critique of
abstracted knowledge, constructivism has been very successful and influential
but has also detracted from the rearticulation of minds and the material world.
A slightly different trajectory has seen from the late 1970s a range of
approaches to embodiment using the idea of the body to reposition how
knowing, doing and materiality intersect. One highly important aspect of this
movement has been phenomenological approaches, which interpret moments
of knowing as situated moments of experience. More recently, the work of
Ingold (2011, 2013)has continued to focus on this area. What is emphasized in
his more recent work is the ways in which making is itself a process of knowing,
through experiencing. Materials can facilitate a consciousness of this engagement. As Oakley says of gold, the interpenetration of what is thought and what
is done became startlingly apparent as FT/FM gold was found to be excluded
from large swathes of manufacturing practice (Oakley, this volume).
One can consider knowing-as-making or making-as-knowing, but we would
also emphasize that there is more to materials than this and rather focus on
materials as problematizing ways of knowing. The problems of knowing are not
necessarily the problems of praxis, because materials themselves do perform
cultural kinds of work, and they are especially kinds of informational or knowledge work.
There are many ways of knowing. By this, we do not mean only different
cosmological paradigms or social worlds. One can know, believe, experience, discover, invent, mean, dream, imagine, learn, question, guess or sense.
Information may take many corresponding forms: knowledge, data, truth, meaning and so forth. In this volume, the researchers have adopted many tools,
methods and routes towards researching materials. They look at cosmologies
(Douny, Mohan, Were), networks (Oakley, Were, Wilkes, Chan), techniques
of perception (Howes, Oakley, Calvo), categories of meaning (Howes,
Fisher, McKay, Douny), subjectivities (McKay, Mohan, Fisher, Barry), histories
(Miodownik, Were, Barry, Chow Wah, McDonald) and properties (Howes, Chan,
Douny). All of these tools are ways into examining material transformations and
the associated social implications.
The imagination of the materials world in these studies draws attention to
the possibility of certain kinds of social transformations, implicit in the tensions
that the exposure of materials reveals. As they sensorially enable appropriation,
materials also can defy and undermine ownership. They are the manifestations of
material properties, and the means to ascribe efficacy, and yet they challenge the
27
boundaries of property relations. The making evident of formlessness in materials

can reflect a sense of unboundedness in social terms. As a student commented
during a visit to a materials library, reaching for an intriguing sample, materials
tempt you in like bubble wrap. In this respect, the idea of properties and of
property are frequently placed in oppositional dialogue: When the thing is seen
to naturally have the property, where does that leave an objects owner? The
property boundaries of materials are not yet naturalized or normalized. Property
relations are frequently challenged by materials (Calvo, this volume).
Materials can underlie and naturalize established social orders and hierarchies
(Wilkes). But when they come to be made evident, they can expose these orders.
Thompson (1979) long ago suggested that dominant elite groups are often those
who are able to define what is rubbish and what is not, expressing the disturbing
dependence of power on rubbish. Douny makes comparable points in talking
of moments when the silk and sheen of West African womens clothes shines
through: These woven aphorisms allow women to express themselves in implicit
ways that enable them to subvert or contest, but also as a self-reminder and sign
of adherence to social moral values and status (Douny, this volume).
By way of a concluding summary, the materials world can be profoundly,
ontologically, disturbing and uneasy. In the extreme, materials have no births
nor deaths but emergences and re-emergences in reconfigurations of matter.
They have no absolute death, but become different. They can be unreliable
while forms endure, the materials comprising them decay. They challenge social
mores, boundaries and hierarchies. They can be purposeless, useless and
pointless. Does rock have purpose? Materials challenge property relations, relationships, ownership, identities and extended personhoods based on objects
and forms. They do not possess a defined biography or social life (Appadurai
1986; Kopytoff 1986). And yet, in the current moment of celebration of materials,
these qualities of the materials world stand in profound opposition to the human
hope for discovery, innovation, progress and social mores in materials.
An anthropology of materials explores moments of manifest transformation
between form and substance and their sociocultural implications. It involves
particular knowledge paradigms and shifts in perspective. It explores the world
seen as assemblages and compounds of properties, more than assemblages
of objects, seen and appreciated culturally and locally. It looks at the interface
between subjective sensory experience and the ascription of objective properties to the material world. It is cosmological, involving an appreciation of how
things are constituted, and exist, as they are. It is reflexive, in that it also considers how we as humans are constituted, how we exist, and evokes how we might
not exist. It necessitates a long-term viewpoint on the existence of matter. It lastly
28
considers the significance of social and cultural ecosystems of matter, more

than the constitution of an individual object as made of matter.
The following chapters, each in their own way, elaborate on aspects of these
points.
References
Appadurai, A. (1986), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990), Objectification Objectified, in The Logic of Practice, pp. 3041. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Bradley, R. (2000), An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge.
Brown, B. (ed.) (2004), Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Frow, J. (2004), A Pebble, a Camera, a Man Who Turns into a Telegraph Pole, in B. Brown (ed.),
Things, pp.346361. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gibson, J. (1979), The Ecological Approach to Perception. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Grasseni, C. (ed.) (2007), Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards. New York:
Berghahn.
Hahn, H. P. and J. Soentgen (2011), Acknowledging Substances: Looking at the Hidden Side
of the Material World, Philosophy of Technology, 24: 1933.
Heidegger, M. (1978), Being and Time. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Horst, H. and D. Miller (eds) (2012), Digital Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.
Ingold, T. (2011), Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2012), Towards an Ecology of Materials, Annual Review of Anthropology, 41:
427442.
Ingold, T. (2013), Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge.
Kopytoff, I. (1986), The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process, in
Appadurai, A. (ed.), The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laughlin, Z. and P. Howes (2012), Material Matters: New Materials in Design. London: Black Dog.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002), Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
Miller, D. and H. Horst (eds) (2012), Digital Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.
Sennett, R. (2008), The Craftsman. London: Penguin.
Sennett, R. (2013), Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. London:
Penguin.
Strathern, M. and C. McCormack (eds) (1980), Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, M. (2004[1979]), The Filth in the Way, reprinted in V. Buchli (ed.), Material Culture:
Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, 3(2): 292303. London: Taylor and Francis.
Underwood, J. (2015), Death Says, Happiness. London: Faber & Faber.
Warnier, J.-P. (2001), A Praxeological Approach to Subjectivation in a Material World, Journal
of Material Culture, 6(1): 524.
Warnier, J.-P. (2009), Technology as Efficacious Action on Objects ... and Subjects, Journal
Part2
On materials innovation
Chapter2
Whats in a plant leaf? a case
study of materials innovation
in New Zealand
Graeme Were
In F. Dillon Bell and Frederick Youngs (1842) Reasons for Promoting the
Cultivation of the New Zealand Flax, the authors observe how a change has
come oer the spirit of their dream. Bell and Young are referring to the failure
of white settlers to sufficiently develop the plant New Zealand flax (Phormium
tenax) or harakeke, the Maori term the plant is commonly referred to in New
Zealand. They wanted the settlers to transform the long bladed coarse green
grass recognized for the tensile strength of its internal longitudinal fibres into
an economic crop that could be used in the manufacture of naval ropes, sacking, upholstery and other fibre products. Their efforts to offer a premium to the
colonists to design a machine that could adequately extract the strong fibres
from the leaf appeared fruitless.1
I begin this chapter with a story of nineteenth-century attempts at materials
innovation because it underlines the expressivity of harakeke: the potential of
a material to create social effect. As DeLanda (2006) states, materials are not
passive entities: instead they perform in ways that make their presence known.
Harakeke, even after research and development, could not be controlled to
make the desired object. For scientists, if the strong fibres could be extracted
efficiently, the performance of harakeke could be calculated and the material be
used as a mass object. Yet harakekes non-compliance instead demonstrates,
as Norman (1988) famously argues, how often well-laid plans and designs are
tempered by constraints of a social, technical and logical nature.
In this chapter, I will investigate the ways in which materials enter the social
world through a sociohistorical analysis of the development of harakeke in New
Zealand industry. I will examine what drives material innovation, focusing on
the historical processes and distributed agency that make materials innovation
possible and demonstrate how the identity of harakeke is continually shifting as
32
the world changes around it. I will question the notion of materials innovation
and, at the same time, provide anthropology with a theoretical framework to
analyse materials innovation in society.
Materials, innovation and anthropology

Materials are ubiquitous (Ashby and Johnson 2002). They help shape through
their experiential and agentive capacity human thought and action (Boivin
2008; Knappett and Malafouris 2008; Miller 2005; Tilley 2004). Through their
innovation and use in society and industry, materials play a significant role in
social change (Ashby and Johnson 2002; Boivin 2008). The innovation of materials is important as the process makes a more efficient and effective market for
industry producers as well as consumers. Materials innovation is often driven
by the necessity to optimize existing consumer products by selecting suitable
materials that perform better or fulfil certain requirements. It can also apply to the
process of improving existing materials by altering their molecular or biophysical structure or finding new applications for well-known materials, such as plant
fibres and timbers (Ball 1997). Innovation is also driven by the environments in
which materials are situated. As Welz (2003: 256)states, economics is a driving
factor of innovation: the capacity to innovate is a key determining factor in the
competitive advantage of national economies, industries and private business.
With the development of knowledge societies, Welz states how a culture of
innovation has been invented in which a plethora of policies, institutions and
procedures of innovation management generate new knowledges, products
and services.
In my approach to materials innovation, materials are not passive entities; I
will show how their capacity for transformation enables social worlds to come
into being and be known (Ingold 2011; Were 2013). Materials are expressive
(DeLanda 2006)and as Bennetts study of their vibrancy outlines, materials lend
themselves to a congregational understanding of agency rather than individualism (Bennett 2010).2 My approach is guided by the work of Hawkins, Potter and
Race (in press), who demonstrate how research and development into plastic
water bottles had a huge impact in the social world: It changed consumer habits
and had unintended consequences, generating an environmental waste problem due to problems in plastic bottle disposal. Scientists undertook research
and development into inventing a new form of plastic suitable for use in the
bottled water industry. Their work reveals how scientists experimented with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in the laboratory in order to find a material that
Whats in a plant leaf?
33
was robust enough to contain water under pressure, could safely contain water
without contamination and that would remain opaque like glass. Their work is
important to developing an agentive approach to materials because it emphasizes how materials innovation has observable effects outside the laboratory.
What is also significant about their work is how research and development
into a type of PET plastic was guided by industry demands to develop a suitable
material that could perform as a water bottle. The object became the guiding
principle for innovation. This illustrates how materials innovation is not solely
driven by activities within the hermetically sealed space of the laboratory; rather,
research and development is intimately connected to issues, agendas and
networks in the outside world (Barry 2005; Latour 1996; Latour and Woolgar
1979). This is emphasized too in OConnors study of research and development
of Lycra (OConnor 2011). In her ethnographic study, OConnor demonstrates
how the American science company Dupont led research and development into
Lycra during the Baby-boomer era of the 1950s as an alternative to the rubber
girdle then worn by women. The girdle was considered stiff, uncomfortable to
wear, and was also prone to deterioration. OConnor points out that a crucial
factor in the emergence of the new elastane fibre for use in girdles is how Lycra
came into being through executive brainstorming sessions, design meetings,
consumer wear-testing, and new factory mass production techniques. Thus,
not only does this study underline the collaborative and codependent nature of
materials innovation; successful transmission of Lycras qualities to the public
and to industry was vital to its uptake in the global marketplace. OConnors
study demonstrates how important intensive marketing campaigns were to
its successful launch and how a new visual culture of pamphlets and adverts
emerged that positioned Lycra as a superior stretch fibre for women. The effects
of this material innovation were the creation of new kinds of gender identities
and body images.
While these approaches foreground the processes and practices in which
new materials emerge in the world and their impact on human behaviour, I will
argue that materials innovation is driven by a much deeper engagement than
otherwise suggested in these studies. Indeed, I will suggest that the innovation
of materials provides insights into the mind at work, revealing the cognitive work
of materials in world-making (Ingold 2011; 2012). Since materials innovation is a
form of material engagement involving trialling, testing, brainstorming activities
and so forth, I am reminded by Alfred Gells seminal work that draws attention
to the abductive quality of material culture (1998). Of particular significance to
my argument, Gell states that artefacts possess the capacity to ensnare minds
through their cognitive complexities: this involves a process of working things
34
out much like the context of materials innovation. Using a stylistic analysis of
Maori meeting houses to develop this claim, Gell (1998: 256258) argues that
each house instantiated an engagement of mind house building was competitive and involved thinking through how to deploy resources to develop a new
house to rival others. We are told that because meeting houses were related
to ancestral power, future houses were generally built in a recognizable form
to previous houses what Norman (1988) would call a design constraint but
innovated (e.g. larger, taller, etc.), and so past houses can be regarded as
protensions towards the ultimate meeting house. In other words, for Gell, innovation involves thinking through a set of possible transformations that can be
enacted or performed on a prototype (the Maori meeting house) while working
within a field of constraints (e.g. form, style, tradition, etc.).
Gells argument is useful for developing my own approach to harakeke
because his insights reveal how scientists engage deeply with materials to
develop new products and applications. In particular, his work underlines how
materials innovation through transformation, testing and comparative analysis,
objectifies and externalizes the mind at work as scientists think through uses and
applications in the real world. This suggests that materials innovation cannot
be understood in isolation, but involves a material engagement as innovation
involves thinking about other materials and objects. Situated in complex relational and context dependent environments (Bennett 2010; Gell 1998), materials
and objects are active coagents that mutually inform possibilities on the basis
of their known and observable performance. In ascribing an agentive capacity
to materials, I am claiming that research and development is driven in ways in
which the performance of materials cannot be separated from their objecthood
or their environments. As such, how a material emerges in society is also shaped
by social, economic and political environments as it is by the transformational
capacity of the raw material. In some cases, as Welz (2003) states, economics
is the driving force for innovation, but in others, this may be tempered by availability of key resources or environmental issues (Sheller 2014). Seen this way,
materials innovation involves a complex engagement between minds, matter,
and their environments.
Indeed, as I will discuss, much like social networks and visual culture in which
new materials like Lycra and PET plastic have emerged in society, my analysis of materials innovation reveals a comparable story of trialling, testing and
transformation over 150years, directed largely by lucrative market opportunities
that reside outside of the laboratory setting and incorporate projects of colonial science, nation branding exercises and military conquest. I will show how
research and development into the potential use of harakeke originally focused
35
on its material substance how the strong fibres could be extracted from the
plant leaf efficiently. This research, however, was driven by the internal objective of transforming harakeke into an economic crop that could support the New
Zealand economy; but it was also guided externally by the need to develop a
strong naval rope, an object that directed research and could compete with other
fibre products on the international market. After its decline in the second half of
the twentieth century, I will also show how a new niche was suddenly opened for
harakeke. Laboratory practice has been driven by the need to capture the lucrative
clean green market of the New Zealand economy, and so research and development has focused on developing a suitable biomaterial (a harakeke composite)
to match the needs of an environmentally conscious consumer and, at the same
time, measure up to the required performance (of object and material). By highlighting the different pathways and relations in which material and object are
inextricably intertwined in the process of innovation and design, this chapter will
reveal how material substances are active agents in the wider environments and
infrastructures through which materials and objects emerge in the world, and how
these create new subjectivities, relationships and power relations.
In seeking to control the material expressivity of harakeke, I will show how
the intended outcome of material scientists has been to create a range of
commercial products that are intimately tied to the New Zealand landscape.
This demonstrates how, as Ingold (2012) claims, materials undergo continual
modulation in the course of their history as their environments shift, and which I
believe has important implications for developing an anthropological perspective on materials and society.
Harakeke and manufacturing

industry in New Zealand
Harakeke (Phormium tenax) is a plant with long spear-shaped leaves that is
native to New Zealand and Norfolk Island. It is well-known for the strength of its
inner fibres, which run parallel to the length of the leaf. The plant grows on hills
and in swamps, from sea level to around 4,000 feet, though performs better (for
commercial purposes) when cultivated close to rivers. It is propagated by either
seeds or by division of its rootstock. Its rootstock spreads horizontally underneath the soil and, from it, sword-shaped leaves grow in clusters (Shaw, Bicking
and OLeary 1931).
Harakeke is considered sacred to Maori, a taonga or treasured possession.
Recently, Maori groups have been fighting a legal battle to assert intellectual
36
property rights over its use. Known as WAI262, or the Flora and Fauna inquiry,
the 2011 outcome of the Waitangi tribunal ruled in favour of improved protection of indigenous knowledge, cultural heritage, environmental resources and
language as well as new partnerships in education, conservation and cultural
heritage (see Lai 2014).
The plant appears in many varieties and names, each with specific applications for weaving and other uses. Maoris extract the strong fibres from its
leaves by hand using a mussel shell that they scrape along the length of the
leaf. Washing, drying and twisting produces a soft, pliable and strong fibre that
is able to hold dyes as well as being waterproof. The fibres are almost white in
colour, flexible, soft and silky. These properties of the fibre made them ideal for
manufacturing textiles and clothing as well as making floor mats, baskets, nets
and ropes.
Captain Cook first brought harakeke fibre to the attention of Europeans having
observed its common use by Maoris (Dodge 1897: 261). Europeans quickly
recognized the possibilities of cultivating harakeke for industrial purposes.
Hector (1889) and Murray (1838) include descriptions of the economic value of
New Zealand flax and its use and application in papermaking and rope. Such
was the enthusiasm towards this new material that Murray (1838) had some
of his book printed on it to demonstrate its potential application. Later, Shaw,
Bicking and OLeary (1931) conducted a feasibility study of New Zealand flax
use in the papermaking industry. Their report to the US government points to
how its success would rely on its availability in large quantities. They conclude
how New Zealand flax is a promising material for the manufacture of wrapping
and writing papers (1931: 420).
There were several reasons why harakeke fibre was considered to be a
competitive fibre. First, when compared with other fibres, it had a high yield. A
much higher percentage of fibre could be extracted from the leaves in comparison with its competitor sisal hemp. Second, the plant could be easily cultivated.
Each leaf was long and the plant could easily be propagated from the roots. A
third reason was its harvesting cycle. One planting could last several years, and
there was no need to harvest crops, if so desired (Critchfield 1951: 177).
Commercial production and export began in the early nineteenth century, in
which Maori people prepared increasing quantities of harakeke by hand for export
(Brooker etal. 1989). According to Cruthers, Carr and Laing (2009: 104)dressed
and partially dressed fibre extracted by Maori people was sold to settlers who
exported the fibre, and used it to manufacture various products in New Zealand.
Trading of harakeke flourished between 1828 and 1853 between Maoris and
settlers with most of the fibre reportedly exported to Australia and Britain. Export
37
production was transformed by the development of machinery to extract the

fibres from the leaves, replacing the labour intensive hand-extraction process
performed by Maoris. An invention, the stripper, extracted fibrous strands from
the green leaf by drawing the leaves between a metal bar and cylindrical drum.
According to Jones (2003), one machine could produce about 250 kilos of fibre
a day compared with the one kilo of finer fibre that one person could create.
This resulted in an increase in exports from 1,062 long tons in 1831 to 5,471 tons
in 1870 (Critchfield 1951: 175).
One of the greatest impediments to large-scale production of harakeke has
been the efficiency of the technology of extraction (as outlined in the opening
paragraph of this chapter). While the development of mechanized techniques of
fibre extraction increased yields of harakeke fibre, the efficiency of the available
technology impacted on the condition of the extracted fibres. This was because
the mechanical stripping process as well as removing the useful fibres also
extracted coarser fibres from the leaf (in comparison to the fibres extracted by
hand), lowering the quality of the harakeke fibres for export and so increasing
failure rates when tested under lower loads. This meant that harakeke fibres,
tested under load, were liable to break at lower loads than other natural fibres. In
contrast, the fibre dressed by Maori people was of higher quality than machine
dressed fibre, but the rate of production was slower (Cruthers, Carr and Laing
2009). In a report to the State Department submitted by the US Consul, the
following assessment was made of harakeke:
The fiber of Phormium tenax is susceptible of a much higher degree of preparation than has been bestowed upon it up to the present. This, however, is
not altogether the fault of those who are engaged in its manufacture; it is for
want of the necessary machinery. The hand-dressed article prepared by the
natives is as fine as silk as compared with the modern machine-dressed flax
of to-day. This only demonstrates the fact that the fiber may be reduced to a
much finer quality, and all that is necessary to do this is an improved machine.
(US Consular Report May 1890, cited in Dodge 1897: 265)
It appears, therefore, that the technology developed for extracting useful fibre gave
the harakeke an unreliable identity, making it difficult for it to compete with other
hard fibres in the international marketplace. According to Hector (1872: v), one
solution to this problem was when New Zealand flax was renamed New Zealand
hemp in 1871 in order to account for its lower quality and so give it an advantageous position alongside other hemp fibres that were traded at the time.
To reduce the failure of harakeke to a singular outcome, as Bennett (2010)
argues, is to deny it of it material vibrancy: its relation to assemblages of events,
38
persons and objects. Indeed, there were also natural factors that hindered the
commercial development of harakeke fibre. For instance, harakeke was beset
with cultivation problems. One of the major drawbacks to the establishment of
harakeke plantations was the long harvesting cycle of the plant. Few farmers
would risk investment in harakeke when their first economic returns came after
at least five years. Another problem was its cultivation. Harakeke was vulnerable
to disease. In the 1920s, yellow-leaf disease destroyed plants, while other fibres
that harakeke fibre competed against remained unaffected. Once these natural
factors had been taken into account, harakeke fibre had to compete commercially with other hard fibres processed throughout the world, notably sisal hemp,
which was of higher quality and comparable strength.
And like all market economies, the New Zealand flax industry was susceptible
to periods of economic growth and decline as market conditions fluctuated.
Jones (2003) states how New Zealand flax underwent three periods of substantial growth: the first two boom periods for New Zealand were 18691870 and
18891890, and the third began in 1898 when the Spanish-American War cut off
the supply of manila fibre from the Philippines. This underlines the relatedness of
the fibre to the material vicissitudes of other fibres in the global marketplace.
The industry boomed in the first quarter of the twentieth century when
harakeke was used as a replacement for sisal, manila and other hard fibres
used in naval ropes. In 1907, exports peaked, when 28,547 long tons were
shipped abroad (Critchfield 1951: 176). The economic depression of the 1930s
sent the industry into decline. As exports dwindled, the industry switched attention to domestic markets, and processing mills began to produce fibre for
use as woolpacks in the wool industry. In 1936, the New Zealand government
restricted the import of woolpacks made from Indian jute in order to support the
domestic flax milling industry.
During the Second World War, the flax milling industry briefly blossomed due
to the disruption of fibre imports to New Zealand. The New Zealand government
provided financial support to the industry in order to ensure that the country had
enough fibre for agricultural and military use. After the war, import restrictions
remained and so supported harakeke production and the 15 to 20 mills that
were still in operation. The mills mainly produced fibre to make woolpacks, but
also for underfelt, carpets and upholstery materials and binder twine to tie up
hay bales (Jones 2003). With the lifting of government protection in the 1970s,
New Zealand flax could no longer compete with other natural fibres that were
produced more cheaply elsewhere in the world. Moreover, the development of
cheaper synthetic fibres such as polyester signalled the end of the industry and
the closure of the last flax mill in New Zealand in 1985. However, Cruthers, Carr
39
and Laing (2009: 108)claim this is an over simplification of the facts as overall
world demand for fibre both natural and man-made actually has increased. In
any case, Brooking (2004) succinctly notes, the flax industry promised so much
and delivered so little.
Clean, Green harakeke

So far, this chapter has concentrated on the story as to how the performance of
harakeke, through its application and use in the design of objects such as woolpacks, ropes and matting, was evaluated by a network of scientists, brokers,
and farmers. It has emphasized how harakeke was positioned, not as a material
in isolation, but in terms of its performance as an object and its relation to other
types of fibre products that were available at the time in terms of its economic
potential. Performance, moreover, was not just about its strength and stiffness
under load but also its capacity to be cultivated quickly, processed easily, its
resistance to disease and its capability to attract government subsidy. Thus, the
material identity of the plant fibre its potential application (as a hard fibre) and
its reputation (performance) had been constructed in line with market opportunities on an international scale.
Markets, however, are not static and neither are material identities. As the
well-documented case of the social history of plastic in Western consumer
culture testifies how its identity as an easily mouldable material that was clean
and hygienic shifted to one that posed large-scale waste and environment
problems (Meikle 1997; Hawkins 2011), material identities are susceptible to
shifting and refining. Indeed, as I will now demonstrate, new market opportunities and social movements have meant that new possibilities have emerged for
harakeke. A major factor has been the emergence of a bio-based economy and
the commoditization of the New Zealand landscape. The plants association to
the land has provided a space for a new identity to be created which has been
capitalized on in New Zealand by material scientists, cosmetic companies and
product designers.
Since the late 1990s, Tourism New Zealand has been running an international branding campaign as a green and clean country. Its 100% Pure brand
was developed by M and C Saatchi and established in 1999 through aggressive marketing in several countries. According to Medway and Warnaby (2014),
places are increasingly regarded as brands: countries like New Zealand
become commodities that are marketed with associated values and images.
In New Zealand, the natural landscape has become a niche brand. The 100%
40
Pure campaign aimed to combine New Zealands brand essence its distinctive landscape with a real point of difference that no other destination in the
world could possess (Morgan et al. 2002: 351). In brand marketing, it is the
positioning of the brand image that is more important to the ultimate success
than its actual characteristics. The outcome of this branding process was that
New Zealand became recognized internationally for its green values. This has
acted as a powerful marketing tool to attract international tourism, develop
economic productivity and raise environmental sustainability (Greening New
Zealands Growth 2011). The notion that New Zealanders share green values
has been pivotal for creating a new space to support renewed efforts to research
the potentials of harakeke as an economic plant. While the New Zealand flax
industry of the nineteenth and twentieth century positioned the material as a
coarse fibre, material scientists began to develop a new generation of sustainable materials known for their clean and green credentials. In other words, place
branding has helped drive materials innovation.
Scion, a Crown Research Institute based in Rotorua, New Zealand, is currently
leading research and development into harakeke and other native plants through
the production of a range of environmentally sustainable products that have
minimal impact on the environment. Their aim is to develop a range of biomaterials that help support a new bio-based economy in New Zealand and support the
image of a clean green country.3 Their vision is: Prosperity from trees or Mai
i te ngahere oranga (Maori). The Annual Report 2013 states: Scions purpose
is to drive innovation and growth from New Zealands forestry, wood product
and wood-derived materials and other biomaterial sectors, to create economic
value and contribute to beneficial environmental and social outcomes for New
Zealand (Scion Annual Report 2013). In addition to these vision statements, the
chairman and CEO of Scion state how Scion is also dedicated to increasing the
benefit to New Zealand from forest ecosystem services and improved environmental sustainability (Scion Annual Report 2013: 5).
The Scion website fashionably adopts the language of environmentalism
and sustainability. Its Manufacturing and Bioproducts webpage points to key
developments in wood and fibre technology, industrial biotechnology and
packaging and is an example of a materials-focused approach to innovation.
It states how the world is witnessing a major shift towards materials, chemicals and fuels made from renewable resources. Scion, it states, offers New
Zealands leading research capability in utilising industrial biotechnology to
create new materials, energy products and green chemicals. The website goes
on to state, in relation to wood and fibre technology, how the world is increasingly seeking to use renewable and sustainable materials to meet consumer
41
needs and as a consequence, new applications for wood and plant fibres are
rapidly emerging.4
I visited Scion in June 2011 to investigate further why scientists had decided
to conduct research on harakeke. In particular, my interest was raised by media
reports of one of the products Scion had developed a surfboard made using
harakeke fibre. According to the Scion scientists, harakeke was selected because
it offered an environmentally friendly alternative to glass fibre, which was made
from petrochemicals. Scientists had selected harakeke because of its biophysical
properties: its strength and stiffness were considered ideal for surfboard design.
Scientists combined harakeke with synthetic resins to produce a lightweight,
strong composite structure that made the board waterproof. The surfboard could
also be coloured, due to the fact that harakeke fibres can be dyed.
Scientists outlined three main reasons for thinking that harakeke could perform
as a suitable substitute for fibreglass in the design of the surfboard. First, scientists had observed its strength and stiffness (since they were aware that it had
been used as naval ropes up until the Second World War). Second, harakeke
was environmentally friendly it grows wild in New Zealand, and, at present, there
are government programmes to promote its cultivation. And finally, the surfboard
demonstrated that it was possible to make a water-resistant composite material
using biomaterials. The natural fibre was combined with synthetic resins and forms
to make a lightweight, strong composite structure that made the board waterproof
and also gave it a unique decorative effect, owing to the fact that harakeke fibres
could be dyed. It was explained that by adding organic nutrients or diallers as
they are termed in the materials industry the life of composite materials could be
prolonged or cut short the time a product takes to decay in the environment and
so address or conform to environmental and waste regulations.
Scion had developed the surfboard (as well as a series of other prototype
models of eco-products) to demonstrate how biomaterials could potentially be
marketed in the design of eco-products. These bespoke biomaterials with time
built in to them since their rate of decay is known appear to have obvious environment benefits. But because extracting the harakeke fibres was a complicated
process, as outlined at the beginning of this chapter, scientists could not scale
up production to the model of mass production they desired and so the surfboard was considered to be commercially unviable.
Instead, the operational realism (Barry 2005)of harakeke (as a hard fibre)
meant that efforts appeared to be orientated towards developing products on a
model of small-scale production. Harakeke biocomposite could not be produced
commercially in manufacturing industry, but it could assume a craft potential
as it conformed to small-scale models of production required for handmade
42
products. This was made evident when Scion formed a partnership in 2010 with
David Trubridge a prominent New Zealand designer working with sustainable materials to create household lamps made using a specially developed
composite material from bioplastic (polylactic acid) and harakeke fibre (Scion
Annual Report 2011). Trubridge stated that in this design we are expressing
our spreading awareness of, and connection to, Nature. (Scion Highlights of
the Financial Year 2010/2011). The products value is clearly in Trubridges innovative use of harakeke and the plants unique place in the cultural and natural
landscape of New Zealand.
Harakeke oil extraction and

environmental branding
While research and development continues to explore the potential of harakeke
in a bio-based economy, its unique and natural association to the 100% Pure
New Zealand landscape has created another niche within the green cosmetics
industry in New Zealand. The oil extracted from the plants leaves and its seeds
have been successfully used in healing and soothing ointments and creams.
This material transformation has positioned harakeke as New Zealands answer
to aloe vera. These cosmetic products, as I will demonstrate, render the actual
material substance (harakeke) unrecognizable (since the raw materials are
reduced through processing to creams or liquids) and in so doing, rely on a
visual culture of labelling and promotion that situates the products in the New
Zealand landscape. An analysis of two corporate marketing websites of popular
cosmetic companies will reveal how harakeke products build on the success
of the 100% Pure New Zealand brand and demonstrates how development of
harakeke has been guided by its potential as a cosmetic product.
Living nature
The website of Living Nature (http://www.livingnature.com/pages/harakeke)
brands itself as 100% natural and uniquely New Zealand. The natural cosmetics company produce and market a range of products including skin care oils
and cream, shampoos and conditioners for the hair, and face, eye and lip care
cosmetics. The products are packaged simply displaying the Living Nature logo,
a circular design similar to a Maori curvilinear kowhaiwhai rafter pattern. Its mission
is rooted in the land and the unique plant resources New Zealand offers:
featuring the uniqueness of our plant resources and earning export income; on
the world by being a model of ethical, honourable business and solving inherent 21st century problems in a way that inspires the human spirit.
43
Their website goes on to assert how the company has harnessed the purifying,
healing and nourishing power of New Zealands unique native botanicals like
Harakeke Flax Gel, Totarol, Manuka Honey, Manuka Oil, Hallo Clay and Kelp.
Their green credentials are underlined further with the following statement about
their commitment to the environment. Their facility uses energy from a New
Zealand power supplier that generates renewable energy from wind and water
(hydro) and we harvest our own filtered rainwater. Our packaging is fully recyclable, meets the highest EU environmental standards and is 100% free from
harmful phthalates and Bisphenol-A (BPA). Paper and cartons are sourced from
renewable, managed forests and, like our inks, are free from dioxin and elemental chlorine.
Further information on the website presents Living Nature as a pristine environment that thrives on its unique environment. It asserts that because of the
isolation of the islands that emerged over 80 million years, 80 percent of the
plants found in New Zealand are unique to the region and found nowhere else in
the world. It states how these unique plants are specially sourced on the basis
of their bioactive ingredients from the most potent plants known for their healing,
purifying and nourishing qualities.
Plants in the New Zealand landscape are marketed as bodily transformative. A number of indigenous plants are presented as hero ingredients and the
resulting cosmetics hero products. Harakeke leaf sap is categorized under this.
The sap is extracted from the plants older leaves to make a natural gel product that helps hydrate the skin. The product description mentions the traditional
uses of harakeke by Maoris as well as by early European settlers for rope and
linen. The website has a close-up image of harakeke leaves behind which in
soft focus is pictured a middle-aged woman with clear white skin. The image is
emblazoned with the slogan Harakeke: Natures Super Skin Hydrator.
Place is important in the promotion of product and its authenticity. The website
ascribes provenance, pointing how the gel is sourced from Te Araroa on New
Zealands East Cape. It provides further details about extraction process, stating
how the gel is physically removed from the base of the mature leaves so that
the main rootstock and younger leaves are preserved. The company uses the
harakeke leaves for the gel and the seeds for making soap. A short film provides
visual testimony of the source for the gel, located at the base of each leaf.
Primal Earth
The cosmetics company Primal Earth (http://www.primalearth.co.nz/) produces
natural plant-based skincare products that utilize New Zealands natural environment to market the efficacy of their products. Their slogan Powered by Plants
44
accompanies a range of products including shaving creme, face creme and

moisturizer in earthy green packaging. The cosmetics company utilize harakeke
and Mamuku fern, highlighting their use as natural skin lotions and healing properties. The Primal Earth oath states: Just New Zealand naturally active ingredients
that work. It adds: This range is powered by plants. No harsh chemicals. Look
and feel great, without irritating your skin. Made in New Zealand, by Kiwis.
The company website features three images of plants (harakeke, aloe vera
and Mamuku fern) situated in New Zealands natural landscape with no signs of
human intervention. In their promotional material about the different properties
of plants, the website states:
Harakeke is a striking plant that features dominantly in the New Zealand landscape. It is native to New Zealand and a handful of Pacific Islands. Harakeke is
renowned for the clear polysaccharide gel exudates produced on the surface of
leaves at the base. This gel is often referred to as the New Zealand Aloe Vera gel.
We use it extensively in our products for its skin soothing and hydrating properties. It is a superior natural alternative to petro-chemically derived synthetic gels.
The positioning of harakeke as New Zealands answer to aloe vera builds on the
plants existing identity as a herbal medicine. Unlike the other cosmetic companies that market harakeke, the website does not include details of how the gel is
extracted, its provenance or any historical reference points relating to the importance of harakeke to New Zealand (Maori and white settler) identity.
These natural products that are produced from the harakeke plant therefore
serve to underline how products are successfully marketed internationally for
their association to a natural, unique and pristine environment, much in the same
way Lycra had to sold to consumers through adverts, pamphlets and so forth
(OConnor 2011). This branding builds on the clean green image that has been
constructed and transmitted by the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign. It foregrounds visual representations of the New Zealand landscape to assert its New
Zealand identity in distinctive ways that add value to the product (cf. Ball 1997). It
also demonstrates how material innovation has been driven by available demand
for renewable products in the green cosmetics industry and the wider environment in which the New Zealand landscape was transformed into a recognizable
and understood brand that transmitted a set of green values and visual images.
Concluding comments
To summarize, while Maoris have for generations utilized harakeke fibre for their
own ritual and social practices, colonial scientists and biomaterial experts have
45
been unable to map their own model of mass production onto the fibre for the
product they are designing. It appears that even when harakeke is repositioned
as an alternative to mineral and petrochemical based products, harakeke is still
not compliant to the kinds of outcomes that the scientists so desired through
their products. That is, the operational realism of the fibre material meant that
products like the surfboard and the woolpacks were deemed uneconomic and
inefficient to produce and support once positioned alongside other products
readily available and easily extractible in the global materials industry, resulting in their failure of uptake. This demonstrates that even though the material
had the potential to innovate design and meet the needs of an environmentally conscious public, in its object form, the harakeke did not meet commercial
expectations. In Gells terms (1998), this suggests that harakeke lacked coherence in its object-form and thus failed to perform to expectations.
This story of innovation has also demonstrated how materials are intimately
tied to cultural and political environments into which they emerge, and how in
turn these influence users and consumers perception and performance of
materials. The national branding of New Zealand as a green and clean economy
has helped open a niche for the plant fibre and drive research and development
into the harakeke plant as an alternative to petro-based materials. Its operational
realism has opened opportunities for a craft-based industry due to the lack of
investment to find a technical solution to extract the strong fibres. In effect, it
has meant that scientists have looked for other properties of the plant, such as
the gel, which draws on the known curative properties of harakeke. This illustrates how the material expressivity of harakeke shapes social worlds and guides
research and development in innovative ways.
Materials innovation, I have hoped to emphasize, is not simply about discovery. Rather, as I have demonstrated, it involves a deeper engagement as materials
provoke connections that shape their substance and form, which in turn, informs
their use and application in society. As Ingold (2000) rightly reminds us, this is
why materials and culture permeate each other and do not exist in separate
domains of experience.
Reports
Greening New Zealands Growth, Report of the Green Growth Advisory Group. December 2011.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment: Wellington.
The Utilisation of New Zealand Hemp Waste. Bulletin of the Imperial Institute XVII (1919):
485488.
Scion Annual Report 2011. Downloaded from: http://www.scionresearch.com/__data/assets/
pdf_file/0003/35526/Scion-Annual-Report-2011-web.pdf (accessed on 17 March 2014).
46
Scion Annual Report 2013: Highlights. Downloaded from: http://www.scionresearch.com/__

data/assets/pdf_file/0017/42443/ScionAnnualReport2013-Highlights.pdf (accessed on 17
March 2014).
Notes
1. Hector (1872) describes how in 1844, a company was formed in England that sent
out specialist machines and technicians to New Zealand. The enterprise, according
to Hector, failed as the machines proved unsuitable for the purpose (1872: iii). Many
other attempts were made to extract the fibre; experimentation with different types of
machinery resulted in the fibre failing to meet the quality of other fibres. These projects,
as a consequence, ended in financial disaster.
2. Although Ball (2012: 362)asserts how materials are computational and the material
structure itself is the machine.
3. See Kotler and Simon (2003) for an analysis of the impact the materials industry has on
the economic productivity of a country.
4. Seehttp://www.scionresearch.com/research/manufacturing-and-bioproducts/woodand-fibre-technology (accessed 17 March 2014).
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University Press.
Ball, P. (2012), Material Computation, Nature Materials, 11 May, 362.
Barry, A. (2005), Pharmaceutical Matters: The Invention of Informed Materials, Theory, Culture
and Society, 22(1): 5169.
Bell, F. D and F. Young (1842), Reasons for Promoting the Cultivation of the New Zealand Flax.
London: Smith, Elder and Co.
Bennett, J. (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Boivin, N. (2008), Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Impact of Things on Human Thought,
Society, and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brooker, S. G., R. C. Cambie and R. C. Cooper (1989), Economic Native Plants of New
Zealand, Economic Botany, 43(1): 79106.
Brooking, T. (2004), The History of New Zealand. London: Greenwood Press.
Critchfield, H. J. (1951), Phormium Tenax New Zealands Native Hard Fiber, Economic
Botany, 5(2): 172184.
Cruthers, N., D. Carr and R. Laing (2009), Research Note. The New Zealand Flax Fibre
Industry, Textile History, 40(1): 103111.
DeLanda, M. (2006), Material Expressivity, Domus, 893: 122123. Lebbeus Woods. 5 January
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Dodge, C. R. (1897), A Descriptive Catalogue of Useful Fibre Plants of the World. Washington:
Government Printing Office.
Gell, A. (1998), Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hawkins, G. (2011), The Politics of Bottled Water: Assembling Bottled Water as Brand, Waste and
Oil, in T. Bennett, and C. Healy (eds), Assembling Culture, pp.177189. London: Routledge.
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Hawkins, G., E. Potter and K. Race (in press), Plastic Water. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Museum and Geological Survey Department.
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London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2011), Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Oxford: Routledge.
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in C. Knappett and L. Malafouris (eds), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric
Approach, pp. ixxix. New York: Springer Books.
Kotler, P. and F. Simon (2003), Building Global Biobrands: Taking Biotechnology to Market. New
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the New Zealand Experience?. London: Springer International.
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Commodification, Environment and Planning A, 46: 153167.
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Chapter3
Pharmaceutical matters: The
invention of informed materials
Andrew Barry
In comparison to physics and biology, chemistry appears to be a science lacking in theoretical interest. Unlike physics, it does not claim to be concerned
with the investigation of fundamental forces and particles. Unlike biology, it does
not concern itself primarily with the properties and dynamics of living materials. Indeed, as Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers note in
their History of Chemistry, the discipline is often considered merely a service
science. In one common view, although chemistry did once play a leading role
in the development of scientific thought, in the twentieth century that role seems
to have been displaced by other fields. To be sure, chemistry is a large field
embracing a huge range of important topics and problems, but it apparently no
longer possesses the status that it once had in the hierarchy of scientific disciplines: Chemistry may seem to be a kind of applied physics, whose focus is not
on the progress of knowledge but technico-industrial utility (Bensaude-Vincent
and Stengers 1996: 245). From this perspective, chemistry is doubly uninteresting. First, the direction of its development is determined by purely instrumental
considerations. Second, the discipline no longer aspires to address any fundamental questions. At best, contemporary chemistry simply makes it possible
for some of the fundamental scientific developments of the twentieth century
(quantum mechanics and genetics, in particular) to find fields of application. At
worst, it remains tied to a nave and outdated ontology of atomism and mechanism. The received view that chemical thought is theoretically limited is not new.
In his Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson had drawn a sharp contrast between
the limitations of physics and chemistry and the philosophical importance of the
sciences of life: Those who are concerned only with the functional [as distinct
from the creative] activity of the living being are inclined to believe that physics
and chemistry will give us the key to biological processes (Ansell-Pearson 1999:
149; Bergson 1998: 36).
50
In this chapter, I make four intersecting arguments, which contest this received
view. First, I argue that chemistry is of general interest to social theory not because
of its larger theoretical claims or ethical implications but rather because, as
Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers argue, it is an industrial, applied and empirical
discipline. Indeed, part of the theoretical interest of chemistry is that it indicates
the importance of research that is not primarily guided by theory but is attentive
to the singularity of the case. Second, focusing on a specific case of R&D in
pharmaceutical chemistry, I develop Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers claim that
one of the key features of chemical R&D is that it is concerned with the invention of what they term informed materials. The chapter argues that molecules
should not be viewed as discrete objects, but as constituted in their relations to
complex informational and material environments. Third, drawing on the philosophy of A. N. Whitehead and the sociology of Gabriel Tarde, I suggest how we
might make a distinction between the concept of invention, used by BensaudeVincent and Stengers, and the concepts of discovery and innovation. While we
may or may not agree with Bergsons claim that chemistry does not provide an
account of the creative activity of living materials, I argue that chemical R&D is
not merely innovative, but is itself creative or inventive, in Tardes sense of the
term. Chemical R&D does not, among other things, discover or synthesize new
molecules or new molecular structures, but, as Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers
argue, it invents informed materials. Fourth, I argue that an important feature
of contemporary pharmaceutical chemistry is, to use A. N. Whiteheads terms,
the invention of new methods for the invention of such materials. Although the
materials produced by chemists have always been informed, the development
of contemporary pharmaceutical research has fostered new forms and levels
of informational enrichment. My suggestion is that the chemical molecules
invented by chemical R&D are now so rich in information that the informational
content of invented materials becomes easier to recognize. In part, the conduct
of contemporary pharmaceutical R&D is of general interest precisely because
it makes the informational content of invented materials more clearly visible. In
sociology, as in chemistry, the general interest of the example derives from an
attention to its specificity.
Chemistry
In their history, Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers do not deny that there is some
truth in the received view of chemistry as merely a service science. But they
offer two correctives, both of which suggest a richer account of the history of
Pharmaceutical matters
51
chemistry. First, they note some of the ways in which chemistry has continued to
produce surprising and fundamental results in the twentieth century. They point,
in particular, to Prigogines work in far-from-equilibrium physical chemistry and
his analysis of self-organizing systems. Contemporary chemistry, in their view,
points to the limitations of those approaches that seek to deduce from first principles but instead recognizes the possibility of learning from the contingent.
What are the properties of a substance if one is interested only in deducing
them without learning? And how does one learn from them if not by painstaking experiments of which they are an integral part or deciphering the temporal
configuration of all the processes at work? (Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers
1996: 264).
In this view chemistry is not so much a positivist science, but a discipline that
points to a new form of empiricism. It produces substances, the properties of
which cannot be derived from general laws.1
Second and relatedly, their history indicates that the technico-industrial utility of chemistry cannot be understood simply as a process of application. On
the one hand, once outside of the laboratory chemists confronts environments
or open systems, which do not correspond necessarily to the closed environments of the laboratory (Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers 1996: 249). In these
circumstances, the relation between the field of application (factory, urban environment, field) and the laboratory is necessarily one of translation rather than
application or diffusion (Latour 1988, 1999). On the other hand, in so far as
chemistry has played a critical part in the development of new materials it has
also given rise to a different notion of matter. Matter is not merely reshaped
mechanically through chemical R&D but is, according to Bensaude-Vincent and
Stengers, transformed into informed material:
Instead of imposing a shape on the mass of material, one develops an
informed material in the sense that the material structure becomes richer
and richer in information. Accomplishing this requires a detailed comprehension of the microscopic structure of materials, because it is playing with these
molecular, atomic and even subatomic structures that one can invent materials
adapted to industrial demands. (Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers 1996: 206,
my emphasis)
Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers argument raises two immediate questions, to

which they do not provide an answer in this text. First, what is implied by the idea
that such materials are invented? What is at stake in using the term invention in
describing what happens to chemical substances in the laboratory rather than,
52
for example, the term discovery? Second, how are we to make sense of the
idea that materials can somehow become informed or, as they suggest, richer
and richer in information.
Invention
What is an invention? In The Laws of Imitation, Gabriel Tarde provides us with
a starting point for a social theory of invention. For Tarde, invention was not
the opposite of imitation, nor was the relation between invention and imitation
analogous to the sociological distinction between agency and structure. Rather,
invention involved the novel composition of elements that were themselves
imitations: All inventions and discoveries are composites of earlier imitations ...
and these composites are, in their turn, destined to become new more complex
composites (Tarde 2001: 105). In Tardes ontology there were no fundamental
elements from which composites were invented. Even those objects that were
often taken to be fundamental such as chemical atoms and human individuals
were only fundamental from the point of view of specific scientific disciplines.2
As a composite, the properties of any invention were not reducible to the
elements from which it was composed. At the same time, as Tarde argued, the
process of invention provided a direction to history, although one that was neither
linear nor predictable. Anticipating the conclusions of more recent economists
and sociologists of technology, Tarde recognized that the process of invention was
contingent, irreversible and path-dependent. In this way, Tarde conceived of inventions as events, not as mere moments in the progressive evolution of technology
or the manifestation of the movement of societies from one form to another: To
establish social science it is not necessary to conceive the evolution of societies
... with a formula comparable to the type of itinerary planned in advance that the
railroad companies propose to and impose on tourists (1967: 93).
Some of Tardes comments on invention seem to imply that he viewed individual genius as being of critical importance to the inventive process. Yet his
account of invention was not psychological, nor did Tarde have a romantic
conception of the individual creator. On the one hand, his account was based
on a generalized social psychology of belief and desire, in which the notion of
society applied as much to non-human as to human entities (Alliez 1999). On
the other hand, Tarde recognized that what he termed scientific geniuses (such
as Cuvier, Newton and Darwin) mobilized the action of many obscure researchers whose contribution was often ignored (Tarde 1999: 66). Invention, in Tardes
account, was accomplished not by an individual agent, but by lines of force that
53
came to traverse the individual person. Moreover, for an invention to become

irreversible depended on the extent of its subsequent imitation by others.
Tardes conception of invention provides a corrective to two commonplace
ways of conceiving of technological invention, in general, and the inventive practice of chemistry, in particular. In one view, chemical research and development is
driven by social and economic forces. It is a service science, after all. In this way,
the products of chemical innovation (such as molecules) become shaped by a
social and economic dynamic that was external to them. In Tardes terms, this
form of socioeconomic analysis operates with an excessively restrictive conception of society. In effect, the activity of chemical substances is simply rendered
inert, excluded from the active realm of the social. In a second view, the chemist works to discover new materials. Indeed, the idea that new molecules are
discovered is one apparently implied by pharmaceutical chemists themselves
who write of research and development as a process of drug discovery.3 In this
account, the fundamental properties of the finite set of chemical elements that
make up the periodic table provide a set of given possibilities out of which effective drug molecules can subsequently be synthesized. This view resonates with
the nineteenth-century notion that nature exists as a repository of potential inventions that are simply there waiting to be realized or discovered by the scientist
or engineer (Macleod 1996). For Tarde, such an account fails to recognize that
an atomic element or a molecule is never just an element in isolation. Inevitably,
the chemist, in discovering a new molecule, invents a new composite element.
Invention leads to the actualization of the virtual rather than the realization of the
possible (Deleuze 1988: 9697).
Although Tarde does provide a starting point for a social theory of invention,
his own historical analysis fails to recognize the significance of the industrialization of science and engineering that occurred in the late nineteenth century
(Noble 1977). In this respect, his image of invention was indebted to romantic
notions of individual creativity. A. N. Whiteheads later remarks on the history of
nineteenth-century science in Science and the Modern World are more suggestive. For Whitehead, the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the
invention of the method of invention (Whitehead 1985: 120). This oft-quoted
comment seems remarkable in a book that is primarily concerned with issues
in the history and philosophy of science rather than the sociology and history of
technology. Yet it makes perfect sense in the context of Whiteheads philosophical project. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead had little to say about
the kinds of problem that traditionally preoccupy philosophers of science such
as the relation between theory and evidence or the nature of scientific method.
His concerns were metaphysical, not epistemological, and at the heart of his
54
philosophy was that the ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from
disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in
disjunction (Whitehead 1978: 21). As for Tarde, Whiteheads was a metaphysics
of association. For Whitehead, the nineteenth-century invention of the method
of invention made the production of novel associations a matter of systematic
research and development. While fields concerned with the invention and investigation of materials such as chemistry and metallurgy have arguably played
a merely supportive part in the development of many of the most well-known
developments in twentieth-century scientific theory, from the point of view of the
history of invention their role is absolutely critical.4 To view such fields of science
as merely instrumental, or simply driven by an economic logic, would fail to
recognize their inventiveness. The notion of informed material, put forward by
Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, points to one way in which such sciences have
been inventive and to one way in which atoms and molecules come to exist, to
use Tardes terms, as complex composites.
Informed materials
How can we understand the idea that materials can be informed? Two views were
commonplace among chemists in the late nineteenth century. First, in comparison to physics, which sometimes dealt with metaphysical abstractions, chemists
prided themselves on the practical craft of their discipline. In this period, chemistrys greatness consisted precisely in its not transcending the facts learned from
its practice (Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers 1996). Chemistry was a discipline
grounded in the controlled environment of the laboratory. Meeting the converging interests of academic research and industrial production, the chemistry
laboratory both produced new entities and provided the space within which they
could reliably be witnessed (Stengers 1997: 95).
Second, many (although not all) chemists viewed the discipline as a science
of atomic elements and molecules. This identity was displayed clearly in the
periodic table, a diagram that is still to be found on the walls of the present-day
laboratory. Conceived in this way, chemistry appeared to make two assumptions. One was that atoms have given and invariant identities, an assumption
that was (partially) undermined with the discovery of radioactivity at the beginning of the twentieth century. The second was that chemistry is a science of
combinations between these invariant entities. Despite the fact that chemists
write of things such as carbon, water and iron all the time, such atoms and
molecules are never studied in isolation. The chemist is interested in the fact that
55
the properties of atoms and molecules vary considerably depending on the form
and circumstances of their association with others.
For A. N. Whitehead, the discipline of chemistry had a particular importance in the exposition of his philosophy of organic mechanism. For Whitehead
recognized that the image of matter as being composed of distinct atoms and
molecules had come to inform contemporary understandings of reality. In this
commonplace view, a molecule is thought of as something like a stone a kind
of stuff which retained its self-identity and its essential attributes in any portion of
time (Whitehead 1978: 78; Stengers 2002). Whereas Bergson wished to distance
himself from what he viewed as the limitations of chemical thought, Whiteheads
own criticism of this commonplace view drew some inspiration from chemistry. In
his account, however, the identities of atoms and molecules were not distinct, nor
were they invariant. Rather than starting out from the first assumption (the invariability of atoms and molecules), Whitehead began from the second (the variability
of their associations). Viewing chemistry as a science of associations or relations,
Whitehead argued that a molecule should be considered a historical rather than
a physical entity. In his view, a molecule should not be understood as a table or
rock but rather as an event: A molecule is a historic route of actual occasions;
and such a route is an event (Whitehead 1978: 80). Seen in these terms the
endurance of a molecule through time cannot be taken for granted. Molecules
certainly endure, but it cannot be assumed that they remain the same: Physical
endurance is the process of continuously inheriting a certain identity of character
transmitted throughout an historical route of events (Whitehead 1985: 136).
Chemistry should not be understood then as a science of combinations
between given elements that are nonetheless be considered distinct and
immutable. Rather, the identity and properties of atoms and molecules are transformed through their changing associations. The properties of a hydrogen atom
bound within a water molecule are different from the properties of a hydrogen
atom bound within a hydrogen molecule. The properties of a water molecule
are quite different at temperatures above and below 0C. The properties of a
metal vary considerably depending on whether it contains trace impurities of
other elements. In displacing the notion of the object by the notion of the actual
occasion or actual entity, Whitehead suggested a different account of atoms and
molecules. For Whitehead, actual entities, including molecules, are not bounded
at all, but are extended into other entities, while folding elements of other entities inside them. As became clear with the development of quantum chemistry,
apparently distinct atoms and molecules entered into the internal constitution of others through their association. This recognition was a central part of
Whiteheads metaphysics: [An] actual entity is present in other actual entities
56
... The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear
the notion of being present in another entity (Whitehead 1978: 50; see also
Deleuze 1993: 78; Halewood 2003).
For chemists, the fact that molecules have changing properties depending
on their associations is an everyday reality. The molecule that is isolated and
purified in the laboratory will not have the same properties as it has in the field,
the city street or the body (Barry 2001: 153174). The challenge, for the chemist, is to multiply the relations between different forms of existence of a molecule
both inside and outside the laboratory (Latour 1999: 113114). It is impossible
to establish an identity between the molecule in the laboratory and a molecule
elsewhere, but it may be possible to establish a relation of translation. The problem is particularly difficult to address in thinking about the properties of drugs.
Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers note the challenge faced by chemists
engaged in pharmaceutical research:
The pharmacological chemist can certainly pursue the dream of an a priori
conception of molecules to be synthesized for their pharmaceutical properties, but it is still the case that 60 to 70 per cent of medicines today are of
natural origin ... From this field the chemist takes the active molecules, which
he isolates, purifies and copies, and modifies at leisure. But it is also on the
field on the ailing body that medicine designed in a laboratory must operate. Humanity delegates active chemical substances to act not in the aseptic
space of a laboratory but in a living labyrinth whose topology varies in time,
where partial and circumstantial causalities are so intertwined that they escape
any a priori intelligibility. (1996: 263)
Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers pose the problem of the relation between the
aseptic space of a laboratory and the living labyrinth of the body as an ontological one. Molecules necessarily do have different identities and effects in the
laboratory and the body. But, for pharmaceutical research, the gap between the
laboratory and the body is equally economic, regulatory and legal. Although
pharmaceutical companies may be able to identify potential drug molecules
through a variety of methods, there is no guarantee that active molecules will
work effectively and safely as drugs in living bodies.5 During development many
active molecules fail whether because they are poorly absorbed or metabolized,
or are subsequently shown to have toxic effects. Moreover, in the context of
the growing concern of consumers, regulators have become more cautious
about drug approvals and increasing post-marketing surveillance has led to
an increasing number of withdrawals.6 The withdrawal of Bayers Baycol is a
well-known recent example.7 In these circumstances, research and development
57
costs have escalated. Pfizer, for example, the worlds largest drugs company,
has warned that its $5 billion annual research budget will yield only about two
major new drugs per year. The average pre-clinical trial development cost of new
chemical entities is said to be $30million per molecule. Perhaps 90 per cent of
such molecules fail such trials. The cost of generating a single approved medicine is claimed to be over $600million.
For pharmaceutical companies the costs of clinical trials and the even greater
costs of withdrawing drugs after they have been marketed poses a clear problem: How is it possible to maximize the chances that a drug will be both effective
and safe prior to the conduct of such trials and, thereby, to increase the productivity of pharmaceutical R&D? How can reliable relations be established between
the aseptic space of a laboratory and the living labyrinth of the body without
the presence of real bodies? In brief, how can innovation be speeded up?8
Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers indicate one solution to the problem.
Pharmaceutical R&D can be directed to the extraction and purification of active
molecules from naturally occurring substances. This practice can give rise to a
series of legal and ethical questions concerning the ownership of intellectual property, for example, regarding indigenous knowledge of the medicinal properties of
plants or the ownership of viruses that are present in particular populations (Pottage
1998). Such an approach is of continuing importance, but it is only one possible
research strategy open to pharmaceutical companies. A more general understanding of pharmaceutical R&D is suggested by the notion of informed material.
One way of understanding the idea that a material entity (such as a potential
drug molecule) could be informed or rich in information would be to say that the
material embodies information. In this view, the design process builds information into the structure of the molecule. But this view would not make sense if we
understood the molecule to be simply a discrete and bounded entity. For if molecules were simply discrete entities, how could one then distinguish between a
molecule that embodies little information and the same molecule with the same
structure of elements that embodies a great deal of information? In Whiteheads
and Stengers terms, it is possible to give a different and more precise meaning
to the idea of a material object being rich in information. This would acknowledge
that material objects (such as molecules) exist in an informational and material
environment, yet this environment cannot, as Whitehead argued, be considered
as simply external to the object. An environment of informational and material
entities enters into the constitution of an entity such as a molecule. Nor can this
environment be perceived from a viewpoint that is external to it. The perception
of an entity (such as a molecule) is part of its informational material environment
(Fraser 2002; Whitehead 1985: 87).
58
Thus defined, the notion of an informed material makes sense of what

pharmaceutical actually do. Pharmaceutical companies do not produce bare
molecules structures of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and other elements
isolated from their environments. Rather they produce a multitude of informed
molecules, including multiple informational and material forms of the same
molecule. Pharmaceutical companies do not just sell information, but neither do
they just sell material objects (drug molecules) either. The molecules produced
by pharmaceutical companies are more or less purified, but they are also
enhanced and enriched through laboratory practice. The molecules produced
by a pharmaceutical company are already part of a rich informational material
environment, even before they are consumed. This environment includes, for
example, data about potency, metabolism and toxicity and information regarding the intellectual property rights associated with different molecules. In this
way, pharmaceutical laboratories have similarities to other laboratories. As Karin
Knorr-Cetina argues laboratories: invent and recreate ... objects from scratch
... creat[ing] new configurations of objects that they match with an appropriately altered social order (Knorr-Cetina 1999: 44).
Drug discovery
Consider the case of a medium-sized pharmaceutical company called ArQule,
which, towards the end of the 1990s began to transform itself into a drug
discovery company a company oriented towards the development of new
chemical entities. Although ArQule was unusual in some respects, its approach
to drug discovery is indicative of broader shifts in the conduct of contemporary
pharmaceutical R&D. These centred on the introduction of new technologies,
including high-throughput screening, combinatorial chemistry, genomics, and
computer modelling (Bailey and Brown 2001).9 In this way, elements of the
drug discovery process, which had hitherto been based on craft laboratory
skills, became increasingly industrialized (Augen 2002; Handen 2002). At the
same time, the introduction of new technologies involved alliances between
companies working in distinct areas of technology, and also the formation
of so-called virtual pharmaceutical companies that managed such alliances
(Cavalla 2003: 267).
ArQule made its name as a pioneering company in combinatorial chemistry, a set of techniques that made possible to produce a huge number of
potential drug molecules cheaply and quickly.10 Instead of being the product
of specific synthetic pathways of the kind associated with traditional synthetic
59
organic chemistry, combinatorial chemistry enabled new molecules to be mass

produced (Hird 2000; Thomas 2000: 6988).
Synthetic chemistry: A + B + C -> AB + C -> ABC (an individual compound)
Combinatorial chemistry: An + Bn + C -> AnBn + Cn -> AnBnCn (combinatorial
library of 10,0001,000,000 compounds)
For the traditional organic chemist the problem was to find the most efficient way
of synthesizing a given molecular compound (ABC) from a finite set of building
blocks of existing compounds (A,B,C, D ...), which were either readily available
in the laboratory or could be purchased from chemical suppliers. Indeed, the
discovery of solutions to particular synthetic problems was central to the field of
organic chemistry, as it was once taught in University courses. In the laboratory,
organic chemists had to deal with the all the difficulties of translating formal solutions to synthetic problems into practice. As Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers
explain: organic chemistry texts usually present the classic, conventional reaction chains. But to the student or researcher falls the problem of directing the
actors in a play, so to speak, and creating the situations they need to achieve the
desired goal (1996: 159).
By contrast, combinatorial chemistry performs synthesis through mass
production. Through combinatorial chemistry a large number of different but
chemically similar building blocks (Aa, Ab ... An) can be reacted with sets of other
building blocks (Ba, Bb ... Bn) and (Ca, Cb ... Cn) to produce huge numbers of
synthetic compounds. In this way, molecules come to exist not as the product
of individual synthetic pathways, as was previously the case, but in conjunction
with a multitude of other molecules produced through combinatorial pathways.
Physically, molecules produced through such techniques are dissolved in
standard solutions and stored, for example, in arrays of test-tubes. These arrays
collectively form what in the industry are termed libraries of compounds (Beno
and Mason 2001). The metaphor of a library of molecules is appropriate because
not only do such mass produced molecules have a material existence but they
also are held in an informational form in catalogues and databases. Without
further research, individual molecules produced through combinatorial chemistry have little commercial value. In practice, combinatorial chemistry companies,
such as ArQule, sold whole libraries of molecules to those larger pharmaceutical
companies that had the resources to investigate and exploit them.
But although combinatorial chemistry, in conjunction with high-throughput
screening techniques, reduced the costs of producing and analysing the
properties of new molecules, it did not solve the problem of how to determine
60
whether they would work in living bodies. According to industry reports combinatorial chemistry companies faced the problem that the new technology was
not yielding the kinds of dramatic improvements in the productivity and efficiency of drug discovery that had been anticipated by investors and partners.
The danger was that ArQule would end up simply providing the bulk material
for drug development, but not playing any significant role in the subsequent
informational enrichment of its product. It would not be able to engage in
either what researchers term lead generation (developing a set of molecules
which have the potential to become drugs) or lead optimization (refining
this set). In these circumstances, ArQules strategy was to reinvent itself as a
drug discovery company and, at the same time, to attempt to create a new
form of informed material. Value could be realized by enriching molecules with
information.
In broad terms, ArQules attempt to do this had two elements. One was to
integrate elements of the existing drug discovery process. To work as a drug,
a molecule did not merely have to be potent but it also had to be absorbed by
(and eliminated from) the body, it had to be non-toxic and metabolized neither
too slowly nor too quickly. Traditionally, major pharmaceutical companies had
performed tests for these properties in sequence. First, potential drug candidates were tested for potency against specific targets, then the other properties
of those molecules that were likely to be potent were investigated. ArQules aim
was to perform them in parallel thereby dramatically reducing the time taken to
optimize the design of a potential drug molecule.
In the traditional drug discovery process, physico-chemical properties,
selectivity, potency and ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, toxicity) parameters are evaluated in a sequential manner, extending
the time required to identify a lead candidate and increasing costs. Key
information provided by ADMET profiling is historically obtained at the
end of the discovery process. Adverse results at this step can eliminate
compounds that have already progressed for many years, at a substantial
cost (ArQule 2001)... [Instead, the] sequential process with late failures
must be replaced by a multi-parameter filer at every stage of the drug
discovery process. (Hill 2001)
This strategy was called Parallel Track drug discovery: The trademark is
an indicator that this method of invention itself had a market value and public
visibility. As a brand, ArQule did not address itself to consumers (Blackett and
Robins 2001)but rather to the network of potential investors, collaborators and
researchers necessary to maintain an innovative company.
61
The second element of ArQules approach to the problem of drug discovery involved a proliferation of the forms of existence of molecules. Molecules
increasingly existed in ArQule not merely as material and informational objects
in laboratories and libraries but also as the objects of computer modelling. To
be sure, computational methods had already established a place in the drug
discovery process, however, this place had been a limited one.
[In drug discovery a] team must come up with a drug which will interact with a
novel target for therapeutic intervention in an important disease. The team will
have access to data on related targets and existing drugs which interact with
them. They may have a crystal structure of a target protein. And using a library
of computational tools, with their inherent sets of chemical rules, the team can
make an informed assessment regarding the shape of molecules that might
interact with the target. In modern companies, they will then be able to enumerate a focused library of possible actives using these methods. But this is where
their simulation ends. (Beresford etal. 2002)
ArQules approach was to extend the use of computer models to the simulation
of ADMET. Through computer models, the libraries of molecules generated
through combinatorial chemistry could be subject to what pharmaceutical
researchers called virtual screening (Manly etal. 2001). In this way, it would
become much easier, and cheaper, to deal with the size of library generated
by combinatorial chemistry. In principle, huge libraries of molecules could be
enriched through computer modelling, reducing the need for costly laboratory experiments. In practice, however, the development of computer models
that might be of use to the laboratory chemist is far from straightforward.
Models themselves can be derived, in part, from general quantum mechanical principles. But, as Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers argue, chemistry can
rarely rely on general principles, perhaps particularly in the case of the pharmaceutical industry. Necessarily, the development of computer models relies
on data derived from earlier laboratory and clinical trials on molecules that
may be more or less different from the molecules that the chemist is interested in. However sound the theoretical bases of models are, their reliability
depends on the quality and breadth of the data sets on which specific calculations are based.
In discussions between chemists, the term chemical space has particular
importance. Why is this term so significant? One reason is that it provides a
way of thinking about the distance between the properties of the molecules they
are interested in and the properties of the molecules that have been used to
derive the models. The quality of the models depends on the volume of chemical
62
space they are able to operate within with some degree of reliability. As one team
of chemical modellers explained:
Any primordial models in the past were invariably poor in their predictability
because they were based on a very small data set of tens of compounds.
(Beresford etal. 2002)
In this way, the concept of chemical space is both important and difficult to operationalize. It is not a Newtonian space, governed by particular coordinate axes that
exist independently of the entities that exist within the space. Rather, chemical
space is a relational space, the coordinates of which are governed by the particular medical chemical process under investigation. Two different molecules that
exist in close proximity to each other in relation to one specific process, for example, may be distant from each other when viewed in relation to a different process.
Different pharmaceutical companies, research teams or projects may temporarily
occupy different regions of chemical space. But, at the same time, they are likely
to conceive of the structure of chemical space in quite different ways.
While computer modelling can be used to select molecules from the libraries
generated through combinatorial chemistry, modelling also generates and tests
molecules that may not necessarily have any material existence at all. Molecules
can be synthesized on screen even more easily than through combinatorial
chemistry. As well as combinatorial libraries it is now possible for pharmaceutical
companies to hold virtual libraries of molecules that have never been synthesized. However, it should not be thought that such computational experiments
are necessarily less real than those tested in a traditional laboratory. For some
pharmaceutical researchers and managers all techniques are viewed more or
less instrumentally in terms of how quickly and efficiently they yield molecules
with a potential to become drug molecules. Others point out that computational
experiments are closer to external reality than traditional laboratory experiments
as they are likely to be based on data derived from trials on living bodies, whereas
laboratory experiments will be conducted in standard solutions.11 Linguistically,
researchers establish equivalence between experiments conducted through
computer models by computational chemists and experiments conducted using
chemical materials by laboratory chemists. The former experiments are in silico,
the latter are in vivo or in vitro (Leach and Hann 2000). For the chemist, it would not
make sense to say that experiment that takes place through a computer model is
simply a representation of the kind of experiment traditionally carried by the organic
chemist or biologist in the laboratory. In silico, in vivo and in vitro experiments are all
considered as distinct events that constitute their own objects, relations and forms
of measurement, and have their own strengths and weaknesses. The problem
63
for a pharmaceutical research group is to translate between the different forms of

experiment and different forms of existence of molecules, so that they enrich each
other. In practice, this translation is likely to be difficult.
ArQule did not produce molecules that could be sold directly to consumers.
The company did not have the resources to invest in expensive clinical trials, nor
the political and legal expertise with which to manage its relations with the regulatory authorities, nor the infrastructure required for marketing and distribution. In
this context, measurements of the properties of molecules, in their various material
and immaterial forms, are critical to the formation of the market for potential drug
molecules for companies such as ArQule (cf. Callon etal. 2002: 198199). For
along with other pharmaceutical companies, ArQule had to develop new materials
that were sufficiently rich in information that they could provide both the basis for
claims to intellectual property and that would also be likely candidates for further
development. Potential purchasers of ArQules research did not purchase molecules but rather molecules of which the properties had, in various forms, been
measured and that were, thereby, uncertainly predictive of their clinical existence.
The economics of the pharmaceutical industry revolve around an extraordinary
level of investment in measuring equipment including computer modelling technology, laboratory tests and clinical trials which produces uncertain results.
Thus specific molecules exist in the informational and material environment
of the laboratory. But they also exist in a legal and economic environment of
other molecules developed by other companies. Necessarily, in formulating
research strategies chemists take into account the existence of prior patents.12
This information, updated daily, is available on commercial databases. The
importance of this informational environment accounts for a second sense in
which chemists use the term chemical space, which refers to the distance
between patented drug molecules and the set of molecules they are investigating. In the context of this information, chemists may seek to buy into the
legal-chemical space owned by other companies through collaboration. But
they may also try to develop molecules that exist just outside of the space
defined by a patent,13 or colonize unexplored volumes of chemical space, or
attempt to redesign drug molecules that have been patented but which have
failed clinical trials.14 Moreover, in developing computer models chemists make
use of publicly available data on patented molecules. In these ways, intellectual
property law should not be considered simply part of the external environment within which pharmaceutical companies operate and drug molecules are
developed. In a number of different ways, information about existing patents
enters into the life of molecules, even during the earliest stages of their development. The molecules produced by the pharmaceutical laboratory are rich
64
in information about their (global) legal and economic, as well as their chemical relations to other molecules. The pharmaceutical laboratory is not a closed
system, but a space that itself includes its external legal and economic environment (cf. Mitchell 2002: 303; Strathern 2002).
Conclusions: Chemical invention

Does it make sense to describe pharmaceutical R&D as an inventive practice
rather than merely a practice of discovery? Are the kinds of entities produced
through pharmaceutical companies novel? Certainly, the molecules developed
by pharmaceutical R&D do not exist in nature. But neither can they be designed
simply on the basis of fundamental chemical principles. Nor are they merely
structures of atomic elements that always had the potential to be discovered or
realized. As we have seen, the development of new drugs involves the multiplication of forms of existence of molecules. But, at the same time, the multiplication
of forms of existence of molecules is associated with their progressive informational enrichment.
Thus, the kinds of entities that are produced by pharmaceutical R&D are not
simply bare molecules. Rather they can be understood as societies of different
elements, as long as we understand that societies are associations of nonhuman as well as human entities. The idea of chemical space, which is used
so frequently by pharmaceutical chemists, conveys precisely the way in which
chemists understand that molecules are societies, in Tardes sense of the term.
As I have argued, the kinds of societies produced by pharmaceutical R&D take
specific historical forms. The molecules produced in the contemporary pharmaceutical laboratory certainly are more or less purified as chemicals, but they
are also enriched in new ways. They are part of increasingly dense, spatially
extended and changing informational and material environments formed not just
through laboratory syntheses and tests, but through virtual libraries, computational models and databases. The notion of informed materials, introduced by
Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, describes such novel entities very well.15
For A. N. Whitehead, it was a mistake to imagine that material objects (such
as molecules) ever had a concrete existence. Rather than imagine that there are
concrete material objects to which social meanings and uses are then added,
he argued that objects themselves take historical forms. Whitehead himself
was preoccupied by the problem of how, despite the historicity of things, things
didnt change that much. Things endured. One of the key assumptions of chemistry is, of course, endurance. Atoms and molecules are never exactly the same
65
as they were before, depending on their changing environments, but they also
have an amazing capacity for endurance. Within the drug discovery process,
the forms of existence of molecules proliferate. Molecules have characteristics
and properties depending on their existence in different informational material
forms (in laboratory tests, clinical trials, computer models, patent databases,
etc.). But this does not mean that the identities of molecules are fluid. On the
contrary, pharmaceutical research can only proceed on the basis that molecules
actually endure across different sites, through different parts of the laboratory,
throughout their life as products. In the pharmaceutical laboratory, the generation of enduring novel entities depends upon the multiplication of different forms
of informed material.
Notes
1. In the sense given to the idea of empiricism by Whitehead and taken up by Deleuze: the
abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained; and the aim is not to rediscover the
eternal or the universal, but to find the conditions under which something new is produced
(Deleuze 1987: vii).
2. The final elements that every science ends up with the social individual, the living cell, the
chemical atom are final only with respect to their particular science. They are themselves
composite (Tarde 1999: 36 cited in Alliez 1999: 10).
3. One of the leading trade journals of the industry is called Drug Discovery Today, and chemists speak of pharmaceutical companies as drug discovery companies. The frequent use
of the term discovery does not mean, however, that chemists understand the term literally.
4. Whitehead noted the critical importance of metallurgy to the development of physics in the
early twentieth century: The reason why we are on a higher imaginative level is not because
we have finer imagination, but because we have better instruments. In science, the most
important thing that has happened over the last forty years is the advance of instrumental
design. This advance is partly due to a few men of genius such as Michelson and the
German opticians. It is also due to the progress of technological processes of manufacture,
particularly in the region of metallurgy (Whitehead 1985: 143).
5. I leave aside here the critical question of the politics of clinical trials and the relations between
pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies. For further discussion of these issues,
see Abraham (1995).
6. Financial Times, nd., 2001.
7. In August 2001, Bayer voluntarily withdrew Baycol from the US market because of reports
of sometimes fatal rhabdomyolysis, a severe muscle adverse reaction (Food and Drug
Administration 2001).
8. Macdonald and Smith (2001: 947)give an indication of the pressures placed on pharmaceutical R&D for increased productivity in the late 1990s: In 1998 GlaxoWellcome embarked
upon a new enzyme-inhibitor programme [featuring] an aggressive timeframe of seven
years, from the start of medicinal chemistry through to drug launch. This period, dominated
as it was by the constraints of the clinical programme [i.e. of testing on human patients],
translated into a lead-optimization phase [i.e. the period in which likely potential drug molecules are identified prior to clinical trial] of no more than 12months. See also Peakman etal.
(2003).
66
9. While the ethical and political implications of genomics have been a key focus for research
in the social sciences the development of genomics has seldom been placed in the context
of other related trends in research and development. At the same time, elements of the
drug discovery process, which had hitherto been based on craft laboratory skills, became
increasingly industrialized (Augen 2002; Handen 2002).
10. Later commentators indicate that combinatorial chemistry became, for a period, an
industrial fashion, just as genomics was later in the 1990s: The launch of combinatorial
chemistry onto an unsuspecting pharmaceutical industry in the early 1990s resulted in
several frantic efforts as companies tried to maintain a competitive edge through the generation and screening of compounds in unprecedented numbers and at an unprecedented
rate (Everett etal. 2001: 779). The importance of speed in the commercial development
of chemistry is not new. Synthetic chemists have often been concerned with the question
of the speed and productivity of reactions and the whole field of catalysis derives from this
concern.
11. In a pharmaceutical laboratory, potential drug molecules will generally be tested in solution.
The solutions used by different laboratories need to take standard forms in order for results
of different experiments to be comparable (Cambrosio and Keating 1995: 82). Such standard solutions can never correspond to the more complex and variable conditions found in a
living body. For examples of the presentation of results of computational experiments, see
http://www.documentarea.com/qsar/a_beresford2002.pdf.
12. See, for example, The Investigational Drugs Database, which is a daily updated, enterprisewide competitor intelligence and R&D monitoring service. It provides validated, integrated
and evaluated information on all aspects of drug development, from first patent application
to launch or discontinuation. Subscribers include most major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies the world over. In addition, more and more companies servicing the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector are subscribing. Chemical companies, CROs,
consultants and media providers find the IDdb3 invaluable in locating lucrative new business partners, http://www.iddb3.com/cds/solutions.htm.
13. A patent is likely not to apply to one molecule but to a set of molecules with similar structure
(the scaffold) and similar biological activity.
14. This strategy is termed drug rescue by researchers. On the relation between the dynamics of innovation and the occupation of technological space more broadly, see Barry
(1999/2000).
15. Scott Lash argues that information should be understood as more than merely a collection of signals or data: The constant bombardment by signals, the ads of consumer
culture and the like does not constitute information. It is chaos, noise. It only becomes
information when meaning is attached to it. Information only happens at the interface of
the sense-maker and his/her environment (Lash 2002: 18). Lashs analysis of information has parallels with my analysis of chemical material. The molecules produced through
the industrial process of combinatorial chemistry can be thought of as material forms of
noise that need to be filtered before they become useful. Individual molecules only become
progressively informed in the assemblage of pharmaceutical research.
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Chapter4
Toward designing new
sensoaesthetic materials:
Mark A. Miodownik
The development of materials was traditionally driven both by aesthetic and technological goals. At the end of the nineteenth century, things changed dramatically.
Scientists started being able to analyse composition, detect structure and make
a link between structure and properties. The subsequent twentieth-century revolution in new materials changed almost all aspects of human activity. However it
was not without serious side-effects, the first of which has been that the materials science community has largely separated itself from material culture. The
second is the decreased interest in the use of the sensual and aesthetic properties to guide materials development. This chapter discusses these issues and
suggests that materials libraries offer a new way to address the divides in the
materials community and also nurture a more innovative materials culture.
The materials that define our clothes, homes and cities are largely chosen
by fashion designers, product designers and architects from the vast array of
materials in production. There is a growing recognition that this task is becoming more and more difficult, requiring as it does a knowledge and understanding
of materials technologies, the diversity and complexity of which are growing at
increasing rate. Individual materials experts tend to have specialized areas of
expertise of particular technologies and processes, for example, a knowledge
of silicone rubbers; their properties, processing, advantages, disadvantages,
suppliers, etc. But it is becoming simply impossible for individuals, and even
organizations, to have such in-depth knowledge across the spectrum of materials (Institute of Materials 2012).
Materials libraries have emerged as one solution to this problem. Like a
library of books, these are repositories of knowledge, but instead of books, they
contain the materials themselves. Physical access to samples of materials is
the crucial aspect of these libraries, because many aspects of materials are
70
currently unquantifiable, and so a hands-on sensory interface is seen as a vital

part of the design process. This function is usually fulfilled through the provision of samples and swatches of materials from the manufacturers (Laughlin
2012). Materials libraries are new approach and have only been in existence
since 1997, but nevertheless are now a global phenomenon from New York to
Beijing (Laughlin 2012).
Materials libraries take many forms including independent organizations
(see the list of resources below: Materials ConneXion 2012; Materia 2012;
Modulor 2012; Materio 2012; Materialbiblioteket 2012; Materioteca 2012;
Inventables 2012), university based resources (Rematerialise 2012; Institute
of Making 2012; Materials Lab 2012; Materials & Products Collection 2012;
Materials Resource Center 2012; New Materials Resource Center 2012), and
in-house facilities of commercial companies (see Laughlin 2012). Apart from a
commonality of purpose, these libraries share very little else. Unlike traditional
libraries, which have had hundreds of years in which to refine and agree on
standards, formats and taxonomy, the materials library as a formal concept is
barely 15 years old. Some libraries exist primarily as a searchable database,
with a much smaller physical archive of samples. In these cases the physical materials serve as a proxy for the whole wealth of materials technologies,
but arguably their main role is to contextualize the language of the materials
database underpinning the library, which contains the majority of the information. These databases typically describe materials in non-technical terms so
that a wider range of users can perform useful searches. The language of such
search terms is still extremely variable across the materials libraries and typically consists of words that allude to tactile and perceptual interface as warm,
textured, as well as more functional properties such as fireproof. Some materials libraries exist as a specialized reference library on a particular topic, for
instance Kingston Universitys materials library (Rematerialise 2012)specializes
in renewable and recyclable materials, while the Materials ConneXion exists to
serve the design and architecture community. The further development of materials libraries is certain to continue, both as useful knowledge interface between
materials producers and materials users, and also as a shop front. They provide
a potential solution to an increasing problem, that of increased specialization
and complexity, and the need for central repository to access information about
existing materials. However this virtue is also paradoxically the obstacle to their
success: they attract a wide variety of users from car designers to artists, from
structural engineers to clothes makers, but each type of user talks a different
materials language. Some require facts such as a materials strength or corrosion resistance, while others need to know perhaps about a materials ecological
Toward designing new sensoaesthetic materials
71
impact or want to understand how a material feels, smells or sounds. These

disparate ways of viewing materials have proved hard to condense into a coherent whole. In order to understand why materials are viewed in such a wide variety
of ways it is useful to consider the history of their development.
The development of materials science

In ancient societies materials were developed without knowledge of the laws of
thermodynamics, crystal structures, phase diagrams or any other of our modern
theories of material science. Nevertheless our ancestors discovered and developed most of the major materials we have today: metals, concretes, pigments,
ceramics, composites and glasses (Seymore 2005; Smith 1981). Although each
ancient civilization pushed forward materials technologies, they did so empirically. A deductive theory of materials was not fully developed until the twentieth
century. The roots of this approach are to be found in the Renaissance of Europe
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The practice of alchemy grew, and,
although shrouded in the occult, it instilled a thirst in its adherents to discover
the hidden principles behind the transformative nature of some materials processes, and the apparent immutability of materials such as mercury and sulphur.
Among other things, these experiments yielded new pigments, mordents and
binders, which were then used by Michaelangelo, Titian and other Renaissance
artists. Thus development of materials was driven both by aesthetic and technological goals (Ball 2001).
The openness to new modes of thought about the natural world, which was
initiated in the Renaissance ultimately led to the rejection of Aristotelian principles of intuition and dogma. By doing so, natural philosophers discovered a
huge wealth of new phenomena, such as electricity. It was an extremely fruitful
period in which concept of a scientist was born (although the name scientist
was coined much later). This new approach is encapsulated by Santiago Ramn
y Cajal (1897):
The intellect is presented with phenomena marching in review before the
sensory organs. It can be truly useful and productive only when limiting itself to
the modest tasks of observation, description, and comparison, and of classification that is based on analogies and differences. A knowledge of underlying
causes and empirical laws will then come slowly through the use of inductive
methods. Another commonplace worth repeating is that science cannot hope
to solve Ultimate Causes. In other words, science can never understand the
foundation hidden below the appearance of phenomena in the universe. As
72
Claude Bernard has pointed out, researchers cannot transcend the determinism of phenomena; instead, their mission is limited to demonstrating the how,
never the why, of observed changes. This is a modest goal in the eyes of
philosophy, yet an imposing challenge in actual practice.
But the discoveries of the Enlightenment period, and the new attitude of takingapart the natural world, in order to discover its mechanisms, provoked strong
reactions by various parts of Western society. In particular, a Romantic movement grew up, which in its most extreme form, was opposed to the active
deconstruction of Nature. This attitude is typified the following passage from the
poem Lamia by Keats (1884):
Philosophy will clip an Angels wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-persond Lamia melt into a shade
In this poem Keats comments on Newtons theory of light, which he regards

as unweaving the poetry of a rainbow and so as an attack on the fundamental mysteries of the Universe. In the same period Mary Shelley wrote the novel
Frankenstein, which was a reaction to the newly discovered phenomenon of
static electricity, which Galvini had recently showed could provoke a severed
frog leg to twitch. This Frankenstein theme, in which scientific discoveries are
viewed as leading to the downfall and degradation of the human spirit, is another
Romantic theme, and continues to modern times.
The philosophical split between the Romantics and Rationalists deepened
in the nineteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution took hold. The defining
material of that century, steel, allowed engineers to give full rein to their dreams
of creating suspension bridges, railways, steam engines and passenger liners.
In doing so, engineers used steel as a material manifesto to transform the
landscape and to sow the seeds of modernism. The industrialization of the
countryside, towns and cities showed that science had the power to transform
society, but more than that, it gave status to engineers as powerful architects of
cultural change.
The scientific project of cataloguing the phenomena of world led also to the
development of a large body of deductive theory, which not only yielded new
understanding about observed phenomena, but predicted new phenomena.
This was particularly important for materials technology. As the discipline of
73
Chemistry progressed in nineteenth century, it became possible to systematically explore materials properties. The establishment of the periodic table was a
good example of this: it predicted the existence of certain elements, which were
then discovered. This caused among other things new pigments to be created
such as Cobalt Blue and Cadmium Yellow, which ultimately gave rise to artistic movements such as Impressionism and to the Colour Theorists (Ball 2001).
But while it might be supposed that the discovery of new pigments might have
initiated a new closer relationship between the arts and sciences, in practice it
heralded an end to the collaborative exploration of materials. After this, materials
discovery and development was largely to become a scientific activity.
The twentieth century is often referred to as the age of silicon, in reference
the materials breakthrough that gave rise to the silicon chip and digital computing. But this is to overlook the kaleidoscope of new materials that revolutionized
twentieth-century living. Architects took the new mass-produced sheet glass and
combined it with structural steel to produce skyscrapers that invented a new type
of city life (Hughes 1991). Product designers and fashion designers took the
new plastics and transformed the home and fashion (Ashby and Johnson 2002).
Polymers were used to produce celluloid and in doing so ushered in the biggest
change in visual culture for a thousand of years, the cinema. The development of
aluminium alloys and nickel superalloys allowed us to fly cheaply and changed
the rate at which cultures collided. Medical and dental ceramics allowed us rebuild
ourselves and change the social context of disability and age (Kemp and Wallace
2000). New composite materials, such as fibreglass and carbon fibre reinforced
plastics, literally changed the shape of sporting equipment (Gordon 1982).
Thus the twentieth century witnessed a materials revolution in which the new
discipline of materials science played a central role in transforming architecture,
product design, urban design, fashion, transport technology, medicine and the
visual and performing arts. However the arts/science split in materials, has led a
situation where now the scientists, technologists and industrialists (the materials
science community) involved in the development of new materials, move in both
academic and social circles widely separated from designers, architects, media,
crafts people and artists (the materials arts community).
This status quo may not be desirable for a number of reasons. First, the
materials arts community are not playing their full role in determining the focus
of publicly funded materials research (at the moment it is the military and industrial sectors that collaborate most closely with materials science departments).
Second, the cultural sector has a long history of posing interesting problems that
benefit the arts and push science forward. A contemporary example could be
the need in the digital media community for haptic materials that transform their
74
properties in response to digital stimuli so that virtual touch and haptic feedback
can become a (virtual) reality. Such new materials could also have impact on
architecture, jewellery, product design, the special effects industry as well as
art (Ede 2001). Third, materials have an immense cultural significance and the
further introduction of new materials by an isolated science community holds the
prospect of a further deepening of the rift between scientists and society.
Psychophysical properties
Materials science as a discipline is the study of the structure of materials. It is
a central tenet of materials science that a particular structure will always yield a
particular set of properties, so control of structure yields the control of properties
(e.g. strength, toughness, etc.). Materials science became possible because
scientific instruments were developed to enable the observation of structure
at different scales, first through the optical microscope, then through electron
microscopes, atom force microscopes and a myriad of other techniques. These
observations then give rise to a body of theory that can predict how to improve
properties. In this way theory, simulation and experiment all inform each other to
provide a framework of the systematic development of new materials.
The close relationship between materials science and engineering, promotes
this innovation. The disciplines share a common language in mathematics, and
have agreed standards. Materials testing and the establishment of mathematical definitions of properties such as strength and toughness were developed
precisely because engineers wanted quantitative information about the materials they were using to build. The Kirkaldy mechanical testing laboratories in
London, were the first such foray into developing this common language, which
is now standard practice. Large databases have now been developed, which
are an effective translation between the language of crystal structure, chemical
bonding, nanostructure and microstructures that materials scientists study, and
the language of fracture toughness and elasticity that engineers need to design
buildings and machines (see Granta Design in list of resources below).
The relationship is particularly strong in sectors where performance improvement is the only key to commercial survival, such as the electronic and aerospace
industries. The design of a jet engine, for instance, involves engineers and materials scientists working at all length scales to deliver the required increase in
performance. The ability to hand information up and down the scales in a form
useful to each practitioner has been the key innovation to the reduction of the cost
of flying and to the increase in safety. This separation of approach and profession,
as a function of the scale of structures is illustrated in Figure4.1, which represents
75
Figure 4.1 Figure showing scale, structure, psychophysical properties and physical
properties.
a schematic of how the psychophysical and physical properties of structures are

designed and used by different professions and at different scales.
The situation is very different for structures whose performance is not based
solely on the physical parameters but also on psychophysical properties of materials (sensual, aesthetic and culturally influenced). These are structures such as
buildings interiors, urban spaces, clothes; in other words, structures in which
human comfort, inspiration, and satisfaction are important. These structures
tend to be designed by the materials art community because of their expertise
in understanding needs and desires of people. Unlike the aerospace industry,
however, there is no systematic methodology for development of materials with
such properties. There is no body of research linking structure to psychophysical properties of materials, except in the case of pigment design.
Part of the reason for this is that many of the psychophysical properties of
materials are clearly subjective, and so are outside the realms of materials
science. The aesthetic appeal of wood interiors for instance, is by definition a
matter of taste, which depends on the culture of the person as well and the
intended role of the structures. Nevertheless some materials are perceived to be
warm (woods) and others cold (metals), and these associations have been quantified (Laughlin etal. 2011; Wongsriruksa etal. 2012). The smell, taste, sound of
76
materials do not just have their origin in a shared cultural outlook but rather in our
shared biology. Metals are good conductors of heat and so conduct heat away
quickly, making them seem cold to the touch. Woods are thermal insulators, so
the reverse is true. Thus the interface between humans and the material environment is mediated by the senses, the colour, smell, sound, touch and taste
of materials. These psychophysical properties are also unusual because they
have a psychological and cultural component. For instance, the colour blue, is
not perceived as a fixed hue in the brain, the perception of blue is relative to the
colour context (Purves and Lotto 2003). Similarly, the taste of a material depends
on action and association of the context of eating: a potato can taste like an
apple, in the absence of smell (Kosslyn and Koenig 1992).
The broad relationships between physical properties and psychophysical
properties has been studied by Ashby and Johnson through property mapping
(Ashby and Johnson 2002). For instance the acoustic properties of materials
may be characterized as a combination of pitch and brightness. The former
being defined by the physical parameters, modulus and density, the latter being
defined by the damping coefficients of the material. Using these attributes, a
property map is built up that clearly clusters materials that will sound bright if
struck, like glass or bronze, or muffled, like lead and rubbers. The usefulness of
such an approach to the materials arts community is clear, in that it becomes a
way to categorize and select materials for their acoustic properties using existing
materials science databases (Ashby and Johnson 2002; Granta Design).
This approach also provides an insight into how to modify psychophysical properties. The modern designer, artisan or architect no longer has to rely on empirical
methods to develop new materials with particular combinations of physical and
psychophysical properties. While a musical instrument maker in the seventeenth
century had no choice but to rely largely on trial and error, a materials scientist
can use the wide range analytical tools to determine the internal structures of the
materials and so correlate them with the psychophysical properties. Thus mirroring the approach employed so successfully to understand the physical properties
of materials (see Table4.1). An example of the successful application of such an
approach is the work by Derby and Ferguson to develop new mokame gane techniques (Derby and Ferguson 1998; Ferguson and Derby 1998).

What role can materials libraries play in this new materials design paradigm? First,
a materials library provides a repository of materials, which allows the systematic
77
investigation of both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of psychophysical

properties. We have used our materials library for several such studies on the
taste and touch of materials (Laughlin etal. 2011; Piqueras-Fiszman etal. 2012;
Wongsriruksa etal. 2012). Second, the materials themselves provide a language
to interface the materials arts and science communities since generating physical
encounters with matter provides an often forgotten way into technical discourse
and interdisciplinary discussion. For instance, allowing a materials library user to
cut ice using simply a wafer of aluminium nitride, provides a non-mathematical
sensual way to discuss the thermal conductivity of materials. In other words, the
sheer extraordinariness of some materials demands explanation of the science
that underpins them (Miodownik 2005), and so can initiate research collaborations. The materials library also provides a natural interface to discuss the
ethical and cultural impact of new materials technologies, such as nanotechnology and rapid prototyping. The presence in the library of samples of materials
produced using these technologies, immediately showcases the present state
of the technology and removes the mathematical barrier to discussion between
the materials art and materials science communities. As the materials scientist
and art historian, Cyril Stanley Smith, commented:
The great success of the logical analytical reductionist approach to understanding over the last four centuries and the utility of the application of its
principles has not negated the evidence of history that the sensual-emotionalaesthetic capabilities of the human being also have validity. The problem is to
find the proper nonexclusive role for each. (Smith 1981)
Importantly, as interfaces, materials libraries enable us to begin the journey of

exploring society itself, and the ways in which materials come to be active and
activated within culture. Through this kind of activity, we can begin to move our
understandings away from an exclusive focus on what materials are, towards a
more inclusive range of questions about why and how they matter.
Conclusions
The underlying assumption with the current materials paradigm is that materials
scientists need microscopes and sophisticated analytical equipment to develop
new materials with novel physical properties because they know that without
this, little progress could be made. The situation is no different for developing
new psychophysical properties of materials. There is very little activity in this
area because the materials science is largely estranged from the materials arts
78
community who are expert in the psychophysical properties. Nevertheless the

development of materials libraries largely by the materials arts communities has
provided a forum and archive of materials with which to systematically investigate
the psychophysical properties. They also provide an instinctive, aesthetic and
tactile interface between materials science and the materials arts community.
Materials libraries and resources

Granta Design. Software tools, materials data, and materials database solutions for industry and
education. Based Cambridge, also Germany and United States, www.grantadesign.com.
Institute of Making. (2012), A materials library based in UCL specializing in connecting
materials science to the wider materials community, www.instituteofmaking.org.uk.
Inventables. (2012), Online hardware and materials store for designers. https://www.inventables.com/.
Materia. (2012), A Dutch materials library that acts as knowledge centre for developments and
innovations in materials, and their applications for architecture and design, www.materia.nl.
Materialbiblioteket. (2012), A Swedish materials library dedicated to supporting the
Scandinavian community of architects, industrial designers and product developers,
www.materialbiblioteket.se.
Materials and Products Collection. (2012), A materials library based in Central Saint Martins
College of Art & Design, that brings together a range of innovative materials representing
current trends in design and manufacturing, http://www.arts.ac.uk/library/collections/csm/.
Materials ConneXion. (2012), A global materials consultancy and library of innovative and
sustainable materials, www.materialconnexion.com.
Materials Lab. (2012), A materials library based in the University of Texas that stimulates and
supports the integration of materials in the design curriculum, http://soa.utexas.edu/matlab/.
Materials Resource Center. (2012), A materials library based in Rhode Island School of Design
to explore materials and discover new methods and processes, http://library.risd.edu/
materialslibrary.html.
Materio. (2012), A French materials library that is an independent information centre on
materials and innovative products, www.materio.com.
Materioteca. (2012), An Italian materials library, www.materioteca.it.
Modulor. (2012), A German materials library supplying materials for professional design,
www.modulor.de.
New Materials Resource Center. (2012), A materials library based in the California College of
the Arts, with a role to inspire designers to focus on the materiality of things, http://libraries.
cca.edu/material-resource-center.
Rematerialise. (2012), A materials library based in Kingston University specializing in
recyclable materials, www.kingston.ac.uk/rematerialise.
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Laughlin, Z. (2010), Beyond the Swatch: How can the Science of Materials Be Represented by
the Materials Themselves in a Materials Library? Unpublished PhD Thesis, Kings College
London.
Laughlin, Z., M. Conreen, H. J. Witchel and M. Miodownik (2011), The Use of Standard
Electrode Potentials to Predict the Taste of Solid Metals, Food Quality and Preference,
22 (7): 628637.
Miodownik, M. A. (2005), Facts not Opinions, Nature Materials, 4 (July): 506508.
Piqueras-Fiszman, B., Z. Laughlin, M. Miodownik and C. Spence (2012), Tasting Spoons:
Assessing How the Material of a Spoon Affects the Taste of the Food, Food Quality and
Preference, 24(1): 2429.
Purves, D. P. and R. B. Lotto (2003), Why We See What We Do: A Wholly Probabilistic Strategy
of Vision. London: Macmillan Press.
Ramn y Cajal, S. (2004[1897]), Advice for a Young Investigator (2004 Reprint; ISBN
0262181916). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Seymore, R. (2005), Creating the Future, Materials World (December): 2223.
Smith, C. S. (1980), From Art to Science: Seventy-Two Objects Illustrating the Nature of
Discovery. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Smith, C. S. (1981), A Search for Structure: Selected Essays on Science, Art and History.
Cambridge MA: MIT press.
Wongsriruksa, S., P. Howes, M. Conreen and M. Miodownik (2012), The Use of Physical Property
Data to Predict the Touch Perception of Materials, Materials and Design, 42: 238244.
Chapter5
The science of sensory
evaluation: An ethnographic
critique
David Howes
There is a class of scientists who specialize in the analysis of the sensory qualities of commodities the colour, sound, smell, taste and feel of things. Their work
has not attracted much scrutiny in material culture studies or social studies in
science to date. The original name for this area of research was organoleptics.
Its origins, at least in the United States, can be traced back to the 1930s when
the Arthur D. Little industrial consulting firm devised a Flavor Profile Method
and Hedonic Index for use by commercial food and beverage companies, and
the first panel on Flavor in Foods was presented at the 1937 meeting of the
American Chemical Society. The field was given a major boost during World War
II, when the US Army found that industrially produced troop rations, which had
been designed for their nutritional value, were not performing their role because
the men didnt like how they tasted and looked (Shapin 2012: 179). Various
studies were commissioned to find out how to make the food more acceptable
(Lahne 2015; Pangborn 1964).
The title of organoleptician has since been dropped, replaced by sensory
professional. The sensory evaluation of food products remains central to the
practice of these professionals (a practice that goes under the name of sensory
evaluation or simply sensory science) but the scope of the products that now
fall within their purview has expanded significantly to include everything from
personal care to household cleaning products and home decor to automobiles.1
Sensory professionals have also lobbied hard to expand their role within the
companies they work for, seeking to convince management that the application
of sensory evaluation techniques is crucial to every stage of product development, from conception to consumption. They like to use the language of driving,
as in sensory properties drive consumer acceptance and emotional benefits
(Kemp etal. 2011), and it has had the desired effect. The science of sensory
82
evaluation now forms an integral part of what Steven Shapin has called the
aesthetic-industrial complex. It is one of the sciences of subjectivity that, as
he suggests, are world-making (Shapin 2012). But what sort of world are these
professionals making out of our senses?
The science of sensory evaluation rests on a fundamental paradox. On the
one hand: Most sensory characteristics of food can only be measured well,
completely, and meaningfully by human subjects (Poste etal. 1991)as opposed
to scientific instruments. On the other hand, it is considered important that
human subjects behave as much like scientific instruments as possible: When
people are used as a measuring instrument, it is necessary to control all testing
methods and conditions rigidly to overcome errors caused by psychological
factors (Poste etal. 1991: 1). In a similar vein, Meilgaard, Carr and Civille (2010)
affirm that the key to sensory analysis is:
to treat the panellists as measuring instruments. As such, they are highly variable and very prone to bias but they are the only instruments that will measure
what we want to measure so we must minimize the variability and control the
bias by making full use of the best existing techniques in psychology and
psychophysics. (2010: 1)
The controls in question include creating a sampling environment that is as

sensorially neutral as possible with regard to such factors as temperature, colour
and odour and ensuring that irrelevant sensory factors, such as the size of the
samples, do not impinge on the panellists judgement. Furthermore, assessors are
trained to evaluate products monadically that is, to assess one sensory characteristic at a time: the use of blindfolds, nose clips and ear defenders is advised
to ensure that panellists maintain the desired focus (Kemp etal. 2011: 2.2.1.5 and
3.2). Focus is also enhanced through isolating one panellist from another by having
them perform their tasks in individual booths or cubicles (for illustrations of the
design of such cubicles, see Meilgaard et al. 2010: 2430). In addition, assessors are commonly instructed not to discuss samples before evaluation since this
might create expectations, which are considered one of the most serious potential
sources of error; and to work in silence, since comments or noises made out loud
e.g. urgh! or Mmmm! can influence sensory judgments (Kemp etal. 2011: 2.2.1.2).
Panellists are otherwise instructed to disregard their subjective associations since
the objective is to provide precise, consistent, and standardized sensory measurements that can be reproduced (Poste etal. 1991: 15).
There are basically three kinds of tests used in sensory evaluation experiments. Discriminative tests are used to determine whether or not a difference
exists among samples. Descriptive tests are employed to identify sensory
The science of sensory evaluation
83
characteristics that are important in a product and give information on the

degree or intensity of those characteristics. Affective or hedonic tests are used
to measure how much a panellist likes a product sample based on its sensory
characteristics. There is at least one kind of test missing from this repertoire, as
we shall see presently.
Finally, the variability of responses is controlled for through the use of standardized questionnaires and standard numerical scales (e.g. Meilgaard et al.
2010; Stone et al. 2012), as well as through statistical analysis of the results
of the experiments and the plotting of such results in the form of graphs and
tables. Only those results that are statistically significant are considered meaningful. In other words, while sensory evaluation experiments are concerned
with assessing the qualities of products, it is the quantification of sensation that
(really) counts. There are some cautionary voices: Statistical analysis is not a
substitute for thinking, hence, Just because one obtains a graphical display or a
series of tables with associated statistical significance does not mean it has any
meaning or external validity (Stone etal. 2012: 2). Nevertheless, such cautions
go largely unheeded, and in the final analysis the interpretation of results boils
down to tabulating responses and pinpointing averages so that any trace of the
subjective associations of individual panellists can be eradicated from the overall picture of a products sensory qualities.
To an outside observer, it might appear difficult to distinguish between the
protocol of a sensory evaluation test and the protocol of the sensory deprivation experiments of the 1960s (see Zubek 1969). It is indeed remarkable the
degree of sensory restriction to which the sensory professional is subjected in
the interests of producing results that are precise, consistent and, above all,
reproducible (Poste etal. 1991).
A survey of the articles published over the past five years in the Journal of
Sensory Studies, one of the leading journals in the field, reveals that many of the
papers are concerned with the development of sensory lexicons. The construction
of these vocabularies is important both to the standardization of communication
among sensory professionals working in different countries, and the communication of sensory product attributes to the consuming public. While coffee and
meat are the most studied products, one study concerned the development of a
sensory lexicon for the description of the flavour, aroma, texture and appearance
characteristics of dry dog food products (Di Donfrancesco etal. 2012). No dogs
were consulted for this study. The lexicon was entirely based on the perceptions
of a five-member highly trained descriptive sensory panel of Homo sapiens.
The papers may otherwise be grouped according to whether they use trained
panellists or so-called nave panellists, whether they use forced-choice, projective
84
mapping or some other scaling method and whether they are unimodal (e.g.
Jeguirim et al. 2010), multimodal or cross-modal (e.g. Piqueras-Fiszman and
Spence 2012)in orientation.2
A good example of multimodal product profiling, which is by far the standard, is
provided by a paper on The Perception of Creaminess in Sour Cream (Jervis etal.
2014). This paper starts from the observation that creaminess perception in dairy
products is complex, and above all tied to fat content, which in turn determines
liking. This poses a challenge for those manufacturers who wish to introduce lowfat and reduced fat products since, despite their health benefits, such products
lack the sense appeal of their full-fat counterparts. The experiment involved the
use of an 11-point creaminess rating scale and a 9-point hedonic scale. It unfolded
over a series of seven sessions that sought to hold different sensory modalities
constant and in this way measure the contribution of each modality to the perception and liking of the array of sour cream products tested. In an initial session, all
of the modalities were engaged and the results of this session were used as a
baseline. Subsequent sessions involved visual inspection only, visual inspection
and physical stirring only, blindfolds and stirring only (to focus attention on the
haptic), blindfolds while tasting (to isolate in-mouth texture and flavour), blindfolds
and nose-clips while tasting (to control for sight and flavour) and nose-clips only
while tasting (to control for flavour). In the result, it was found that olfaction of
milk-fat associated flavours has the greatest impact on creaminess perception,
followed by visual assessment of flow while stirring. With this information in hand,
sour cream manufacturers can know which factors have to be accounted for in
order to maximize consumers perception of creaminess and liking.
In another paper (Oberfeld etal. 2009), which attracted considerable media
interest (Oberfeld-Twistel 2013), researchers at the University of Mainz related
how they invited panellists to taste wine under different ambient lighting conditions: red, blue, green and white. The colour of the wine itself was occluded
by serving it in black opaque glasses. Among other things, it was found that
blue and green ambient lighting made the wine taste spicier than under white
light, and that red ambient lighting made the wine taste as much as 50 per cent
sweeter than under blue or white light. General liking and willingness to pay a
higher price were also found to be augmented when the illumination was set to
red or blue rather than green or white. It was the same wine in all cases (a dry
white Riesling). This study is of interest for its methodological innovation. It did
not just focus on the product, the way most sensory evaluations do. It modelled
an environment. And it did not just treat the senses monadically (i.e. by concentrating on a single sensory characteristic) or additively (i.e. toting up the scores
to arrive at a complete sensory profile of a product). Rather, it allowed that the
85
senses might be interactive. In the result, it was found that the red ambient light,
which was not a property of the product (the wine), but rather the environment,
decidedly influenced the perception of the products flavour, and so on with the
other colours.3 Hence, the wines taste must be recognized as contingent on its
context of consumption, but it is precisely context that the design of the sensory
evaluation laboratory (except in the case of this study) is designed to rule out.
Ergo the majority of the studies published in the Journal of Sensory Studies are
valid to the extent that the products concerned are consumed in the laboratories
in which they were tested. But who wants to drink wine alone in a booth in a
sensory research laboratory?
Sensory professionals are to be admired for the sensory and social sacrifices
they make to test and perfect (or bring what is called quality control to) the
products we consume. However, there are serious questions concerning the
validity and applicability of the findings of sensory science outside (and even
within) the laboratory that still need to be addressed.
Summing up, it is difficult to imagine a more asocial or, practically speaking,
more asensual environment and protocol than the environment and protocol of
a sensory research laboratory. This is due to the assumption that, as Meilgaard
et al. put it: We must minimize the variability and control the bias [of panellists] by making full use of the best existing techniques in psychology and
psychophysics.
The senses in everyday life

What if the methodology of some other discipline, besides psychology and
psychophysics, such as anthropology, were incorporated into the practice of
sensory science? Anthropology has, in fact, begun to make inroads into the field
due to the rise of the subdiscipline known as the anthropology of the senses or
sensory anthropology (Howes 2003). It is exemplified by the work of Sarah Pink
(2004, 2009), John Sherry (2006), Timothy Malefyt (2014), Jake Lahne and Amy
Trubek (2014), and the Concordia Sensoria Research Team (CONSERT), among
others. The principles of this mode of inquiry may be summarized as follows:
First, sensory anthropology understands acts of perception to be cultural as
well as biological and psychological processes.
Second, it takes the study of product perception out of the sensory research
laboratory and into the street, the home, the bar or whatever the natural environment of the consumer may be. The meaning of a product is in its use, and not
its physical structure (abstracted from any context) alone.
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Third, its methodology is one of participant sensation, or feeling along with

ones informants, as opposed to subjecting them to some predetermined protocol and list of questions the way a sensory scientist would.
Fourth, the focus of sensory anthropology is on eliciting the natives point of
view, or rather, because one doesnt want to privilege the visual over other senses,
the natives ways of sensing (Howes and Classen 2014) that is, the practices
(including technologies) which frame a given groups perception of the world.
Fifth, sensory anthropology postulates that the senses interact with each
other first, in culturally conditioned ways (Howes and Classen 1991: 258).
Hence, the focus is on analyzing the relations and transfers between the senses
rather than viewing them as independent channels or separate silos.
Sixth, as we sense, we also make sense, in Phillip Vanninis felicitous expression (Vannini et al. 2012). This formulation plays on the polysemy, or double
meaning, of the word sense. This word includes both sensation and signification, both feeling and meaning in its spectrum of referents, which should be
conceived as forming a continuum.
The polysemy of the word sense is lost on sensory scientists. The signifying
(or symbolic) and also social dimensions of perception are occluded by their
research protocols. By limiting the sorts of tests they use to the discriminative,
the descriptive and the hedonic, they prevent themselves from ever investigating what could be called the semantics of perception (but see Alcntara-Alcover
etal. 2014). A semantic test, such as an anthropologist would be the first to utilize, would seek to determine the meanings or mental associations stimulated
by a given products sensory characteristics (Howes 2003b: 119).
In addition to highlighting the issue of sense-making, as will be discussed
further below, research in the sensory anthropology of consumption has shown
that consumers may be more or less discriminative in a particular sensory register, depending on how it is weighted or valued in their culture or subculture. By
way of example, consider Sarah Pinks study of the sensory home, which was
informed by the methodology of sensory ethnography (Pink 2009).
The sensory home

In this study, which was commissioned by Unilever, Pink (2004) compared attitudes toward household cleanliness and practices of housework in Spain and
the UK. Her informants included students and retired people, as well as single
and married women (or housewives) of middling age. She asked her informants
to take her on a tour of their house or flat and recorded their actions and words
87
on video. The tours typically involved poking her head in cupboards, and being
invited to smell this, or feel that, in addition to conversing with her informants (thereby breaking the silence that normally prevails over the assessment of
products in the sensory research laboratory).
For the Spanish subjects, dust referred to matter that had infiltrated the home
from the outside world, and was classified as dirt to be eliminated. For the British
subjects, dust referred to the flakings of persons and matter such as paint or
plaster inside the home, and people were more tolerant of a certain build-up. It
was not dirt as long as it did not smell or appear tacky. One young man stated
that when the floor of his apartment started to feel sticky it was time for cleaning.
Pink found that the practice of cleaning house sometimes involved people
dancing uninhibitedly to their favourite music while wielding a broom or mop.
Thus, housework had an audio component, a kinaesthetic component (which
involved more than just scrubbing) and it also involved setting out scented products, like incense and essential oils as a finishing touch. In other words, cleaning
did not involve eliminating odours so much as enhancing the existing smell of
the home. Significantly, Pink found that all of her informants compared themselves (often negatively) to what they suspected a real housewife would do,
thereby incorporating a social dimension into what might otherwise be seen as
a very private practice.
Pinks study of the sensory home brings out how consumers do not necessarily use products as directed but rather negotiate social meanings through
them and in so doing construct identities for themselves. Consumption is a creative process, Pink argues, wherein products do not drive or trigger responses
in a straightforward fashion but rather are selectively deployed to construct
worlds of sense within which people can feel at home.4
The interplay of the senses

As noted previously, sensory evaluation tests frequently involve the construction
of barriers between people, between the senses, and between the subjective
associations of the assessor and his or her response to the sensory characteristics of the product tested. This is accomplished through training and through
the architecture of the sensory research laboratory with its individual booths and
neutral atmosphere. Assessors are instructed to discriminate, describe and
express their preferences, but not associate. Do these firewalls work? They might
be made to work in the context of the laboratory, though they would hardly work in
everyday life, but even in the laboratory it is dubious that the play of associations
88
between the senses can be forestalled. In one of the studies we reported on in

Aroma: the Cultural History of Smell (Classen etal. 1994: 194)involving a test of
facial tissues, it was discovered that respondents found pine-scented tissues to
be fresher but also rougher than unscented facial tissues, even though there
was no actual difference to the texture of the tissues used in the two samples.
The reason is obvious: the respondents did not dissociate the scent of pine from
the feel of pine needles, which are, of course, prickly. This is because, As we
sense, we also make sense (Vannini etal. 2012).
In another study reported on in Aroma, respondents in a Chicago shopping
mall were asked: What odours make you feel nostalgic?
People born in the 1920s, 30s and 40s said that such odours as rose, burning leaves, hot chocolate, cut grass and ocean air made them feel nostalgic.
Persons born during the 1960s and 70s, in contrast, grow nostalgic at such
scents as Downy fabric softener, hair spray, Play-Doh, suntan oil, Cocoa Puffs,
and candy cigarettes. (Classen etal. 1994: 202203)
The trending evidenced by this survey, when the responses are grouped by
decade of birth, are significant: there has been a shift away from natural odours
towards artificial ones, and many of the latter come already trademarked.
This pattern brings out nicely the extent to which the sensorium is an historical
formation:
It is not only in clothing and appearance, in outward form and emotional
make-up that men are the product of history. Even the way they see and hear is
inseparable from the social life-process ... The facts which our senses present
to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the
object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ.
(Horkheimer quoted in Levin 1997: 63, n. 1)
A study conducted a number of years back by the Concordia Sensoria Research

Team brings out further the sociality of sensation and the indissociability of the
senses. We asked: What accounts for the popularity of Corona, the best-selling imported beer in Canada? Preliminary research suggested that part of the
answer must have to do with gender. Men are, notoriously, far more avid drinkers
of beer than women, and in the case of most brands the ratio is 5 male drinkers
to one female drinker. In the case of Corona, however, the ratio is more like 3 to 2.
This means that its popularity among women is key to its success. So we set out
to investigate why women prefer Corona. Our quest took us to a range of bars
and restaurants, many with a Mexican theme, where we talked with both men
and women about their preferences. This displacement was essential, since in
89
anthropology one wants to encounter subjects on their own ground and elicit the
categories they use to order the world.
We did not go in with a predetermined set of questions. Instead we let the
questions emerge in the course of interaction. Some subjects said that they had
encountered Corona while on vacation in Mexico. For them, drinking Corona
when back in Montreal was a way of injecting some festivity or vacation spirit
into the drudgery of everyday life. More typically, however, those subjects who
drank Corona regularly said they liked it because it is light.
Technically, Corona is not a light beer. It has the same alcohol content and
carb levels as regular, domestic beers. This response, then, is an example of
consumer-added meaning (and value). We needed to discover what motivated
this categorization. What was it about the sensory characteristics of Corona that
could explain this misperception (which is not a misperception at all, of course,
from the native point of view)?
The design of the Corona bottle struck us as one of the factors contributing
to the perception of the beer as light. Corona comes in tall, slender bottles that
are clear and translucent. By contrast, most domestic beers, such as Molson
Canadian, come in short, stubby, brown-coloured bottles that even look more
weighty, more dense than the former. Furthermore, the colour of Corona is light,
like sunshine, compared to the golden colour of Molson Canadian. From our
conversations with our research subjects, it appeared that they were condensing or associating a number of different sensations into one: the bright (or
light) tint of the beer and the translucency (as well as slenderness) of the bottle
was identified in their minds with lightness of taste (or, put another way, absence
of heaviness). This impression was borne out by the gestures people used to
describe their taste experience. When men talked about what they liked in a beer
they would pat their stomachs whereas the women would rub their thumb and
fingers together. The latter gesture suggested that what women most appreciate
in a beer is a refined or delicate taste, whereas men are more interested in a full
(and filling) flavour. Indeed, those men who preferred domestic beers claimed
that Corona has no taste (by which they meant body) whereas those men who
drank Corona with their female friends dissociated themselves from more heavy
drinkers, as they styled their male counterparts.
The Corona study has implications for the study of the perception of creaminess in dairy products discussed earlier. It suggests that greater attention should
have been paid to the interaction of the modalities involved in the trial (instead
of holding them constant), and that the meaning or sense of fat in everyday life
for the test subjects (and the general populace) also needed to be explored.
In other words, even though full-fat products can be demonstrated to have
90
higher acceptance on account of their intrinsically fuller taste or palatability,

the matter does not end there. Also pertinent are the extrinsic associations that
fat as a material symbol evokes. The fatness both of bodies and substances
has recently become a topic for anthropological investigation (Forth and Leitch
2014), and this has led to a more nuanced understanding of both its (increasingly ambivalent) cultural construction and its effects.
Sensory experience is social experience

A study of consumer perceptions of Vermont artisan cheese conducted by the
team of Jake Lahne and Amy Trubek (2014), the former a trained sensory scientist,
the latter a sensory anthropologist, can shed light on this question of so-called
extrinsic properties and associations. They theorize sensory perception as a
learned and active practice (rather than passive reflex). Sensations are held to
arise neither from the food nor from the consumer, but from the encounter between
them, that is, it is neither taste nor taster, but tasting (Lahne and Trubek 2014: 130,
citing Hennion 2005). This shifts attention from the search for (putatively) universal,
objective sensory qualities of food to the recognition that the sensory qualities of
food emerge for a particular consumer in a particular context.
The emphasis on context is carried further by Lahne and Trubeks insistence that sensory experience is social experience. This is reflected in the way
their preferred methodology involves holding focus-group discussions around
a plate of cheeses instead of relegating participants to individual cubicles
and inviting participants to recall past experiences instead of simply check
off boxes. The sorts of questions Lahne and Trubek ask may be characterized
as conversation-starters. They include questions about the participants own
consumption practices, about what makes a cheese artisan in their estimation, and challenges like: How would you convince people whove never tried
that cheese to give it a try? Is there anything besides taste that is very important about this cheese? In this way, participants are encouraged to explore
the subjectivity of their own responses, instead of screening out any trace
of subjectivity so as not to appear biased. Interestingly, none of the participants felt that their responses were any the less valid for being subjective,
and their subjective judgments about subjectivity became part of the findings.
This is in stark contrast to the objectification of taste (through the privatization,
bureaucratization and pacification of the senses) in the conventional sensory
science research laboratory. The context Lahne and Trubek created activated
the senses instead of restricting and objectifying them.
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Lahne and Trubek found that the sensory experience of Vermont artisan
cheeses, for those who customarily consume them, stems from a mix of intrinsic, organoleptic properties and extrinsic socially embedded properties, but the
two are mutually constitutive, and so it is not fruitful (or entirely possible) to
disentangle them (Lahne and Trubek 2014: 132). The extrinsic properties include
such things as the social context in which a cheese was first encountered by
a participant (e.g. a wedding, a family meal), the memories that attach to the
cheese in consequence and information about the conditions of production
of the cheeses sampled (e.g. the cheesemakers animal husbandry practices,
ethos of workmanship, scale of operation, sustainability, etc.). For example, one
respondent remarked on the grassy, earthy flavours in a particular cheese
possibly due to knowing that the animals were permitted to graze instead of
being exclusively fed grain; another sensed the care a cheesemaker put into
his cheese. Lahne and Trubek also recorded instances of participants modifying
their perception and judgment of a particular cheese in response to what other
participants had to say.
Alice: I would say its tangy, and it has a nice the flavors change from when
you first bite it to ... the aftertaste.
Ben:
A little citrusy, maybe?
Alice: Yeah ... I would maybe even say nutty, like its ... I dont know ...
like it rolls around in your mouth and the flavors change. (Lahne and
Trubek 2014: 135)
Summing up, Lahne and Trubek argue that through an active, iterative, and
social practice of sensory perception, consumers integrate their past personal
experiences, socially transmitted and valued information about producer practices, and the material properties of the cheese into a single instance of sensory
experience (Lahne and Trubek 2014: 130).
The Lahne and Trubek study is unusual in the annals of sensory science for
what could be called the free-range character of the focus-group discussions
(though the use of focus-groups is not uncommon) and for introducing a social
theory of sense experience. Its publication in the journal Appetite is a reflection
of how the field of sensory science is changing, opening up to new methodologies and theories. One can nevertheless imagine the questions and objections
that a conventional sensory professional might put to the authors, such as:
What would a blind taste test involving artisan and generic cheeses reveal about
which tastes better? Why was there no attempt to plot liking in relation to fat
content? Arent the participants all pre-selected5? Arent the questions somewhat
92
leading questions? How can any generalizations be made on the basis of such
contingent results? However, these objections can be turned around: Lahne and
Trubek freely admit that their results are contingent on context but would point
out that sensory evaluation experiments are no less contextual, despite their
appearance of objectivity, on account of being staged in a lab.6 Furthermore,
they could point to the all too frequent practice of using the employees of the
company that is conducting the study as stand-ins for the ordinary consumer
(see Resurreccion 2008), and ask: How representative is that? More seriously, as
Lahne (2015) has argued, the research protocols of sensory science are fitted,
and even overfitted, to industrial production where products are standardized
and therefore portable across contexts (e.g. a batch of Coca-Cola) in contrast
to artisan production, where products are unfinished, often quite variable and
tied to locale. There is risk involved in artisanal production, whereas variation
is virtually eliminated in industrial production (Lahne 2015; see further Paxson
2013). Hence, the protocol doesnt fit the product, or vice versa .
In Lahne and Trubeks study, social context does not simply refer to the
exchanges between the participants in the focus group but also extends to the
geographic region or terroir of Vermont. Part of what makes the artisan cheeses
taste better is that they embody the taste of place (Trubek 2008). But the taste
of place is not a function of geography alone, Lahne and Trubek insist. It also
has to do with what they call cultural saturation that is, the ubiquity of Vermont
artisan cheese in Vermont, such that it is impossible for a Vermonter not to be
aware of artisan cheese, and many consumers have in fact developed personal
connections to such products and their producers.
Generic cheeses, and processed cheeses such as Cheez Whiz, lack such
personal connections and indeed are designed to be portable across contexts.
The same is true of most of the standardized commercial products, hatched in
laboratories, which saturate our existence as consumers. These products have
the effect of standardizing our perceptions, shaping our tastes to conform to
those of their designers and manufacturers. But this does not prevent us from
personalizing, or, as it were domesticating them through incorporating such
products into our everyday lives. Cheez Whiz is a case in point: it has been
discovered by consumers to have many uses never imagined by its manufacturers (Green 2000). Consumption is always a matter of context in the final analysis.
The meaning of goods is in their use that is, in the sense we make of them and
not simply the design characteristics (Howes 1996).
The implication of these observations is that rather than dismiss the Lahne
and Trubek study for being too parochial, sensory science needs to develop
new, more historically and culturally grounded methods for understanding (not
93
just assessing) the sensory qualities of the full range of commodities, materials
and substances that pervade our everyday lives, both those that are artisanally
produced and those which are mass produced. The anthropology and history
of the senses has a vital role to play in generating such an understanding by
attuning us to the social preformation of the senses and the extent to which as
we sense we also make sense (Howes and Classen 2014; Vannini etal. 2012).
Perception is not a passive process, a physiological reflex, it is an active, worldmaking activity (Classen 1993; Shapin 2012), which is nevertheless contingent
on the materials at hand. A number of highly stimulating studies that illustrate
this point have emerged in recent years, having to do with such materials as
aluminium, the material of mobility (Fallan 2013; Sheller 2014) and lycra, the
fibre that shaped America (OConnor 2011). By way of closing, I would like to
offer a sensory history of perhaps the most ubiquitous material of the twentieth
century: plastic. Plastic was at once the substance that characterized the physical world of the twentieth century and provided a material base for much of its
cultural expression.
The plasticity of the material world

The term plastic, in fact, covers a variety of synthetic or semi-synthetic
substances, from the celluloid used in film and cheap jewellery to the vinyls
employed in records, raincoats and exterior siding. However, plastic became the
umbrella term for all these creations of the chemical industry. Technical advances
resulted in plastics that were amazingly durable, as well as low cost. Plastic is
forever touted one industry pioneer, and a lot cheaper than diamonds (cited in
Miekle 1993: 9).
Over the course of the century the material became a familiar component of
ordinary life. A family celebrating Christmas in the United States in the 1970s, for
example might have a plastic Christmas tree decorated with plastic ornaments
and featuring plastic Barbie dolls and Lego blocks as presents. In a famous line
from the 1967 movie The Graduate, a recent college graduate who is uncertain
about his future is told by his businessman father: I want to say one word to
you. Just one word ... Theres a great future in plastics. Think about it (cited in
Miekle 1993: 3).
Like its material uses, the sensory properties of plastic were multiple. Easy
to shape, colour, and texture, plastic might approximate anything. It could be
made to look like wood or it could be made to look like glass, it could resemble
flowers or it could mimic gemstones. Nonetheless, on close inspection, it always
94
retained something plasticky in its look and feel. Plastic itself had no imitators;
for who would imitate such a cheap and indeterminate substance?
Due to its mutability, plastic engendered a notion of the malleability of the
material world. The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote of plastic in the
1950s that it embodied the very idea of ... infinite transformation (1972: 79).
Plastics mutability coincided with twentieth-century desires to reshape not only
the physical environment but also society, and even the human body through
cosmetic and surgical procedures. Limits set by nature or by custom no longer
seemed to hold in a plastic world. Anything could take on a new form.
While plastic was embraced by the twentieth century for its malleability and
low cost, however, it was despised (at least by the educated classes) for its
inauthenticity. Over the course of the century, in fact, the word plastic came to
be a synonym for fake. Social critics saw plastic as a sign and symptom of a
society in which simulations had a greater appeal than reality. When the businessman in The Graduate affirmed that there was a great future in plastics, the
line was not intended to serve as an indicator of commercial acumen, but as an
indictment of the superficiality and materialism of Western culture.
It was not only the look and feel of the twentieth-century industrialized world
that breathed artificiality, however, but also the taste. Convenience foods
from the quick meals served up by fast food restaurants to the prepared foods
stocked at the supermarket (such as the frozen TV dinners made to be warmed
and eaten while watching television) became increasingly popular during the
century. The new processed foods also had new artificial flavours and colours,
many of them derived from petrochemicals just like most plastics (see Classen,
Howes, and Synnott 1994: 187200). In their song of 1972, Plastic Man, The
Kinks sung disparagingly of a plastic man who eats plastic food with a plastic
knife and fork. Many processed foods, of course, were packaged in plastic, if
not canned or boxed. The contents of the supermarket thus seemed, from one
perspective, to represent one more triumph of modern technology and, from
another, one more of the shams of contemporary life.
Notes
1. For a survey of these parallel developments in the management of sensation in other fields
of mass production-consumption besides food, see the discussion of giving products
sense appeal in Howes and Classen (2014: 139141); Sheldon and Arens (1932).
2. Cross-modal investigations are new to sensory science, and many of the studies in this
vein in the Journal of Sensory Studies have as one of their co-authors the maverick experimental psychologist Charles Spence. Spence directs the Cross-Modal Research Lab at
Oxford University and is a frequent collaborator with Heston Blumenthal, the proprietor of
95
The Fat Duck restaurant. Spences focus on cross-modal relations, or what we call intersensoriality (Howes 2011: 177179) is at the forefront of the critique of the compartmentalized
understanding of the sensorium that traditionally prevailed in the brain sciences, and the
emergence of a more integrated vision, which comes close to the interactive understanding
of the sensorium that is fundamental to research in the anthropology of the senses (see
Howes and Classen 2014: ch. 6).
3. In the online summary of their conclusions, the authors of the Mainz study write:
Ambient lighting influences how wine tastes, even when it has no effect on the color of
the wine in the glass. Our results show that the context has a stronger influence on the
taste perception than formerly believed. These findings can be relevant for the architectural designing of restaurants and wine shops.How can the effects of ambient color be
explained? The simple hypothesis that whenever a certain light color makes a person feel
comfortable he or she likes the wine better could not be affirmed. The emotions elicited by
a certain light color do not seem to be the cause of the effects.
An alternative explanation could be an influence of color on cognition, for example by
making us more accessible and responsive for a certain taste. Likewise, associations
could play a role. (Oberfeld-Twistel 2013)
As examples of the role played by associations, Oberfeld et al. propose that green may
connote immature and red may connote sweet. The Mainz study departs from the vast
majority of research in sensory evaluation by acknowledging the significance of context,
recognizing the senses as interactive and refusing to reduce the explanation of the observed
effects to the mobilization of the emotions alone: cognition (or what we would qualify as
sensuous cognition) also plays a role.
4. Pink does not discuss how this information was operationalized by the studys sponsor,
Unilever.
5. The participants were pre-selected in the sense that they were recruited by means of
advertisements that solicited consumers of Vermont artisan cheese who were interested in
participating in a research study on their opinions (Lahne and Trubek 2014: 131; see further
Lahne, Trubek and Pelchat 2014).
6. The subjectivity of perception is made to appear objective through what Bruno Latour (1987)
calls the process of inscription that is, all of the graphs and tables that represent the
object of study. But this objectivity is a product of the process of inscription itself. It depends
ultimately on a visualization of taste.
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Part3
From substance to form
Chapter6
Wild silk indigo wrappers of
Dogon of Mali: An ethnography
of materials efficacy and design
Laurence Douny
This chapter sets out an ethnography of indigenous materials, which, I argue,

allow us to gain insights into some of the ways in which people think and conceptualize their relationships to the natural and social realms, through making and
doing (Naji and Douny 2009). By drawing upon Tengu and Tommon Kan Dogon
uses of wild silk and indigo in making tombe toun textiles (Figure6.1), I highlight
Dogon representations about the efficacy of these materials, as it is grounded in
the materials intrinsic properties, enabling Dogon people to act upon the world
in particular ways. Furthermore, I propose that an examination of indigenous
perceptions of these raw insect and plant materials helps to uncover the cultural
significance of tombe touns blue-and-white striped designs. I conduct a close
analysis of local terminologies, concepts, uses, representations and manifestations as an ethnographic entry point into these perceptions and experiences.
In particular, the Dogon concepts of daoula and sangah throw light on how the
materials used in these textile wrappers are perceived. The designs therefore
objectify aspects of Dogon social relations and the construction and self-display
of material identities through production.
Material efficacy and transformation

Let me first establish something of the history of ideas behind material efficacy. The term making implies transformation techniques of materials into
new forms of matter, and matter into objects. Within a making process that
Leroi-Gourhan describes as: a dialogue between the maker and the material
(Leroi-Gourhan 1993: 306), techniques are meanwhile defined as efficacious actions upon matter (Lemonnier 1992: 4, following Leroi-Gourhan 1993).
Technical efficacy, contested by Latour (1996), who rather situates efficacy
102
Figure6.1 Dogon gwara dyer showing a tombe toun wrapper worn by old women as it contains
few stripes of silk (here mixed with cotton). Photo by Laurence Douny.
in social action, is grounded in Mauss definition of techniques as traditional

and efficacious actions upon something (Mauss 1936: 371). In Lvi-Strauss
(1967) work, the notion of symbolic efficacy designates the effect of ritual healers speech on individuals through the mediation of symbols found in myths. In
another vein, Salpeteur and Warnier (2013: 153154) describe autopsy practice
in the Cameroon grass fields as a form of practical efficacy on the dead and the
living, through which local representations about the efficacy of bodily organs
and substances are revealed. While all these approaches stemming from Mauss
locate efficacy in human/body actions or practice on matter, bodies, things and
the invisible world, I want here to focus in particular on the efficacy of materials
and on indigenous representations about them, through techniques of making
tombe toun textiles.
Wild silk and indigo are materials made of matter considered in respect of its
occurrence in processes of flow and transformation (Ingold 2012: 439). These
transformations that may be natural, technical, symbolic or magical (Gell 1988),
Wild silk indigo wrappers of Dogon of Mali
103
occur in particular cultural contexts, through events and within networks of

people, things and spirits, out of which categories of meanings and concepts of
materials emerge as deep localized knowledge (see also Mohan, this volume).
Following Mauss, I propose that wild silk and indigo are perceived by Dogon
as living and actively possessing something undisciplined, wild, dangerous
and, too, animated and receptive (Mauss 1974: 166 about earth, translated by
Pecquet 2004: 152). I suggest that their material efficacy, meaning the effect
that indigo and wild silk materials produce on people and thus what they enable
Dogon women to do socially, is determined by their inherent properties and
material relations. Hence, the efficacy of these materials of enchantment (Gell
1988: 5) is harnessed by Dogon women in particular ways in order to wield
power and influence over rivals and fulfil their own social ambitions.
From this perspective, I propose that a study of materials helps us to understand the social implications of Dogon concepts of efficacy, as for instance the
sheen (daoula) of wild silk, charm (sangah) of natural indigo or the beauty
(sara) of the finished wrapper. By focusing on the relationships between these
materials, I argue that Dogon womens social visibility and charismatic power
is mainly achieved through the daoula of wild silk woven aphorisms, which are
materialized in the wrappers design. Daoula, as a force that resides in the fibre,
implies a set of magical and medicinal properties and also includes the materials strength and durability in addition of its visual brilliance. The sheen that
is drawn out of the fibre requires particular techniques, knowledges and overall
Dogon womens mastering of the mystic power of the material, and this also
applies to indigo, which serves to enframe wild silk. I conclude that the Dogon
cosmological paradigm is related to local materials and is defined on the basis
of their complex nature, efficacy and relationality. Thus, at an epistemological
level, indigenous materials such as wild silk and indigo undeniably challenge the
ways we might think about such concepts as beauty, charm and sheen.
Sheen in the natural and material world

Sheen is a visual property that certain elements of the natural world and certain
objects possess by virtue of light reflecting on their surface. The sheen of textiles,
the brilliance or luminescence of minerals like the gleam of metal that attracts
the eye, is coded with cultural meanings and triggers an emotional response.
As Ben Amos notes about Benin court art, known for its bronzes (labelled as
such although most of it was made of brass), their initial shiny red appearance
(Herbert 1984: 277282) would convey awe and fear as it magnifies the power
104
of monarchs (Ben-Amos 1980: 15). Sheen, gleam or brilliance in tandem with

colour and light are embedded in cultural and multisensorial experiences of the
social, natural and spiritual worlds (Rivers 2003). As Saunders explains, in MesoAmerican cultures, natural light and brilliance that stem from minerals, feathers
and shells bestowed supernatural qualities and represented sacred power
and positions in the social hierarchy, as well as life and death (Saunders 2002:
215216). In West Africa, cowrie shells serving as a currency before colonial
time and sewn on hunters shirts would not only stand as a means of displaying ones wealth but also, in the manner of armour, would shield against evil
spirits. In fact, the gloss and white luminescence of these small round shells
means they have the magical property of bewildering evil spirits (as suggested
about white shells by Rivers 2003: 2). While sheen can be found naturally in
materials, certain materials however necessitate specific techniques in order to
bring out their sheen. Physical transformation of these materials may consist
of polishing and beating material surfaces, washing or exposing materials to
chemical substances. For instance, the sheen of West African indigo bazin cloth
can be intensified by beating synthetic indigo powder into the cloth with wooden
mallets, rendering a special glazed or metallic dark blue sheen. Lastly, while
sheen tends to be treated as a visible material quality found in the natural or
material world, it should be emphasized that sheen is also regarded as an active
property, which minerals like quartz possess. Roberts, for example, suggests
that it allows Bugabo movements in the south-eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo direct communication with the spiritual world in magic rituals such as in
sorcery detection, healing and hunting (Roberts 2009: 2930).
As far as wild silk is concerned, the Tengu and Tomon kan Dogon of Mali
consider sheen as a set of visual and material properties that are inherent to
the insect-produced fibre and that require a technical process to obtain. The
sheen of wild silk, which is perceived as a material of power defined as daoula, is
achieved through a long and fastidious process that involves boiling the cocoons
in water containing potash, as a means of releasing the fibres (degumming
process), and their treatment through beating (Figure6.2), brushing, spinning
and washing in order to release their brilliance. Then, the sheen of wild silk
is brought out through contrasting it with indigo cotton threads that are woven
together in bands. Finally, the wrapper is soaked in an indigo bath in order to
darken the cotton indigo stripes, the color of which faded away during weaving,
and thus reinforces and enframes the visual sheen of wild silk. Wild silk threads
partly absorb indigo when mixed with cotton. As a consequence, they turn into
light blue, a color that is dimmed through brushing the stripes with a toothbrush
soaked with soap, in order to recover the original white of the silk.
105
Figure6.2 After being boiled and dried, wild silk lumps are thoroughly beaten to remove dust
(remaining dried gum and potash). Photo by Laurence Douny.
The sheen of wild silk: The Dogon

concept of Daoula
When compared to domesticated mulberry silk, West African wild silk clearly
lacks luster. It is endowed with a coarse and lumpy texture and rather bestows
a greyish or beige color (after being washed). As a consequence, woven wild
silk can be confused by non-specialists with indigenous cotton or kapok woven
fabrics. In Dogon communities, wild silk stands as an expensive and prestigious
material due to its rarity and the fact that cocoons are traded over long distances,
as well as the multiple costs that are involved throughout the production of the
wrapper. Yet, the authenticity of the material and therefore its high value are certified by the visual sheen or brilliance of wild silk that is said to improve through
time by wearing the wrapper and by washing it, in tandem with the thick texture
and heavy weight of the fibre compared to plain cotton fabrics. Nonetheless,
what Dogon people describe as the sheen of wild silk, daoula, goes beyond its
visual quality, and therefore aesthetic, of visual brilliance (Douny 2013). Generally
speaking, daoula is said to be a living and active force that certain people and
animals have at birth and that runs in their blood (boli boli). Similarly, certain
objects can possess daoula in their materiality depending on the materials they
106
are made of. As a kind of aura of people, animal and things, daoula is said to
shine out of an entity permanently and to produce an emotional response of
appreciation in people and its own attraction.
As far as tombe toun wrappers are concerned, the notion of daoula expresses
as sheen in the sense of the intrinsic, positive and permanent values of wild
silk and therefore, the efficacy of wild silk that produces grades of pale blue, or
light beige or white (pea). This visual sheen, also luminescence, is described as
kongonron so, that is something [i.e. wild silk] that shines like the sun, which is
considered to be the brightest existing light. Yet, the value of wild silk in its material properties does not only encompass the visual aspect of sheen but implies
the durability as well as the strength of the yarns (tawanso or se balla) as well
as the medicinal and magical properties of wild silk that, as I will explain in the
next section, is seen as a mystic and dangerous insect product (djina diie odjo
or kaba ko). Finally, producing wild silk threads requires particular techniques
and knowledge about the nature and materiality of wild silk and so mastering its
power. They constitute a form of heritage (atemu) for the Dogon people that is
also acknowledged as a dimension of sheen.
Inside the sheen: The material

properties of wild silk yarns
West African wild silk is a fibrous protein that is secreted by the salivary glands of
a caterpillar species known as Anaphe or Epannaphe (African Wild Silk 1916; Ene
1964; Peigler 1993). Wild silk cocoons that Dogon women transform are mainly
collected from the forests of Ivory Coast, Guinea Conakry and the Savannah
of North East Nigeria. The saliva or fluid secretion that silk worms spin around
themselves solidifies into a thread on contact with air, forming a cocoon in which
they metamorphose into a moth (Figure6.3). Hence, wild silk is perceived by
Dogon people as a mystic and powerful material mainly because of the material
properties that the insect-secreted substance carries, and which according to
Dogon women is endowed with the medicinal power of the tree leaves the insects
feed on. Dogon perception of silk is based on the otherworldly nature of the
wild and remote environment that hosts cocoons and spirits in trees, caves and
underground cavities. Furthermore, the insects extraordinary and so intangible
capacity to transform inside of the cocoon that it weaves around itself bewilders
as much as it frightens. Lastly, the transformation of cocoons is only operated by
post-menopausal women because it is believed that boiling the matter that kills
the live caterpillars remaining inside of the cocoons would provoke abortion or
107
Figure6.3 Inside of a goro dialen cocoon showing caterpillars and moths. Photo by Laurence
Douny.
badly affect the health of a newborn child. Here, processing and transforming
the materials incorporates beliefs about gestation as it takes place in a womans
womb, and by comparison with insect metamorphosis inside of the cocoon, a
matrix for the species development.
The most commonly found type of wild silk that Dogon women transform
is secreted by the processionary moth caterpillar (Lepidoptera order) called
Moloneyi Druce, the cocoons of which are imported from Nigeria by Marka
Dafing traders and are easier to transform. Wild silk traders provide Dogon
women with four types of cocoons called goro ba, goro dialen, tuntun bleni and
tuntun de, whose weight, quality and colour depend on the food-plant that the
caterpillars consume, for instance, the leaves of the tamarind tree (Tamarindus
indica), the kola tree (Cola acuminata) or doka tree (Isoberlinia doka), all of which
possess a different tannin that also slightly colors the threads. West African wild
silk cocoons that are spun by different kinds of caterpillars are generally initially
white/beige or light grey in colour, but they rapidly darken on the trees, especially
when exposed to sunlight and rain.
Various alternatives to wild silk that are far more affordable and broadly available include plant and industrial materials. The classification of these alternative
materials by order of preference resides in their degree of resemblance to wild
108
silk in terms of strength, texture and colour. For instance, the fibre of the dried
pod of the silk-cotton tree, which partially resists indigo dye, remains the best
substitute for wild silk. It is followed by the fibre of the dried pods of the red
flowering silk-cotton (Bombax buonopozense), called tou-oule or tongoron,
and indigenous cotton (Gossypium herbaceum or Levant cotton), called kouni
kagadji, which possesses a hard texture compared with imported varieties of
cotton. Yarns produced from indigenous cotton are soaked in the decoction
of its seeds (koriden dji) that naturally dyes cotton yarns a light beige, a colour
that matches this of genuine wild silk. The last option is polyester fibre that is
unwound from the padding of armchairs or car seats.
Dogon people attribute various medicinal properties to the silkworms and the
matter that they secrete. First of all, caterpillars are widely consumed for their
notable curative and nutritious properties, being high in protein (Ashiru 1988).
Caterpillars and the larvae found in the cocoons are said to cure diabetes, tetanus and to help reduce high blood pressure. In addition, a decoction of the bits
of branches on which wild silk cocoons are spun is used to purge children who
suffer from an illness called kono, which involves the soul of the child being
taken by a night bird, and that is diagnosed as a form of chronic malaria. Finally,
smoke from burning the wood that touches the cocoons is wafted around the
head and breathed in, as a means to cure headaches and fever provoked by
evil spirits.
The metaphysical complexity of wild silk materials, including the involvement
of magic, adds to its medicinal properties. For instance, Dogon hunters shirts
(dana arco) may be made of wild silk. The material is used for its durability and
strength that make this shirt a solid and light form of armour. Its fireproof qualities are notable in the event of wild fires. Wild silk yarns are used to seal amulets
and to attach them onto the shirts. Moreover, wild silk threads are dipped into
the inky rinse of Quranic writing boards, impregnated with Quranic verses to
be recited and then folded into leather amulets, as a way of protecting hunters against wildlife, witches, and evil spirits, but also to heal. In armed conflict,
hunters who ensure the protection of civilians and very often form a part of the
national army, wear these amulets so as to protect themselves from bullets and
blades. Lastly, these amulets are said to attract luck, and to confer or reinforce
the charismatic power of the wearer.
Wild silk also possesses two noticeable material properties of endurance:
strength and visual brilliance, which can however be weakened by chemical
potash, when it is excessively used for freeing the threads or if the cocoons are
over-cooked. The oldest wrapper I saw was, according to the owner Fatoumata,
about 70years old. Its cotton strips had clearly worn out over time while its wild
109
silk strips and their sheen remained intact. By touching its surface and then
holding one of its corners, she explained that no other wrapper is as strong,
as wild silk challenges time and the ageing body. This wrapper will be passed
onto the next generation. It can be emphasized that in colonial times, wild silk
was considered by the German and British colonial administrations for use in
manufacturing war supplies such as parachutes, due to the tensile strength of
the material. However, the experiment was abandoned, notably because of the
emergence of nylon that was easier to produce and much cheaper (Ene 1964;
McKinney and Eicher 2009: 4748). Today, the materials and design of cocoons
engineered by silk-producing caterpillars constitute a considerable source of
inspiration and material innovation for the development of human technology,
such as producing protective lightweight armours, helmets or sustainable car
panels, as recent studies have suggested (Chen etal. 2012).
A last noticeable property of wild silk recognized by Dogon comprises in how
its visual sheen is said to improve with time, where the majority of natural fibres
used in local textile industries would fade away. As I have already mentioned,
the sheen of wild silk is obtained through a long process that starts with the
degumming of threads, followed by the carding and spinning of the fiber, which
is itself said to get smoother during the process as it is imbued with sweat from
the hand. Wild silk threads are then washed with local soap or industrial washing
powder, to restore the light beige colour of newly formed wild silk cocoons.
Textile shaping through indigo dyeing:

The Dogon concept of sara
Sara is a term which describes the visual aesthetic of wild silk indigo wrappers
as revealed through its design, which enables highlighting wild silk material.
Sara is the beauty of the fabric, produced through weaving and indigo dyeing,
that is through shaping wild silk material. In other words, sara is what is being
done with or to wild silk as a means of enframing it. It consists in the treatment
and design conferred on it, resulting in a wrapper that is composed of woven
white wild silk and woven blue indigo cotton stripes, sewn together to form a
wrapper. The role of indigo is essential in creating that particular design through
contrasting white silk and indigo cotton threads. By soaking the whole wrapper in indigo, the dye reinforces the color and texture of pre-dyed indigo cotton
threads. These are much weaker than wild silk, and wear out and fade away
much quicker. Similarly, as Renne proposes as regards black marriage cloth in
the Bunu area of Nigeria: Indigo enhances cloth, much like gold-plating (Renne
110
1995: 60). Indigo dye not only embellishes fabric but it also changes texture by
conferring temporary rigidity to its cotton. Cotton is a commonly found material
that does not possess any particular force and is rather considered as a material support for dyes and decoration. In the manner of a bare surface ready for
inscription, woven cotton allows fashion possibilities and meanings to materialize in the fibre. A greater cultural value is here attributed to indigo dye, which
confers a particular treatment to it.
Hence, sara is seen by Dogon people as shaping and adding value that is
produced through weaving, through indigo dyeing or in other contexts through
decorating a wrapper with lurex or rayon. Similarly to daoula as a material
aesthetic located in threads, indigo dye possesses an efficacy called sangah. It
resides in the material itself and is brought out through techniques known to the
caste of gwara dyers, yet it remains temporary.
Indigoferas sangah: Material properties

and the dyeing process
The quality and material properties of indigo, a plant material, are described
by Dogon as sangah or charm. This concept refers to a substance, material
or thing that in terms of textile production has material properties of a limited
efficacy, ephemeral values and triggers an aesthetic judgment of appreciation
that therefore fades away. Natural indigo that is perceived as a living material is
a medicinal plant locally grown. It is claimed by Dogon dyers to be of a higher
quality than chemical indigo that is imported from Europe and China. However,
natural indigo used alone takes twice as long to become fixed and it necessitates rather large quantities of dyes compared to chemical flakes that are more
concentrated, yet very expensive. Therefore, natural indigo is mixed with a small
quantity of chemical indigo. Beyond the fact that natural indigo enables rebalancing chemicals, Dogon dyers, called gwara, believe indigo dye can never be
foreign as it has to be made of local indigo brought into the dyers own recipe.
Therefore, in order to be efficacious, the bath and hand process must remain
indigenous in the sense that the origin of indigo is known and this botanical
species possesses medicinal-magical properties.
Over 600 species of indigo plants belonging to the genus Indigofera
(family Leguminosae) are found in West Africa. One of the most common is
the shrub Indigofera arrecta (Hochst. ex A.Rich.)1 (see database.prota.org;
Burkill 1995), which grows perennially on arid soils and is commonly found
in the Sahel and therefore in Mali. Indigo dye can also be obtained from
111
various indigo-bearing plants such as Striga Rowlandii, called do, which is

also parasitic on Millet crops (Dieterlen 1952: 143). These two indigo varieties differ in colour and in strength.
Indigo leaves that are collected before flowering are not only used as a dye
but also as a painkiller, for instance, as eye drops or as a cataplasm that heals
infected insect bites and wounds that have festered and are accompanied by
high fever and nightmares (Figure6.4). The seeds of the indigo plant, reduced
to powder, mixed with a fruit tree potash and some shea oil, constitute a powerful ointment that heals body pains caused by witchcraft. They are vigorously
massaged into childrens bodies in which the indigos active properties are
immediately diffused inside of the body.
In a similar way, the dried roots of the plant are crushed and mixed with shea
butter that adults apply on their body to prevent witchcraft. Kumba recalls that in
the past, immediately after being exorcised, girls would have to carry a twig of
indigo in their hands at all times so as to chase away witches. The powder of the
Figure 6.4 Crushed indigo leaves made into balls are used to dye cloth and as medicine.
Photo by Laurence Douny.
112
roots of the indigo mixed with perfume is also placed on hot charcoals as a form
of incense, the smoke of which protectively envelopes the body of the victim of
witchcraft or of a spirit attack.
Hence, all parts of the indigo plant are used and administered to children and
adults in different ways (i.e. ointment or smoke), as various means of healing the
sick body or to prevent sicknesses that are diagnosed as being provoked by
witchcraft or spirits. Indigo, a living and active material, possesses the ambivalent power of healing or killing, such as by causing abortions. Pregnant gwara
dyers are traditionally forbidden to manipulate indigo plants, while the fermentation process of the dye that takes place in the vat is seen by gwara as a metaphor
for gestation in a womans womb.
The process of indigo dyeing remains mysterious. In fact, fabrics are first
impregnated with indigo-white, of a green-yellow translucent aspect that gradually turns blue when the fabric is removed from the bath and is exposed to
the air, a process that occurs through a chemical reaction2 akin to magic. As
Taussig describes, indigo color as a magical polymorphous substance eludes
us because it is in continuous transformative flux (Taussig 2009: 4041, 149).
The number of soaks and therefore time needed to impregnate cloth with indigo
depends upon the strength of the dye. In this way, a good quality dye will require
only one dye. Consequently, indigo plant and dye are perceived as a magic
material and substance that possess sangah or charm, in the sense of its
dyeing capacity and medicinal properties. Its dyeing process is also seen as
magical because its transformative qualities cannot be grasped. Yet in making
tombe toun textiles, indigos material efficacy, and visual aesthetic as a dye
stemming from a cultivated plant, is much weaker than wild silks. Indigo fades
away through washing and wearing, just as cotton fragments, whereas wild silk
that possesses daoula as a permanent sheen is said to improve through time.
The social implications

and significance of materials
As obtained through weaving and indigo dyeing, the sara of wild silk indigo
wrappers enables production of woven aphorisms through contrast with wild silk
threads. The primary function of these material aphorisms is to silently express
moral values and truths as well as to legitimate social order. In other words,
by wearing these wrappers, Dogon women fully embody and perform cultural
codes through self-display. For instance, the aphorism sabari tono that means
patience in ones marriage is composed of one large stripe of wild silk and
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three smaller stripes of the same material, separated by indigo cotton stripes.
It describes a woman who has been patient in her marriage and has had three
children. The aphorism denkelen ba meaning the mother of the only child is
materialized by one stripe of wild silk framed on both sides by a larger stripe
of indigo cotton. This message is designed to mock a co-wife that has only
one child, whereas the wearer has many and they represent her worth. Hence,
these woven aphorisms allow women to express themselves in implicit ways, to
subvert or contest, but also they stand as self-reminders, signs of adherence
and expression of social moral values and status.
Wild silk wrappers that carry one or several aphorisms and therefore contain
large quantities of wild silk are intended for young women who are between 17
and 35 years of age, that is of marriageable age and looking for a husband,
who are getting married or simply married (Figure 6.5). Here, the sara that is
Figure 6.5 Dogon wild silk wrappers (mixed with cotton) on young women and displaying
batono ti ban (left), meaning the usefulness of a mother never ends, and an Obama girl
(right) wearing pin ba da fila (the stripe with two white extremities) and moyo le zama daa ben
(tolerance brings people together). Photo by Laurence Douny.
114
the beauty of the wrapper lies in the large amount of wild silk that decorates the
wrappers and attracts the eye, because of the almost redundant abundancy of
sheen in stripes and through the contrast with the cotton indigo that enframes
them. For instance, the aphorism sabari tono3 that I have described above may
appear, in this case, four or five times on the wrapper or it may be combined with
other aphorisms. This wrapper, called gnein e toun, celebrates the beauty of
young women who want to be seen, congratulated and therefore socially visible.
On the contrary, a wild silk wrapper, which contains less aphorisms woven in
silk and that therefore is darker, is worn by old women (over 35years old) and
is called baaliku toun, the wrapper of old women. It possesses daoula just as
the wrapper for young women does but far less sara as it affords few motifs or
aphorisms. Dogon women see themselves as old after 35, that is, after having
given birth to several children, due to the lack of medical care, a considerable
load of routine physical work and also because of living in a harsh environment
that wears down the body. Hence, they feel that their youth as a personal worth
must be celebrated while they still can.
Social visibility and value through self-display

Wild silk as the queen of textile materials assigns honour and worth to women,
who often describe wearing wild silk as making them feeling important and so
charismatic. The daoula or sheen of wild silk as a material of enchantment attracts
the eye on the wearer. Sheen as a kind of aura triggers emotional responses of
esteem or admiration, and so it enchants the viewer to a much higher degree
than indigos charm or sangah. Therefore, wild silk makes women inevitably visible, as opposed to wearing dyed cotton cloths that make them unseen, which
is equivalent to being naked. This is expressed as: tombe toun kouni banga
kouwa pere kouni toun banga ire, which means a woman who wears tombe
toun is ten times more visible and expressive than a woman who wears cotton.
Here, the aphorisms forming the design of tombe toun wrappers are efficacious
because of the power, sheen and daoula of wild silk material, which legitimates
the non-verbal messages the stripe bears, and also because its visual aesthetic
is enhanced and enframed by indigo, which itself possesses a reduced efficacy
compared to wild silk.
Wild silk is a material of prestige not only because of its price and rarity but
also it is overall a material of power that authoritatively legitimizes the wearers
thoughts and actions. Here, the cultural significance of sheen plays a role in
legitimating social codes, hierarchy and moral values through self-display. In
115
addition, sheen imparts personal worth on the older women who produced the
wrapper. It confers charisma to young women, who by wearing it flaunt their
social significance and status. Therefore, they show they can afford such a
prestigious cloth, are married to a wealthy husband or have a caring and hardworking mother who made the wrapper to celebrate their daughter. It is worth
noting that wild silk wrappers as items of prestige constitute essential elements
of dowry and of bridewealth. In both cases, the wearer feels aesthetically and
socially transformed, while the viewer become socially enchanted.
Materials classification and their cultural

representations
Due to its formidable material properties, such as endurance and magic, wild
silk is perceived by Dogon as a material of power. It is obtained through longdistance trades or journeys in the bush and in caves, and it requires long boiling
to be degummed. Wild silk as a unique material provides absolute healing and
long-lasting empowerment of individuals who seek protection, or luck, or strive
for recognition and situatedness in the social world. On the contrary, cotton is a
domesticated plant material used in textile production that does not stand the
test of time even when coated with indigo. Similarly to cotton, indigo is a domesticated plant commonly found in villages that bears medicinal properties, which
are however much weaker than silk, and are said by traditional healers to be
redundant since other medicinal plants can cure the same illnesses that indigo
cures. Although indigo dye obtained through crushing and fermenting leaves
takes over cotton by adding value to it, its properties and visual effect fade. Here,
Dogon cultural representation, appreciation and classification of these materials
are based on their sources, their environment, and primarily on their efficacy.
This implies their inherent force or properties, the relationality that form their
materiality and also includes the temporality, techniques and knowledges of wild
silk and indigo.
Within a broader Tengu and Tommon Kan craft production and material
system, the role that indigenous materials such as earth, wood, iron ore, silk,
cotton, indigo and animal skins play in Dogon daily and spiritual life are central to
the Dogon cosmological paradigm. Their roles entail the ways by which Dogon
define, order and act upon the social, natural and spiritual world, through transforming and using materials. As explained by a Dogon blacksmith, earth, called
the mother of humanity, is a sacred element from which everything emerges.
Life-giving earth is also a prominent building and shrine-making material.
116
Second, wood and by extension plants are medicinal substances, intervening

in healing and ritual performances. Dogon people extract medicines and food
from trees, while their wood also serves as firewood and for sculpting various
objects. Third, iron ore and metals are essential in making tools to cultivate the
land, to cut wood and weapons to protect. Fourth, wild silk is primarily used for
its outstanding medicinal and magical properties in addition to making textiles.
Wild silk entered the Dogon micro-cosmology of materials and also tradition
some 260300years ago with the advent of Islam, inter-ethnic marriages and
collaboration with the Marka-Dafing (Douny 2013). Fifth, as I have previously
explained cotton is mainly used in textile production but does not possess any
inherent force. Lastly, although indigo possesses medicinal properties, duplicated by other plant species, likewise animal skins used in leatherwork are seen
as dispensable compared to the other materials listed.
Thus, a micro-cosmology of materials for Tomon and Tengu Dogon communities that is dynamic, open to change and yet excludes chemical and industrial
materials (similarly see McKay etal. in this volume about Filipino conceptualization of plastik) is built on materials choice and preference. These are driven by
necessity and meet peoples worldviews within a craft production system. The
materials order depends on Dogon priorities about sustaining life and requires
efficacy. The making of textiles, wild silk and indigo materials are means by
which social relations are established and negotiated. They enable people to
locate themselves and act upon and in the world.
Towards a micro-cosmology
of indigenous materials
Through an ethnography of materials, I have examined the material efficacy of
wild silk and indigo in the making of tombe toun wrappers. I have shown that
wild silk through its sheen or daoula acts as a statement of social prestige and
personal worth, while the wrappers design of blue and white stripes carries
aphorisms that have strong visual and communicational impact due to the efficacy of this material. Wild silk indigo wrappers constitute an efficacious marker
of social visibility, essentially due to the way wild silk legitimizes social actions
and relations. In other words, the social relevance and implication of sheen rests
on the ways Dogon women engage socially with sheen, which as a material of
enchantment triggers an emotional response of social respect. Wild silk indigo
wrappers bestow not only beauty (sara) on Dogon women, but power (daoula)
and also charisma.
117
Wild silk and indigo are both perceived as living and active materials that act
upon people because of their inherent properties, including medicinal and magical, yet with very different degrees of efficacies, in the sense of being permanent
(daoula) and so powerful, or else ephemeral and weak (sangah). Dogon representations and classification of materials are based on their source of origin,
materiality and transformative processes, which show materials cosmological
pervasiveness.
In other words, the Dogon micro-cosmology of materials brings people and
indigenous materials into a system of relations, in which materials enable people
to locate themselves, relate and act upon the social, natural and invisible world
through their materiality. Consequently, such concepts of materials cosmology
and efficacy allow us to better circumscribe the nature, power and relationality of
materials as well as their active role in shaping cultures. In the context of making,
researching materials constitutes a compelling way of uncovering implicit indigenous cultural meanings about indigenous materials and their epistemological
complexity.
Notes
1. The full botanical names of plants commonly record the names of botanists whose work has
been involved in ascribing the plant to a genus and family. Hence Hochst. ex. A. Rich. and
Schumach. and Thonn. Benth., which record the five botanists involved in categorizing the
plants listed, are here included as a part of the Latin names.
2. The enzymic hydrolysis that results from soaking indigo plants in water enables transformation of indican into indoxyl and glucose. Then the indoxyl converts into indigo when oxygen
is added by whisking the bath (Balfour 2011: 103).
3. The majority of Dogon proverbs are expressed in Malinke, the language spoken by the
Marka-Dafing people of Mali and Burkina-Faso who created these wrappers and are wild silk
specialists.
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Chapter7
Fashioning plastic
Tom Fisher
Barbie is plastic ... but she knows. And when I need help,
always shes there ... I know shes plastic, I know shes
useless, but shes always there.
(Giovani Madonia 2014)
A few hours after hearing this radio interview with Giovani Madonia, the owner
of the United Kingdoms biggest Barbie Doll collection,1 I opened a new tube of
toothpaste, made of plastic. It was not my usual brand and promised special
tooth-whitening power. When I squirted some on my (plastic) toothbrush, I saw
that the toothpaste was translucent, light blue, with dark blue flecks. Looking
carefully through the plastic lenses of my reading glasses, I wondered if these
might be so-called microbeads. These tiny spheres of polyethylene or other thermoplastic that are used in beauty products wash down the sink into the sea,
where they absorb chemicals such as PCBs and other persistent organic pollutants (Takada 2013), and may be consumed by marine life.
These examples indicate something of the range and diversity of current manifestations of plastics. They can be the component of a personal metaphysics.
They are useful in our everyday habits. They can be the focus of environmental
concern. Between these extremes, as illustrated by the toothpaste example, they
are ubiquitous, and consequently often escape our attention. One objective of
this chapter is to acknowledge plastics disappearance as material and its simultaneous presence as already more than stuff, indicating something about the
texture of contemporary material ecology. As Webmoor and Whitmore (2008) put
it, Things Are Us. Here the suggestion is that Plastics Are Us materially so if
you happen to swallow some tooth-whitening toothpaste, more abstractly if you
construct your psyche round a Barbie collection.
120
The chapter approaches the strange world of plastics2 from the perspective
of design, which is a practice concerned to resolve the material facts of things
with their social life (Appadurai 1988). It sketches in some of the history of the
material: key moments in its developing cultural presence, its double nature as
both useful and dubious. The main objective is to think about how to balance a
necessary acknowledgement of the role of plastics shifting material forms with a
clear sense of the meanings that are activated in them. This aligns with the range
of perspectives from which plastics are studied, from engineering to cultural
studies, which in turn matches the range of ways it makes its presence felt in
our contemporary surroundings, as well as its significance in material culture.
Studies of plastics include early commentaries on their potential for design and
manufacture from a technical point of view (Gloag 1943, 1945; Plastes 1941;
Yarsley and Couzens 1941, 1956, 1968)through to culturally informed historical
narratives that sought to confirm them as the materials of progressive modern
innovation (e.g. Katz 1978). More recent accounts focus on the history of the
plastics industry and the cultural connotations that the materials gathered in
the period of intense consumerism after World War II, which Meikle (1995) and
others have called the Plastic Age (Thompson etal. 2009), as well as their consequences for consumption experiences (Fisher 2013b).
Ubiquitous plasticity
Over time, plastics have become a ubiquitous, inescapable and unremarkable
part of our surroundings and everyday life in the developed world. As a consequence, they have become in a sense invisible to us, while, at the same time,
becoming potentially active, smart by design that operates at nano-scale. The
principle of synthesis behind plastics has even transferred from the chemical to
the biological due to recent work in biotechnology (Ginsberg 2014), which like
the example of microbeads, points towards a blurring of the distinction between
animal and material. Alongside the relative invisibility that their ubiquity brings,
concerns about plastics environmental consequences have seen the development of a negative view of them in public discourse (Frienkel 2011), which is
also reflected in the attention garnered from commentators and researchers in
the human sciences (Gabrys 2013; Hawkins 2001). These studies pay close
attention to the material facts of plastics, bringing an acute understanding of
the diffusion of these inherently labile materials through human practices and in
multiple relations to human and more-than-human bodies in what Whatmore
calls a sticky web of connections (2013: 604).
Fashioning plastic
121
Concentrating only on plastics material, sensorial presence, however, risks

leaving behind its role as a component of our imagined figural world. This chapter takes this risk as one starting point, inspecting the fashioning of plastics
relational materiality by using sources close to fashion practices, in clothing and
music. It reviews concepts of plasticity that appear in social media related to
fashion, and delineates relationships between the consequences of particular
material formulations and the work they do as signifiers in culture. Culture here is
meant in the sense that Raymond Williams retrieved from the high versus popular
debate a process of artful making from which forms emerge that are significant
for a time and place (Williams 1974). Fashion is a form of artful making, a feature
of modernity available to all, that works with immaterial materials that are infinitely malleable, infinitely plastic.
The physical materials also are as malleable in their cultural manifestations as
in their physical properties, and the examples of current fashionings of plasticity discussed below draw on themes that can be found in the materials history
since the start of Meikles Plastic Age. Both their material and their abstract characteristics feed into and draw from the structure of feeling of contemporary
life in ways that are critical of consumer culture and ways that celebrate the
fashioning of the self within it. A critical stance on consumer culture is evident
from the point that the Plastic Age began to wane, and this has an ironic reading
of plasticity as a component. In 1968 the Plastic Ono Band started a theme in
Art Rock that aligns with the use of plastic to indicate inauthentic and uncool.
It is also possible to find plasticity being invoked to celebrate what it means
to synthesize the self, to be fashionable, fashioned in plastic. This chapter will
return to these contrasting but related examples. First, it is appropriate to think
about the physical properties of the materials that have so extended themselves
into the collective imagination.
Plastic materials
Plastic is a misleading name for a material because it identifies a property of
material, the ability to be moulded,3 to flow, and this ability is not restricted to one
category of useful matter. Glass shares many of the properties of some plastics,
but its high melting point, fused structure and ancient origins give it different
properties and connotations. Nonetheless, the modern materials known as
plastics have come to be characterized by the fact that they are processed by
moulding. The properties of the materials means that things made of plastic
have moved from one form to another, and if they are heated, they may do so
122
again. They have moved from indeterminate stuff to a determinate form and
in many cases they are more ready to relinquish that form than are objects of
glass, metal or ceramic.
Although they seem characteristically modern, this ability to move, to be
pushed about, gives plastics strong connections to materials that belong in a
pre-industrial craft setting, naturally occurring thermoplastics including shellac,
gutta percha, rubber, horn, tortoiseshell and whalebone that can be worked when
hot. Horners turned animal product into material for lanterns (or lamp-horns),
buttons, combs, handles and other objects, with increasing sophistication. Horn
itself was used to make moulds to produce articles in softer material, such as
straw, for votive souvenirs (Schaverien 2006). In its most advanced application by the late sixteenth century, it was used to take impressions of detailed
engraved dies, in a process that points towards the moulding processes used
to make objects from thermoplastics from the mid-nineteenth century.
Horn objects soften and change their shape if they are heated just as the
shape of some durable plastic objects changes if they are exposed to heat
by accident, or if their material is recycled, as McKay (this volume) details.
Apparently stable plastic objects are only temporarily halted in their flow. They
are things between states, characterized as much by motion as by the stable
forms they have in use. Although it was their protean ability to adopt an infinite
variety of forms that fascinated early commentators on plastic (Meikle 1995: 11),
here the focus is on the implications of the fact they do that their plasticity
rather than the forms that result.
Although variety is certainly one of the defining features of plastic things, I
want to think about the ways in which the motion that gives formless matter
determinate shape is temporarily halted. I want to dwell particularly on the
cultural forces at work when their motion is stilled, which work as much on an
immaterial as a material level the ways in which plasticity works on our ideas
as a consequence of its presence in our physical surroundings. So one focus
here is on design, since designers are among the most significant of the agents
that bring about the flow of this material, and determine the shapes in which it
ends up. But the scope of the chapter is both narrower than what designers
have done with plastic and, at the same time, broader than this since it considers plasticity as a quality that pervades contemporary culture.
Consumer product designers and engineering designers have different but
overlapping concerns. Both have made use of the fact that plastics engineering
can make possible integrated forms and more efficient production. Fixtures can
be embedded in complex mouldings that may be formed out of more than one
polymer, with a variety of textures and visual effects. Single mouldings take the
Fashioning plastic
123
place of assemblies of components integrating structure and surface, reducing

both the number of components and production operations. While design engineers are concerned with physical, mechanical performance, product designers
think of plastic in terms of consumers engagement with objects through the
tactility of their surfaces and the visual effects of their forms aesthetic relationships with objects activated by culture. This engagement has both material and
immaterial dimensions. We are touched by the materials and our touch is primed
by our ideas about them (Fisher 2004).
So what is relevant here are some moments in the history of plastics, some
factors in their cultural trajectory, and some characteristics of their properties
that are played out in the production processes that are the course along which
they flow. This focus on motion, on the flow of matter through production and
consumption and over time, implies the forces that move it (Fisher 2012). To say
that a material flows, is to ascribe to it a tendency do so, implying endogenous
properties that make this possible, as well as external forces that activate these
properties, akin to gravity without human agency. However, in both the sphere
of consumption and of production, materials are no more than matter impelled
by human forces. But they are matter with properties that are the grounds for
their performance and in the case of plastics these properties are both physical
and cultural. They allow certain sorts of design, and have accrued an unstable
repertoire of abstract components that can be put to use as cultural elements
in the fashioning of self-hood. As McKay puts it in this volume, plastics are
co-producers of cultural categories.
In this fashioning it is possible to discern both the pre-modern sense of
to make and the modern sense of a making that is socially acceptable and
desired. As a word to describe prevailing socially acceptable ways of doing,
fashion coincides with Western modernity. Its use is found from the sixteenth
century, describing changes in what is considered right and acceptable in
manners and accoutrements that are apparently random but temporarily meaningful. Its etymology associates it with social agreement and factions. The
associated term vogue derives from an Old French root with maritime associations, describing the random swaying movement of the waves.4
The phenomenon of modern fashion has generated a rich literature that
centres on fashion in clothes and its role in self-presentation (for example,
Entwhistle 2000), as well as work that locates this communicative function in a
social setting. In his study of haute couture fashion, for instance, Blumer identifies the relationship between fashion and a shared sense of the times, calling it a
collective groping for the proximate future (1969: 281), noting the role of particular people designers in the mechanism of collective selection. For Blumer,
124
designers catch and give expression to what we may call the direction of modernity (280). As the industrial designer Raymond Loewy put it, design consists of
giving form to that which is the most advanced yet acceptable (Loewy 1951:
277ff). It is possible to think about fashion and design without the assumption
that modernity has a direction if we accept that designers simply develop forms
that resonate with their times. In the case of plastic, designers stop the materials
motion at forms that are significant, fashioning the material in both the old and
contemporary senses outlined above. Our understanding of plasticity is in itself a
component of this fashioning, as designs mesh with their context. It is possible
to see this in plastics relationship to fashion so it is appropriate to think about
fashionable plastic, through themes that emerge from its history.
Design history and plastic authenticity

The most authoritative account of the entanglement between plastic materials
and contemporary culture is Meikles (1995) American Plastic: A Cultural History,
which emphasizes the meanings that have accrued to plastics rather than their
technical details. However, as we have seen above, the two cannot be disaggregated and as the materials were developed, plastics production technology
meant that familiar plastics came in familiar shapes. For instance, the production
technology behind phenolic thermoset resin moulding in the 1930s favoured
streamlined forms, whereas the polystyrene that emerged after the Second
World War can follow sharp angles in the mould (Meikle 1995: 187188). But
what materials are is not simply what they can do.
As well as forms that related to production processes, the materials accrued
meanings that depended on their material nature, including their early association with the imitation of more honorific materials. The properties of cellulose
nitrate meant it was possible to make a passable imitation of a starched linen shirt
collar, or an acceptable approximation of tortoiseshell, indeed such imitation had
been the stimulus for developing early plastic materials. Negative connotations
of inauthentic poor taste were one consequence of this imitation, which persists,
as McKays chapter in this volume shows. In the Philippines the Tagalog usage
of plastik or Tupperware is to indicate a two-faced, fake person.
However, plastics have also been associated with positive ideas. The materials have represented a progressive modernity. The first designs in plastic
that critics took to be authentic applications of their qualities appeared in the
mid-twentieth century and did not imitate any other material but played on their
capacity to be light in weight, seamless in construction and, by then, brightly
Fashioning plastic
125
coloured. In examples such as the phenolic radio cabinets of the 1930s, the
material was taken to be expressive of the modern. Meikle calls this strongly
positive construction on plastics post-1945 a plastic utopianism that invoked
ideas of the mastery of nature through the application of polymer science (Meikle
1995: 104118 and 228230).
Before Meikle, Sylvia Katz produced several histories of design in plastic
(1978, 1984, 1986). The depth and reach of Meikles work demonstrates the
richness of the cultural dimensions of plastic, and the seriousness with which
design history has treated it as an object of study. War-time developments in
plastics production methods, and the contact citizens consequently had with the
new materials, brought them to the attention of John Gloag, an early UK design
historian (1943, 1945), as well as industry figures who were keen to promote
the materials, notably Yarsley and Couzens who concluded each edition of their
account of the current plastic industry with a piece that positioned the technology in the current times (1941, 1956, 1968; see Fisher 2013b for a more detailed
comparison of the three passages). The 1941 edition proposed a future Plastic
Man, living in a plastic age (1941: 154158); the 1956 edition identifies a fear
for the future, including its materials, that accompanied anxiety about nuclear
destruction. By the 1968 edition, they were able to note plastics uptake by fashion, quoting Mary Quant: We were the first people to use plastic as plastic
(1968: 358). They might have made the same point by noting the high design
in plastics that emerged from Italy after the Second World War from firms such
as Kartell (Sparke 1988).
This search for authentic plastic as plastic design that would fix this fluid
material into a repertoire of forms that were authentic to it had been going
on since the 1950s. Meikle quotes the editor of Industrial Design, Jane Fiske
Mitarachi, in a 1956 special issue on plastics saying that quality could only be
designed into plastics by a frank exploitation of the things that make plastics
unique (Meikle 1995: 194).5 The same moment produced an equivalent debate
in the United Kingdom, evident in the February 1958 issue of Ideal Home. This
appeared with a special extra practical guide to plastics, its editorial engaging
directly with plastics double nature, advanced and at the same time possibly
counterfeit, rather phoney (Ideal Homes and Gardens 1958). On both sides of
the Atlantic then, commentators were troubled by plastics lack of an identity and
strove to construct one.
These efforts were linked to the materials imitative origins, imitation that could
be seen as a fraud against those whose social position had previously given
them a natural economic monopoly on the materials that plastics imitated.
The commentary drew on a well-established rhetoric of material authenticity
126
that derives from the writing of Ruskin, Morris and Pugin, giving imitative plastics an aesthetic association with a lack of social and physical authenticity.
This challenge to an apparently natural social ordering by plastics inauthentic
dissembling existed in parallel to another established perception of them based
on more metaphysical premises they are unnatural because they are made,
rather than given by nature, impure because of their origin in human reason. This
theme is found up to the present in debates about materials, in which appeals
to the significance of human interaction with material that is given, rather than
made, have been challenged with reference to plastic.
This debate is evident in a dialogue about the concept of materiality, between Tim Ingold and Daniel Miller in 2007. The clearest differences
between Millers and Ingolds approaches centre on their discussion of particular materials, among them the plastics that make up phones. Miller (2007)
criticizes Ingolds discussion of materiality for selecting only apparently natural materials (stone, wood, air) rather than more obviously cultural ones,
such as plastic, which he goes on to discuss in the context of mobile phones.
In this, Miller could be accused of preserving the human/object, mind/matter
distinction that elsewhere (2005) he states he wants to supersede by invoking these two categories of material: natural and cultural. In his argument,
plastics are ontologically distinct from the type of materials Ingold discusses
because they are of us, because they derive from human cognition. Plastics
are made, but they are not things. Plastic objects, like phones, are made
of stuff, but this is stuff made out of precursor material. Plastics origin challenges Millers distinction, but it also breaks down on logical grounds, since
to say that is a material is a human act, which makes a particular relationship
to matter and transforms that matter into material, whether it has acquired
connotations of culture or of nature.
In a later discussion of the ecological relationship between materials and
humans, Ingold stresses the significance of flows of matter the leakiness of
both humans and materials against the idea of the imprinting of culture on to
brute material (Ingold 2012: 438). With plastics this imprinting seems impossible since they are always already of culture. Their brutish origins in oil, or
latterly in biopolymers, are distant both conceptually and geographically and
therefore do not signify in their identity. Plastics seem a rather good example of
the historical idea of materials that Ingold proposes in which matter is always
an ongoing historicity (ibid: 435), against the idea that there are fixed material properties and humanly understood material qualities. However, plasticity
as conceived in this chapter perhaps adds a dimension to Ingolds resolution of
material relations into the idea of ecology. Thinking about plasticity rather than
Fashioning plastic
127
plastics suggests that even in physical terms the materials are never a material,
but a property or a set of potentials. As physical entities, they either pretend to
be, or are taken for, other things when we encounter them in everyday settings,
and they afford metaphorical plasticity, which can be mixed with or fashioned
into the sense of self.
However, through their history, their identification with an inauthentic synthetic
origin has meant that plastics have gained a negative image. Consequently,
from the 1930s, the American plastics industry made organized efforts to ensure
a positive image for the materials, some of which have had a lasting engagement with design history, such as the Hagley Museum and Library at the original
DuPont site in Wilmington, Delaware.6 By 1978 the marketing section of the trade
magazine Plastics World was describing a concerted public relations campaign
by the plastics industry in the United States to rescue the reputation of chemicals, which had been the subject of attack by a generally misinformed public.
The campaign, by a consortium of manufacturers with the Society for the Plastics
Industry (SPI)7 was organized round the slogan, Without chemicals life would
be impossible. Its intention was to counter what Monsanto, one of the leading
elements in the consortium, called chemophobia (Fountas 1978).
Concerns about plastics consequences for the environment and human
health have seen the development of a negative view of it in public discourse,
especially when plastic objects become visible waste (Frienkel 2011). This is
identified at the extreme as plastiphobia (Roberts 2010). As palpable materials, plastics have the capacity to both delight and disgust. The delight of
modern consumption derives partly from the consumption of newness
(Campbell 1992), and new plastics are new like no other material. The production process means that the significant investment of time and skill, and
therefore money, required to make the peerless surfaces of mould tooling is
reproduced perfectly on the surfaces of even cheap plastic objects. When
they are old and worn, however, plastics have the capacity to disquiet us, and
people may take steps to protect their plastic possessions through protective
layers of more plastic (Fisher 2013a). This private concern for the ugliness that
old plastics may bring to peoples private spaces mirrors worries about their
impact on the environment and, in particular, awareness of the plastic that
ends up in the oceans.8 This ranges from the identifiable detritus that is visible
on beaches, smaller pieces of which are eaten by fish and birds and may kill
them by blocking their gut, to tiny plastic beads that wash into the seas from
plastic feed-stock spills and can be found in beaches all over the world along
with the plastic microbeads from cosmetics that start in our bathrooms and
end up in the ocean (Gabrys 2013; Takada 2013).
128
Cultural plasticity
Plastics now reach far beyond their use in settings where people have encountered them in the past as palpable elements of our surroundings large
non-consumer markets exist for the materials. Although 39.4 per cent of the
47million tons used in 2011 went into packaging, 8.3 per cent into automotive
and 5.4 per cent into electrical and electronic goods, the remainding 20.5 per
cent was used in construction and 26.4 per cent in other applications, including
agriculture (Plastics Europe etal. 2012). Nearly 50 per cent of plastics used in
the EU therefore are either actually invisible part of buildings or buried in the
ground or remain in the sphere of production rather than consumption. Along
with plastics relative lack of visibility in engineering, building and agriculture,
they have become mobile in two senses. They make up the plastic soup9 circulating in the biosphere (Davison and Asch 2011; Foekema et al. 2013; Marks
2008), and some polymers can now have smart properties that mean they react
to their setting they respond to stimuli from their environment. An everyday
example of this is packaging that decomposes, but there are also many applications of this principle in medicine, for instance, targeting drug delivery (Galaev
and Mattaesson 1999).
This diffusion and mobility coincides with the immaterial presence outlined
above; a sense of plasticity that plays on the meanings the materials have accrued
in the past and takes them in new directions. The sticky web of connections
that the materials have to us, to the environment, to our ideas about nature and
culture leave a particularly curious imprint in contemporary plastic pop-culture
manifestations. Here, plastics identity is unruly, drawing from the chemophobic
suspicion about the materials that has accompanied their ubiquity as well our
dependence on them in everyday life. Embracing this identity has become a
marker with which to fashion cultural opposition or at least critique.
Views of plastics that were built on an assumption of their lack of authenticity
began to appear in public discourse in the late 1960s. Meikle notes that they
cluster round the obscure reference to plastics in the film The Graduate (1997:
3, 259). The materials have appeared in everyday discourse and commentary
ever since, but now often seem to be related to somewhat ironic critique, which
in turn serves to construct an equivocal view of them that mirrors the love-hate
relationship with plastics that is familiar in many aspects of contemporary life.
Collective demonization of the plastic bag does not affect the desire for new
goods. This ironic and critical stance is evident in social media.
A 2014 search of Facebook groups turns up 122 musician pages with titles
that include the word plastic, all the way from A Plastic Rose to Wrapped in
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129
Plastic, via Plastic Babies, Plastic Noise Experience, The Plastic People of the
Universe and, of course, the Plastic Ono Band. It is hard to be certain precisely
how plastic is being used in each of these examples, but extending from their
genealogical relationship to the Plastic Ono Band, it seems safe to assume that
in all cases the word indicates a connection to the texture and aesthetics of
contemporary consumption experiences. This was an explicit part of the rhetoric
of the Plastic Ono Band in 1968 and in some cases is suggested through an
association with a particular plastic object:
A Plastic Rose, Plastic Animals, Plastic Bag Boyz, Plastic Dinosaurs, Plastic
Flowers, Plastic Garden, Plastic Glasses, Plastic Handles, Plastic Harmonicas,
Plastic Horse, Plastic Kasket, Plastic Mermaids, Plastic Panda, Plastic Rhino,
Plastic Soldiers, Plastic Teeth, Plastic Toys, Plastic Tree
Plastic toys are particularly telling in this connection, given the materials strong
association with childhood from early in its history. Yarsley and Couzens
emphasized an association between plastics qualities and childish delight in
the life of plastic man (1941: 154), and toys have become a defining element in
contemporary plastic culture. Indeed, Plastic Culture is the title of a recent book
that reviews the genre of (mostly plastic) post-Second World War Japanese
character toys that generates avid interest among collectors (Phoenix 2006). The
impact of globalized production and consumption on the environment seems to
hit the news particularly forcefully when the detritus at issue has recognizable
form, particularly so if it is in the form of toys. The cargo load of plastic bath
ducks that circumnavigated the earth is one example. Another is the container
load of Lego that spilled off Cornwall over a decade ago and is still found on the
beaches there.10 Toys were famously the subject of some of Roland Barthes
musings on plastics the problem of authenticity seemed to him particularly
acute when the formative experiences of childhood were overlain with the associations of artificiality that he read out of the material (Barthes 1972: 54).
The immaterial plasticity that has resulted from the dissociation of the idea
of plastic from its material foundation has a particular inflection in relation to
fashion. Things have moved a long way from the 60s wet-look fashion that Mary
Quant called plastic as plastic (Yarsley and Couzens 1968)and that depended
on the material properties of PVC for that disturbingly skin-like but impossibly
glossy surface. Alongside the use of plastic as a signifier of an ironic stance
on consumption that is evident in the names of the groups identified above, and
which implies some critical detachment, it can also frequently be found used in
an almost celebratory way, with perhaps an element of innocent mistranslation
at times. Facebook contains a page called La Vie en Plastique, which has been
130
made since 2012 by Mara Jos Ossandn, a Chilean woman, to accompany

her blog of the same name.11
In her blog, she shares her impressions of life as a fashionable young woman,
particularly tips on where to get cosmetics, as well as recipes and there are the
pictures of foods and travel that are a conventional feature of this genre of social
media. However, La Vie en Plastique is distinctive in its clear connection between
the concept of plastic and the richly sensual aspects of life that go along with
cosmetics, clothes, travel and food as Maria experiences them. She is in plastic
in these decorative and sensual artefacts and the experiences through which she
constructs herself as a fashionable person. La Vie en Plastique is part of the
fashion blogging phenomenon that Rocamora (2011) describes as a technology of the self and a privileged space of identity construction (p. 410) through
which individuals can both reflect as in a mirror and project their sense of style
to the world. Crucially for this discussion, this phenomenon is played out in a
strongly visual medium, mediated by the type of ubiquitous screen that shows
the present, as Manovich put it (2001: 99103).
The blogs that Rocamora discusses are in the fashion system, but they
disturb the production/ consumption distinction they contradict the collective
selection that Blumer (1969) identified in the process through which fashions
have emerged in the past. They can be a way for nobodies to become renowned
characters on the fashion stage, so they fall perhaps on the side of production.
But they have strong relationships to consumption blogs too, ones like La Vie en
Plastique, which are not just about clothes but serve to fashion the self through
the fluid, plastic resources available. However, out-and-out fashion blogs, filled
with images of clothes and accessories, are also not immune from the power
of the metaphor of plasticity. One of the more famous fashion bloggers who
Rocamora discusses, Susie Bubble, put up a page in May 2011 that she titled
Plastic Candy.12 This is ostensibly to show off a pink plastic coat but her reflections on the page suggest it relates as much to the qualities of plasticity as to
particular objects:
For the past few weeks, whilst travelling around, Ive been on a plastic candy
wave. Its basically pastels coated in a glycerine-sticky shiny sheen. Its a result
of consuming too many unnatural food dyes in Japanese candy and American
cereal.
Although the blog pictures are of sets of objects, not all of them clothes,
which share the same sort of plasticky colours, this narrative associates them
unequivocally with the whole range of material properties that are characteristic
of plastics. Here is the association of the materials with un-nature in their origins
Fashioning plastic
131
and the sense that this compromises our bodies, though we desire them and
consume them willingly. Here is the association of tasteless tackiness with the
impossibly perfect gloss of new plastics seductive, but slimy and viscous, so
potentially disgusting (Sartre 1957). Recent research has shown that it is not
just fashionistas who associate these qualities with plasticity. Marie Hebrok and
Ingun Klepp (2014) have shown these colours to be generally associated with
synthetic fabrics, and therefore with plastic.
It seems clear that what Susie Bubble and Mara Jos Ossandn are doing
with this immaterial plasticity, what they are the fashioning with it, relates closely
to their being in the world, to their self-concept and to the fashioned self that they
project through their blogs. It is tempting to draw a parallel between the move
from indeterminate to determinate form in the production of plastic goods, and
this construction of modern subjectivities relevant to the material texture of the
times (Berman 1982; Giddens 1991). Susie Bubble and Mara Jos Ossandn
are self-consciously making themselves and the made character of plastics
underlines that self-consciousness.
These fashion blogs, which are not isolated examples of manifestations of
fashion that refer to plastics,13 resonate with the strong historical association
that plastic materials have had to modernity. Just as the consumer culture of
the period after the Second World War embraced plastic materials as signifiers
of progressive modernity, the wide-eyed (perhaps false?) innocence projected
in fashion blogs suggests a new strategy for being of the times by being of
plastic, embracing a plasticity. There is a sense that plasticity affords more than
simply being a signifier of modernity. This is plasticity as production, plasticity as
synthesis these are individuals making, fashioning themselves with the (plastic-like) materials that are at hand making themselves plastic. Their fashioning
goes in two directions: they both fashion themselves and, in the process, help
to extend the idea of plasticity beyond plastic materials, into all the materials of
consumption available to them.
The sense of the fashioning of worlds through the material and immaterial
qualities of plasticity borrowed from plastics that is evident in these examples
seem to give credence to Ezio Manzinis stress in the 1980s on the malleability of
the materials image, its physical reality deferred by the presence of technoscientific images of their structure (1989). However, the examples introduced above
do not imply technical knowledge of plastic, but processes of living through
plasticity. They also imply the materials disappearance through their simultaneous invisibility and ubiquity, and their return in this diffuse but active sense of
plasticity. For all the immateriality of this sense, it is clear that its material referent
will persist far into the future, and we suspect that as Jody Roberts puts it about
132
the materials: Their future is as much unwritten as our own. Together we are
becoming plastic. (2013: 130).
Conclusion
The circulation of both meaning and material in the more than human relations
of plastic outlined above seem a long way from the pragmatics and practicalities
of polymer engineering, or the origins of the materials in craft practice. It blurs
the distinction between production and consumption in the ironic play with the
cultural dimensions of the materials that this immaterial plasticity supports. At
the same time, this play supercedes the dualities that have grown up in ideas
about the materials. Plastics are not either glossy or drossy, cool or schlocky,
delightful or disgusting, but they provide the material ground for a plasticity out
of which individuals may fashion themselves, articulated with and perhaps critical of consumer culture. In this, they seem to be an example of material with
which people think, along the lines that Ingold proposes (2012: 438).
Notes
1. Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4, 11 September 2014.
2. The chapter refers to a class of materials with quite different properties, plastics, as well
as to the concept of plasticity, which is implied by the idea of a single material, plastic
a convenient name for all those materials that have plasticity. The chapter draws out the
relationship between the physical and cultural dimensions of that plasticity, concentrating
on the latter.
3. The word also indicates a property of metals that can undergo plastic deformation, where
their matter is pushed from one shape to another when cold, as well as all materials that
can be formed by casting in a liquid state.
4. <http://www.etymonline.com/index>.
5. Meikle quotes from Jane Fiske Mitarachi, Plastics and the Question of Quality, Industrial
Design (June 1956): 6467.
6. The Hagley Museum and Library was endowed by the DuPont company in 1972, holding
the DuPont archive. It is now a centre for the study of American business history.
7. The Society for the Plastics Industry (SPI) is an industry wide association that was set up in
1937 to represent the interests of the American plastics industry (Meikle 1995: 102).
8. A Google search for plastic in the ocean in June 2014 produced 74,400,000 results.
9. http://plasticsoupfoundation.org/eng/ (accessed 25 April 2014).
10. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699930/Lego-washed-Cornish-beach-17years-container-filled-plastic-bricks-fell-sea-ship-hit-freak-wave.html#ixzz38Yt48A6X>.
11. Mara Jos Ossandn has given permission to refer in detail to her web presence in this
chapter.
12. http://www.stylebubble.co.uk/style_bubble/2014/05/plastic-candy.html.
13. Maras and Susies pages are not the only social networking manifestation of this plastic
fashioning. The global context revealed by Facebook shows that the concept of plasticity
Fashioning plastic
133
resonates strongly in fashion-culture. Plastic Tinkerbell is a page put up by a Hungarian

woman, also sharing make-up and fashion tips. Plastic People, as well as being a night club
in fashionable Shoreditch, is a song from 2008 by Le Peuple de Lherbe, which is a critique
of consumer capitalism along the same lines as Malvina Reynolds 1962Little Boxes. This
milieu is the contemporary equivalent of the cultural background against which the fashion
designers that Blumer studied worked, and it has a strong connection to clothes fashion.
Plastic People is also a vintage clothes shop in Tenerife and a range of t-shirts hand printed
in New York. Plastic Passion is a rather arty shoe shop in Genoa. Although there seems to
be nothing particularly plastic-y about its merchandise, the name reinforces the sense that
plasticity is a relevant element in European fashion culture. As with Mara Jos Ossandns
web presence, there is a sense that an element of mis-translation may be present, or
perhaps these slightly puzzling inflections on plastic are evidence of new dimensions to
the fashioning that it can afford. This may be the case with another Italian fashion retail
shop called Plastic Pordenone in an unremarkable shopping mall in Pordenone, a small
town near Venice. The shop sign actually reads Virus + Plastic, adding the idea of viral
fashion to the sense of antiseptic, but cultured, alchemy that comes along with plasticity,
both material and immaterial.
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Chapter8
Dressing God: Clothing as
material of religious subjectivity
in a Hindu group
Urmila Mohan
As part of a changing Indian religioscape (Appadurai 1996), the International

Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) has grown from its Gaudiya
Vaishnava1 roots in India to become an international, missionizing Hindu group.
ISKCONs unique identity is based on universalizing the worship of the deity
Krishna as a means of salvation and its membership includes people from
different countries, cultures and ethnicities. Materials take on a specific cultural
resonance in ISKCON since the earthly world is associated with a negative materialism and the sleep-like state of maya (illusion) that has to be transcended.
However, there is also the seeming dichotomy that materials can be used to
love and serve the deity, create suitable ritualistic experiences, and transform
and improve ones self. As argued by Meyer etal. (2010: 210), there is no such
thing as an immaterial religion since beliefs are not just internal and cannot
exist without the support of things, places, bodies and practices. In this chapter,
I study deity clothing as a material of religious and devotional subjectivity in
ISKCONs global headquarters in Mayapur, West Bengal, India,2 and explore
how deity dressmakers and priests manipulate materials to dress the deities,
embody religious beliefs and pursue their devotional goals.
Subjectivity is a term loosely used to refer to the inner life of the subject
and to the way subjects feel, respond and experience and, especially, their
sense of self and self-world relations (Luhrmann 2006: 345). We live in multiple registers including that of affective, embodied intensity and of symbolic
mediation and discursive elaboration. I argue in this chapter that religious
subjectivity can be related to intersubjectivity and sociality through a productive intertwining with materiality, phenomenology, praxeology and cognitive
studies. Merleau-Pontys theory of subjectivity (2002) is grounded in the feeling
body and its interaction with the world and others, and allows us to combine
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the lived body with the acting body with action as the basis of engagement with the world. Warnier (2001: 910) argues that such actions involve
sensori-motor processes that combine two types of knowledge, embodied
procedural and verbalized discursive, to help incorporate materials deep into
the psyche of the subject and influence subjectivity. Combining these insights,
I use deity clothing to explore ISKCON as a community of religious practice,
that is, not just as the production of clothing artefacts but the learning of
values and norms through participation in socio-cultural practices (Naji and
Douny 2009: 420).
The body as religious material

Devotees liken the process of Krishna Consciousness to an awakening of a
dormant relationship with Krishna through bhakti (devotion). Bhakti as murtiseva (serving the deity image) is the worship of pictures, statues or objects
that embody the deity. It is aligned with notions of service (seva) and duty or
moral order (dharma), and ultimately to love (prema). Daily temple worship in
Mayapur consists of caring for these murtis as one would care for the deity
were they personally present. The needs of the deities are seen to throughout
the day (Figure8.1). They are awakened from sleep, offered greetings, bathed,
fed, dressed, fanned, praised, given naps and at the end of the day put to bed.
In this highly embodied, intersubjective relationship, the deity is a person with
a body and is cared for by the bodies of devotees. Remedial purificatory rituals place human bodies in the right mode to receive and worship God and so
devotees follow the four regulatory principles of abstinence from meat, intoxication, gambling and non-procreative sex. Devotees also engage their senses
in Krishnas glorification and service. This includes consuming prasad or transubstantiated food that was formerly offered to the deity, the congregational
chanting and dancing of sankirtan and the mutually embodied gaze of deitydevotee in darshan.
It is generally agreed that the human body in Hinduism is transformed by
transactions of giving and receiving, touching and eating and ensuing prohibitions (Holdrege 1998; Marriott 1990; Pinard 1991). As I observed during my
fieldwork, this extends to cases where physical contact is not involved such
as the concept of association, that is, being in the vicinity of somebody or
something. One would wish to associate with an object, person or event that
is sanctified and/or sanctifying, and it is worth noting that the Sanskrit word for
rites of passage (samskara) also connotes reformation through the gathering of
Dressing God
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Figure 8.1 Priests greeting deities in the morning with mirror and perfume, Mayapur, 2013.
Photograph by Urmila Mohan.
mental impressions. This implies that transformative substances are transferred

across physical boundaries even when direct contact does not take place. Drazin
states in the Preface (p. xxvi) that the term substance particularly tends to be
used for material when a material is in dialogue with the notion of form (emphasis in original). If one accepts that the body is material then perhaps the most
striking example of this is the conduction of substance through sight in darshan.
Darshan in the temple is an exchange of perspectives between devotee and
deity that involves an intersensory visual, tactile and olfactory empathy (Babb
1981; Eck 1985; McHugh 2007). In the context of sight, darshan harkens back to
an extromissive theory where visual rays from the viewers eye touch the object
creating an intensity that cannot be replicated in contemporary theories of vision
and aesthetics. Darshan is as much about seeing as being seen, and visuality is
not just a physical but spiritually efficacious process. Hence, seeing the deities
is a transformative experience and materials operate as substances that can
mediate between the boundaries of human bodies and artefacts. Against this
backdrop, how does cloth facilitate an appropriate mood of worship in a temple
that will be both efficacious and satisfying for deity and devotee?
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Darshan in the Mayapur temple

Life for devotees in Mayapur revolves around the physically unassuming but
spiritually potent Chandrodaya temple and a daily routine of attending aratis
(receptions for the deities) in the temple. Everyday a minimum of 1,000 pilgrims
visit the temple and this number swells to 10,000 for major festivals. Murti-seva
in the temple is based partly on the practices of the famous Jagannath temple in
Puri in Eastern India and temples in the holy town of Vrindavan in Northern India.
The deity images in Mayapur are of Radha-Madhava and the Astasakhis, and
Panchatattva and Narasimha.3 These murtis get new clothes at least three times
in a year for the major festivals and have gathered a large wardrobe over time.
ISKCON style garments that are colourful and ornate are changed twice a day
with the night dress being seen at the early morning mangala arati and the day
dress being seen at the morning darshan arati (the word dress does not have a
feminine connotation and is here used to refer to the garments of both male and
female deities). The deities Krishna and his female consort Radha are depicted
in their kishori or youthful form. Krishna is a cowherd boy or gopa with tribhanga
(bent in three places) dancing posture. He is dressed in a dhoti (a long loincloth)
and a chador (shawl) with his signature peacock feather and flute. Radha is a
milkmaid or gopi and is dressed in an outfit of lehenga (skirt), choli (blouse) and
dupatta (veil). They are approached in the temple through the mood of awe and
reverence expressed and embodied through material opulence. The emphasis
on opulence underscores the rule-governed mode of worship (vaidhi) that the
founder Prabhupada considered appropriate for his foreign disciples and can
be observed in the ornamentation and worship of the deities.
One of the goals of deity clothing is to create an inspirational darshanic
experience for the congregation. A senior pujari or priest in the temple defines
an effective darshan as one where:
You feel some relationship with Krishna. Because we are a preaching movement we want to inspire the pilgrims when they come to Mayapur. We try and
create this festival mood so that they can come here and leave all their material
worries, and rise above their consciousness. The temple president told me to
work up to a standard of worship and darshan so that the pilgrims on seeing
the beauty of the deity and the decorations will faint!
If it holds true that a social project that is not imposed through force alone must
be affective in order to be effective (Mazzarella 2009)then one could argue that
the materiality of darshan is part of affect management; that deity clothing is
part of the ritual coordination of affect. Referring to the aesthetics of bhakti in the
Dressing God
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Northern Indian Pushtimargi sect, Jain (2007: 260)contrasts the sensualized

libidinal involvement with the icon to post-Enlightenment aesthetics predicated
on an autonomous subject that has self-critically distanced itself from its sensory
passions, desires, and affects, even as sensual apprehension is acknowledged
as their basis.
Dressmakers and priests who conduct the deity dressing on the altar help
evoke an appropriate mood in the temple that is enjoyed by the deity and the
congregation. Krishna is Rasa Raj or the relisher of different rasas, where the
Indian aesthetic concept of rasa describes a flavourful essence or the relish of
a particular experience or interaction (Schwartz 2004: 710). In a performative
context, rasa belongs to the phenomenological level of human existence, but in
a religious context rasa is also related to concepts of spirituality and transcendence. Visitors may not exactly faint when they take darshan in the temple, but
they are certainly affected by the beauty and presence of the deities and consider
them sakshath bhagwan (God manifested). The spectacle of priestly attendance,
abhishek (the bathing of the deity in different substances) and sumptuous bhogs
(food offerings) for the deities, help create a mood of opulence. Such a high
worship standard is believed to please the deities and make them more receptive, and devotees will use words such as merciful, responsive, and active
when referring to the deities in Mayapur. Whether through garments, facial decoration or altar decoration, dressing helps to elicit these different moods and
efficacious responses.
Making and materializing devotional attitudes

I now proceed to two sites of clothing-related activities that could be described
as situated behind the altar curtain. These are the Chandrodaya temples sewing
department where deity garments are produced and the Mayapur Academy
classroom where priests are trained. Clothing is innovated by lay devotees in
the temples sewing and embroidery rooms while celibate priests conduct the
dressing of deities on the altar. Dressing includes garments, ornaments, flower
and leaf garlands, decorative painting and ritual applications of substances.
Mayapur Academy: Learning to take things personally

The Mayapur Academy is a school on the ISKCON campus where students
are taught how to worship the deity through ritual offerings, cooking and dressing. Jayananda,4 a senior devotee, was teaching a course on deity dressing
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that covered the essential elements over a period of two weeks. Most of the
students were young men dressed in saffron robes that mark them as celibates
or brahmacharis. They were taking this course to learn how to dress the deities
and construct ornamental turbans for Krishna, all part of the signature ISKCON
style that devotees have come to expect when they attend temple services. On
a table at the head of the classroom was a black mannequin bust of Krishna with
wide eyes and a playful smile. Next to it was a large stone, a tray of decorative
turban pieces, some golden beaded chains, a small box of straight pins and a
few colourful fabrics.
Jayananda summarized the fundamentals of dressing on the whiteboard.
Being personal was the first precept followed by time management, artistic
theory and techniques, and it referred to the belief that Krishna in his deity form
is a person with senses. He followed this with a list of the senses and how each
one could be used to delight Krishna. Under the sense of touch, the words oil
massage and pin=pain were contrasted to denote pleasing and disturbing
sensory experiences. The students then engaged in a turban-building exercise
(Figure 8.2) around the concept of pin=pain. They took long strips of foam
and separated into pairs of two. One student wrapped the foam around the
Figure8.2 Students practising turban construction, Mayapur Academy, 2012. Photograph by

Urmila Mohan.
Dressing God
143
others head and then pinned it in place using a long, straight pin. After about
10 minutes of this exercise and much laughter, Jayananda pointed out that the
right technique is to insert the pin by placing ones finger under the foam strip as
a barrier between the pin and the head. Jayananda further dramatized the P(A)
IN technique by picking up a large stone from the table and trying to push pins
into it. The students concurred that an ordinary stone did not feel pain but that
the deity form should be treated as-if it felt pain.
As the course progressed over the next two weeks, I along with the Bengali
students learned that many details were involved in presenting the deities as
opulent as well as approachable (Figure 8.3). While much of the richness
of the garments was in their colour and embroidery, Jayananda taught the
students how to enhance these using jewellery and drapery. Krishnas dancing form was animated through flowing fabrics, flower garlands and bead
necklaces. The asymmetrical style of Krishnas posture, turban and dress
was deemed to complement the symmetrical modesty of his consort Radhas
posture and garments. Jayananda informed the class that Krishnas dress
is more daring, confident and bold just like the single peacock feather in his
turban! He is engaged but his mood is also relaxed. Radhas symmetry created
a feeling of stiffness and distance and so she had to be dressed to seem more
Figure 8.3 Student dressing mannequins of Krishna and Radha, Mayapur Academy, 2012.
Photograph by Urmila Mohan.
144
approachable. He reminded students to enhance the darshanic emphasis on

the gaze: The connection is with the eyes. If you dont bring out the sweetness
of the eyes you dont have the connection!
While emphasizing the intimacy of the gaze in darshan, Jayananda added
that opulent dressing was needed both for Krishnas pleasure and to ensure that
devotees maintain an appropriate relationship with the deity. A few days later,
Iwaited till the students had left the classroom and pursued this line of enquiry
with him. He responded with an example:
There is one deity in ISKCON Germany whose ankle bells they (the priests
outside) could hear. When they opened the altar they found the garlands
between Krishnas legs. We cannot similarly dress Krishna with a garland
between his feet so that he looks like he is dancing. We shouldnt pretend that
there is an intimate relationship between us and him and shouldnt act as if
we have it.
I asked him if the deities are material and he responded vehemently:

No, they are not material! Thats the thing. Krishna can do anything. He can
take a form of stone but it is not stone. There are stories where deities have
walked or come down to a pujaris level because he was too old to reach him
... the murti that we perceive with our material eyes is Krishna.
In Hindu worship of murtis, the process of ornamenting the deities is called

alankara, which in Sanskrit means to make sufficient or strengthen, to make
adequate (Dehejia 2009). For Jayananda, alankara as opulence strengthened
the deity (and the faith) by reinforcing worship as awe and reverence and by
creating a suitable distance between deity and devotee:
Its about understanding that Krishna has senses and doing things so that we
dont cause him inconvenience. Its not like Krishna is my friend and he will
understand if its five minutes late. No, thats not good. So when we stress
that you shouldnt put pins into Krishna we mean it. I fail anybody who does it
automatically, no matter how well they dressed the deity. Because that means
that they have not understood that Krishna is a person.
The comment that a student was failed for putting pins into Krishna underscored
that the Academy was a place where students would be assessed and sent
away with grades and printed diplomas. It also indicates how ISKCON has
responded to global expansion by regulating worship culture through standardized instruction. However, what is relevant to my analysis is not the rubric
of formal evaluations but how sensations and emotions are used as embodied
Dressing God
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experience and knowledge. As stated earlier making and doing are ways of
knowing. The P(A)IN exercise combines knowledge gained through embodied procedural and verbalized discursive means (Warnier 2007: 9), and helps
develop a relationship between the object and subject. I suggest that the P(A)
IN exercise is an act of empathy and emotional resonance between students
that is then transferred to the artefact (in this case the deity) and sustained by
a host of other phenomena such as sensations, emotions, verbalized and written instruction, dreams, etc., all of which come under the umbrella of religious
experience. The neuroscientist Gallese (2001: 46)considers emotions as one
of the ways to acquire knowledge. He analyses the phenomenon of empathy
through the neural matching mechanism of mirror neurons and as-if body
loops where emotions are neural but also triggered by observing others. In this
model, emotions and actions are strongly related and sensoriality is connected
to the deeper sub-personal levels of the mind. Combining Warniers notion of an
agentive subject supported by materials and Galleses work on empathy, I argue
that the P(A)IN exercise created a personal relationship between the studentdevotee and the deity by facilitating an empathy and intersubjectivity that would
be repeatedly enacted and developed as the course progressed.
In the sewing room: Making and doing

a philosophy of materials
Deity garments for the day are highly ornate and are hand-embroidered by
artisans who work only for the temple. The night dresses are simpler and are
generally made from decorative fabrics to save on time and expense. The
sewing room for the night dresses has a large worktable for measuring and
cutting fabric (Figure8.4), an area for storing clothing, some shelves for supplies
and a small washing up area. Since I participated in many celebrations, I was
able to observe dressmaking in this sewing room as a community of practice for
devotees, especially women and children. Madhavi was a senior devotee who
had worked in the sewing room on numerous night outfits. I asked her how she
became a dressmaker and a priest:
In my day it kind of happened automatically. You lived in the temple and you
learnt on the job. You begin with doing the deity backup service by washing the
brass, washing the dishes, washing and ironing the towels and handkerchiefs,
washing the arati paraphernalia, ironing the deities clothes if they needed it. So
while you are ironing the clothes or when you are helping to sew the clothes
you start to understand how they go together. So by doing the backup service
you start to learn. Its like an apprenticeship in a way.
146
Figure8.4 Women and children working in the sewing room, Mayapur, 2012. Photograph by
Urmila Mohan.
Madhavi was convinced that serving the deities had attached her to Krishna:
Being a pujari just grounded me in Krishna Consciousness. I dont think I would
have stuck with this if I hadnt been doing service. I know that I would definitely
respect the philosophy but I dont know if I would have been as involved for
so long if I didnt have the service. It has been forty years now. Now I engage
others and pass it on to them.
Madhavi had a special ability to mentor young devotees and would create
festival-related projects for children and teenagers. Her practical roll-yoursleeves-up approach towards any new project was beneficial for my research
since I was welcomed into the sewing room as an extra pair of hands that could
be pressed into service. I would often interview her while she was working on
her 30-year-old Swiss Elna sewing machine. During one such conversation she
described how doing was transformed into true devotional service:
We engage everything in service for Krishna till we are not just engaging what
we like in Krishnas service but we are doing what Krishna wants us to do. Its
a paradigm shift. You are going from what makes you happy to thinking What
will make Krishna happy?
Dressing God
147
I asked how they knew what pleased Krishna and Madhavi considered the
question:
Things can be done automatically and it may be beautiful but if you havent done
it with your heart then it may look materially beautiful but is Krishna pleased
by it? Krishna doesnt want the activity! He doesnt want this ruffle, he doesnt
want that blob of paint, he doesnt want that trim. He wants the consciousness
that we do it with. Yet, its not black and white. I can throw an outfit together and
theres no heart in it for me. But then if somebody else offers this dress with
such devotion if Prabhupada offers it then surely Krishna will accept. Even
if you use something that isnt real like plastic pearls or glass rubies but if you
offer it with great affection then it becomes real. Krishna accepts it as real!
The belief that something fake can become real through the sincere devotion
of the devotee and the grace of the deity was intriguing since I also encountered
less transcendental attitudes about materials. For example, flowers that had no
scent or shoddily made trims and fabrics were evocatively termed karmi materials to express a larger ethos of deterioration. The term karmi commonly refers
to non-devotees or materialists trapped in the worldly cycle of actions (karma)
and reactions, causes and effects, and credits and debits. Devotees believe that
since all their actions are channelled towards Krishna and salvation, they will
be freed from the eternal cycle of birth and reincarnation (samsara). Yet, in my
observation non-karmi and karmi worlds were difficult, if not impossible, to keep
separate and materials constantly challenged devotees. Madhavi described one
of her trips to the city of Kolkata:
There is one saree shop selling lehengas with intricate embroidery work. They
looked gorgeous but everything you touched just fell off. They were not made
to last. It used to be that if you had a Benares brocade saree and if the silk was
finished you could take it to a man who weighed it and gave you the money for
the silver. So that way the wealth was sustainable if you like. It maintained some
value. But now all the opulence is plastic, sequins and glass. You pay upwards
of Rs 15,000 for a saree and the minute you buy it, its completely worthless. So
these are the changing values of the age of kali everything has to be instant
and as ostentatious as possible. Ostentatious is in your face. Its nouveau riche,
people who have to prove themselves because they want to be part of the upper
echelons of society. Whereas opulence is quiet, not always understated but regal.
Its hard to describe it. It just looks classic ... or classy. It doesnt look cheap.
Madhavi started by referring to poor quality materials in garments but then

used them to critique the culture of in-your-face ostentatious where speed
148
and superficial glamour are more important. She invoked the concept of the
age of kali when describing the degradation and devaluation of clothing materials. Kali is the present age in cyclical Hindu cosmology and represents the
maximum loss of religio-moral order and wisdom in the world.5 Madhavi related
problems with materials to a general ethos of decline and peoples desire for
status without substance. Her views on materials were derived from a lifelong
engagement with fabrics and used analytical categories of illusory ostentation versus real opulence. Here the mood of opulence was invoked through
substantive fabrics with intrinsic value, such as the Benares silk saree, while
ostentation was associated with garments that were garish, shoddy and had
no lasting value.
On seeing the time and effort that went into making deity outfits, I became
concerned about their maintenance. Madhavi lamented the fact that the silk
outfits were damaged by heat and humidity, and envisioned a day when the
deitys clothes would be cleaned and darned after every use. She used the
theological concept of gunas or the three modes of material nature6 creation,
destruction and maintenance to articulate her distress:
There is just no storage here. This is an example of the three modes of material
nature. Passion is about creating, ignorance is about destruction and goodness is about maintenance. We are very good at making things, we are very
good at leaving things to die but when it comes to looking after things we are
very bad at it!
After multiple conversations with Madhavi, she summed up her views of materials and related it to the soteriological goal of Krishna Consciousness:
So the main thing about material things is that they have no lasting power.
They will all be taken away. If I have a diamond bracelet, its easier to take off
a diamond bracelet and give it than to have it ripped from my arm. So material
attachments are like that. If we can give them up willingly then we can make so
much advancement. But the family, the position, the fame all such things will
be taken away at the time of death. We dont really know where we are going
to go in our next lives.
My conversations with Madhavi helped me move from the aesthetic implications

of materials to a wider cosmology since she thought about how her dressmaking related to the practice of Krishna Consciousness. Many of Madhavis views
echoed theological concepts that I heard from other devotees but were also
uniquely hers since they were viewed through the lens of her particular seva. She
attributed her lifetimes association with ISKCON to her pujari work and hoped
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149
that her service would count for something. Simultaneously, she implied that
materials are worthless since the attachments of material life are temporary.
From an anthropological perspective materialism is a culturally agreed-upon
understanding of a mode of consumption that is generally regarded negatively
(Ger and Belk 1999: 184). ISKCON is rooted in both anti- and de-materialism,
wherein pessimism about material existence is a criterion for spiritual advancement (Goswami 2012: 100). One may regard this as a form of material blindness,
but all cultures are to some extent de-materialized. A general marginalization
of materials pervades our daily lives until the time that we have to deal with
bodies that ache, cars that dont start or fabrics that wear out. As Warnier (2007:
292)states, if we were to be aware of every material engagement then we would
be frozen into inaction. That it is precisely because they are so essentially obliterated and unobtrusive that material and bodily cultures are ... so effective in
reaching deep into the subjectivity of people (emphasis in original).
Conclusion: Clothing as entry into devotion

Cloths transformative capacity is enhanced by its ability to evoke cognitive and
corporeal states such as opulence, protection and transience through actions
of tying, pinning and wrapping as well as the various stages of production such
as cutting, sewing, embroidering, and so on. The emotional and psychological valences of a garments material aesthetics are created through the use of
elements such as frontality, symmetry, colour, silhouette and adornment. Each of
these elements through style can have specific sociocultural connotations and
effects and shape intersubjectivity through the mediation of categories of interior
and exterior, divine and human, and the subject and object. Through this case
study, I propose that material-cum-bodily transformation is a useful paradigm to
study how devotees live and engage with the world. The ontological transformation of materials and bodies through actions oriented towards divinity makes it
possible for devotees to be sensorially/ materially engaged but also helps them
separate from the material world. Such a culture creates a specific challenge
and opportunity for an ethnographer of materials and making. The altar curtain,
for example, performs its function well and ensures that most devotees appreciate the deity spectacle without needing or desiring to know how it is done. To
find a material entry point into spirituality, I had to go behind the altar curtain to
explore sites of dressing and clothing production.
It is clear that devotional attitudes are embodied and expressed in the temple
through materials such as cloth and that sociality, materiality and morality are
150
co-produced by members of a community through practice. This is a morality that is dynamic and is acquired and transformed through interactions with
bodies and artefacts. The body is both acting and acted upon, capable of transforming interactions and processes; matter is fluid and inhabitants of the world
are malleable substances. I stated earlier that ISKCON is unique because it is
a universalizing Hindu group with prominent visibility of non-Indian Hindus. This
alone might make a case for the praxeological importance of materials where
acceptance into a Hindu community is no longer based on just inheriting the
right substance through birth but also on acquiring it through practice. The idea
that one can become an upper-caste Brahman through a complete mental and
physical transformation is not just of soteriological relevance but of material
import. For a community of bhakti or devotional love, the transformation is not
just about purifying the devotee but also about forming a personal relationship
with the deity through materials such as cloth.
I have argued for a materially embodied approach through a site-specific
study of deity dressing practices since belief is not just about internal states or
scriptural norms but is manifested and sustained by events, places and experiences. Combining a phenomenological approach with insights from materiality,
praxeology and cognitive studies, I have explored how devotees form a personal
relationship with the deity through their physical and mental engagement with
materials, aesthetics and religious philosophy. In the Introduction to this volume,
Drazin makes the point that an anthropology of materials explores moments
of manifest transformation between form and substance and their sociocultural
implications (p. 27). What is being created through cloth is not just garments but
the subjectivity of devotees whether they are dressmakers, students or congregation. A transformative world of materials makes it possible for devotees to live
and relate to the deity as-if they were in a transcendental space; the concept
of as-if being not just an act of individual imagination but one of conceiving and
sustaining relationships. I suggest that this relational, transformative quality is
one of the key attributes of a material of religious subjectivity.
Notes
1. Gaudiya Vaishnavism or Bengali Vaishnavism traces its line from the fifteenth-century saint
Chaitanya who is also considered an incarnation of Krishna. The term Vaishnavism refers to
Vaishnavas or devotees of the Hindu deity Vishnu of whom Krishna is considered to be one
incarnation.
2. The research for this chapter is based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in the ISKCON
temple in Mayapur, West Bengal, India. Fieldwork was partly funded by an India Travel Award
from the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Dressing God
151
3. Astasakhi literally means the eight female friends and refers to the main gopis, or milkmaids,
who serve the deities Radha and Krishna. Panchatattva refers to Chaitanya and his four
associates. Narasimha is an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu as half-man and half-lion.
4. The names of people have been pseudonymized to protect their identity. Devotees generally
have the last name Das if they are male and Dasi if they are female, both of which mean
servant.
5. The four yugas or epochs in the macrocosmic Hindu theory of time and society are krita,
treta, dwapar and kali. The yugas move in a cycle of repetition and progressive degeneration
with the current age of kali representing the most chaos and loss of coherence.
6. The three modes of material nature or gunas refer to the qualities and properties that approximate the categories of sattva (truth), tamas (destruction) and rajas (creation). Sattva guna
involves values of purity and balance and is the desired mode of life for devotees.
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Part4
The subversion of form
by substance
Chapter9
Introducing Fairtrade and
Fairmined gold: An attempt
to reconfigure the social
identity of a substance
Peter Oakley
This chapter considers the multifaceted social identity of a particular substance1

gold and how this identity is defended by groups, institutions and existing
material culture in the face of challenges to its validity. This will be done through
a case study of the rise and demise of a new material, Fairtrade and Fairmined
(FT/FM) gold, created in an attempt to challenge the status quo. Campaigners
concerted attempts to increase the multivalence of gold and the results will
be considered using the analytical tool of complexity, an approach that helps
explain how specific masses of gold can be considered and treated as different
yet identical.
While the focus here is a specific material, the story of FT/FM gold has much
wider implications. It exposes how dominant abstract understandings of what a
particular substance is, among the specialists who work with it on a daily basis
and the wider population, are shielded by practices and assemblages of objects
not created to be, or generally considered as, protective. It also shows how these
interlock to form a pervasive network. While influence or agency is not equally
distributed across this network, there is no single dominant source, a feature that
helps frustrate attempts at change. The case study therefore offers a theoretical
template for researchers encountering similar, potentially protective systems.
Fairtrade and Fairmined gold:

From beginning to end
On 9 February 2011, the Fairtrade Foundation presented a new material to
the UKs press. Hatton garden, Londons jewellery manufacturing district, was
chosen for the public launch of FT/FM gold by Fairtrade and the Association for
156
Responsible Mining (ARM), the two organizations behind the initiative. The event
brought together a mixture of professional activists, representatives of smallscale miners, journalists, bloggers, managers, directors and jewellery designers
and makers.
Among the presenters were celebrity jeweller Stephen Webster, Cristina
Echavarria (secretary general of ARM) and Manuel Einoso Rivas (president
of SONAMIPE, the Peruvian small-scale mining association). They all spoke
passionately about the difference FT/FM gold would make to subsistence
mining communities in Peru and elsewhere. The climax of the event was the
unveiling of the first ingot of FT/FM gold ever made. The press launch was the
culmination of a well-thought-out and executed publicity campaign. The event
itself was timed so reporters articles would coincide with Valentines Day. The
launch generated sympathetic coverage in the mainstream and trade media
(e.g. BBC Radio 5 2011; Bishop 2011; Taylor 2011a; Valerio 2011). FT/FM gold
appeared to have a bright future.
In autumn 2012, Fairtrade began a review of the FT/FM gold standard. The
review was ostensibly to make adjustments to the existing standards using
the experience gained since product first went on sale last year (Taylor 2012).
But the review took place in a climate of concern. Fairtrade had anticipated FT/
FM gold could capture 5 per cent of the worlds jewellery market over 15years
(Maldar 2011). The actual take-up was falling far short of projections. In addition,
existing manufacturing licensees were voicing concerns about FT/FM regulations and the rising cost of premiums. Some even claimed the FT/FM system
was fundamentally unsustainable in its current form.
Fairtrade and ARM had anticipated the supply of FT/FM gold would consolidate into a steady stream, but it remained stubbornly erratic. At the launch,
Fairtrade claimed there would be at least 40kg of FT/FM gold available during
the first year, but the first jewellers who signed up to the programme had to wait
four months for any FT/FM gold to appear (Harriet Kelsall, quoted in The Jeweller
2011). FT/FM gold was also scarce during the run up to Christmas, so FT/FM
products made no major inroads into the United Kingdoms jewellery market.
During 2012, the campaign lost momentum in the United Kingdom, and the
Peruvian and Columbian miners (who were now producing more certifiable gold)
were faced with a lack of buyers.
On the 15 April 2013, the Fairtrade Foundation and ARM announced they
were dissolving the FT/FM partnership. After 22 April, the two organizations
would promote their certification programmes independently (and, it turned out,
Introducing Fairtrade and Fairmined gold
157
in competition against each other). Two years after its first appearance, FT/FM
gold ceased to exist.
Researching Fairtrade gold

The authors first contact with the FT/FM gold initiative occurred during fieldwork for a research project on the United Kingdoms jewellery industry and its
supply chains (involving gold refiners, fine jewellery manufacturers, distributors
and retailers). From 2009 onwards, the project grew to include actively observing and interviewing professional campaigners and attending private campaign
meetings, public events such as the press launch and debates on ethical gold
sourcing held at jewellery trade shows.
The author also engaged in an unusual form of participant-observation. After
having a series of articles on the ethics of gold sourcing published in a jewellery
trade journal, he was repeatedly invited to give presentations and chair panels
on ethical sourcing at industry events.
Alongside the fieldwork, the chapter relies on primary literature relating to the
FT/FM gold campaign, gold trading and jewellery manufacturing and retailing. This
includes UK jewellery trade journals, the campaign literature and internal reports
produced by Fairtrade, ARM and other NGOs and global gold market surveys.
The fieldwork was conducted among elite groups: a techno-scientific elite,
a managerial elite and professional social campaigners. The jewellery trade
as a whole also behaves as an exclusive professional group. The methodological issues faced during the project were similar to those identified by other
researchers (e.g. Gusterson 1997; McDowell 1998; Nader 1969; Rice 2010).
Though a full discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worth noting
that the authors previous employment as an analytical chemist and training
as a jeweller repeatedly facilitated acceptance to these elites, but despite this
the project still took four years of fieldwork to complete. The authors specialist expertise affected fieldwork in other ways; the observations of refining,
assaying and manufacturing activities were undertaken from the position of an
informed rather than nave observer (cf. Laudel and Glser 2007).
Though the fieldwork was undertaken among these elites, it is important
to recognize that many of the products they created (objects, images, texts
and regulatory systems) were meant for general consumption. The items
of jewellery, promotional materials, campaign literature and FT/FM certification system were all intended to have widespread appeal and influence.
158
Their success therefore depended on them conforming to wider cultural

expectations.
Using complexity
Fairtrade campaigners promoted FT/FM gold as a material distinct from
all other gold. This was often expressed as a dualism: FT/FM gold versus
dirty gold (e.g. Maldar 2011; Valerio 2011, 2013). A reliance on these types
of simplifications to describe the material world was criticized by Annemarie
Mol and John Law in the introduction to their edited volume Complexities
(Mol and Law 2002). Simplifications inherent reductionism, and its elision of
whatever does not fit the preconceived schema, were considered by Mol and
Law to impede an understanding of real situations. But how should we define
complexity itself?
There is complexity if things relate but dont add up. If events occur but not
within the processes of linear time, and if phenomena share a space but
cannot be mapped in terms of a single set of three-dimensional coordinates.
(Mol and Law 2002: 1)
Complexity admits of disjunctions and partial overlaps, the inability to impose

overarching order and what Marilyn Strathern (1991) termed partial connections. Admitting complexity presents specific problems for researchers. The
lack of a predetermined stable framework amplifies the issues inherent in
all ethnographic research and traditional associated modes of dissemination. But complexity can be a key analytical tool, explaining how apparently
unstable or irresolvable tensions can be maintained indefinitely within cultural
frameworks.
Unpacking the complexity of gold

Gold is a magnificent exemplar of how a particular substance can develop and
maintain a complex social identity, and how this influences and constrains the
actions of actors it comes into contact with. Golds social identity includes four
key facets: elemental gold, noble gold, transcendent gold and gold-as-money.
All of these share a space, namely the yellow, heavy, metallic stuff we call gold
though the extent to which each predominates at particular times depends on
the perceptions of observers.
159
Gold as a scientific object: Elemental gold

Today, across the West, gold is considered a chemical element. This perspective
is underpinned by the cultural dominance of the scientific definition of reality, in
particular the discipline of chemistry as a way of knowing matter (Schummer
2008). Elemental gold is characterized by apparently inherent physical properties. It is one of only two distinctly coloured metallic elements and is heavy, highly
ductile and extremely malleable: a piece of gold can be stretched into wires as thin
as a hair or hammered out into a sheet only a few microns thick. As gold has the
lowest redox potential of any metallic element, gold objects exhibit outstanding
resistance to corrosion. In reality all these scientific properties of elemental gold
are comparative, expressed relative to other chemical elements or compounds.
Even supposedly abstract properties, such as weight or redox potential, ultimately
rest on this type of material comparison (see Busch 2011; Gooday 2004).
Elemental gold is morally neutral: its properties are undirected and merely
exist as inherent and identifying features that are observer-independent (Searle
1995). Though they may be extreme or unusual, these properties do not make
gold more or less special than any other chemical element.
Creating a mass of completely isolated elemental gold is a practical impossibility. Physically existing gold is always understood to contain atoms of other
elements, though the majority of these can be removed by using a succession of
metallurgical technologies (a process called refining). Determining the percentage
of gold in comparison to other elements existing in any particular physical mass is
achieved through specialist analytical technologies (a process called assaying).
The majority of gold bullion being offered for sale in the major gold markets
has been refined to, and confirmed as containing, 99.99 per cent gold. This
substance is colloquially called four nines gold (Capano 2008). Through refining, assaying and the material produced as result of these activities are all
conceptualized in terms of scientific principles, their history and current practice
are closely intertwined with the demands and needs of trade and manufacturing.
Four nines gold can therefore be considered a type of informed material, similar
to the pharmaceutical compounds described by Barry (this volume).
Gold as the king of metals: Noble gold

The modern scientific belief that gold is fundamentally unchangeable usurped
an older European cosmological belief that gold was the ultimate maturation of mineral matter, the end product of the gestation of metals in the earth
(Dobbs 2008[1975]; Eliade 1962[1956]). Many late medieval and Renaissance
160
alchemists understood the transmutation of base metals into gold as the speeding up of this natural process.
In contrast to the moral neutrality of modern chemical reactions, alchemical
transmutation had strong spiritual connotations. The contemplation of transmutation was seen by many as a means of understanding the refinement or purification
of the soul (Dobbs 2008 [1975]; Linden 2008 [1996]). For alchemists, golds
observable tendencies resistance to decay or corruption by fire and refusal to
mix with base or dross substances were evidence of its elevated moral status.
Though alchemical cosmologies are no longer current, the notion that gold
is somehow morally superior lingers. Commonly used English verbal analogies
rely on a link between gold and desirable morals or perfection. People can be
good as gold or have a heart of gold. The appealing visual ratio of 1:1.618 is
called the golden ratio. The scriptures also use gold as a metaphor for purity
or moral elevation.
Gold as supernatural material: Transcendent gold

Gold can move beyond representing temporal nobility to become a materialization of divinity itself. Polished gold surfaces reflect the light as if the source exists
inside the material, so burnished gold gives the appearance of being alive with a
spiritual eminence (Clarke 1986; Schroder 2012). In addition, unlike other metals
and all organic materials, gold does not decay, appearing to transcend the mortal
world. Such incorruptibility is often considered a divine attribute (Cruz 1977).
These peculiar and visually enchanting properties have resulted in gold
being the material of choice for representing spiritual space or creating objects
with an overtly spiritual raison-detre (Bernstein 2004; Clifford 2012). The royal
crown, communion chalice and wedding ring, as well as the golden palace or
statue of Buddha, all play on golds transcendence to support their status as
sacred objects.
Transcendent gold can be considered an entirely alienated substance: its
perception does not encompass any prior history to its existence in the encountered form, whether this be as an object or surface (as with gold leaf or gold
mosaic tiles).
The price of gold: Economic gold

Golds resistance to corrosion also supports a more prosaic aspect of its social
identity: its role as a store of wealth. In addition to being durable, gold is portable
and easily identified and quantified. It is scarce enough that a small amount can
be used in direct trades, but common enough to be available for a good many
161
trades. Gold can therefore become the key medium of exchange gold can
become money (Simmel 1978).
It was during the late nineteenth century that gold reached its apogee as
a financial instrument. The comparability of the gold-based currencies of the
Western imperial powers led to a financial system called the gold standard
(Eichengreen 1985; Ferguson 2009 [2008]). The gold standard was replaced
by fiat currencies during the 1920s, but the idea of gold-as-money clung on
(Bernstein 2004; Green 1968, 1985 [1982]). When national and international
regulations covering the personal ownership and the international transport of
gold were relaxed in the 1980s, it led to a resurgence of gold hoarding by individuals (Bernstein 2004; OCallaghan 1993).
Advocates have made repeated attempts to revive a role for gold in national
and international finance (e.g. Lewis 2007). Despite their efforts, situations where
gold can be used directly as a medium of exchange remain strictly limited. But
though gold is no longer money in the strict legal sense, it still retains its place in
the popular Western imagination as the ultimate store of wealth.
Adding more complexity: Immanence versus provenance

When an object is made of gold, any combination, or even all of these facets
of golds social identity can be in play simultaneously. A gold coin can be seen
as an economic instrument, material evidence of the nobility (and sometimes
divinity) of the ruler who had it minted and a mass of alloy with a specific ratio
of gold atoms (Oakley 2013). Though these perceptions all draw on the same
material features of gold, they cannot be collapsed into one another.
Despite the divergence of these perceptions, they are all essentially immanent: they exist at each and every point of contact and are open to independent
reconfirmation at any moment. In contrast, FT/FM gold is constructed in terms
of its circumstances of origin. This emphasis on selected aspects of the history
of the constituent material its provenance adds another, irreducible dimension. Provenance is intangible. It cannot be determined by scientific assay, by
direct observation or by financial appraisal, but only by trust in the authority
that proclaims it.
Fair trade, Fairtrade and the ft/fm gold campaign

From fair trade to Fairtradetm and corporate engagement
Concerns over how commodities2 are sourced in the developing world are
fundamental to the fair trade movement. The first fair trade networks were
162
established by activists in Europe and the United States in order to help

coffee farming cooperatives in Latin America circumvent the free trade market.
They believed establishing direct connections between coffee growers in the
Global South and coffee drinkers in the Global North would engender solidarity between producers and consumers (Bowes 2011; Luetchford 2008;
Perla 2008).
The first fair trade networks were ad hoc, but as the movement grew it became
increasingly necessary to regulate who was eligible to join fair trade supply
chains (Renard 2005). In 1997 the marketing organizations across the Global
North joined together to create an international certification body, the Fairtrade
Labelling Organizations International (FLO). In 2002 FLO created an independent company, FLO-CERT, to certify licensees. Fairtrade was registered as a
brand name along with the Fairtrade Certification Mark (Fairtrade 2013).
Since the 1990s, the organizations theoretical antagonistic stance towards
commercially driven corporations has coexisted with a realpolitik of direct
corporate engagement. This was initiated by the Fairtrade Foundation (the
Fairtrade marketing organization for the United Kingdom and Ireland), who
claimed that unless Fairtrade mainstreamed, it would never become socially
influential (Bowes 2011; Lamb 2008). Their first corporate partnership was
with a major UK retailer, the Co-operative Society (the Co-op), who chose to
sell Fairtrade chocolate under the Co-ops own-brand label. The subsequent
growth in Fairtrades market share and public profile (Bowes 2011; Reed
2009) convinced the movement as a whole to adopt the corporate engagement strategy.
The Co-ops directors chose chocolate as their first Fairtrade product in part
due to its potential emotional impact:
[We have] chosen chocolate as the focus for making Fairtrade mainstream
because of the stark even obscene contrast between the pleasure from
eating it and the suffering that goes into making it. (Co-operative Group 2002,
quoted in Bowes 2011: 126127)
An emphasis on the disparity between the enchantment of the product and the
abject conditions of producers has become a key promotional tool in subsequent Fairtrade campaigns, including the one for FT/FM gold. In the case of
gold, the strategy was underpinned by questioning notions of golds inherent
purity and claims that only FT/FM gold was really pure (see Fairtrade Foundation
2012; Maldar 2011).
Fairtrades increasingly formalized organizational structure and growing
reliance on commercial partnerships has led to internal tensions within the
163
movement, particularly between the European and US marketing organizations. Some members have accused their leaders of turning fair trade into a
commercial brand, compromising its founding ideals (Bacon 2010; Lekakis
2011; Renard 2005).
The FLO-ARM partnership

The FT/FM gold initiative echoed Fairtrades beginnings in terms of the location and organization of the producing communities. The idea that responsibly
sourced gold could be certified was first proposed by ARM, a Latin American
association of subsistence mining communities that promotes responsible mining
(Echavarria 2008). They approached the Fairtrade Foundation, who petitioned
FLO to construct a standard. FLO and ARM then formed a partnership to jointly
develop the standard. The resulting product would be called Fairtrade (relating to
the FLO licensing system) and Fairmined (meeting ARM criteria) gold.
The FLO/ARM team drew on ARMs understanding of the needs of subsistence miners and FLOs experience of creating certification systems (Echavarria
2010; Madlar 2011). However, they lacked members with expertise of refining
technology, large-scale jewellery manufacturing or the global gold trading
system. Consequently, the resulting standard was severely hampered by
misconceptions and prejudices regarding these activities. But the costs and
demands of refining, the amounts of gold needed by large manufacturers
and the mechanism behind the London gold fix (the price set for large international gold trades) were all to play a major role in the subsequent story of
FT/FM gold.
The ft/fm gold standard

The standard that emerged had four main features. First, FT/FM gold had to be
bought from the miners at 95 per cent of the days gold fix. Second, businesses
submitting a finished gold item for hallmarking had to pay a premium to have
the item stamped with the Fairtrade and Fairmined marks. The premium, paid
to the miners, was 10 per cent of the price of the finished item for FT/FM gold
and 15 per cent for FT/FM ecological gold (which was subject to further, environmentally friendly production criteria). Third, all FT/FM gold was to be subject
to a track and trace system: the movements and use of all FT/FM gold had
to be recorded for the FLO-CERT auditors. Fourth, all businesses handling FT/
FM gold from mine to hallmarking had to purchase a license from Fairtrade
(Fairtrade Foundation 2012; Maldar 2011).
164
Determining the price of gold

The FT/FM project team based the price for FT/FM gold on the London gold fix
set by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). Despite the key role the fix
was accorded, the FT/FM team described it in very simple terms:
The London gold fix (or LBMA fix) as it is known, is set twice a day and is
the global price reference for gold trading worldwide. These decisions, taken
by traders in the City of London, have a major impact on the lives of artisan
miners, thousands of miles across the world. (Maldar 2011: 8)
The Fairtrade Foundations CEO, Harriett Lamb, was equally elusive about the fix
mechanism at the FT/FM gold launch: these people [the LBMA] set the price for
gold. I dont know who these individuals are (personal communication 2011).
The impression being given by Fairtrade was that the LBMA arbitrarily decided
the daily gold price. Others, including economic researchers, describe the
LBMA as part of a wider network of gold trading exchanges, including the Gold
Pool in Zurich, the COMEX market in New York, and the Hong Kong Exchange
(Green 1968, 1985 [1982]; OCallaghan 1993). Together they create a global
gold market, with the daily fix being as much an outcome as a driver of events.
Even within the LBMA, the fix is the result of competition rather than collusion;
the agreed price is the outcome of a series of competitive bids between LBMA
buyers and sellers. The fix exerts its wider influence only because of the size of
the LBMAs trades (sometimes large multiples of metric tonnes) (Green 1968,
1985[1982]; London Bullion Market Association 2013).
The project teams pricing decision exposed a paradox of FT/FM gold.
Apparently essentially different to all other gold, its value was to be calculated by
referring to the price set for other gold. But as the FT/FM team set the price of
unrefined FT/FM gold at 95 per cent of the fix (the price of processed gold sitting
in bank vaults), the additional refining, assaying and transport costs (including
export licenses) pushed the price of refined FT/FM gold far above the LBMA fix.
The project teams assumption that the LBMA fix was the gold price, rather than
the internally negotiated price for a closed market whose members traded large
volumes of four nines gold, was to have dire repercussions.
The resurgence of economic gold

The full implications of the FT/FM pricing mechanism only became apparent
as the banking crisis of 20082009 mutated into a sovereign debt crisis. Five
years of economic turmoil led to golds role as a store of wealth coming to the
165
fore. The phenomenon of cash-for-gold took hold across the United Kingdom,
with financially distressed families selling their gold jewellery to local jewellers,
pawnbrokers and postal gold companies. In 2011 the amount of gold being sold
as scrap exceeded the amount used for manufacturing jewellery in the United
Kingdom (Thomson Reuters GFMS 2012). This scrap fed the surging international demand for less spiritually imbued but still highly desirable investment
objects: gold bullion bars and coins.
This demand led to an unprecedented rise in the gold price. In 2006, when
ARM had first proposed a fair trade supply chain for gold, the fix was below $600
per ounce (CPM Group 2006). By the time FT/FM gold was launched, the fix was
approaching $1,400 (CPM Group 2011). The price eventually peaked at $1,896
in early September 2011, after which it stabilized between $1,550 and $1,800 for
the following year (CPM Group 2012; Thomson Reuters GFMS 2012).
During this period gold jewellery prices rose significantly year after year, while
incomes came under pressure. For many consumers, gold jewellery shifted from
being an impulse purchase to a considered luxury. At the FT/FM launch and
in promotional literature the Fairtrade Foundation quoted the 2005 figures for
gold items hallmarked in the United Kingdom 19million as evidence of the
programmes potential impact (personal communication 2011; Fairtrade 2011).
This was the year before the UK jewellery mass market collapsed (Thomson
Reuters GFMS 2012, table on p.88). The figure for 2012 was just over 4million
items (Birmingham Assay Office 2013, table p.8).
The leaders of ARM appeared oblivious to the pressure the gold price was
placing on jewellery manufacturers. They assumed jewellers were making huge
profits, some of which should be diverted to their miners. In an interview the day
after the FT/FM gold launch, Cristina Echavarria claimed that as jewellery is a
designed product and jewellers have built up brand names: There is greater
room for the jeweller to absorb this [the FT/FM] premium and not necessarily
pass it on to the consumer (BBC Radio 5 2011). This expectation was placed on
the shoulders of the FT/FM licensee jewellers, who were, in most cases, small,
cash-poor businesses with minimal operating profits and little brand equity (see
Fairtrade 2011; Taylor 2011a, 2011b).
ARMs representatives held a similar position during the 2012 review. They
claimed the 10 per cent premium should be retained, even though the actual
payment now equated to 25 per cent of the gold price when the premium was
set. This charge came on top of the inflated price manufacturers were paying
for refined FT/FM gold over and above the now massively risen daily fix. The
miners perspective mirrors that of other Fairtrade producers. Despite Fairtrades
rhetoric and consumers expectations of solidarity, researchers keep finding
166
that Fairtrade producers primarily see transactions in purely commercial terms

and cannot understand why retail prices are higher than the price paid for their
commodities (see Fischer 1997; Lyon 2006).
The mass balancing controversy

The lack of empathy on the part of the miners was not the only contentious issue.
In September 2012, a group of licensees posted an open letter condemning a
proposal to include mass balancing in the revised FT/FM standard.
The FT/FM project team had initially assumed gold would be similar to
Fairtrades agricultural products (see Fairtrade 2011: 8). These have linear
supply chains that are amenable to track and trace. But gold is different: due
to its high value, durability and recoverability, the gold industries at both macro
and micro levels have become acutely dependent on mass balancing.
The LBMA functions in part as an international mass balancing system for
bullion. LBMA members holding open accounts must accept whatever London
Good Delivery Bars (LGD bars) they are offered when they redeem their gold;
they get the same amount of gold, but not necessarily the same pieces of
bullion (Capano 2008; London Bullion Market Association 2013). In this context,
LDG bars come as close to the ideal of a commodity as is physically possible
(Appadurai 1986). As a consequence, the LBMA can make extensive use of
ownership swops to complete international gold trades rather than physically
move bullion every time it is traded (Green 1985 [1982]). This eliminates the
costs, risks and delays associated with transporting gold.
Mass balancing also occurs on a smaller scale in industrial refining and manufacturing processes where gold is trapped in technical systems. If a factory or
refinery operates a mass balancing system, clients will get the same amount of
gold they supplied, but again not necessarily the same piece. The surfeit of gold
needed for the process to operate is provided and owned by the factory, stays
onsite and is treated as a material asset for accounting purposes.
In contrast, Fairtrades track and trace certification system required that licensees kept FT/FM gold separate from other gold stocks. Due to the limited amount
of FT/FM gold in circulation it was impossible to use machinery or equipment
that required large volumes of gold to operate effectively. Processes dependent
on large volumes of gold, for example, chain making, electroplating or specialist
alloy production never became available to FT/FM licensees. The technologies
licensees were able to use, such as casting, had to be run as bespoke operations, pushing the finished price of FT/FM gold items even higher.
167
Industrial manufacturers had developed a high level of path dependency (see

Busch 2011)towards the concept and practice of using interchangeable stocks
of gold. While not ideologically opposed to the ideals of Fairtrade, managers
and directors knew their production systems could not accommodate the FT/
FM regulations and remain commercially viable. Licensees found they were
restricted to a limited range of technical options compared to competitors using
ordinary gold.
FT/FM campaigners fought over the proposed inclusion of mass balancing
as if it were an abstraction that could be comprehensively rejected. The extent
to which it manifested itself within the industry in material ways: in ownership
swops of bullion, in the nature and intentions built into the machinery and even
the written accounts that were used to determine the profits and viability of individual companies was not understood.
Oro Verde goes to auction

Pricing and mass balancing were not the only problems to affect the campaign.
In December 2012 Oro Verde announced they would be selling their gold by
auction rather than directly to FT/FM licensees. Corporacion Oro Verde was a
founding partner of the FT/FM gold campaign (Maldar 2011: 1516). Oro Verde
gold comes from the Choc region of Columbia and is extracted using panning
and sluicing techniques without any recourse to mercury or cyanide (Oro Verde
2013). At the time of the 2012 review, Oro Verdes miners were the only producers of FT/FM Ecological Gold.
Though compromising to the FT/FM gold initiative, Oro Verdes decision
was a practical response to wider events. Oro Verde had built a loyal client
base in the United States. During 2011 Fair Trade USA (the US Fairtrade
marketing organization) was petitioned to join the FT/FM initiative. But in
December 2011 Fair Trade USA left the International Fairtrade Association,
due to the strategy direction of the Association (including the adoption of
corporate engagement). After the split, jewellers in the United States were
never going to be able to call the material they purchased FT/FM gold. Oro
Verde had to cope with its partners splitting into competing factions at the
same time as the gold market stagnated and the FT/FM campaign failed to
deliver the promised number of new licensees. Despite campaigners optimistic claims, FT/FM gold remained an extremely niche market that threatened to
leave the Corporacion with potentially unsellable stock.
168
Concerning complexity
Why did the FT/FM partnership crumble? The answer is complicated, but the
complexity of gold certainly played a role. It was apparent that the campaign
team were ambivalent about the substance they were attempting to redefine.
They attempted to subvert the noble and spiritual dimensions of gold: the launch
was timed to coincide with Valentines Day and promotional material repeatedly contrasted the miners poverty with the enchantment of gold jewellery.
Campaigners directly challenged golds spirituality: This idea of purity, what
are we hanging this on? (Greg Valerio, presenting at the Eco-jewellery workshop, Hatton Garden, 3 November 2010). Gold was presented as an apparently
sentient and untrustworthy substance: Gold does not want you to know what it
is doing, or where it is ... gold is a very bad master (ibid.; see also Valerio 2011).
Yet the same campaigners always believed gold wedding rings would be a key
product line for FT/FM gold (personal communications 2010, 2011).
The Fairtrade campaigners believed the inherent nobility of the subsistence
miners, together with the moral superiority they attributed to the fair trade movement and their personal efforts, would redeem this duplicitous substance and
imbue it with a new spiritual quality. This romantic perception of subsistence
producers and fair trade contrasted with the miners more prosaic and ruthless
approach to the trade arrangement at the heart of the FT/FM system. Due to
a belief in the primacy of fair trade ideals, the campaigners also suffered from
unrealistic assumptions about the level of mainstream consumer support the FT/
FM initiative could rely on.
The tension between transcendent gold and economic gold was not the only
barrier. Provenance, dependent on distinctiveness, was antithetical to the universalizing force that underpins elemental gold. The technologies reliant on the
concept of elemental gold aided in its repeated triumph in the skirmishes that
resulted. Elemental gold is more than just an abstraction. It is made manifest in
industrial gold manufacturing, being embedded in the physical structures and
operational capacity of the machinery and the praxis of operators. It also materializes in a different guise in company accounts and operating reports, where
it underpins mass balancing tallies. These elements all reinforce each other,
making the resulting assemblages thoroughly inimical to the idea and practice
of treating any mass of gold as a singularity.
In contrast to the strength that centuries of interlocking and reconfirming practices gave immanence, the provenance essential for FT/FM gold was
utterly dependent on a single organizational structure built from FLOs standard, FLO-CERTs certifications and the Fairtrade Foundations labelling and
169
promotional machinery. If this system was to break down or lose legitimacy, FT/
FM provenance would vanish. The damage to the Fairtrade Association caused
by Fair Trade USAs succession resulted in a decline in FT/FM golds viability.
The new substance was socially unstable: each mass could potentially revert to
ordinary gold as a result of a local lapse in the credibility of its provenance or a
complete collapse of the certifying system.
Conclusion
FT/FM gold was a socially complex substance that carried numerous incommensurate and contradictory aspects. To the immanence of its identity as a scientific
object, store of wealth and representation of nobility and transcendence (features
it shared with all gold) was added the intangible, observer-dependent property
of a provenance that valorized the circumstances of its extraction.
It proved possible to create FT/FM gold as an intangible entity. This was done
through the campaign literature of the Fairtrade Foundation and the regulatory
standard for FLO and FLO-CERT, as well as in the beliefs of the campaigners. It
turned out to be more difficult to maintain as a physical substance, a situation
that the miners and manufacturers who supported the initiative found out to
their cost. Exploring the contrast between the stability of substances as abstract
ideals and actual physical stuff is a potentially fruitful means of analysing materials from a social science perspective that has yet to be fully capitalized on; as
FT/FM gold shows, the results may be counter-intuitive as well as illuminating.
The FT/FM gold story demonstrates how each aspect of golds social identity connects with specific social institutions that reconfirm and so protect that
aspects validity. Elemental gold is made manifest by the theory and practices
of the techno-scientific activities called assaying and refining; noble gold is reinforced by the use of gold in status objects old and new; transcendent gold
is underpinned by cosmologies that provide a detailed exegesis for the gold
objects that enchant viewers and owners; economic gold relies on the trading
floors that minute by minute reassess and broadcast the level of demand for
the yellow metal. Research on materials needs to encompass these networks.
Each is essential for the growth and ossification of any facet of any particular
materials identity rather than an excrescence that subsequently attaches to an
already formed understanding.
The creation of FT/FM gold was an attempt to directly challenge what
campaigners saw as social and environmental abuses associated with the gold
industries. But while the campaign focused on conceptualizations, creators of
170
physical masses of FT/FM gold found they were faced with pre-existing technological and trading systems consisting of human actors and inanimate
objects (both material and immaterial) which could not be easily reconfigured
to accept the new paradigm. The interpenetration of what is thought and what is
done became startlingly apparent as FT/FM gold was found to be excluded from
large swathes of manufacturing and trading practice. The protective aspect to
these systems was all the more remarkable for the lack of any overall organization. This diffusion of agency and absence of guiding intention proved to be a
key feature of the systems overall resilience, as there was no specific target the
campaigners could attack.
While gold is an unusual, or perhaps extreme, substance, there is no
reason why the same types of networks could not exist around all materials
that are socially employed. Too often researchers are content to accept material properties as inherent, without considering how these properties have
been developed or are maintained. The research that has been conducted
sits inside particular disciplines, remaining isolated and often marginal. In
food studies, work on specific supply chains has uncovered similar networks
and contestations (e.g. Busch and Tanaka 1996; Cidell and Albert 2006).
Researchers in science and technology studies have started to consider how
chemical reagents assume an identity qua chemical reagents (e.g. Klein and
Spary 2010). There are also cases of art and design historians focusing on
the interaction between a specific material and classes of objects made from
it (e.g. Baxandall 1980; Nichols 2000). But the social sciences have not yet
comprehensively addressed the questions these individual studies throw
up. Broader examinations of how materials come to be seen the way they
are in these and other social spheres (or across many) and a more developed understanding of the role of networks in these processes would be of
immense academic interest, as well as of practical benefit.
Notes
1. In this chapter the word substance is used to describe a physically existing, formally mutable material with a set of recognizable and determinable properties. This definition aligns
with its usage by contemporary Western scientists (cf. Soentgen 2008) and philosophers
(e.g. Putnam 1975). This contrasts with use of the word as a specialist term in anthropology
to describe a supernatural and sometimes intangible material that carries life-force or fertility
(e.g. Douglas 2008[1966]; Kchler 2002; Warnier 2007).
2. Commodity is used here to describe one of a restricted number of raw materials with a
dedicated international market rather than the Marxist sense (cf. Appadurai 1986).
171
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Chapter10
Subversive plasticity: Materials
histories and cultural categories
in the Philippines
Deirdre McKay with Padmapani Perez, Ruel Bimuyag
and Raja Shanti Bonnevie
Plastic, because it is able to subvert cultural categories, does vital political work
in the Philippines. Plastics local history among Filipino indigenous communities
opens up broader questions of value, identity and art. Its plastics Philippine
particularities that make it potent and problematic, generating a set of contested
local categories. These categories emerged through the experience of a participatory research process for the Everyday Objects exhibition, staged by the
authors in Baguio City in 2012. This chapter draws on participant observations
with artisans and artists, formal interviews with dealers and collectors and audiences responses to the plastic artefacts the team exhibited. The caveat is that
this is a fresh-from-the-field take on plastic in what is still a project in progress.
Exploring plastic reveals how a materials approach unpacks the makings and
remakings of distinctive global subjectivities. Here, plastic both excites peoples
interest and is used by them to express their identities and political allegiances.
Our preliminary exploration of plastics cultural specificities suggests how materials can be studied for the ways that they index transformations in or struggles
over social and cultural categories. For a team with little training in formal material culture studies, we found materials not only good to think about but also
great to elicit rich ethnographic data.
Our Everyday Objects project began with my colleague Padmas curiosity
about the new brightly coloured plastic versions of traditional indigenous basket
forms she was seeing on the streets of Baguio City. She then discovered that
Ruel artist, photographer, tour guide and Ifugao cultural practitioner was
collecting these new craft objects and making his own. As more and more of
these objects appeared, Padma and I bid for seed funding, deciding to explore
176
the subversive qualities of plastic through a participatory workshop with craftspeople and artists working with repurposed materials. We recruited Shanti to
help out with collections and logistics. Our team then curated the results as
Everyday Objects, an exhibition that ran at the BenCab Museum in Baguio City
in JuneJuly 2012 (see Figure 10.1). After collecting plastic objects, curating
them and displaying them as art, mixed in with the BenCab museums own tribal
art objects, we began soliciting peoples opinions on the objects and their reactions on being asked to consider them as art. We learned that contemporary
Filipino audiences found plastic objects, presented in their historical context,
Figure10.1 Everyday Objects exhibition postcard, 2012. Copyright Deirdre McKay.
Subversive plasticity
177
to be surprisingly desirable and attractive. It is the material of plastic itself that

brings up powerful questions of authenticity and perceived value for our audiences. Members of the Philippines art viewing and collecting public tend to see
questions of authenticity and indigenous identity as much more tied to material,
rather than form. Theirs is the inverse of the views of craft producers. People
who make these objects are much more interested in exploring the persistence
of indigenous forms in new materials. This difference emerged because these
two groups consider the ontology of plastic itself in different ways. The material
of plastic itself, not the form it takes, embodies a political problematic which is
distinctively Filipino.
Plastic craft and plastik, playing

with Filipino categories
Google plastic, and youll find the English word comes from the Greek plassein, meaning to mould, and describes a synthetic material made from a wide
variety of organic polymers or, used as an adjective, means artificial or unnatural.
Plastic is a subversive substance because it is not just one thing, but can be
shaped, and reshaped again, into many kinds of objects. In the Philippines, the
English word has been taken up and given new meanings to carry. Plastic, in the
post-colonial Philippines, carries possibly even stronger messages about social
class and distinction than in English-speaking countries (see Fisher, this volume,
and Wilkes, this volume).
For wealthy Filipinos, plastic is the detritus of colonialist globalization. Plastic
threatens the air with toxins when the poor burn their garbage, blocks the waterways and results in flooding and fills the streets when discarded by sidewalk
vendors or thrown by passengers eating snacks on public buses. Metaphorically,
plastic blocks national progress. In popular culture, it marks a kitsch and tacky
baduy aesthetic. Most of the educated elites are reluctant to buy plastic and
unlikely to decorate with it, preferring authentic Filipino natural materials. They
generally prefer wood, rattan and bamboo, worked into objects by authentic artisans who have been especially commissioned by designers trained in both local
heritage designs and the latest European and American architectural trends and
design forms. Thus the wealthy aspire to store their fresh fruit and vegetables in
metal fridges, rattan baskets or ceramic bowls. Plastic is something they accept,
grudgingly, but wish to transcend.
For the poor, plastic is convenient, lightweight, durable and/or easily
replaced. Its many colours cheer up their dark, poorly lit houses. Plastic
178
containers and bags are not so badly damaged by the leaking roof and
flooding that characterize rainy seasons. Plastic bags of produce hang from
the walls in their kitchens while plastic jerry cans hold their cooking oil and
water. Plastics very malleability means it can be repurposed, while its light
weight makes it easily transportable. Among the many kinds of plastic poorer
people encounter, some are extremely versatile. Plastic can be repurposed or
reworked and remoulded. So plastic sheeting can be a raincoat, then part of
a roof, or the walls of a makeshift bathhouse or toilet. But pretty much the best
thing about plastic for the poor is that it is usually cheap, but often free, or
freely available for appropriation. Because it is widely despised and derided,
bits and pieces of plastic lying about can be more or less easily liberated and
repurposed to new ends. To make a plastic basket, it is much cheaper for a
skilled craft producer, for instance, to use the webbing from discarded factory
seconds garden chairs, pieces lifted from an export-processing zone factory,
or blasting-cap wrappers from the (transnationally owned) gold mines, than
it is to purchase rattan from someone who has sourced, cut and prepared it.
Because poor people already have craft skills and are often underemployed,
the time they have on their hands is easily put into adapting these skills to
repurpose discarded plastic.
People who are both poor and members of indigenous cultural communities may have an even greater advantage here. They are often self- or
seasonally employed and have more time and a wider set of skills and
known forms with which to experiment on found and reappropriated materials. Everyday Objects worked with craft producers from state-recognized
Indigenous Cultural Communities (also called tribes) in Northern Luzon who
speak Kalinga, Kankanaey, Ibaloi and Ifugao languages and belong to those
same ethnic groups. These peoples are often described by their shared,
regional identity: Igorot. Igorots find themselves at the margins of a national
Filipino imaginary dominated by the Tagalog language spoken in the region
surrounding Manila. Though Igorots usually speak some Tagalog and understand more, they do not think in it or conduct daily life in it, and thus have a
bit of bemused distance when it comes to Tagalog trends and slang, and,
perhaps, Tagalog views on materials.
Theres definitely something more to the problem of plastic in the Philippines
than simply the propensity of the poor to take it when the rich have discarded
it, or to throw it around and ruin the landscape aesthetic. Plastic itself indexes
Filipino critiques of character and social relations, critiques that also revolve
around class, solidarity and ideals for charity. In the Everyday Objects exhibition,
plastic made these critiques material.
179
Mrs. Tupperware plastiks etymology

Plastik as an adjective was something I first heard in Vancouver in 1994, when
a Filipino migrant friend, Marlyn, describe her struggles with her Canadian
employer. Marlyn was working as a nanny under Canadas Live-in Caregiver
Programme and she called her employer Mrs. Tupperware behind her back.
Marlyn had assigned her this nickname because she was so plastik she says
I can have a writing desk, time off, overtime, but none arrives. This nickname
was a great joke, drawing on the term tupperware that, in Filipino, is swardspeak (gay slang) for plastik a Filipino borrowing of an English term to mean
someone who is untrue to themselves and others. Marlyns employer was Mrs.
Tupperware, because she was only pretending to be friendly but was actually
hypocritical in her relations with Marlyn.
We see here how the English word plastic has entered Filipino languages in
a very particular way. Theres quite a bit of blogging among diasporic Filipinos
on plastic that explains the Filipino (Tagalog) slang. For an anonymous blogger
(languageculture.blogspot.co.uk 2008), plastik:
connotes something cheap: plastic slippers, plastic shoes, plastic watchbands, etc. It used to have that meaning too in Filipino: Naku, mura lang yang
platong iyan. Plastic kasi. [Oh, that plate is only cheap. Because its only plastic.] It was a cheap substitute for breakable drinking glasses, leather shoes,
leather watchbands and the like.
Wealthy people have fragile, breakable glasses, durable leather shoes, and
durable leather watchbands. The poor use plastic, which isnt prestigious for
fragile items, but isnt durable for the items that get harder wear. Its just stuff. So
the Filipino language term became a metaphor for the cheap, fake and undesirable. Thus this blogger observed that plastik indexes undesirable personal
attributes. Plastik carries the notion of:
being a substitute, yung pagkahindi tunay [not genuine] not really glass, not
really leather [it] entered Tagalog and seems to have nudged out balat-kayo,
or the act, thought, feeling, sense of hypocrisy. More specifically, it dislodged
doble-kara [two-faced], which describes a persons hypocrisy: saying one
thing but not really meaning it; acting friendly although one really carries smoldering hatred; showing concern, love and affection although one is really just
interested in the persons bankbook. It runs the gamut of situations. Plastik in
Filipino now captures that behavior (thought, act, feeling) which is quite the
opposite of what one truly feels. It carries more than the sense of being not just
not really, but more it also signifies not truly.
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Plastik carries a sense of falsity or lack of genuine intent. People say, Hoy, hindi
ako plastik, ha! [Hey, Im not plastik, eh?], to assert their sincerity in interactions with others. Very often the term plastik is associated with the hypocrisy the
rich display in their everyday encounters with the poor. As Marlyn suggested,
above, poor people use plastik to describe rich people giving them false respect
or false promises of assistance. Another anonymous blogger at socyberty.com
(n.d.) gives the following example: Plastik from plastic; meaning hypocrite,
pretender, phoney Example: That sosy lady is a plastik purita. In contemporary
Filipino (Tagalog) slang, sosy comes from social, socialite meaning snobby,
rich or someone acting like a rich person. Purita comes from poor, meaning
without money. Thus that lady acting rich is an insincere poor person. But insincerity can run in the opposite direction. Those merely pretending to be poor are
actually undeserving of charity or donations from the wealthy.
So, in Filipino, plastik denotes insincerity, inauthenticity and unreliability,
as well as being the cheapest, most accessible material the material of the
poor, which clogs their living areas, underpins their squatter shacks and figures
strongly in their purported preferences for bright, kitsch and easily disposable
home and personal decorations. By extension, craft or art objects made from
plastic may misrepresent the social position of their creator or somehow make
a fool of the viewer/purchaser. Using the material itself plays on tropes of inauthenticity and resistance. Plastic, cheap and widely accessible, enables artists
and artisans to call into question the stereotype of the poor as acultural, while
refiguring their relationship with waste as a positive one. Plastic is, at the same
time, about meaning and subjectivity; plastic is not a neutral substrate, but a
co-producer of cultural categories.
Plastic, poverty and tribal art

Far from Manila and its pre-eminent position in the Filipino cultural mainstream,
indigenous craftspeople play with plastic. In and around Baguio City, plastic
materials now figure prominently in crafts made by Igorot artisans. The same
objects, if made in rattan or wood, might be considered tribal art. Plastik is closely
aligned to peyk (fake), as opposed to jinwayn (genuine). Something fake is not
genuine tribal art, even if the object was made by indigenous Igorot producers.
Igorot plastic crafts are thus playful and problematic. This play with plastic materials points to, and up-ends, a particular local history of tribal art production.
To identify genuine tribal art in the northern Philippines, dealers, collectors and
curators (largely urban-based, wealthy and non-indigenous) assess the work of
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producers (typically rural, poor, and indigenous). Collectors and dealers apply
an art-craft distinction, that is not about the skill of the producer or the aesthetic
form of the object. Instead, their distinction relies on intention of the maker in
not making art, but in creating an object that was used, un-self-consciously,
for its quotidian purpose in traditional tribal culture. To self-consciously make
something as a piece of art, or as a commodity to be sold into the tribal art value
chain, makes that object not truly tribal art. In the conception of dealers and
collectors, no authentic tribal person would do such a thing. Instead, the dealers art/craft distinction relies on a notion of art that assumes a truly indigenous
artist would only make something for their own ritual use, or their wider family or
community. For collectors, owning tribal art remains a way of touching a history
untarnished by the commodity form.
Tribal art, as a category, thus recreates geography and history to its own
ends. As Fabian (1983) argued for anthropology, tribal art dealers occupy the
space of interpretive intermediary, taking the place of here and now in the art
market and making the object of their expertise: tribal art. They do this by recognizing authentic products. Producers of art objects must be locatable in the
there and then of a continuing tribal past because the value of this art relies on
a tribal other who exists in a time not contemporary with dealers and collectors own. The spatial and social distance between the collector/buyer and site
of craft production enables the art dealers expert knowledge to recontextualize
the object into a story of timeless ritual use for the eventual buyer/collector. This
requirement for history means that dealers must claim with conviction that tribal
art objects instantiate Fabians (1983) allochrony (other-time) through material
properties acquired through ritual use. On a traditional rattan backpack (pasiking), for example, a dealer would look for a patina created by sacrificial blood,
smoke damage and worn grooves to show it had been used in authentic Igorot
rituals. When Igorot artisans remake the same traditional backpack from neoncoloured plastic blasting cap wrappers liberated from a gold mine, they disrupt
the fictions of cultural continuity and spatial hierarchy on which the art and
antiques markets here depend. Blasting cap plastic backpacks dont acquire
the same patina, and the plastic tends to break rather than get worn down.
The ways artists and artisans play with plastic thus challenge the dominant
idea of cultural heritage in the Philippines. This challenge begins by undermining
the tribal art dealers and collectors premise that market economies necessarily
erode local, indigenous culture. Classifying objects as antiques or collectibles
leads collectors to withdraw these objects from the sphere of use and turn them
into history. Acts of withdrawal or conservation are sacrifices intended to stabilize
both Igorot and Filipino identities. Yet craft-art objects are important as means
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to assert claims for recognition of indigenous political and land rights and as
component of indigenous peoples livelihoods. In neither of these vital economic
and political positions is it strategic for Igorot communities to portray themselves
as stuck in other time. Making crafts contributes to local Igorot livelihoods, if not
from cash sales into the market, then through barter, exchange and the circulation of gifts. Demand for rattan has led to such a decline in supplies that many
craftspeople cannot afford to produce indigenous forms in natural materials.
Thus there is great potential for Igorot migrants now living overseas to assist
those at home to develop new products and access new markets for their work.
However, this economic expansion can only happen if migrants themselves
recognize the cultural and economic value of contemporary indigenous crafts
and art. This recognition proves difficult to attain when collectors and audiences
deem new materials to be insufficiently authentic or tribal and thus neither prestigious nor valuable. Crafts and tribal art producers have become caught in a
heritage trap, unable to obtain traditional natural materials but expected, nonetheless, to work within the limits of a nostalgic aesthetic.
Whether craft or art, Filipino elite collector-consumers are the largest market
for these objects. But the wealthy seem to worry more about certifying the
authenticity of objects from disappearing cultures and the trustworthiness and
character of producers who might play them as fools than the formal properties
of the objects themselves. It seems there are too many plastik people in the
tribal art supply chain and market and too many fakes made of natural materials
have been sold. Wealthy would-be collectors are open to the charge of hypocrisy in not actually wanting to meet the producers of the art but rather to collect
stories of their simple, tribal lives and spiritual practices. It is a comfort to the
Filipino elite to believe that Igorots are poor because of their culture or their lack
of education and skills, not their lack of access to infrastructure, markets and
persistent state corruption. When poor Igorot producers trick dealers with fake
tribal art, their poverty can also be attributed to their lack of civilization or inability to engage respectfully and equitably in a market transaction. Thus the tribal
producers identities also have a certain plasticity. With fakes, dealers refigure
artisans from indigenous artists into undeserving charlatans who may even be
faking their own poverty to gain sympathy and thus appropriate more money
than their products are worth.
In the Everyday Objects exhibition, artists and artisans subverted the heritage
trap with plastic. Their plastic crafts and art objects made no attempt to pass as
authentic rattan, wood or cotton or to claim ritual use. With their self-consciously
garish colours, they struggled to become art in public estimation, even in a
museum exhibition context. Plastic fish traps were one of the first plastic crafts
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we collected for this exhibition. Gallery visitors saw them not as basketry, but as
repurposed garbage little more than recycling. But their persistent form recalls
Gells (1996) analogy between artworks and fish traps. The ways art objects
may act with agency, as Gell argued, tells us about limitations on the cultural
and political agency of their producers. The exhibition-space was key to these
limitations. As Foster (2012: 3) observes, Gells conception of art as entrapment
and enchantment his claim that art-works captivate, and thus exert a kind
of (secondary) agency on people (patients) (Gell 1992, 1996, 1998), depends
largely on the underexplored aspects of exhibiting such work in museum or
gallery installations. The key point for materials studies here is that, if we find
Gells patients created by these craft objects, it isnt through the forms they
take. Instead, the creation of viewers as patients lies in the action of the objects
material composition. It is this capacity of materials to act on viewers or owners
that devalues these objects as art. It is plastic itself that denies their producers
recognition as artists or as bearers of culture rather than craft skills.
Contributors to the Everyday Objects exhibition confronted audiences with
plastic to explore just this problematic. They intended their colourful plastic
versions of traditional tribal art objects to be precisely the obverse of formal
tribal art: not to be sacrificed, nor to become antiques. Our participating artisans produced these objects from waste materials baby oil bottles, plastic
ties, plastic webbing and broken CD cases. They sourced plastic materials from
domestic and industrial waste or liberated them from commercial enterprises.
As craft producers, they sacrificed their time and effort to make use not let go
to waste materials at hand, while trying to remain true to culturally prescribed
patterns or forms that come from their indigenous heritage and which they
already have the skills to produce. They intend their plastic crafts to portray their
producers as creators and innovators, as canny and potent, at the same time
as they sustain their indigenous ethnic identities by citing and reworking heritage forms from their communities of origin. By using plastic materials, however,
these indigenous artists position themselves as not tribal, just poor. Blurring the
distinctions between art and craft, indigenous and just poor, Everyday Objects
asked audiences to reconsider their own received notions of cultural authenticity
and value.
The way plastic problematizes these cultural categories was revealed by what
were easily among the most challenging objects for visitors to the Everyday
Objects exhibition: plastic replica trade beads. Viewers described these beads
as being most common, most easily found in the market, requiring the least
skill in production and as fakes. To understand why, its helpful to visit the site of
their production. McKay, Bimuyag and Bonnevie travelled north from Baguio City
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to interview a bead-maker in Kalinga Province. The following sections draw on

McKays participant observations on that trip and from follow-up fieldwork with
migrant Filipinos in London.
Plastic beads: A case-study

Repurposed plastic has been extracted from the waste stream and used to make
replica trade beads by Igorots since at least the 1950s. The practice began with
melting down old toothbrushes but has expanded to encompass a variety of
other forms of waste. Today, strands of plastic replica beads are on sale in Baguio
City. Their intended market is Igorot high school and college students who are,
as part of their education, expected to take part in cultural performances. Strung
according to Kalinga traditional patterns, but used by other ethnic groups to
denote Igorot identity, these beads replicate strands of glass and stone heirloom
trade beads. The trade beads themselves had become (comparatively recently)
a definitive aspect of the material culture of the Kalinga ethnic group of Northern
Luzon and serve specific ritual purposes in life-cycle events (Abellera 1981).
The plastic beads thus replicate the distinctive bright colours of a set of beads
made from stone, ceramic and glass used as a currency to exchange for goods
and services during the colonial era (sixteenth to twentieth centuries). Among
Igorots, these original beads still serve as a store of familial wealth, being valuable heirlooms passed down to the next generation. The replicas, however, are
extremely useful for the expanding calendar of cultural presentations and ethnic
events attached to education and local politics.
Replica beads replicate important markers of ethnic identity and social status.
Among indigenous groups on the northern Philippine Cordillera Central, heirloom
beads serve as an external diacritical mark to distinguish one ethnic group from
another (Francis 2002: 191)and to distinguish one person and their extended
kin group from the next, in terms of wealth, power, political alliances and marital status. Most Kalinga heirloom trade beads date to the nineteenth century.
Although Kalinga people made their own alter beads, the bulk of their collections
are glass trade beads that travelled well-documented South-east Asian routes
from colonial trade-bead production centres in Venice and from Vietnam and
China (Francis 2002). Francis (2002: 251, note 12)reports that Kalinga craftspeople started making plastic replicas of these beads in 1969, and the practice
expanded in the 1980s. By the 1990s, small multi-strand necklaces and bracelets appeared in regional markets but were worn only by children and the very
poor. The expansion of replica production likely coincided with the increasing
185
availability of suitable waste plastics in appropriate colours to be melted down

and remoulded into bead form.
To collect plastic replica beads for Everyday Objects, we visited Fely, an artisanal bead-maker, at her home workshop in Lubuagan, Kalinga. In April 2012,
she was making strands of replica bongeh (a long double-stranded necklace
in a distinctive colour-blocked pattern) for cultural performances. To do so, she
was melting down an assortment of plastic, including CD cases (black), plastic
spoons from Jollibee fast food outlets (white), and big yellow plastic beads she
had purchased in the Divisoria market in Manila. Fely was using her cooking fire,
working with improvised metal tools over an open hearth. As she worked, her
elderly mother and two-year-old daughter sat nearby. The little girl had a cleft
palate. Fely was trying to raise the necessary money to travel to Baguio City
for surgery by meeting bongeh orders for the festival season (April and May).
Her house was a very simple wood and galvanized iron one-room structure on
posts, located on a windy hillside. Water came from a public tap and there was
a communal washing block nearby. With plastic melting over the fire, the small
house filled with an acrid smell. In response, Felys mother propped open the
door and took her toddler granddaughter to sit on the porch. Some people
complain that the smell is bad for our health, Fely explained, they say that we
should stop, because it is a pollution.
Fely herself said she had no ill effects, or none more than she did when she
or her neighbours burned their plastics-rich domestic garbage. Burning is the
fate of most discarded plastic in the rural Philippines either that, or it is buried
or makes its way into a nearby watercourse. Luckily, Felys house on the windy
hillside had good natural air circulation, though it would have been fairly uncomfortable in the rain and cold of the wet season. She explained that it was burning
garbage that gave local bead-makers their categories for suitable plastics.
She had learned how to choose plastic to melt down from the experiments of
other producers and by trying out different plastics broken buckets, cracked
Tupperware, and so on of appropriate colours when burning garbage. She
told us that the best plastics for bead making were shiny and hard cassette
tape cases and CD jackets were particularly useful. Mid-interview and mid-production, one of Felys buyers arrived, looking for her order of 15 bongeh replica
strands. She would be doubling the purchase price to resell in her market stall
in Baguio City, but needed the order in a rush, expecting high demand around
the cultural programmes set for college inductions in the coming new school
year. As we wrapped up the interview, I purchased a bongeh replica of my own
from Fely (see Figure10.2), and then we departed for our Kalinga host familys
christening celebration.
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Figure10.2 Replica Kalinga bongeh in plastic, Lubuagan, Kalinga, April 2012. Photograph by
Deirdre McKay.
The plastic beads I bought were a topic of discussion with our host households other guests, a group of Swiss musicians. One commented that since I
didnt know what the beads meant to local people, as a non-Filipino, I shouldnt
have purchased them or been wearing them. It didnt matter, she opined, whether
they were real or replicas the beads had a local ritual and spiritual significance
that made them taboo for foreign visitors. Meanwhile, the beads intrigued another
member of the same Swiss group, Livia. She was not concerned so much with
the local meanings attached to the beads but their availability and cost. Livia
had been asked by a friend to acquire some locally made beads for her Swissbased jewellery-making business. When she learned that my beads were plastic
replicas, she was disappointed; her friend, she thought, would only want real,
natural materials. Both responses to the replica beads exemplify the ways that
international tourism and cultural contact foster ideas of material authenticity as
both viable and easily commodified. When I appeared with my new strand of
replica beads, one visitor wanted to protect the local sacred from my misplaced
cultural appropriation, while the other wanted to acquire that same heritage to
repackage it for further value-production.
Our Kalinga host family seemed much more relaxed about my purchase
of replica beads. In their home, their extensive collection of real beads was
displayed behind glass in locked wall cabinets and under glass-topped tables.
Plastic replica beads decorated bouquets of grass placed in big earthenware
jars in the corners of their reception rooms. However, everyone in this household
187
could tell which were real and which were replicas. Though the other visitors
responses suggested the line where plastic beads took on the cultural properties
of real ones seemed somewhat malleable itself, our hosts were confident in their
skills of distinction. They assured me that Kalinga spiritual practices appended
ritual value and spiritual potency value to trade beads, not to plastic replicas.
The trade beads made of glass and stone were not of local manufacture, I
explained to Livia, but owed their value to having been traded in, coming largely
from Europe and Asia. While many beads had very high local scarcity value, dealers around the world had collected the same kinds of beads, made from the same
materials and from the same sites of manufacture, elsewhere. All were available
on an international market for antique beads. Her friend could thus order these
same beads off the internet, at a cost reflecting their history and scarcity. A similar
set of scarcity and pricing dynamics were driving the resale of heirloom strands
in Lubuagan. Another anthropologist-friend had reportedly just purchased a
double strand necklace of real heirloom beads in Lubuagan for about PHP 40,000
(600/$950). The sale had been driven by the necessity of renovating the sellers
family home to accommodate an expanding extended family. Buying individual
heirloom beads would be well outside Livias price range. When she inspected
the plastic replicas further, she noted that they had a nice, handmade look with
pleasing irregularities and bits of soot included in them. She successfully ordered
several bags of individual beads from Fely, and her friend made friendship bracelets from them, now for sale over her Facebook page. Clearly, our Lubuagan hosts
did not consider the sale of replica beads to be a problem of cultural appropriation, so much as a possible opening of new markets for local artisans. Meanwhile,
I found Felys beads really travelled pretty well. Their lightweight and durable material made them both eye-catching and convenient.
Several weeks later, I was in the audience for an Igorot beauty contest held
by migrants in East London. I recognized both a version of the plastic Kalinga
bongeh on stage and some lovely examples of real Kalinga beads in the audience. I asked one contestant where she got her string of Kalinga beads, and
she told me that they were her grandmothers from the Philippines. She let me
hold them, and I could feel from the weight and warmth of the material that
they were likely an example of Felys craft. So, when my Igorot friends in the
audience asked me real or fake, my answer was, plastik. The young Kalinga
women in the Kalinga cultural performance that same evening were much more
savvy about real/fake distinctions and the provenance of their beads. While they
danced in sets of plastic beads, these were mixed with their own real strands
that they had brought with them as part of their very best formal outfits. But only
the real beads were part of their off-stage wear.
188
What my Igorot friends in London wanted to know was if I could teach them to
tell the difference between plastik and real heirloom beads. Amy explained:
Me, I need to know how to tell the real. Now that Im in London and earning,
we can afford to buy some sets of our own, for our dancing. But not before. Its
shameful, you know? You know how it was in our place. My family, we had no
beads. I think my auntie, maybe, she inherited some of our familys and then
sold them. For an emergency weve had many.
When I asked if she would consider plastic versions, she said, Yes, just for the
representation. But I think it looks good, you know, just like those girls, to wear
the real ones with your jeans and shirt, like youre still an Igorot. What if, I asked,
they were mixed together? Amy replied, Well, I suppose that would be ok, really.
Thats like how everything is for us now, being migrants and our places at home
changing. But Amy sounded reluctant to abandon the idea of authenticity as
value altogether. She later showed me a plastic-bead bracelet she bought from
a fellow Igorot and paid 5 for, in the belief the large central bead was a real
agate. I advised her that the price was too much for plastic, and probably about
50 too little for a good agate bead. I showed her what I had learned from my
hosts in Kalinga. If you check the temperature of the bead on your skin, plastic
always feels warmer than glass, stone or ceramic. If you rub it against your teeth,
reworked plastic is rough against your enamel, more so than ceramic or glass.
If you consider its weight, its light. If you look at how it reflects the light, plastic
replicas are comparatively dull beside glass, stone and ceramic beads. Then
you can examine the bead for inclusions or irregularities. An inclusion that looks
like soot? Thats from Felys fire!
The materiality of plastic still plays tricks on those who aspire to status
in this social field. Amys comments remind us of two important and interrelated points. The first point is that poverty in the sense of limits on assets
and value appropriated can be escaped. The second is that the diacritical
markers of wealth and rank we associate with status, if not wealth per se,
are also material ones. Materiality is part of the set of symbols learned as
an aesthetic and tied to class. Amy, being newly middle class, pointed out
the ways her own aesthetic for self-presentation continues to represents her
origins as poor to other middle-class or elite Filipinos. She was also reminding me that Im comfortable with fake beads because Im a wealthier person
who is able through experience and research to trust in my ability to
discern the difference. I was not embarrassed to ask my elite Kalinga hosts
for a tutorial on distinguishing plastic beads, while Amy would be. She is
newly affluent and worries she has been wasting money on buying bracelets
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with plastic beads in the belief that her choices will help to reshape her social
standing. Authenticity of material matters to Amy because she has been
poor. Exploring a new and subversive aesthetic perhaps matters more to me,
because I havent.
I found myself sympathetic to Amys response. Perhaps my isnt it cool attitude to plastic crafts reads the plastic back in to the very materiality of poverty in
producers lives, admiring their ability to make something of it, to use their knowledge of indigenous forms and craft skills to transcend and refigure the garbage
that they live with and in. But the aestheticization of poverty itself is no more
troubling than the notion of tribal art and its idea of ahistorical indigenes living
spiritual lives. Mulling over the moment when I realized I was arguing Livia into
purchasing from Fely as an exercise in retrieving an authentic-but-contemporary
culture, I realized I was thinking of Felys struggle to fund her daughters surgery,
her one-room house and her deft handiwork in transforming pieces of plastic
into these familiar forms. I located a value in her skills of material transformation
that I felt should be rewarded in material ways.
Making plastic into art

When placing these beads, baskets and bottles in the BenCab museum, my
artist-collaborators (Padma, Ruel and Shanthi and the rest of the workshop)
practice was entirely self-aware. Padma wanted to instantiate what KirshenblattGimblett (1998: 51) calls a museum effect: the dual process through which
museum presentation makes ordinary things special and experience of viewing
such objects in the museum itself becomes a model for the experience of life
beyond the exhibition. Our team was making a political statement by asking visitors to consider the broader context of their responses to plastic objects. Plastic
crafts here instantiate a turn of the head (Kirshenblatt-Gimblet 1998: 50)which
bifurcates the viewers gaze between the exotic display [of the museum exhibition] and her own, everyday world. This turn happened in Everyday Objects
precisely because plastic turned the viewers head for her. Plastic worked its
agency on the visitors/patients as an autoethnographic gesture on the part of
the artists and artisans. By making tribal art in plastic, the artists and artisans
turned their own gaze (and production) to meet that of the visitor, intentionally
disrupting Fabians sense of timeless othering. Plastic art thus challenges the
viewer to confront received ideas about poverty and indigenous identity. Plastic
art suggests that the poor can be culture-bearers at the same time as the tribal
other Igorots can be ordinary, everyday poor people.
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Our Everyday Objects exhibition thus used the materiality of plastic to reveal
the network of shifting relationships in which these everyday objects were
embedded (see Foster 2012: 3, paraphrasing Gell). By juxtaposing recognized tribal art pieces against utilitarian objects with multiple purposes, craft
objects, and the tools used to make them, we asked audiences to confront
their expectations for indigenous authenticity, temporality and value. Doing so,
we made room for what might be seen as impure and/or hybrid objects (Foster
2012: 3, citing Clifford 1988)like the replica beads. All this made the exhibition
into a place where people with different relations to these objects and expectations for them could come together to engage in a coeval dialogue about
their forms, material and values. In the next iteration of the project, we plan to
exhibit a bongeh-style necklace of mixed plastic and heirloom beads. For now,
what we can say is that plastic, as a material, brings to the fore the problem of
indigenous contemporaneity of scarcity, trade and value. But plastic also foregrounds the issues thrown up by dynamic indigenous cultures when tradition is
reinvented (Hobsbawm 1983)in not un-problematic ways to sustain people in
contemporary, global economies. In a very practical way, revaluing plastic craft
as art may be able to open up new potentials for diasporic community building
and community-based economic development, creating new sources of income
for marginalized craftspeople like Fely. The broader lesson from this case is that
traditions reinventions require not just renegotiating received ideas of authenticity and appropriation (see Aragon and Leach 2008)but also exploratory play with
the physical properties and social agency of materials.
Conclusion
This chapter has shown how objects created by contemporary indigenous
Filipino artisans and artists who work with plastic challenge widely recognized,
if tacit, categories of identity and cultural authenticity in the Philippines. While
there has been a great deal of attention to the ontology of the object (Henare,
Holbraad and Wastell 2007), it is tempting to assume that ontologies of form and
materials work together, rather than being in conflict. But, by setting the ontology
of the material against that of the objects form, the materiality of the object can
itself works as a political commentary and blur the boundaries of established
cultural categories. This is where a whole new class of problematic hybrids (see
Foster and Clifford, above), like these plastic replica beads, find their particular
agency. No doubt it is not only plastic but also other materials, elsewhere, that
can be found to be doing the same sort of subversive work.
191
For materials studies, the key lesson is that materials have an agency
that lies in their physical properties and cultural histories and that can work
against the forms taken by the objects they make. The uneasiness generated
by conflict between substance and form gives rise to political commentary.
Materials cultural histories could thus undo even the best attempts at making
them sustainable or recycling them because of the cultural work they are
already doing. As this case study makes clear, before launching projects to
redirect plastic in the waste stream to new purposes in the Philippines, planners and designers would need to look carefully at the very particular social
and cultural meanings Filipinos attach to plastic. Elsewhere, it would be other
problematic materials and other histories and ontologies. In a world where
stuff is increasingly not what it seems (see Fisher, this volume), mastering
ontologies of the authentic and skills of distinction are necessary strategies
to sustain selves and cultures in a global Age of Plastic. This is where an
anthropology of materials can make its practical contribution to planning and
designing sustainable futures. Beyond this, studying materials is a key methodology for ethnographic research on changing experiences of selves and
stuff in an increasingly global world.
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J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, pp.4066. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Gell, A. (1996), Vogels Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps, Journal of Material
Culture, 1: 1538.
192
Hobsbawm, E. (1983), Introduction: Inventing Traditions, in E. Hobsbawm, and T. Ranger
(eds), The Invention of Tradition, pp.114. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Henare, A., M. Holbraad and S. Wastell (eds) (2007), Thinking Through Things: Theorising
Artefacts Ethnographically. London: Routledge.
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1998), Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chapter11
Diamonds, machines and
colours: Moving materials
in ritual exchange
Filipe Calvo
The purest diamond is an emblematic ideation of an elusive and notoriously

complex ethnographic object, the commodity. Its capricious and shifting materiality, challenging perceived notions of wants and desires, use and exchange
value and rendered to consumers as a veritable icon of value fetishization, is
somewhat paradoxical in that diamonds are the only gemstone that is abundant
in nature. But just as much as the materiality of value is not physical but also
social (Pietz 1993), there is more to the material of diamonds than the simple
calculation of its material properties and qualities. At the turnover moment from
rock to commodity, the materiality of a diamond its thingness remains at
the centrepiece of negotiations over value. More significantly, diamonds also
emerge as an unstable material by way of a ritualized negotiation. What is the
matter, then, with the material life of a diamond stone?
In this chapter, I suggest that the moment when diamonds are traded provides
inestimable clues to understand materials in processes of valuation. I seek to
demonstrate how the value of one diamond stone (kamanga1) is produced and
transformed with other circulating materials in the trading context. I approach this
problem by way of ethnographic events of trading diamonds in Lunda, Angolas
diamond-rich province.2 In the regions conturios (also called pronturio, casa
grande or office), everyday talk animates trading rooms and the economy of
ritual practice complicates our understanding of sensory perception, bodily
praxis and qualitative labour in processes of capital reproduction. I build from
concrete instances of trading to connect the material qualities of diamonds
and other things that leak in-between different materials (Ingold 2011a: 4)to
forms of expert knowledge or the language of the market (Keane 2008). Can
the social, institutional and technical process by which diamonds are evaluated
change the material itself?
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Materials, value and revelation

This project contributes to the field of anthropological thought on materiality,
commodities and objects by bring[ing] the materials back in (Ingold 2012, cf.
Kuechler and Drazin, foreword to this volume). Similarly to the tension inherent
in golds multiple and immanent qualities (Oakley, this volume), I wish to locate
in and through diamonds the play of unequal and asymmetrical exchanges of
meaning and signs leading up to the production of value (Munn 1986; Weiss
1996, 2003). Specifically, I aim to demonstrate how materials are aligned in-between a carbon-based physical substance and the socially mediated experience
of trading diamonds, thus contributing towards the definition of value and the
orientation of social life more broadly.3
Given the internal instability of the commodity form and the exigencies
of situated practice, as William Mazzarella points out in his discussion of
the commodity-image in contemporary advertising, it becomes necessary to
investigate the question of the relationship between the thingness of things
and the meanings with which they are invested (2003: 26). I approach this
problem in the gap between technical grading and the qualitative experience
of trading diamonds as a ritual spaced carved between rhetorical negotiation and the allegedly objective conditions impinging on the transaction.
Following Gells discussion of substances and qualities in olfactory dream
states, I suggest that awareness to the exchange of materials renders their
context and sign inseparable (1977: 33) and thus traceable for ethnographic investigation.
Theoretically, I build on studies of the political economy of language that
demonstrate how linguistic and semiotic events factor into economic processes (e.g. Bourdieu 1977; Gal 1989; Irvine 1989). I also pay close attention to
approaches to circulation and the semiotic properties of the commodity (Keane
2003; Kockelman 2006; Lee and LiPuma 2002; Shankar and Cavanaugh 2012).4
The commerce of diamonds in Angola is particularly suggestive to situate this
analysis, both locally and with an eye towards broader scales. In fact, international diamantaires are routinely invoked over the course of these negotiations
and simultaneously, these moments of trading recall the performative spectacle of financial and stock exchange market trading (Abolafia 1998; Hertz 1998;
Zaloom 2006).5
In what follows, I evoke the spatial setting of a trading room and some of
the social and institutional relations permeating diamond transactions in Lunda
Norte, Angola. In a second section I turn to the invocation of the market as ritual
language, followed by a concluding analysis of diamonds composite materials
Diamonds, machines and colours
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in ritual exchange. Let us now move towards the trading room itself through the
lens of one of Lundas iconic diamond traders, or kamanguistas.
The trading room

Busy scribbling down some numbers from the previous diamond transaction,
the trader did not bother to look up at the new group entering the room: Are
you bringing good kamanga [diamond]? he asked. Put good kamanga [on the
table], cant you see [the market price] is bad? The stone carrier unwrapped a
small piece of paper and placed a rugged rock on a table cluttered with bagged
diamond lots and other evaluating instruments. The trader surmised the stone,
quickly examined it under the magnifying glass and positioned it on the balance
plate 2.01 carats. Some of the members of the group, presumably but not
always diggers, stood up slightly from their chairs to check the weight, either to
determine their initial bargaining position or to confirm the measurement given
by a previous competitor in case the balance had been fixed. A calculator was
passed around among the diggers, confirming the number on display or punching new ones in until finally settling on a price. The trader glanced over at their
offer but was clearly not interested in the small stone in front of him, all piqu,6
too ruined, like the many others he will see throughout the day. The main voice
in the group responded firmly: Im a son of the house. Accumulate [increase
monetary offer]! Youre the boss. You have a bank, we dont.
In his capacity to amass large amounts of cash, Boss Tom is a big buyer,
known locally as Pai Grande (Big Father), Patro or Boss (originally in English).
The recent renovation of his commercial space reflects Toms concern for his
public image and that of his house. Unlike his brother and commercial partner, who enjoys buying diamonds in moments of collective effervescence by
attending to multiple groups of sellers at once and taking pride in cultivating an
image of generosity and exuberance, Tom attempts to distance himself from that
image and the social responsibilities accruing from a traders expected largesse.
In his own analogy, Tom is a strict but frank evaluator, playing the bad cop to his
brothers good guy persona, and thoroughly seems to enjoy the fine-grained
evaluations. The public reputation of the buyer, however, is only a stepping stone
to validating the knowledge and expertise necessary to assess diamonds and
thus mitigate the risks of fallibility and uncertainty associated with this economy
of monetary transaction.
Over time, Boss Toms trading post has grown from a shabby-looking, poorly
lit office into one of the most influential and busiest diamond offices in Lucapa,
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a mining town and major hub of diamond mining and trading in the Lunda Norte
province. Since my last visit, it had been turned into an upscale and air-conditioned office, furnished with sleek black chairs, an elegant leather couch and a
glass coffee table with an assortment of travel magazines. His diamond business works in tandem with the family-owned retail warehouse, located on the
main thoroughfare of the city in a two-story building surrounded by high walls
and metal gates, which spans an entire block. On any given day, hundreds of
people congregate in the vicinity of the warehouse and retail store. Far from the
general public at the back, a dozen or so warehouse workers unload trucks from
Luanda, stacking large pallets of frozen meat, cases of national and imported
beer, sacks of flour and a wide array of other items in high towers.
Toms trading office is a public reflection of his buying power and reputation,
where he often entertains up to hundreds of diggers, their sponsors (financial backers), and petty traffickers. More established diamond traders and state
officials also check in routinely, sharing the latest news on the diamond market,
soliciting favours, borrowing money or collecting payment for services. Having
weathered the impact of the 2008 financial crisis that put a significant number
of corporate mining projects on hold or made them insolvent, this was now a
full-blown diamond operation, with fixed daily expenses (not including capital to
acquire diamonds) of thousands of dollars, up to a dozen cars to support mining
operations (transport diggers and facilitate food distribution) and an additional
agent on the frontline of digging sites. To cope with growing demand, his business now has multiple evaluating rooms, arranged by estimated price range
between the ground and first floors. The most valuable stones are traded directly
in his office, where Boss Tom can entertain multiple groups of sellers at once,
although he prefers having one group at a time to prevent conflicts and stop
valuable information from leaking to rival traders.
My arrival was announced by walkie-talkie to the upstairs room. Although
only a few metres away, Boss responded with a laconic let him in, and the
senior guard unbolted the heavy metal door separating me and the main trading room. I left behind a bustling scene in the commercial warehouse, filled with
retail clients loading their vehicles with supplies, a large group of loosely affiliated house employees, and a crowd of spectators. At the Bosss suggestion,
I took the chair immediately to his right, across the main table, a spot usually
reserved for his junior associate.
The traders table is the centrepiece of diamond trading rooms, where
beneath a fluorescent light one commonly finds a stack of white sheets of paper
providing an initial colour contrast for grading purposes. To his left, Tom kept a
personal laptop logged in on Skype to communicate with foreign buyers and
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family abroad. Behind him, atop a sturdy locked vault, was a currency-counting
machine: the coveted sound of flipping crisp US dollar bills is the tell-tale sign of
a successful transaction. To his right were two electronic balances, and below
his desk, hidden from the curious stares of diggers, he kept a colour-grading
machine, the most expensive piece of equipment in the business of evaluating
diamonds, used when presented with high-grade stones of dubious colouring.
Strewn across the table were various calculators (frequently used during transactions so as to talk on the machine), magnifying glasses for close inspection
of diamonds and miniature shovels to move smaller lots of diamonds onto the
balance dish and place them in small zip-sealed bags according to carat, weight
and colour. He often left these bags in plain sight, a customary sign of trust and
clear evidence of his financial power.
Talk of the market

The best kamanga comes from the mouth, I was once told. In a literal sense,
the best diamonds need to be hidden away, often in the mouth. More figuratively,
a good diamond is also the product and effect of intense debates: the mutual
valuation of diamonds is negotiated in language use, and power relations
signalled in economic transactions are established in conversation. This statement also indicates the proximity of the material of diamonds to the body itself, in
the interpenetrable nature of bodies and commodities, materiality and language.
Sellers (diggers, or someone on their behalf) are first known for deploying a
barrage of bargaining techniques in order to increase the offer, monetary or
otherwise, before consenting to the deal. Second, the body is therein posited
as the material process of social interaction where embodied practices are
rendered meaningful in its proper material context (Turner 1994: 29).
Trading in diamonds is a seemingly straightforward and ordinary event of
face-to-face interaction. A diamond trader (buyer) appraises one or more
diamonds and the digger (seller) can accept the offer or refuse it and move on
to the next trading post. In reality, however, the ethnographic moment of trading
diamonds is far more complicated than what this rendition might suggest. When
a diamond trades hands, there is more at stake than a simple monetary transaction defined by an assessment of the gemstone or the reputation of the buyer.
Let us consider this problem more closely.
Importantly, representations of the market take centre stage in these negotiations. Traders invoke their privileged and expert knowledge of the market: I
know the market, you have to trust; my market does not work with this kind of
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[small] stone; or the Boss of capital in Belgium says dont buy. This knowledge
of the market is often contested with responses along the same lines.7 Rather
than being bound by the experts and expertise put forth in evaluation, I take
these moments of trade and talk of exchange as ritual events structured in a
knowledge and speech of negotiation that anchors cultural constructs designed
to interpret diverging definitions of value (Keane 1997; cf. Silverstein 2004). In my
suggestion, the shifting nature of the material being traded is articulated in the
tension between a language of the market and the experiential and sensorial
awareness of the diamonds material qualities.
While talk of the market seems dull and uninteresting, humour and joking
are also injected into these conversations, providing a serious commentary
on the material of the commodity, capital accumulation, or the market. These
communicative strategies, including the mockery of the traders higher standing,
substantiate claims about external and intangible phenomena (again, capital or
the market) brought to bear on the exchange itself. In a revealing example, when
one trader asserted that there is problem in the world market, there is crisis
of money, the attending crowd of diggers burst out laughing. Surrounded by
the buyers ostentatious and seemingly successful commercial enterprise, the
group of diggers found his claim so preposterous that the supposed gravity of
the argument was turned on its head by being rendered as a joke. Conversely,
though rare, these jokes can lose their intended effect and become dangerous
if the negotiating parties do not signal a willingness to play along (Basso 1979:
43)with the temporary transformation and reversal of social roles thus entailed.
Consider the following exchange in Toms office. The trading office was full
to capacity with about 20 people, but more sellers continued to arrive. Unlike
other exchanges, the large stone placed on the table sparked Toms interest,
and perhaps in light of it, he set up the negotiation by complaining about a
depressed market. The groups main interlocutor questioned his complaint by
trivializing his standard formula of declining markets: What crisis? Do we have
crisis? Angola never had crisis! Crisis is there!8
Reacting to the groups initial offer, Boss Tom pretended to return the stone as
a sign of lack of interest, accusing the group of being a chatty bunch (xaxeiros),
who only come here to drink soda (gasosa). There was laughter in response to
Toms banter, and the first moment in the negotiation was sealed. What followed
included a number of recurrent elements throughout the conversation: money
for work or loans, on the one hand, and the contentious origin of diamonds (with
frequent references to digging sites) on the other. Pressed to reveal the stones
colour and weight, Boss Tom accused the digger of being distrustful, hinting at
the possibility that the group may have tried to sell the stone to a different buyer
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prior to their visit. He continued: Im not worried about the weight, Im worried
about the colour. It is worth little, almost nothing ... Do you want to sell kamanga
or do you want to play?
This moment defined an important shift in the tone of the transaction. Jokes
became scarce and recriminations were exchanged between the parties. One of
the diggers who had been sitting down suddenly stood up, putting down a travel
magazine he had been busy flipping through. Pointing to his wrist, as if personifying a time-is-money attitude, he complained about their wasting of time: Lets
just negotiate. He asserted loudly: You should encourage. Kamanga isnt easy,
you dont understand . . . This is the third time were here. How many times
did we come here to receive? Notice, too, the purported inversion of assigned
social roles: Boss Tom did not know the price of kamanga, according to this
digger, and it was at the diggers suggestion (let us just negotiate) that the
transaction resumed. The group remained resolute: Were not going to leave
with the kamanga. They resorted instead to their familiarity and closeness to the
commercial post (This is the third time were here. Weve taken motorcycles and
everything) and their knowledge of digging, asking rhetorically if the trader had
ever gone digging. The terms of sacrifice and hardship, in fact, are here reversed:
finding kamanga isnt easy, a digger suggested, and we are poor because we
belong to this company, go[ing] for a week of hunger in the bush.
Although the stone was clean and had a good shape, its colour represented a problem for the trader, so much so that both parties seemed unwilling
to reach an agreement other than by way of taking out a loan or keeping the
unevaluated diamond in the traders premises. In this type of case, diamonds
are kept sealed on consignment to ensure that the group returns to sell their
production, setting a pledge of moral debt in a paperless contract.9 In addition,
some traders find ways to assess whether the group visited a rival trader prior
to their arrival. Truthfully or not, however, most diggers are adamant in denying
having had any previous evaluation: We havent circled around with that one, I
swear, this is our house.
The trader played off on the impasse by suggesting the group seek a different appraisal: You guys are complicated. Go around to any pronturio (trading
office). $1,000 (USD) is the maximum theyll pay. L colour, round, 1.95 carats.
Thats the stones classification, okay? Wrapping the stone in a piece of paper,
he concluded by saying Ill save it with your name on it and give you a thousand
dollars (USD). Avoiding the stalemate, the trader agreed to sell but not without
explaining his risk of bankruptcy, the plummeting sale price in Belgium and the
need to work to set money aside in a bank. The group left with the money. It was
unclear for the negotiating parties whether the money was an advance for the
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labor (work money), the groups contractual relationship with the company, or
monetary compensation in exchange for holding the commodity.
This exchange offers an important contrast between labor, knowledge and
capital. Before agreeing to sell, the trader moves from acting indifferently to
the transaction to questioning the origin and quality of the stone. Against the
potential of subsoil riches and future gains, the trader counters by offering a
loan (acting as a de facto bank). The expert knowledge required to evaluate a
stone, moreover, is juxtaposed to the traders lack of familiarity with the work of
digging. Importantly, in order to convince the group of diggers to sell elsewhere,
the trader delivers the stones minute classification colour, form, weight thus
acquiescing to his last remaining source of authority over the transaction.
These elements of ritual expertise, play and loss of control (Turner 1977)are
critical in the reproduction of capital, defined less by its efficacy (e.g. the
calculation of value affixed to a diamonds material properties) than by the
elements brought forth to forge the ritual situation and the diamond itself.
These can range from the temporary suspension of otherwise rigid social
identities, the dispute over the tempo of the transaction (lets just negotiate)
or, finally, the definition of a diamonds material properties in its capacity
to circulate between trading posts. In other words, these communicative
modalities reaffirm the negotiating power by subverting those in control of
the exchange (Do what we tell you, a more daring digger commanded),
shifting between indifference and deference, ritual drama and play, insult and
joking, exoteric and esoteric knowledge. What is more, standard formulas of
negotiation can be easily denounced as such, both by a process of mimetic
parody (notice when the digger pressed the trader over time, pointing to his
wrist where there was no watch) or when a message proves inadequate to
its context of delivery.
What is more, if the boss is said to possess a bank stashed away in his vault,
talk of currencies and capital is also framed in terms of accumulation, much like
prices fluctuate in a geography of upward and downward movements (raise,
lower, increase, decrease). Similarly, the market is a constant elliptic reference
in the dialogue between buyer and seller, providing the moral predicament and
pragmatic justification to contextualize any given offer (e.g. the crisis, there). In
perhaps the most deployed rhetorical device, traders personify the market and
voice its momentary qualities: the market is bad or, conversely, if the market
was strong I would buy. This remains true irrespective of diggers or sellers
attitude and posture vis--vis the sale. Finally, although negotiating by invoking
the external (and physically absent) properties and capacities of capital and
global markets (there and not here), the outcome of these negotiations requires
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an agreement over what is, in the end, present and tangible: the materials in
ritual exchange.
Materials in exchange
One of the idiosyncrasies of diamond exchange is that intense negotiations
notwithstanding, prices are theoretically predetermined according to a chart
shared regularly by the state with all licensed buyers in Angola, providing an
approximate guideline for the acquisition of diamonds. Being merely indicative,
the chart offers a price range per carat (based on their size, colour, clarity, cut or
a combination of these) and is subject to the arbitrariness of the categories themselves. More often than not, the stones placement within the evaluation chart is
the product of intense disputes between sellers and official buyers. In fact, one
slight disagreement in colour may represent a difference of several thousands
of dollars or more per carat. Diggers and unlicensed buyers do not have access
to official charts, and this disparity in knowledge, and the capacity to depreciate the stone rhetorically or convince a buyer of its value, often becomes one of
the main driving forces behind the negotiation.10 In what follows, I examine how
specific materials, in the broad sense of resources from machines, gifts, or
colour categories impact on the material value of diamonds and the establishment of final prices.
Take the following situation, when a 9-carat diamond showed up for sale in
Toms office. He louped the large stone through a magnifying glass, tossing it
negligently over a white paper on the table, picking it up and louping it again,
repeating the movement a number of times. His cigarette burned in the ashtray,
untouched. He opened up the negotiation by intentionally depreciating the
stones quality: This is screwed. Nonchalant, the groups interlocutor asked for
a cigarette. Confronted by the seller on whether he wanted cigarettes or money,
the digger quipped, provocatively, I still havent asked for the motorcycle key.
Repeating his preliminary assessment, Tom pointed towards an internal crack
... from side to side, refusing to engage with the diggers request for a motorcycle and cell phones. Visibly irritated, the digger responded: How many holes do
I need to open for a kibula (large stone) to come out? How many holes? Tell me,
how many holes? The crack in the stone, he insisted, was Gods fault, not his.
Like in other transactions, a calculator, the machine, was passed around in
a muttered negotiation. The groups interlocutor sat across the table from Tom
and used his loupe to examine the stone. Along with the calculator machine,
the motorcycle key became a focal point of the negotiation (Give [us] two keys
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and then well understand each other, one digger commented). All the while,
other diggers punched numbers on the calculator, settling for $15,000 (USD).
Rejecting the figure presented to him, Tom belittled the stone, claiming it had
fire, or internal charcoal residues. The digger stood by the stones colour, referencing the traders race: Its your colour (white), isnt that good? If it comes out
our colour, or coffee-colour . . ..
In a first reaction, the trader was quick to dismiss the stone by suggesting it was ruined, tossing it over and picking it up again. While the group of
diggers indulged in cigarettes and alcohol, the trader thoroughly analysed
the stone from different angles, meticulously evaluating it. In the meantime,
conscious of its potential value, diggers opened up the negotiation by presenting what Tom considered a number of unrealistic demands. Chief among the
groups demands was a motorcycle, and convincing the trader that the stone
was deemed worthy of it would exponentially increase its valuation. Rather than
dismissing the sellers repetitive requests, as if testing the limits of the traders
authority, Tom contrasted them with the stones defects. Although the 9-carat
diamond was large enough for the group of diggers to have a clear perception, and act upon its sheer potential value, it was only when it became clear
that motorcycle keys would not be put on the table that the group offered their
price. As their patience wore thin, in fact, the forceful negotiation conducted by
the groups main interlocutor, and particularly his insistence on the motorcycle,
a prestigious sign of material wealth, became a source of contention among the
group, some of whom preferred other methods of negotiation. One digger in
the group stood up and suddenly sought to expedite the negotiation: Lets talk
on the machine [calculator]. I havent had breakfast today ... Were not here to
tell a story but [get] price.
After a brief exchange, the trader made a counteroffer of $4,000 (USD),
mediated by the calculator machine, which was passed across the table for the
diggers to see. This is a kamanga of problems, he explained. If it was a good
stone, Id give [a motorcycle] with pleasure ... Its not worth buying if it means
problems ... go wash [gravel] and good things will come out. Tom ended up
raising his offer and closed the deal by giving away mobile phones in recognition
of the groups allegiance to his trading post: Here, phones for everyone.
The value of diamonds, as I have suggested, could not be ensured without proper market appraisal and the authority granted by technical expertise.
Despite being a seasoned trader renowned for his modest evaluations, Tom
knew this was a kamanga of problems and so decided to hear a definitive evaluation. We drove to the main state agency (ASCORP/SODIAM)11 in town, where
diamonds legally bought are resold and divided in lots according to official price
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charts. The agencys senior evaluator, a middle-aged Israeli, received us in a

small office with two chairs, a computer, and practically no decorative elements
other than the usual diamond appraisal paraphernalia. In silence, the evaluator
proceeded immediately to loupe the stone from different angles, scratching at
the surface and placing it inside an ink-based acidic solution for colour reaction.
He continued to loupe the diamond, taking measures and repeatedly placing it
on the balance tray as if the weight could have changed in the time it took him to
examine its interior. To the traders dismay, he appraised the diamond at about
$500 (USD) per carat, significantly less than what he had just paid for the stone.
Had it been clean of its crooked cleavage and piqu inclusions, he explained in
amicable terms, it would be worth $8,000 (USD) per carat.
Significantly, material objects such as the calculator machine or the myriad
of gifts expected from these transactions can increase the expectations of
a stones material value or, conversely, act to deter the stones movement.
Although meant to complement the monetary transaction, gifts such as motorcycles, cellular phones, clothes, drinks and food can sometimes be equated
to the value and wealth of money proper. As one digger put it, in referring to
diamonds fungibility, good kamanga is [a] motorcycle. In order to maintain
a reputation, out of respect for established customers, or in order to forge the
potentiality of future transactions, the trader is often obliged to pay for transportation and food, even when diamonds are not directly exchanged. Work
provisions and subsistence goods are also handed out as support in the form
of a voucher to be claimed over time (jeton, or token). Though wary of customers uninterested in selling diamonds and only looking to benefit from this kind
of support, a trader also needs to maintain his presence as a living force in the
diamond market and preserve his image of a big patron (pai grande). As was
explained to me, the more you retract [from buying], the more kamanga runs
away, thus justifying the need to either provide some form of support or buy
diamonds at a short margin of profit.
Alongside the calculator and other material objects, colour, and the machine
purported to define it, emerges as a significant element in these transactions
and the negotiation of gifts and monetary gains. Colour is a seemingly objective
category in the grading process, more so than clarity or what is often described
as the inner life of the diamond12 (Calvo 2013). The principle is somewhat
paradoxical: the most sought out colour is the lack thereof (translucent pure
white, D). As one trader put it, the more colourless, the best colour it is. While
no one would turn down a coloured diamond (pinks are said to be rare, and
some traders claim to have never seen blue diamonds), problems emerge with
the classification of tones and shades of colour, leaking between categories. Is it
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light or full light? Pink, brown, or champagne? The entire process of evaluating a
diamond is fraught with uncertainty, and colour categories partake in this economy of risk and speculation. To mitigate the uncertainty, traders occasionally
make use of the colourimeter, a small yet expensive device used to determine
a diamonds grading by its colour. Based on the diamonds capacity to absorb
light, this remains however an unreliable measurement subject to error (Collins
1984).13 In one specific event when the results proved inconclusive, the trader
falsely explained the limits to his machine according to a colour scheme ranging from D (colourless) to Z (light yellow): Look, its not even K [faint yellow]. Its
below K ... Below K the machine wont say.
In these circumstances, colour categories combine with other qualities of
the stone to create what might be called composite materials (cf. Drazin, this
volume). For example, white charcoal signifies an internal fluorescent tension,
lighting up. By louping the diamond under water, as is customary in artisanal
mining operations, any reflection indicates the presence of charcoal. Irrespective
of the colour, strong and vivid tonalities are always valued, and some traders
make a point of keeping imperfect diamonds of vivid colours to themselves,
removed from circulation. In other cases, however, traders are fast to get rid
of certain coloured stones. A diamond that circulates between trading posts
quickly depreciates, marked by a potential internal inclusion (Calvo 2013). In
some cases, traders suggest that by circling around (girar) the colour will drop.
In this case, significantly, the movement of colour is experienced in the alignment between a technical classification and the expectation of its value: given
the stones lack of quality, the prospect was that by moving from digging site to
different trading post, its colour category, or perceptions thereof, would drop in
each transaction.
Conclusion
By situating the act of trading as communicative and social practice performed
in interactions between traders and diggers, I hope to have demonstrated how
the material substratum of commodity value becomes tangible as a repertoire
of knowledge and labor. In the accumulative effect of utterances and discursive interactions, this talk of exchange connects the setting of trading rooms
to imagined representations of the global market. In other words, these discursive exchanges render visible how certain materials productively underlie social
and spatial relations (in practices of exchange), and in turn, how they become
productive features and material index of an imagined market logic (by the labor
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of exchange). This is a dynamic aspect of the ritual reproduction of capital,

defined less by the calculation of value affixed to a diamonds material properties than by the elements brought forth to the ritual event itself and the temporary
suspension of otherwise rigid hierarchical identities.
Other than being a semiotic object translating in social practice the abstract
forces of globalization (Keane 2008), a diamond actively disentangles diverging
regimes of valuation (material, semiotic, moral, or cultural) brought forth by the
liminal condition of a material extracted from nature and converted as economic
value. In lieu of taking the material object as abstracted from a very specific
set of political, economic, and social functions, I approached diamonds and
other materials machines or technical categories in the ethnographic convergence of economic instrumentality and ritual practice, space and time, local and
global processes. The participants in these exchanges, put differently, performatively and ritually deploy the objects natural, historical and cultural significance
in the mediating effect of language and enveloping social context: enacted
in the authoritative translation of the language of the market and surrounding materials (calculator machines or other appraisal instruments), the ritual
event of diamond exchange interprets and locks transformations in value. In the
process, value is given shape through multiple registers of materialization, be it
in the invocation of labor and natural wealth or in the utterances of space-time
dialogues of exchange.
One of these registers, importantly, is the expert knowledge required to
detect occult sources of value. The ability to talk in machines is crucial to situate diamonds vis--vis a broader visual economy, namely that of divination. As
one informant described, diviners in Lunda (tahi) see in their machine, so as
to detect the cause of prolonged sickness. Similar to diamond evaluators, the
diviner also deploys some jars to see, look, and then voice his diagnosis.
Similarly to the manipulation of jars in the visit to the senior evaluator of the
states buying agency, this knowledge to talk and see in machines, or to let
the colour machine say value, echoes the expertise of diamond evaluation and
contributes to situating the production of value within a broader field of material
objects.
Notes
1. From the word for diamond stone (kamaang/kamanga) in local Cokwe-Lunda.
2. Research was based on fieldwork conducted in trading rooms in the provinces of Lunda
Norte and Lunda Sul, Angola. Specific evidence for this article was collected on diamond
trading practices in the urban axis of Calonda-Lucapa between 2008 and 2011. For the
purpose of this article, I focus specifically on one diamond merchant, whom I call Boss Tom.
206
3. The challenge here is the commensuration of value: how, and for whom, is something
deemed valuable? (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 1992). Following Munns pioneer work
on qualisigns (1986) and Harkness and Chumley (2013), I suggest elsewhere (Calvo
2013) how opposing experiences of trading and extracting diamonds organize semiotic
qualities of bodily movement (or qualia). Here, I wish to focus more explicitly on the material
components of trading diamonds.
4. Take, for example, Kockelmans reading of the commodity as a semiotic process that
gives way to an analysis of immaterial commodities (2006) or Asif Aghas proposition of
commodity formulations (2011).
5. In this, I follow theorizations positing the social and material world of things in motion
(Appadurai 1986; Bridge and Smith 2003: 3; cf. Foster 2006) so as to demonstrate the
interconnected spheres of production and consumption (Mintz 1985; Smith and Mantz
2006).
6. Piqu, or punctured, originally from French. It designates a diamonds range of internal
inclusions and spots. While the term has been replaced by more precise technical grading,
it is still widely used among Angolas traders.
7. For example, when quipped by the trader with the conventional assertion that the market
is bad, a digger simply replied that the market is not in the field where diamonds come
from.
8. Presumably referencing the decline in global diamond prices.
9. Boss Tom, for example, kept dozens of these stones, each lot sealed with the name of
an individual standing in for the group (saying on occasion, Im only taking care of your
kamanga). These contracts project the possibility of exchange into the near future, despite
no guarantees of a successful outcome as there is no formal control or obligation to sell at
the home office. Conversely, this arrangement is frequently invoked by groups of diggers
with a history of commercial interactions with a given trader or his company so as to ensure
better dividends.
10. This is valid particularly for the case of larger stones without internal defects. With smaller
stones, such as melee or huit-huit (below 0.18 carats) or sengas (up to 1 carat), traders
tend to expedite the sale or avoid it altogether.
11. ASCORP (Angola Selling Corporation, a joint venture of private and public interests) and
SODIAM (Sociedade de Comercializao de Diamantes de Angola, a public branch of
state-owned Endiama) are the main agencies responsible for acquiring rough diamonds
in Angola. In Lunda, they are used interchangeably to refer to the states official buying
channels.
12. Also described as pujana (vitality), that which catches your eye if two exact same diamonds
have the same weight, colour and form.
13. Given its subjective results as well as clearly indexing the buyers interest in the stone, this
colour machine is only used sporadically with larger stones.
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Kockelman, P. (2006), A Semiotic Ontology of the Commodity, Journal of Linguistic
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The University of Chicago Press.
Part5
Ecologies of materials
social lives
Chapter12
Sustainability and the
co-constitution of substances
and subjects
Sarah Wilkes
This chapter examines the role that materials play in mediating the constitution of moral persons. It draws on ethnographic research among the materials
scientists, engineers and designers that make up membership of the Institute
of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), a professional body representing the
UK materials industry (Wilkes 2013). Rather than focusing on any one material, this research takes a horizontal view across myriad materials to explore the
ways in which materials as diverse as PVC, concrete, carbon fibre, paper and
steel jostle for market share and are dynamically and differentially categorized
as sustainable or unsustainable. In this chapter I focus on attempts to classify a
few of these materials as sustainable and explore how both moral persons and
moral materials are constituted in the process. I argue that the production of a
sustainable material is intimately connected with the construction of a sustainable producer, and vice versa.
My research participants in the UK materials community1 are coming to appreciate materials in new ways as a result of concerns about sustainability. Materials
producers are increasingly recognizing that this nebulous concept can have an
enormous impact on the success of their product. Since the publication of the
United Nations report Our Common Future (Bruntland and WCED 1987),2 there
has been a move in the materials industry away from thinking about sustainability
as the single issue of environmental impact and towards a more holistic and
modern understanding of the concept,3 which encompasses the three pillars
of economic, environmental and social sustainability. There is a growing belief
among materials scientists that if they are to achieve true sustainability, a concern
with the physical or technical aspects of materials is no longer enough. Among
my research participants the concept of sustainability seems to act as a byword
for ethics, and judgments about the sustainability of their materials are intimately
212
linked to producers transformations into ethical persons. The question of how

materials are sorted out (Bowker and Star 2000)into categories of sustainable or
unsustainable is therefore heavily imbued with questions of morality.
This chapter focuses in part on the techniques used by the materials community to try and govern materials and thus constitute themselves as sustainable
producers. Drawing on Foucaults (1985) discussion of ethics, I explore how
materials producers subject themselves to moral codes to transform themselves
internally. However, this chapter goes beyond the Foucauldian perspective to
explore how producers can only achieve their moral vision by subjecting their
materials to the same ethical work that they subject themselves to (1985: 27).
In governing their materials, producers also govern themselves. During an investigation of practices of governing materials, it becomes clear that nature cannot
be forced to say anything we want it to (Prigogine and Stengers 1984: 5). As
Gregson, Watkins and Calestani (2010) demonstrate in their study of asbestos,
materials have the potential to resist, inform and constrain human strategies of
control. This chapter therefore draws on the work of vital materialists and waste
scholars to show materials acting recursively on their producers, restricting and
enabling the kinds of moral judgments that can be made about them and shaping the ethical sensibilities of their makers. It argues that ethics is not a solely
human affair (Verbeek 2008: 18)but rather arises from the interplay of people
and the materials that they produce, use and dispose of.
The structure of this chapter is as follows: the first half of the chapter explores
three of the many ways in which people try to govern materials to make them fit
with their ideas of sustainability. Firstly, I look at how my research participants
manage flows of information about materials in order to affect their own and
their materials sustainability. Secondly, I focus on the techniques of the self
that producers use to constitute themselves as sustainable producers. Finally I
explore how producers govern materials to make them more sustainable.
The second half of the chapter explores the ways in which materials impact
on these human strategies of control. It puts forward the argument that several
different conceptions of sustainability exist across the UK materials industry, and
the kinds of issues that these conceptions prioritize vary. These understandings of sustainability, and the ethical sensibilities of producers, are informed by
their lived experience (Kleinman 1998: 358), of which the particular affordances
of their specific materials are an important part. Finally, in a comparative case
study of PVC and oxo-biodegradable plastics producers, I focus on the ways in
which the affordances of the materials that these producers deal with on a daily
basis constitute their lived experience and thus affect their understandings of
sustainability.
Sustainability and the co-constitution of substances and subjects
213
Making knowledge mobile

In order to make moral judgments about the relative sustainability of materials, people require more, and different kinds of, information about materials.
My research participants spoke about the difficulties involved in assessing the
sustainability of material in a generic way if you dont know the specific context of
extraction, production, use and disposal. Understanding the relative sustainability of a material or product therefore requires us to know its story or biography.
As a result, in order to make decisions about the sustainability of materials it
is commonly thought that we depend upon transparency in the supply chain.
Industry cannot achieve the ethical and equitable production and use of materials without a transparent and self-regulated community of suppliers and
consumers (Tsoukas 1997: 828).
During a conversation with Jack, a designer at a small clothing company,
I was particularly struck by his complaint that a lack of information is his
greatest handicap in choosing sustainable materials. Jack argues that it is
not until we have all the data in front of us, that we can really start to appreciate
the causality of our actions. He describes the black box areas of fragmented
information that he kept walking into, which resulted in confusion about
sustainable textiles. Lauding the benefits of the process of understanding
as much as possible, he links this directly to both good business practice
and good environmental practice. This involves managing our supply chain
efficiently, with effective timing so that everything is running smoothly and on
time, so we dont have to rush things with air transportation. He suggests
that gaining knowledge about the supply chain causes them to change their
behaviour, to act differently, which has implications for the sustainability of
their products:
For me, I feel the most important environmental consideration is understanding
what it is that we are doing, and in that respect, trying to do things differently.
Now that could be as subtle as buying fabric from a factory that is closest to
where we are getting [our product] made, as opposed to an existing supply
chain because we are trying to reduce energy. But the crux of it is doing something differently, and we do things differently because we understand what is
going on.
Jack implies that once acquired, information about the supply chain cannot be
ignored and has immediate and positive effects on their decision-making process. In a discussion about responsible sourcing, Paul, marketing manager for
a multinational materials producer, also comments on the profound effects that
214
information about the supply chain coming to light can have on a company.
He remembers one brand that is now one of the global leaders in responsible sourcing, but only because they virtually lost the whole company because
they were having children sew their footballs and a television programme on
the topic created a knee-jerk reaction from consumers. This resonates with
Marilyn Stratherns argument that in the Euro-American tradition some types of
knowledge are constitutive, and these potent causative agents can have an
immediate social effect (1999: 75).
Paul also describes the process whereby the very act of instituting a box-ticking exercise like a sustainability questionnaire can actually push responsibility
through the supply chain. Even though he describes this as the result of a
policy and part of a process, his comments suggest that the act of reporting,
and the knowledge it produces, engenders responsibility and ethical behaviour.
At the end of this process, hopefully the consumer then will know that the mines
that mined the [material] for the car that hes driving around werent staffed by
10year old boys. This is reminiscent of Foucaults practices of the self (1985:
29); in subjecting themselves to a set of moral practices, these manufacturers
constitute themselves as responsible people. Paul also implies that by asking his
suppliers questions, he is ensuring that they behave responsibly. This suggests
that the flow of information between supplier and user is somehow positive and
generative in itself.
Jack implies that a willingness to share information is indicative of the trustworthiness of his suppliers, and that receiving information from them also has
moral implications for his company:
I would always say if you have a choice of going with one company that seems
to have more environmental credentials than another, but the one that doesnt
have environmental credentials has more transparency, so that you can actually engage with the process more, I would always go with the latter. Because in
doing so youre effectively taking responsibility for what it is that youre doing
who youre investing in as opposed to having blind faith that because this
person has accreditation, theyre doing something that maybe they are not.
In stating that he would rather work with a transparent company than have
blind faith in one with credentials that they may not live up to, Jack stresses
the importance of visibility for validating trust. Its only when he can see everything that he can trust his suppliers. This belief in the value of transparency is
a recurring theme in my fieldwork and illustrates a key point made by Strathern
that in the information society, with its commitment to evidence-based policy,
ensuring that knowledge travels begins to carry political and moral burdens
215
(2004: 27). In her examination of higher education evaluation techniques,

Strathern argues that this auditing process relies on the assumption that
increased visibility or transparency will axiomatically increase the moral standing of an organization: if procedures and methods are open to scrutiny, then
the organization is open to critique and ultimately to improvement (2000: 313).
Among my research participants, attempts are made to encourage the free flow
of information between supplier and user and producer and consumer, and to
ensure visibility in the supply chain, with the expectation that this will guarantee
moral robustness.
Within Science and Technology Studies, scholars like Pickering (2003) and
Knorr-Cetina (1999) have critiqued the assumption that knowledge has some
magical property that allows you to accomplish anything and exert rational
control on the world (Pickering 2003: 102). However, as anthropologists we must
pay attention to the commonsense assumptions of our informants. Drawing on
Daniel Miller and James Carriers (1998) theory of virtualism, I would argue that
this belief in the efficacy of knowledge can have material effects. Whether we
consider materials knowledge to be an intangible abstraction or a concrete
practice, it has undeniable material consequences, even if they are not the ones
expected. Information led Jack to reduce his energy use, and beliefs about
the efficacy of free-flowing knowledge led him to change his zip supplier and
choose one merino wool over another, therefore impacting on material flows of
energy, materials and money.
Internal transformation and

technologies of the self
The first part of this chapter explored the idea that the management of information about materials can lead to both ethical conduct and more sustainable
materials and processes. The sustainability of a material also cannot be divorced
from judgments about the motives or mentality of its producers. Determining the
relative sustainability of a material obviously relies to an extent on its physical
performance during use and disposal. However, a materials social, economic
and environmental impact also depends on what happens behind the closed
doors of factories and other extraction and production sites. Assessing the
sustainability of a material therefore requires a degree of trust in producers
descriptions of these processes. Since the sustainability of a material is thought
to depend on the actions and the motives of the people who produce it, a
sustainable material requires an authentically sustainable producer.
216
During my research I found that it was not uncommon for one producer
to express doubt about the motives of another producer in adhering to environmental assessment schemes or sustainability frameworks. As I discuss
in greater detail elsewhere (Wilkes 2013), there was a perceived difference
between producers who espouse an outward-facing, superficial, shallow version
of sustainability and those for whom achieving sustainability involves a deep,
internal commitment. This became apparent during one discussion between a
multimaterial group of materials producers. For example, branding expert Baron
argued that there is a massive difference between those producers that have
truly embraced sustainability, and those who are merely paying lip service
or being seen to be sustainable. Fellow branding researcher Arun theorized
that we are currently seeing a move from the light green business philosophy
of adding a hessian pack to make products comply with concerns to a deep
green philosophy that places nature before humans and argued that this move
requires the internal transformation of industries and individuals. Metallurgist Bill
added that if the idea of sustainability is intrinsic in your culture, youll be more
successful at achieving it. Baron agreed that for a sustainability policy to be
implemented effectively you need to get everyone in the company, including
those people on the shop floor, to think in the right way. This was one of a
number of conversations that suggest that true sustainability requires an internal transformation that can only be achieved if motivations are genuine.
When speaking to PVC producer Lewis, who adheres to the sustainability
frameworks The Natural Step (TNS), he argues that the internal transformation of
both individuals and companies can be affected by a sustainability philosophy.
Lewis describes the impact of TNS on the trajectory of his material, his company,
his colleagues and his lifestyle choices. PVC is a material that has received a lot
of hostility over the last few decades with regards to its sustainability and was
most notably the subject of a single-issue campaign by Greenpeace from the
1990s onwards. Greenpeace campaigns outside PVC factories spurred questions from some employees families as to the virtue of the product they were
making. Lewis sat through years of meetings where nobody challenged the
Greenpeace position on PVC, and he described his experiences of meetings
with retailers at that time as feeling like the naughty boy in the class. However,
the industry today looks very different; PVC windows have been given an A and
A+ rating from the Building Research Establishments (BRE) Green Guide,4 and
one manufacturer has been held up as exemplary case study of a sustainability
journey (Brennan and Smith 2008: 19).
The turning point for Lewis was when he first came into contact with Forum for
the Future, the charitable organization that holds the UK licence for TNS. Forum
217
for the Future were brought in to arbitrate between Greenpeace and the Vinyl
Institute at a critical moment in discussions with retailers, who were deciding
whether or not to deselect the material. As a result of this meeting, TNS began
working with the PVC industry in 1999. At the time of their first report, the TNS
team were not uncritical of the material, and noted that there were a number of
substantive challenges to making PVC sustainable, but commented that alternative materials cannot be assumed to be any more or less sustainable given
current manufacture (Everard, Monaghan and Ray 2000: 2).
Partnering with TNS had a dramatic and positive impact on his companys
working environment. Employees became fully steeped in the journey of their
industry towards sustainability, with many of them undertaking training in their
free time. Staff were encouraged to contribute ideas on issues like what could
be done on carbon neutrality, and Lewis suggests that their faith in their industry
was restored. This created a very different working environment:
Youve no idea how fantastic that was in terms of creativity. There was just a
real buzz, with people just thinking, This a great opportunity for us to come up
with some really good ideas. Many of them were doing it in their spare time. It
gave employees empowerment, if you like.
Lewis characterizes his encounter with TNS as a revelatory moment, a real

moment in his career, and describes the transformative effects this process had
on him personally:
I live and breathe TNS, I really do, fundamentally. It has changed my life
massively. Even down to things like choice of car: Ive got a Prius, and Ive still
got it, its six years old.
In the case of PVC and its producers, the TNS sustainability framework had a
drastic impact on the ethical sensibilities of people involved in its production.
Lewis suggests that having a sustainability framework to structure his thinking
helped him to act more sustainably.
Controlling materials and processes

Authentic motives and genuine immersion in a sustainability philosophy are
thought to be crucial for achieving true sustainability. However, Lewis also
emphasizes the importance of the physical transformation of his material in this
process. One of the key tenets of the Greenpeace campaign was that PVC was
inherently unsustainable as a result of its chlorine content and heavy metal
218
stabilizers. According to Lewis, a key moment in the fortunes of PVC came

during a meeting with Jonathon Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future, when
he questioned what was wrong with PVC. When the response came from the
Greenpeace representative that it uses heavy metals in manufacture and that
theres all this PVC thats ended up on landfill sites, Porritt questioned what the
retailer response would be if they [PVC manufacturers] were not to use heavy
metal stabilizers? and asked, Can PVC be recycled?
Once the inherent unsustainability of the material had been refuted, this
paved the way for a number of changes in the UK PVC industry. This process
resulted in quite substantive changes to the material itself. A year later, in the
year 2000, a consortium of PVC producers (ECVM, the European Council of Vinyl
Manufacturers) came together to commit to a series of industry-wide voluntary
commitments to waste management, innovative recycling technologies, stakeholder engagement and responsible use of additives (Vinyl2010 2011; VinylPlus
2013). At their biannual conference in 2010 they had successfully phased-out
two of their three heavy-metal stabilizers (cadmium and bisphenol A) from PVC
and had reduced lead stabilizers by 50 per cent (Vinyl2010 2011), and they had
also managed to develop technology for the recovery and recycling of 270,000
tonnes of PVC. One speaker at the conference described it as a new PVC and
argued that the material had changed significantly over the last 10years (PVC
2011). Lewiss account makes it clear that the physical transformation of their
product was a turning point in the internal transformation of his industry.
This example shows that in governing their materials, producers also govern
themselves, and during this process of self-realization, some very real changes
are effected in the technical and behavioural characteristics of the materials
and products that we produce and use. The first part of this chapter shows
that sustainability in materials and their makers is dynamically produced, and is
affected by attempts to govern information, people and materials themselves.
The following sections explore the ways in which specific materials resist these
attempts at control in particular ways.
Industrial patterns of attention

According to Honess, Coleman and Brimacombe (2008) sustainability can
never be defined as all things to all people there is a certain inevitability of it
always being different things to different people. In a similar vein, during his
presentation at a conference, metallurgist Bill comments that weve all seen
the definition, and work with it but its difficult to apply in practice (Innovation
219
Towards Sustainable Materials, ITSM, 2011). When it comes to sustainability,

one of the three things we all agree on [is] that there are different priorities in
different sectors and parts of the supply chain (ITSM 2011). Other speakers at
the same event expressed a similar sentiment, with one mining expert commenting that whats fashionable here in London may be very different in the rest of
the world: here, carbon and environmental impact are very high on the agenda,
but in India HIV, keeping staff in jobs, water and political problems are more
immediate concerns (ITSM 2011).
This recognition that understandings of sustainability are culturally specific is
a sentiment commonly expressed by sustainability professionals. An ungenerous observer might argue that this allows companies to redefine or selectively
view social problems to fit with the technologies they have.5 However, in both
academic literature and public debate, sustainable development is accused
variously of being imprecisely defined, impractical and internally contradictory
(Luke 1995; Watts and Ford 2012). As a result of the broad and all-encompassing nature of the concept, both producers and users of materials struggle on
a daily basis to implement sustainable development and make the nebulous
and generalized moral axioms of policy makers and heads of state intelligible,
particular and practicable.
As I discuss in detail elsewhere (Wilkes 2014), my research participants
find themselves confronted with extremely difficult trade-offs between, for
example, unemployment and carbon emissions. They explain that it is not the
case that they dont care about, for example, carbon emissions, the health
of a material or factory conditions. In the dynamic of daily decision-making,
they are constrained by finite limits, particularly of time and money, and they
inevitably have to prioritize some aspects of sustainability over others. As a
result, several different conceptions of sustainability exist across the different
communities that make up the UK materials industry, with each community
prioritizing different issues.
Over the course of my fieldwork I was involved in a number of multimaterial
sector discussions and meetings with sustainability professionals at the IOM3.
Round table discussions at these meetings, in conjunction with participant
observation at industry-specific conferences and interviews with different materials producers, allowed me to build up a picture of where industrial priorities
lay. For example, in conversations with architects and civil engineers, it became
evident that they were primarily concerned with the environmental impacts of
materials, and particularly the reduction of carbon emissions involved in making
and using materials. Duncan is a materials specialist at a civil engineering firm,
and when I asked him about sustainability, his immediate priority was to lower
220
the carbon footprint of a building, so much so that he nearly forgot to mention

the conditions of production of a material:
Sustainability is such a complex topic, we try and talk about it as four aspects
of it: the climate change impact of it, the resource depletion aspect of it,
whether its a healthy and safe material and . . . [the ethics of production?]
yes, thank you, responsibly sourced. I think there is a priority system if we are
going to do the right things in terms of how we build and manufacture things
and reduce our climate change impact, then the priority is to use materials
with a lower immediate carbon footprint and to build things that will reduce the
carbon emissions that we are producing now. So in terms of the priority, thats
a pretty urgent thing to do Id say. So thats why the carbon impact of something up front gets quite a high ranking in terms of the priority.
Duncan tells me that his priorities are also influenced by the fact that any material
he uses has to perform during the use phase of a building, and that performance contributes to the buildings overall environmental impact. He distinguishes
between the priorities for an industry where the product doesnt consume energy,
and one where the use phase contributes to the overall impact of the product:
With something like gold, which is only purchased as a luxury good, its all
about perception then it doesnt have any energy saving benefit, doesnt have
any performance in use in terms of environmental impacts. So in the end, the
social impact of it, I can see why that is the big priority. Whereas something like
aluminium, which is used in so many functional applications, has a big influence
on how well buildings perform, for example. It uses a lot of energy in extraction
and quite a lot in its reprocessing, so there, that becomes the priority.
This conversation suggests that the physical properties of the materials that
producers use, and the nature or application of the product a producer is
making, can impinge on their ethical stance and the concerns they prioritize.
Using a more detailed comparison of the priorities of two producers of different types of plastic, the following section will explore the idea that the particular
ethical sensibilities of these producers are formed in the process of making and
using specific materials.
A vignette: pvc and oxo-biodegradables

Within the plastics industry there seem to be very different ideas about what kinds
of qualities constitute a sustainable material. To return to Lewis, he is clearly very
221
proud of the changes they have made to their material and industry. However, he
also makes it clear that he has always had a devotion to his material, even at the
height of the Greenpeace campaign. He describes what he sees as its inherent
environmental and social benefits:
In my own heart, I believed we had a fantastic product. And, I say that with
absolute conviction, because all of the [other] polymers were largely 100%
from oil. Here, we were producing a polymer pretty magically in terms of half
of it coming from salt, which is an abundant natural resource on this planet. If
we were going to continue consuming in the way we are today, in terms of salt
supply, we could do that for the next 10,000years.
He also asserts the critical importance of his material to maintaining human

health:
I think things like medical bags, blood bags and all the rest of it ... well if you
didnt use those, what are you going to use? There wasnt really any alternatives to PVC for blood bags, so if youre going to phase it out, what are you
going to use there instead?
We discussed why PVC should not have been targeted in the same way as other
products of chlorine chemistry like CFCs, PCBs, DDT6 and mustard gas. Lewis
states:
All of those four substances have the propensity to be widely dispersed in
nature in terms of their use, because they are largely produced, apart from
PCBs, to disperse. And the other issue there is they have this persistency
element, which means potential bioaccumulation in the food chain.
PVC, however, uses a huge amount of chlorine, but actually its quite different to
these things. Lewis argues that this is because the material is not biodegrading, and therefore its not really shedding itself into the environment. He explains
that its because of this resistance to biodegradation that you dont get bioaccumulation in the same way:
Bacteria actually are not digesting [it] because it is a macromolecule, so
the molecule itself is just so big that you havent got this bio-magnification,
bio-accumulation.
Lewis states that this materials persistence is actually a strength in terms of

sustainable development, enhancing the amount of service to society that may
be delivered by a pool of atoms. This material is promoted as safe and sustainable as a result of its very resistance to biodegradability. This durability is largely
222
thanks to the technical properties and structure made possible by the addition
of chlorine, which makes it fire-retardant and allows it to be separated out from
other plastics for recycling.
The sustainability credentials of this plastic are couched in terms completely
contradictory to those of oxo-biodegradable plastics. Lewis sees durability,
stasis and the stability of his material over time as positive qualities. By contrast,
Stephen, a shareholder in an oxo-bio company, expounded the sustainability
benefits of materials with short lifespans, which could be safely disposed of.
During a sustainability seminar at a plastics industry trade fair, he describes this
polymer as a controlled-life plastic and states:
The advantage of oxo plastics as opposed to, for example, compostable plastics is you can actually tell it when to start degrading, it has a programmed
service life. So in the case of a bread bag, you can tell it to degrade in 6months,
in the case of a shopping bag, 18months, and in the case of a bag for life
maybe 5years.
Oxo-biodegradable (oxo-bio) plastics are traditional plastics in the sense that

they are made from petrochemical resources, but they are manufactured with a
additive that causes them to break down at a designated point in their lifecycle.
They are marketed in a way that positions them as analogous to natural materials: the manufacturer states that they harmlessly degrade at the end of their
useful life and can be bio-assimilated by microorganisms in the same way as
a leaf (manufacturers website).
He argues this material is also distinguished from other biodegradable
and oxo-bio plastics because it has been certified to international standards
for ecotoxicity: no known harmful heavy metals or other toxic or hazardous
substances are released when it breaks down. Stephen suggests that his
material is a solution to the problem of traditional plastics, whose strength and
durability normally makes them such a useful and economic material but can be
a major problem when disposal is required. He warns that:
Whilst most of us think that plastic is fantastic, it can also last for many
decades, and if it gets out into the environment, as some of it surely will, this
is a problem.
Stephen paints a picture of this problem of the visible, dispersed and long-lasting
effects of plastic waste. He describes its accumulation in the environment over
decades, its ingestion and incorporation by wildlife, and the plastic soups of waste
floating in the Pacific Ocean, covering an area greater than the size of Texas. He
positions his material as the solution to this disfigurement of the landscape.
223
These two producers of different kinds of plastics both make claims for
the sustainability of their material. As a result of the radically different physical characteristics of their material, however, they see sustainability as
completely different things. For Lewis, the durability of his material in the use
phase makes it efficient, safe and socially valuable, whereas for Stephen, the
degradability of his material at end-of-life makes it innocuous and environmentally beneficial.
Arthur Kleinman has formulated a theory of the ways in which ethical
discourse informs moral practice. He characterizes ethical discourse as the
abstract articulation and debate over codified values (1998: 363). Moral practices, however, are constituted at the local level of lived experience (363)
where our movements meet resistance and find directions, and our subjectivity emerges, takes shape, and reflexively shapes our local world (359). This
is not to suggest that ethical discourse is the precursor to moral experience;
protagonists of ethical discourse are, of course, grounded in particular moral
places and processes, thus moral experience informs ethical discourse (365).
Scholars like Peter-Paul Verbeek and Kersty Hobson have adopted this kind of
practice-based approach to ethics that takes into account the ways in which
moral persons are produced at the same time as moral objects. As Hobson
has argued in her study of the role of recycling bins in encouraging environmental behaviour, things do not just script certain practices and transfer
proper behaviour but rather solicit practices that forge specific socio-material
relations (2006: 325). Hobson states that ethics are neither abstract values,
nor scripted into technologies, but are worked up and through the objects
they refer to (2006: 330). Following Hobson and Verbeek, I would argue that
technologies shape us as specific moral subjects since they help to shape
human perceptions and interpretations of reality, on the basis of which moral
decisions are made (Verbeek 2008: 23).
I would argue that this is precisely what happens when materials
producers struggle to make sustainable development policy a reality; their
implementation of it is, necessarily, guided by their engagement in everyday life. This engagement involves interactions with particular materials and
their affordances, as well as with the perceived dangers and priorities that
occupy their industrys attention. In the process of making and using specific
materials, the particular institutional logic of these companies and the ethical
sensibilities of their employees are also produced. Because of the nebulous
nature of sustainability as a concept and the different lived experiences of
producers, different conceptions of sustainability and kinds of moral person
are produced.
224
Conclusion
For reasons that I discuss in greater detail elsewhere (Wilkes 2013), this chapter takes a deliberate methodological choice to focus on multiple materials, in
contrast to some of the other chapters in this volume. It provides less detail on
individual materials in order to provide more detail on the relationships between
them. This broader focus allows for observation of the dynamic struggles
between different materials and producers, where some materials periodically
gaining ascendancy over others. I would argue that an anthropological approach
to multiple materials adds a new dimension to this field of study.
This chapter shows that the sustainability of materials is thought to require
traceability and transparency in the supply chain. What we know about materials affects their success in the marketplace. This observation invites further
questions about the relationship between knowledge and the social efficacy of
materials, which I cannot deal with here due to constraints of time and space. As
I discuss elsewhere (Wilkes 2014), this speaks to existing anthropological literature on knowledge transmission (Barth 1990; Harrison 1995; Strathern 2004)that
explores how the management of knowledge can lead to changes in the status of
people. New research that examines how the stickiness of an object or material,
cognitively and meaningfully, can be affected by information about its biography
has the potential to add to this literature by examining how knowledge practices
can impact on the trajectories of materials as well as their makers.
In examining the interplay between the UK materials community, their strategies for sustainability, and the affordances and resistances of their materials, this
chapter also examines the ways in which ethical materials and their producers
are co-constituted. The data presented here demonstrates that there is a link
between the morality of a material and its maker. True sustainability is determined by the performance of the product itself but also by the ethics, actions and
motivations of the producer. When the sustainability of a material is assessed,
the credentials of the producer come under scrutiny, and vice versa.
The idea that the world is not plastic and resists our attempts to control it is
not a new one. What this chapter contributes to existing literature is an understanding of how both individuals and social groups are constituted through
the process of materials resisting attempts at governance in specific ways.
Industrial patterns of attention are developed and communities are formed
through interactions with specific materials. Because materials are often ignored
in anthropological studies,7 I want to emphasize their role in the co-constitution
of moral persons and sustainable materials. However, materials are not the only
disciplinary apparatus that play a part in this process. As Latour comments,
225
morality is a heterogenous institution that is constituted from a multiplicity of

events and that depends in part on technical apparatuses but also on a good
many other forms of organisation (2002: 254). People, institutions, tools for
knowledge production and transfer and manufacturing processes are some of
the actants that play a role in the dynamic and relational process whereby materials such as steel, copper and PVC come to be seen as sustainable. The social
value of a material is relationally constituted and cannot be understood in isolation from other materials, people, tools and practices.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
I use this term to designate both producers and users of materials affiliated with the IOM3.
Commonly known as the Brundtland Report.
Bill, metallurgist, personal communication.
The BRE Green Guide to Specification is an accredited system for comparing the
environmental impacts of building materials using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
5. Peter, sustainable chemist, personal communication.
6. CFCs, PCBs and DDT refer to Chlorofluorocarbons, Polychlorinated Biphenyls, and
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, respectively.
7. Miller (2007) asserts that the material is already the focus of material culture approaches.
While I agree with this assertion, I would argue that materials, as a plural entity developed in
relation to a scientific discipline of the same name, are less well studied.
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Chapter13
The peony and the rose: Social
change and fragrance marketing
in Chinas bath market
Chan Chow Wah
In 2007, Liushen, a Chinese soap and body wash brand (Figure13.1), overtook
Lux as the best-selling beauty soap and body wash brand in China. This is a very
rare achievement considering that in Asia the brands owned by global giants
such as Unilever and P&G usually dominate the market.
Utilizing market reports of the China bath market set against the political and social development of post-Cultural Revolution China, along with
Figure13.1 Liushen soap. Photograph by Chan Chow Wah.
228
interviews with Chinese consumers, I use the case of Liushen to focus on the
relationship between fragrance preference and social change. I propose that
collective fragrance preference in a society can be appropriated as a barometer of social change.
I present fragrance as an informed material (Barry, this volume) and a product of relationships, connections and networks, embedded in the historical
imagination of consumers. This perspective encourages a pluralistic approach
to understand the success of a brand not just within narrow confines of good
marketing. The social landscape that paved the way for Liushens success also
illuminates the limitations of the linear history of fragrance espoused by the
fragrance industry.
Smell: The neglected sense

Medical scientists have not quite understood the human mechanism of smell, and
cultures do not have the vocabulary to describe smells in any complete or absolute sense (Moeran 2005). Among the general public, discussions of fragrances
are communicated through references to other senses or through metaphors.
Our sense of smell can be argued to be the least understood of our senses. Yet
every culture has its order and hierarchy of senses and symbolisms.
Classen (1993) has documented the decline of olfactory culture in the West
as society evolved towards a visual-centric culture from the second half of the
seventeenth century. The changes in the sensory landscape of the West are
best reflected in the transformation of the rose, from an earlier focus on its
scent to a later focus on its visual qualities. Fragrance consumption in the West
has moved from public and collective to become private and personal. This
shift is also reflected in the restriction of smells and olfactory symbolism in the
modern West, especially as human senses have acquired a gendered association where men see and reason, while women sniff things out in a more
embodied sense. Fragrances as a material, within this history, began to be
more closely feminized.
Classens research explains several phenomena that we continue to observe
to this day and begins to account for anthropologys lack of attention to smell.
With feminized associations, fragrances continue to be linked with a real men
dont do this attitude, and even male scientists may blush and titter when given
a smelling strip used to evaluate fragrances (Turin 2006). Meanwhile, participant
observation, the anthropologists most well-known research methodology, is
also a product of the Wests visual-centric culture.
The peony and the rose
229
Despite our lack of understanding, almost everyone interacts with fragrances

on a daily basis as most consumer products are infused with fragrances
produced by a multibillion dollar fragrance industry. In fact, Moeran (2005) has
predicted that technology is bringing smell back into our daily lives and that it
will be more pervasive.
Bath products as fragrance barometer

With the exception of air-fresheners, body sprays and perfumes, consumers encounter and consume fragrances as part of a product. Generally, the
choice of fragrances in a product reflects the existing fragrance associations of
consumers in a particular market. The fragrance becomes part of the products
attributes and is even the primary communicator, as evidenced by peoples
tendency, in their role as consumers to smell products before purchase. In the
case of soaps and body wash, fragrance is the only dimension of the product
that lingers on the skin of the user and remains detectable by both the user and
people around the user.
The largest product categories for fragrances are fabric care, such as detergents and fabric softeners, and personal care products such as soap, body
wash and shampoo. Soaps and body wash are classified as bath products and
stand out as the categories that have the widest direct contact with end consumers. The purchaser of soaps and body wash in Asia, following the paradigm
of the market research reports, is usually a woman, but the entire family uses
the product almost on a daily basis and even several times a day. As such, the
purchaser needs to choose a product that is acceptable by the entire family,
including male members. Due to its wide and regular contact with the general
population in a market and country and the ability of its fragrance to linger on
the skin, soaps and body wash are a good indicator of fragrance appreciation
or preference in a society.
The fragrance industry

Fragrances infused into consumer goods are produced by the flavour and
fragrance industry. Each company usually has a flavour and a fragrance division.
The former produces flavours for use in food products while the latter produces
fragrances for consumer and industrial products that are not meant for use as
food. The industry in 2011 was worth about 22 billion USD, and the top four
companies controlled 55 per cent of the global market.1
230
The major fragrance houses employ perfumers, whose global number is

estimated to be about 500, a population less than the number of astronauts.2
They produce fragrances from a pallet of raw materials that include both natural
and synthetic raw materials,3 that are either natural identical or non-natural
identical.4
With thousands of fragrance creations, the fragrances are classified into
families. When new fragrance profiles become popular, the fragrance families
are updated to incorporate new subgroups. Each fragrance company has its
own classification methodologies that may differ from company to company.
An independent methodology is the fragrance wheel developed by Michael
Edwards and adopted by retailers to communicate fragrance profiles with
customers (see Figure13.2).5 Using this as an example, fragrances are classified as Floral, Oriental, Woody and Fresh. While floral, citrus and woody notes
are obvious and nature-inspired, the oriental category illuminates the strong
Western bias in the fragrance industry. Oriental notes refer to heavy blends of
Figure13.2 Michael Edwards fragrance wheel. Use with permission from Michael Edwards.
Note the original is in colour.
231
resins, opulent flowers, sweet vanilla and musk that conjure up the Near East, or
more specifically the Western imagination of the Middle East.
To a large extent, the fragrance industry smells the world from a Western
perspective and adopts a linear history of fragrance tracing its beginning in
ancient Egypt and through the Greek and Roman periods, and Renaissance
Europe to todays modern fragrance culture (Moeran 2005).6 This linear history
fails to take into consideration the olfactory culture of non-Western societies.
Chinese olfactory culture: The forgotten peony

In ancient times, Confucius was said to have been inspired by the orchid
fragrance, and used it as an analogy for unrecognized talents. Archaeological
excavations from third-century BCE Han tombs have unearthed fragrance holders with gyroscopic principles (Michaelson 1999).
A millennium later, the seventh-century Tang dynastys extensive trade routes
offered their aristocracy a wide pallet of local and imported raw materials to
perfume their environment and themselves. Their fragrance pallet included
camphor, lime, frankincense, cloves, patchouli, sweet basil, musk deer (Benn
2004), vanilla and aloe wood (Michaelson 1999).
In the tenth century, the Song dynasty organized imperial examinations open
to all subjects. At times, candidates were even tested on their ability to compose
poetry and to paint, and in one examination the candidates were said to have
been tested on their creativity to paint a visual interpretation of a poem. The poem
mentioned the scents of flowers, and the top candidate creatively used butterflies
to convey the floral scent, while others painted flowers. By the fourteenth-century
Ming dynasty, incense and incense-holders had become indispensable objects
of a scholars study, and coexisted with visual-centric literati pursuits such as
calligraphy and painting.
Chinese social symbolism of fragrances

The Chinese character for fragrance is Xiang () and is used in idioms and
invested with social meanings. Members of literati families are said to be
someone from a family living in the mist of fragrances emitted from their book
collections (). The fragrances referred to are herbal, from the herbs
used as insect-repellent to protect the books, and the phrase is used to mean
an educated and cultivated person. In Southern Chinese tea culture, there is
even a distinction between fragrance and flavour. When tea is prepared, it is
232
poured into a smelling cup () to appreciate the aroma before the same
tea is poured into an appreciation cup () to be drunk from and to appreciate its flavour.
The Patriotic Princess () is one of the most popular Cantonese operas,
written in 1957 in Hong Kong. It still has a huge following in the Chinese community around the world, especially among the Cantonese. The opera revolves
around Princess Chang Ping, a Ming dynasty princess who committed suicide
with her consort on their wedding night as an act of political resistance against
the Manchurian invaders. As the newly-weds slowly die of arsenic poisoning,
they sing of how the scent of the princesss fragrance will continue to linger
around their suicide site (). The lyrics use fragrance as an
analogy that the sacrifice of the princess will be remembered for generations
after her death.
These examples highlight certain differences between Western and Chinese
olfactory cultures. Chinese olfactory culture is gender-inclusive, which I suggest
continues to this day. Men and womens appreciation of fragrance and the ability
to articulate them is considered a mark of refinement, and apart from their olfactory value, fragrances have also acquired ascetic, social and moral values.
This Chinese olfactory culture is in contrast to the West, where the rise of its
visual-centric culture developed at the expense of other senses, diminishing both
the role of smells in modern Western culture and its olfactory symbolism (Classen
1993). This contrast raises an important question as to why Lux and its Western
fragrance connotations have prevailed for about two decades in China, a culture
with a rich olfactory history and heritage. The East-West contrast exposes the
inadequacy of a linear history of fragrances. The Egyptian to modern perfumery
history is one fragrance genealogy that exists alongside other fragrance genealogies such as the Chinese, Indian and other cultures.
Bath fragrances
Globally, the sale of soaps and body wash is undertaken by marketing companies. This is usually done by creating a brand to differentiate their products and to
present them as singular and incomparable (Foster 2008).7 Companies such as
Unilever and P&G become so successful that their brands, like Lux and Palmolive,
are sold in many countries around the world. Almost every country will have local
companies who promote their respective brands, competing among themselves
and with international brands. Each brand usually has three to four variants, and
each variant is available as a soap or body wash. Variants are differentiated by
233
adding fragrances, cosmetic ingredients and colour. Fragrances play a unique

role as the only material that lingers on the skin after use, and potential buyers
often smell the product to decide on a purchase.
When a new product is planned or an existing one is being relaunched, the
company issues a brief, explaining the products concept and the fragrance
requirement. Fragrance houses submit fragrance proposals by translating the
brief into olfactory creations. While fragrance houses may offer different interpretations of a brief, only one fragrance will be selected per variant.
As an example, if customers in the industry ask for a citrus fragrance for
their bath product, there are many possibilities for perfumers to create a citrus
fragrance: sweet citrus, sour citrus, citrus with bitter peel notes, floral citrus, citrus
with cologne touch, etc. The perfumers have much room for creativity but ultimately, the fragrance must smell attractive to potential and existing customers,
and have some resemblance to their notion of citrus. Beyond that, perfumers
are free to include any resonations they feel will make fragrance more attractive
to customers.
Upon receiving fragrance submissions, the companies will conduct consumer
tests to identify the winning fragrance. This winning fragrance is infused into
the products and marketed to consumers. During the purchase process, most
people evaluate a bath product by smelling it. If the fragrance profile is perceived
to have associations with the product claims and the potential customer likes the
fragrance, a purchase happens. Otherwise, the product is rejected. The collective actions of consumers in the longer term determine the success or failure of
the final product.
The importance of fragrances in product communication becomes even more
apparent in cases when a producer uses the same soap or body wash base for
all the variants, differing only in the fragrances. From the companys perspective, a good fragrance must smell attractive and be able to communicate the
product attributes to potential customers. From the customers perspective, the
products fragrance profile is the main indicator of product quality and benefit. In
the context of cross-cultural marketing, the fragrances play an additional role of
investing the product with a cultural content (Chua 2003).
The peony blooms

In 2007, Liushen () surpassed Lux to become Chinas largest beauty soap
and body wash brand by retail share.8 Since 2007, Liushen has maintained and
strengthened its position as the number one beauty bath brand. Their retail share
234
has grown from 5.5 per cent, to 6.2 per cent in 2010, while Lux fell from 5.4 per
cent to 5.1 per cent during the same period (Euromonitor International 2011a).
Liushen is owned by Shanghai Jiahua United Company (
) whereas the global giant Unilever owns Lux. Liushens defeat of Lux,
and its achievement in becoming the top-selling, and therefore most popular
brand of beauty bath products in China, is an unusual phenomenon in China
and Asia. In Asia, with the exception of Japan and South Korea (Euromonitor
International 2011a, 2011b), and now China, Lux or one of the global brands
usually captures the largest share of the beauty soap market. Very often, local
competitors attempt to emulate Lux or one of the leading foreign brands by
offering similar products at a lower cost and sometimes at a lower quality. Their
choice of fragrances reflects either imitations of foreign brands or popular fine
fragrances from the West (Europe or United States).9
In contrast, Liushen products and fragrances are marketed as inspired by traditional Chinese medicine, promising oriental charm and cherishing traditions
(). Liushen has been competing against Lux, targeting 20-35 yearsold urban married women with junior high school or above education, including
general labors [sic] in the society and first-line/middle management whose
income are distributed between 25% and 75% of the whole population.10
Liushens positioning as local and its focus on traditional Chinese medicinal knowledge is unusual in China, where consumers generally favour foreign
brands. Foreign brands are usually perceived to be of a higher quality (Fong
2004)and deemed as more appealing or prestigious.11 Product safety concerns
are another obstacle for local brands. Despite these obstacles, Liushen was
able to emerge as the most popular beauty bath brand in China.
Cultural branding theory

Sales professionals often attribute the rise of Liushen to good marketing
strategies, while consumers explain that Liushen is a familiar brand, but both
reasons are insufficient to account for Liushens success. Good marketing
cannot explain why some brands are more successful than the others and
does not take into consideration the social contexts in which the brands were
promoted and the ways in which brands are being consumed and appropriated
by consumers. As in Fosters value chain analysis, adding value via the expert
labour of the marketer is inadequate (Foster 2008). Familiarity on the other hand
is no guarantee of success as Liushen only surpassed Lux in 2007, ending its
reign of nearly two decades. Both explanations, marketing and familiarity, fail to
235
take into consideration the meaningful use to which consumers put the product
(Foster 2008).
I propose that social change in China was instrumental in Liushens ascent
to become the top brand, and I draw on Douglas Holts cultural branding model
to present my argument (Holt 2004). Cultural branding proposes that brands
become iconic when their product addresses cultural contradictions experienced by consumers at a particular point in time. Cultural contradictions emerge
whenever an individuals ideology and real-life experience diverge, when individuals feel they live in a world that is different from how they like it to be or how
it should be. These cultural contradictions are usually experienced at a collective
level and occur during times of social change. During periods of cultural contradiction, products, through their marketing strategies, address the contradictions
by offering consumers an imagined populist world that resonates with their
ideology. Over time, as conditions in a society changes, new cultural contradictions arise. Brands stay relevant by offering new populist worlds to address the
new cultural contradictions. Brands that succeed thrive while those that fail lose
their customers.
Social change therefore presents a challenge to existing brands while offering opportunities for new brands. In the case of Liushen, the Chinese cultural
contradiction lies in the Chinese belief of their rightful place among leading
nations of the world against their self-perception of backwardness and the ways
they believe China has and still is being denied that status. Liushens products
inspired by Chinese heritage offer a gateway to a populist world addressing their
cultural contradictions.
Locating Chinese consumption

against the decline and rise of China
To understand the social context of consumption in China and the nature of
cultural contradiction that Liushen benefited from, I will present (somewhat
briefly, it must be acknowledged) recent Chinese history from the perspective of
Chinese consumers.
The First Opium War between Great Britain and Qing China from 1839 to 1842
was a tragic historical marker for the Chinese. China had to sign the first of many
unequal treaties, and Hong Kong Island was ceded in perpetuity to Great Britain
among other demands. To the Chinese, this was a humiliating event marking
their decline and the advert of foreign intrusion and imperialism. Other major
events included the Eight Nation Alliances () occupation of Beijing and
236
their entrance into the Forbidden City during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the
Second Opium War and the destruction of the Summer Palace in 1860. During
these campaigns, many treasures were looted and taken out of China.
To this day, emotions continue to run high whenever these treasures
emerge in auctions outside of China (e.g. an auction by Christies of artefacts
from the Summer Palace: see BBC 2009)and there is even a social movement to buy back stolen artefacts (see, e.g. Yingzi 2008). This movement is
not just a China-based initiative but includes the participation of overseas
Chinese as well. The most prominent example is Macao businessperson
Stanley Ho, who bought artefacts looted from the Yuan Ming Yuan during
the Second Opium War and donated them to the Chinese government (see
Lim 2007).
By 1912, the Qing dynasty had collapsed, but the new Republican government fared no better. At the end of the First World War, German concessions in
China were awarded to Japan instead of China, although both were part of the
Allied forces. In 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War erupted and dragged on
for seven years, until the Japanese surrender in 1942. The infamous Nanjing
massacre, the extreme loss of life, the suffering and the Japanese refusal to
apologize for the war, continue to be sore issues. Immediately after World War
II, Nationalist and Communist factions began the Chinese Civil War, and China
was finally united as the Peoples Republic of China in 1949 under Mao Zedong.
From 1966 to 1976, China experienced another period of turmoil during the
Cultural Revolution (Fong 2004).
In September 1978, Deng Xiao Ping came into power and initiated a series
of reforms () to integrate China with the rest of the world. During this
period, Special Economic Zones were established in coastal cities and foreign
investments (notably) were welcomed.
Yang as social aspiration

Dengs reform brought about economic growth and opportunities for the Chinese
unprecedented since 1949. Socially, the Deng era is characterized by a desire to
make money and to modernize through consumption (Pan 1986). Chinas opening up brought about economic growth but also the perception that the country
and the Chinese being backward or tu (). The concept of yang () became
the defining aspiration among Chinese consumers who aspired to be modern.
Yang refers to foreign and is associated with being modern and can include
ideas of being fashionable, progressive or civilized.
237
The pervasiveness of Yang aspirations is best reflected by Yans (1997)

account of an elderly couples 1993 visit to McDonalds at Tiananmen on Chinas
National day. The trip was a treat from their daughter and the memorable visit
was completed with a taxi ride and photo sessions. Their adventure took place
slightly over a year after Beijing McDonalds opened. It was at that time the largest McDonalds restaurant in the world and a place where Chinese consumers
experienced American culture. Every year domestic tourists arrived in Beijing to
visit famous monuments such as the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China,
and after the opening of McDonalds, it was added to their itinerary.
This McDonalds visit reminded the couple of their earlier Beijing visit in 1949,
the founding year of the Peoples Republic of China, when they also had a picture
taken. Proud of their visit, they sent the two photos taken 44years apart in the
same location to their hometown newspaper. Their hometown newspaper team
obviously viewed the two photos from the perspective of the tu-yang discourse,
and went on to title their story Forty-four years: From Tu to Yang (Yan 1997).
Similar cases appear in many other ethnographies: homes have not been
seen as modern due to the lack of Italian design (Guldin 1996); young factory
girls want a taste of Western wind () or a cosmopolitan lifestyle (Ngai 2003);
eating at McDonalds is a way to gain status (Yan 1997); and going abroad forms
part of a strategy to achieve social mobility (Fong 2004).
Lux entered the Chinese market in 1986, about a decade after Dengs reforms,
and into a social climate characterized by the pursuit of yang (Euromonitor
International 2011a). As a foreign brand, Lux symbolized modernity for Chinese
consumers addressing their aspirations to be advanced, modern, developed,
progressive or capturing of the western, cosmopolitan or global (Croll 2006).
Not surprisingly, within a few years of its arrival, Lux became the number one
beauty bath product in China and held this position for almost two decades until
the rise of Liushen in 2007.
Filial nationalism and filial consumption

When Chinese consumers consume foreign brands and products, their
consumption is located within a consumer discourse of tu and yang, but the
motivation to be yang or modern is also driven by a desire or an obligation for
China to rise and to be equal among nations.
Even Chinese consumers who love everything Western and perceived China
to be inferior still believe in their obligation to help bring China into the imagined community of wealthier societies, a phenomenon Fong (2004) labelled filial
238
nationalism. There is a love-hate relationship, or Chinese-foreign dilemma (Barme

1995), between Chinese consumers and Western countries, especially the United
States and United Kingdom, who are their cultural source of modernity. However,
they are also the countries, in Chinese opinion, responsible for the decline of
China and even for preventing her rise. Barme (1995) goes further to suggest that
it represents the coming of age of Chinese narcissism, and it bespeaks a desire
for revenge for all the real and perceived slights of the past century.
The desire for China to be equal among nations, to be part of the imagined
community of wealthier societies, and the personal obligation to play a part
towards this dream is in contradiction to the strong desire for Western goods
and their ability to confer social status as a symbol of yang. This cultural contradiction is resolved by mining the past to construct a new Chinese modernity and
the trend is propelled by the growing Chinese economy, as well as by increasing
Chinese pride and nationalism.
A new Chinese cosmology

Dengs reforms laid the foundation for successful economic growth, rising
income and living standards. These economic changes, along with recent political events, such as the Hong Kong Handover in 1997, Macao Handover in 1999,
Chinas admission into WTO in 2001, and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, led
to aspirations for national revival and supremacy (Barme 1995).
By the turn of the twenty-first century, the economic, social and political developments in China gave the Chinese a sense of pride that China has finally risen
from, or at least is rising from, the humiliations inflicted by the Opium Wars and
from the time when China was known as the Sick Man of East Asia ().
Now, China is considered to be more or less equal among nations.12
This Post-Deng era attitude is contrasted to two earlier periods: the Cultural
Revolution (1966 to 1976) and the Deng Reform era (1978 to 1997). During
the Cultural Revolution, a new identity was forged through the destruction and
disassociation with the past, with calls to destroy the four olds: ideologies (old
ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits) (Roberts 2003). This attitude was
materially manifested in the destruction of material culture that represented the
old, such as antiques and works of art, and in the destruction of institutions such
as temples, monasteries and ancient monuments.
Moving out of the Cultural Revolution and into the Dengs reform era was a
period characterized by loss of confidence (Croll 2006)when anything Chinese
was considered tu while everything foreign, especially European and American,
239
was considered yang. In the post-Deng era, the pride and confidence of the
twenty-first century motivated Chinese consumers to embrace their cultural
heritage and to mine the past for the construction of a new modern Chinese
identity. The most visible manifestation of this is the rise of the Hanfu movement
() since 2003 (Wong 2006), which has since spread to the Chinese
diaspora.13 Supporters dress themselves in clothing styles selected from periods of ethnic Han rule in China, especially the Han, Song and Ming dynasties,
that they feel reflect Chinese culture and heritage (Figure 13.3). Considering
the Manchurian rule from 1644 to 1912 as foreign, Hanfu enthusiasts reject the
more visible qipao () as inauthentic Chinese costume.
The Hanfu movement is a good example of mining the past to create a new
modern Chinese identity. Hanfu dress offer customers a wide range of styles,
colours and designs who accordingly to their personal preferences, disregarding the symbol, materials and colour codes imposed on the population by the
respective Chinese dynasties (Clunas 2007). More significantly, Chinese female
graduates who dress in Hanfu for their graduation are enacting an entirely new
phenomenon, since the former imperial examinations system only admitted
male candidates (Miyazaki 1976). Fortunately though, there have so far been no
calls to revive the practise of foot binding (Gernet 1962)that used to form a part
of elite Chinese womens fashion since the tenth century.
The Hanfu movement demonstrates very clearly a selective borrowing from
the past to create a new modern Chinese identity, and is definitely not a revival
of traditional or ancient norms. The same dynamic unfolds in other material
Figure13.3 Hanfu fans in Singapore. Photograph used with permission from Mr. Michael Jow.
240
dimensions, as in the case of Liushen soaps and body wash. The rise in national-ethnic pride in China around the turn of the twenty-first century offered an
opportunity for products to address the cultural contradiction felt by Chinese
consumers. It is a situation that Liushen successfully addressed and benefited
from to defeat the Lux brand.
First launched in 1995, Liushen incorporated many traditional Chinese herbal
and medicinal ingredients such as green tea, aloe vera, wheat bran, chrysanthemum, clove and lily, with which consumers can identify. These ingredients are
used as part of their secret recipes and/or traditional formulations, mentioned
on the product packaging (,,,
,). At the same time, the company stressed the use
of traditional herbal knowledge combined with modern technology (
). This traditional/modern interlink is also reflected in the
dual approach of their advertisements, using both very traditional settings and
modern Chinese settings.
The fragrances used in Liushen products have an association with traditional
raw materials but with modern twist. The fragrances signal the cultural content
(Chua 2003)of their bath products and invest them with an identity and a means
to establish communication with consumers.
Liushens positioning as Chinese and modern, which is reflected in the
different designs of its advertisements, resonates with Chinese consumers who
have described the scent as modern Chinese fragrances. Liushens popularity
also indicates the acceptance of traditional Chinese medicinal knowledge and
its efficacy in beauty bath products. These sentiments have converged within
Liushens slogan, Way of the East ().
Liushen was able to benefit from the cultural shift, as Shanghai Jiahua traced
its corporate founding to the period after the Opium war, and its aim was to establish a national enterprise to invigorate China through industry.14 This aspiration
fits neatly with Fongs concept of filial nationalism (Fong 2004). The ascent
of Liushen is thus driven by the rise in cultural pride among Chinese consumers and marks their transition from the loss of confidence (Croll 2006)during
the reform period to the current time where they embrace cultural heritage and
appropriate it in the construction of modern Chinese cultural identity.
Conclusion
I have used the rise of Liushen soap and body wash to explore the relationship
between fragrance preference and social change in China. Similar to Oakleys
241
(Oakley, this volume) unpacking of gold into its four facets (elemental, noble,
transcendent and gold-as-money), fragrances have both chemical and social
facets as well. In fact, it is the social facets of fragrance that shape consumer
preference in the Deng and post-Deng era.
Unlike the physical properties of gold, fragrances exist in various forms and
are often invisible when the scent is released. As a material incorporated in
soap and body wash, it is invisible but detectable though the sense of smell,
and it lingers on the skin after washing. Most people can only describe scents
through metaphors or references to other senses, and while people can identify a fragrance they like, most cannot account for why they like it. However,
fragrances are informed materials (Barry, this volume), as fragrance houses
rely on consumer insight, market trends and customer briefs to create new
fragrances.
Liushens success has been explained in terms of good marketing strategy
or consumers familiarity, but neither adequately explains its popularity. Foster
(2008) has noted the inadequacy of crediting marketers for success of a brand,
while familiarity with Liushen did not give it the top ranking during the Deng
reform era. With the Deng reform era and post-Deng era as backdrops, we see
that while fragrances are materials whose properties remain unchanged, as in
one way they smell consistently the same, the social aspirations of each period
have influenced fragrance preferences, from Lux as a symbol of modernity to
Liushen as a modern Chinese fragrance.
Appreciating fragrances from this perspective, they are loaded with social
meanings and historical memories, and definitely mean different things to
different groups of people at different historical periods. As such, they become
barometers of social change. This dynamic, if understood and appropriated by
marketers, can have a profound effect on brands and makes a strong case for
the move towards a parallel histories of fragrances as opposed to the current
linear history of fragrances. We interact with fragrance materials through our
sense of smell but our fragrance preferences are probably more social than
biological.
Notes
1. These figures are publicized by Leffingwell and Associates: see online at <http://www.leffingwell.com/top_10.htm> (accessed 2012). This chapter engages with the flow of information
from the professional fragrance industry, much of which circulates in various market reports,
market research reports and online information.
2. See <http://www.thisismanufacturing.co.uk/sites/bmit/files/pzcuzzons-videotranscript.pdf>
(accessed 2012).
242
3. For a discussion and explanation of major terms of fragrance raw materials, see <http://www.
cosmeticsandtoiletries.com/formulating/ingredient/fragrance/136099708.html?page=1>
(accessed October 2012).
4. A natural identical synthetic fragrance raw material has the same chemical structure as a
natural fragrance, but is created chemically and not derived from botanicals. For example,
a natural identical synthetic rose fragrance material will smell similar to a rose but is not
derived from the rose plant. A non-natural identical synthetic fragrance raw material has
a chemical structure that is not found in nature, and its fragrance profile has no natural
equivalent.
5. A version of Michael Edwards fragrance wheel is reproduced, with permission, in this book
in black and white. The wheel is much more rich if viewed in colour, and a version can be
found at Michael Edwards website: <http://www.fragrancesoftheworld.com/index.aspx>
(accessed November 2014).
6. Another example is the history of fragrance as presented by the Fragrance Foundation.
The Foundation represents major players in the fragrance industry, and their fragrance
history again reflects the Western orientation that I have described as a linear history. The
Foundation describes itself as a non-profit making educational trust founded in New York
in 1949 by Chanel, Coty, Elizabeth Arden, Guerlain, Helena Rubinstein and Parfums Weil. It
has become a substantial organization in the United States and is well known internationally as the forum for the fragrance industry. See <http://www.fragrancefoundation.org.uk/
history-of-fragrance.htm> (accessed October 2012).
7. The industry has two main categories, beauty and anti-bacterial, for soap and body washes.
Beauty soaps and body washes offer customers real or imagined benefits, such smooth
skin or a more fair complexion, from regular use. Anti-bacterial soaps and body washes
promise the ability to kill germs and bacteria. This chapter examines beauty soap and body
wash products in China.
8. Safeguard brand, by Procter & Gamble, has the largest share by retail value. However,
Safeguard is a health bath product, offering antibacterial benefits. Liushen has the
second-largest share by retail value in the bath product category and is the top beauty
soap brand. Source: Euromonitor International, Country Sector Briefing Bath and Shower
Products - China, May 2009.
9. Exceptions do happen, as in the case of whitening soaps in Indonesia and Papaya whitening soaps in the Philippines. However, in both instances, the local brands are still unable to
surpass the global brands in sales.
10. These various quotations are taken from the Liushen brand section of the website of Jahwa,
the manufacturer. The site was accessed in 2012 but no longer easily accessible by 2014:
http://www.jahwa.com.cn/en/brand/liushen.php.
11. One young lady explained her choice of foreign brand as a form of social mobility, and cited
the Chinese idiom of humans aspiring for social mobility ().
12. It must be mentioned that this feeling of revival is not confined to Chinese nationals in
China but also felt by Overseas Chinese, especially the elderly and the Chinese-educated
diaspora, as evidenced by the purchase of stolen antiques and the recent Hong Kong activist visit to disputed islands in the East China Sea. The Chinese in China and the diasporas
may have different political views and different nationalities, but there is still a sense of filial
ethnicity, to borrow Fongs concept. In the context of this chapter, filial ethnicity has implications for global fragrance trends.
13. See for example the Hanfu movements Facebook group in Singapore <https://www.facebook.com/groups/2204561358/?ref=ts>.
14. See Jiahua Chinese website: <http://www.jahwa.com.cn> (accessed October 2012).
243
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Chapter14
The woollen blanket and its
imagined values: Material
transformations of woollen
blankets in contemporary art
Fiona P. McDonald
Woollen blankets have been numerous things to many people. The mutability of
this single object is captured in the ever-shifting symbolic and mnemonic values
that emerge in diverse social and cultural contexts of use. From the original
manufacture of woollen blankets of raw wool in the United Kingdom and France
around the seventeenth century, to the transformation of woollen blankets as
a ready-made medium for contemporary artists in Canada, the United States,
and Aotearoa New Zealand, the unpredictable values and previous meaning(s)
of this single material object make visible its involvement in larger histories, its
presence within distinct social contexts, and its participation between cultures
at specific historical junctures. This chapter presents, in relation to theories of
value concerning material culture, how the nuanced meanings of woollen blankets become visible when artists transform them from serviceable or discarded
objects into sculptural works of art.1 As David Graeber notes, to understand
the meaning (value) of an object, then one must understand its place in a larger
system (Graeber 2011: 14). Therefore, this chapter contributes to this volume
by considering larger issues and systems around the conceptualization of materials through aesthetics, in relation to the agency given to objects by creative
makers, and to the sensory experience of our material world.
Concerns with the ever-shifting values of materials, when coupled with an
interest in the materiality of things and their social lives, in particular the sensory
effects of materials on each of us, have recently occupied the discourse of
anthropology. First, by understanding relevant values and associated cultural
meanings of objects such as woollen blankets, we gain insight into what motivates cultural producers, craftspeople, and artists within distinct cosmological
246
frames to consciously transform materials for aesthetic, visual, sensual, and

tangible outcomes. And second, by looking specifically at the material transformation and transfiguration of woollen blankets as a material case study allows
actions upon materials more broadly, and related social responses, to become
visible once things and objects are moved within and through various contexts.
A woollen blanket is a compelling and complex thing, one whose intangible
content (meanings and values) and tangible context when brought in to a new
form within a work of art rely heavily on understanding the cosmological perspectives of those who transform the woollen blanket, and those who experience it
within an art gallery. The plurality and historicity of things and objects like woollen blankets is central to questions such as: What is a thing versus an object?
Who gives an object its bounded or unbounded meanings? And how does a
single object attract varied experiences and values? Material culture discourse
that engages with art often looks specifically at the work of art as an object that
conveys meaning or the potency and potential of agency, but how does the
materiality of that object as an art form inform a larger understanding of our
engagement with our material world?
In this discussion, the presentation of the varied understandings, meanings
and values ascribed to woollen blankets will be approached with circumspection in order to present how two contemporary artists interpret and present the
ontological status of woollen blankets in our material world, both historically and
today, and how their physical engagement with woollen blankets represents one
way in which we come to interact with the meaning and value of objects by way
of the aesthetic transformation of materials.
The use of a woollen blanket in a work of art placed inside a contemporary art
gallery validates the blanket beyond just being read as a textile or a thing (Brown
2001, 2010; McDonald 2014). Fred Myers notes, Art has been situated in the
West as a category of redemptive value, distinct from money and discrete from
other sociocultural values (Myers 1997: 7). The monetary value and meaning
of a woollen blanket, however, are re-contextualized within the system of art
determined by the institutions, as well as by the artists who use them, and by
those who privilege these objects beyond their homes as domestic necessities
or biographic objects (Burren 1971). Placement of blankets by an artist resituates their value and meaning, and their material transformation foregrounds
other significant meanings and values.
Several artists participate in this process of transforming the woollen blanket
through their artwork. Independently they assert particular values and meanings
of the woollen blanket that reflect their own embodied experience and cultural
references. But taken collectively they represent a distinct social phenomenon
The woollen blanket and its imagined values
247
within the art world that captures the way that art and objects enable an anthropological understanding of the social and aesthetic transformation of material
culture. Each case study presented in this chapter is extracted from a larger
material ethnography on woollen blankets within distinct social and geographic
contexts: North America and Aotearoa New Zealand (McDonald 2014). The
data from each visual case study (specifically how artists and curators speak
about their engagement with woollen blankets) illuminates how qualitative
(and mnemonic) values have come to be associated with woollen blankets
and their material properties. In advance of unpacking each work, the parallel values between the two examples include, but are not limited to: use-value,
economic-value, historical-value, labour-value, sentimental-value, and the larger
understanding of the mnemonic-value of woollen blankets. According to Arthur
Danto, transformation [of materials] in the practice of art in recent decades has
made ... meanings available to artists in realizing works that draw on the meanings fabric possesses in vernacular forms of life (Danto 2002: 84).2
The theoretical frames that buttress this chapter owe a debt to the work of
many scholars, including those in this volume. First, a basic understanding of
material objects is informed by the writing of Arjun Appadurai, Igor Kopytoff,
Bill Brown and Fred R. Myers. Their foundational work concerning regimes of
values and material culture enables more nuanced readings of objects across
time. For example, Bill Brown notes that:
[A] given object culture entails the practical and symbolic use of objects. It
thus entails both the ways that inanimate objects mediate human relations
and the ways that humans mediate object relations (generating differences of
value, significance, and permanence among them), thus the system (material, economic, symbolic) through which objects become meaningful or fail to.
(Brown 2010: 188)
Second, Alfred Gells propositions concerning dynamic social relations that

coalesce around art objects are used to undergird how values are ascribed and
circulate within the contemporary art world. Gell, by way of taking up Simmels
central thoughts on value and money, notes:
The idea that valued objects present themselves to us surrounded by a kind of
halo-effect of resistance, and that it is this resistance to us which is the source
of their value. Simmels theory, as it stands, implies that it is in the difficulty of
access to an object which makes it valuable. (Gell 1998: 48)
Gell goes beyond this idea around restrained access as the sole reason an
object acquires value to posit that the power of the object resides in the symbolic
248
processes they provoke in the beholder (Gell 1998: 48). This returns to the idea
of values placed on woollen blankets so as to reflect more on the personal experience that each person brings to bear on experiencing a woollen blankets in the
social context of contemporary art, and how the symbolic values of a woollen
blanket can vary depending upon the experience one brings to their sensory
(seeing, touching, smelling) encounter.3
The essentialized materiality

of woollen blankets and their manufacture
When looking critically at the larger values associated with woollen blankets,
one needs to consider the essentialized materiality of this object (Figure14.1).
What is a woollen blanket? A blanket, in this case a woollen blanket, is something with which many of us have had a visceral, corporeal and embodied
experience. There is a shared sensorial experience most human beings have
with blankets no matter what their material make up. All taxonomies of blankets (hide, wool, cotton, synthetic fibres, etc.) are generally associated with
a sense of survival (primal instinct) that evokes a common sensorial experience of warmth and protection. Woollen blankets are no exception. They are
comprised of raw wool that has been systematically washed, dyed, carded
and fulled and have been produced in the United Kingdom and France since
shortly before the seventeenth century.
Figure 14.1 Queens Coronation Hudsons Bay Point Blanket. Royal Alberta Museum
H89.220.169 (Ethnology Collection). Photograph taken with permission by Fiona P. McDonald.
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Woollen blankets in this study may vary in size, colour and patterning, but
historically they have always had the same essentialized woollen materiality. The material essence of manufactured woollen blankets is that they are:
thick, warm, itchy, impenetrable, durable, robust. They have been employed
in varied contexts because of these very characteristics. The imagined potential of a woollen blanket ranges from bedding to sails on small boats, and
coverings on doors, and they have been employed in the form of shelter to
protect from the elements. These basic essentialized characteristics are what
have allowed the woollen blanket to be introduced and adopted into various
contexts around the globe. Buttressing the material characteristics of woollen
blankets are their aesthetic qualities.
While the woollen blankets discussed here have tended to have monochromatic fields (the larger background colour) (see Figure14.1) that feature dark
bands at the top and bottom, and some with point markings along one side to
designate their size and value (up to a maximum of six points), they have tended
to vary in colour ever since their original manufacture at weaving mills in the
United Kingdom. The colour and pattern range is vast and is generally reflective
of the weaving mills that have produced them around the globe. For example,
grey blankets have commonly been issued for naval and military services even
though they have been produced at various different mills.
The type of woollen blanket considered in this discussion was originally
produced at the Witney Mills in Oxfordshire, England, until it officially closed
down in 2002. Specifically, Witney Mills is the starting point for many of the
woollen blankets that have appeared around the globe and in settler states.
Beyond Witney Mills, however, the colour of the woollen blankets field and any
additional patterns or markings have always been dependent upon the mill that
manufactured them. Since the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, for
example, the presence of blankets in different colours, patterns, and quality
increased as weaving mills were technologically revolutionized in England and
globally. Eventually, many mills were set up across Canada, the United States,
and Aotearoa New Zealand, and with this flourished new communities.4 While
the blankets were and are signature products of their mill, generally speaking,
the mills in both North America and in the Antipodes operated on technology
that emerged during the mechanization of the blanket industry in the United
Kingdom, which was spurred on by the Industrial Revolution (see McDonald
2013: 108). The distribution of woollen blankets manufactured in Canada,
the United States, and Aotearoa New Zealand have tended to have more of
a regional character when compared to the global reach that Witney blankets
originally had.
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The consistency of manufacture to produce the basic essential qualities of

the woollen blanket is what has enabled it to be legible to numerous audiences.
Its legibility as an object a blanket is where we begin when looking further
into a critical material assessment of the meanings and values that have saturated the woollen blanket within various social contexts and at distinct historical
moments.
The woollen blanket in art

Ruth Phillips wrote that because we are material beings inhabiting a material
world, artefacts can uniquely serve as trans-temporal and trans-spatial witnesses
to alternative modes of cross-cultural historical interaction (Phillips 2011: 135).
This observation is perhaps the most accurate way to encapsulate the diversity
of researching the mutability of woollen blankets within contemporary art from an
anthropological perspective.
The presence of woollen blankets in contemporary art stands in a poetic relationship to the historical visibility of this serviceable object found in numerous visual
representations from the colonial trade era that discretely document the woollen
blanket and its subtle movement into different landscapes and cultures.5 In North
America for example, in paintings done by Paul Kane (18101871) and Cornelius
Kreighoff (18151872) that romanticize distinct landscapes in North America, woollen blankets appear naturalized in scenes of trade and exchange, as well as critical
objects in outerwear such as jackets. Similarly, in Aotearoa New Zealand, artists
aboard ships captained by James Cook (17281779) rendered similar scenes
of men and women wrapped in blankets, and later William Strutt (18251915),
Gottfried Lindauer (18391926) and Charles Frederick Goldie (18701947) painted
varied portraits with Ma-ori men and women wrapped in plaid woollen blankets that
are now treasured items in national art and archive collections. These stereotyped
representations of Indigenous individuals wrapped in woollen blankets persisted
beyond the canvas throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and are also
well evidenced in ethnographic and studio photography.
From these colonial images and constructions, more recent works by
contemporary artists either challenge, or are positioned in relation to, historical
metanarratives and visualizations that incorporate the woollen blanket. As Arthur
Danto once observed, by bringing into their works objects and materials with
often powerful meanings in lived forms of life, artists have been able to appropriate those meanings for their art, and even to communicate with audiences
in ways considerable beyond what pictorial representation would allow (Danto
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2002: 84). Therefore, through the literal incorporation of woollen blankets into
their works of art, how does such a material engagement within the context of
an art gallery allow audience access to other values, meanings and histories of
woollen blankets beyond their own lived experiences?
Since the mid-1980s, woollen blankets started to appear both literally and figuratively in works of art by several practicing artists in Canada, the United States,
and Aotearoa New Zealand. In the context of this discussion, only two examples
are presented to reflect upon how artists have literally transformed one or more
woollen blankets in their sculptural installations. This does not mean that pictorial
or figurative representations of woollen blankets by other artists carry any less
effect upon a viewer, but Dantos argument in relation to the communicative power
material objects possess suggests that works of art where woollen blankets are
used by artists can clarify some of the meanings that have been appropriated and
represented. In the context of this discussion, the simple fact that a woollen blanket appears in a sculptural work that has been exhibited in a gallery context and
been called art by the maker has qualified it for inclusion. Nicholas Thomas argues
that the anthropologist is not obliged to define the art object (Thomas 1998: 7).
The list of artists who have used the woollen blanket as a ready-made object
in their works is formidable. In the United States, for example, Bob Boyer created
a series of works titled Blanket Statements starting in 1985, where his works
functioned on one level as an act of resistance toward dishonoured treaty
agreements. Bob Boyers Blanket Statement series conveyed many meanings associated with the woollen trade blanket. Interestingly, Boyer worked on
cotton blankets but referenced the woollen trade blankets distributed by traders,
government officials and also at ceremonies. Wendy Winter wrote that Boyers
paintings in Blankets, and their proactive titles, often contrasted the historical
and cultural symbolism of a blanket (security, warmth, generosity) with difficult
issues related to the colonization of North America (2009: 16). However, his later
works, in series such as Smallpox Issue, address the deliberate and horrific
impregnation of the smallpox virus into government-issued blankets distributed
to aboriginal populations during the nineteenth century (15).
One of the first examples I have identified where an artist directly transformed
a woollen blanket was in a site-specific installation titled Up Biblum God (1987)
by Mohawk artist Alan Michelson. Michelson used a Hudsons Bay Company
multicoloured striped Point blanket as a canvas that he transformed with an
encaustic paint to render a beaver pelt and trap upon it. Here the woollen blanket
gets transformed into a canvas, and is installed in the gallery in relation to other
material objects that speak to and of colonial histories, trade interactions and
assimilation practices between settlers and Indigenous communities. The title
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of this work references Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, also

known as the Algonquin bible.
In 1991, Ron Noganosh also reconfigured the multicoloured woollen striped
blanket into a traditional Native American drum with the title Thats All it Costs, a
title that invites a reading of the role of blankets in trade and treaty agreements.6
Seneca artist Marie Watts comprehensive body of work since 2003 meanwhile
represents one of the largest series of sculptural works made from woollen
blankets, which are either folded and stacked into totem-like structures within
the gallery or take the form of large-scale wall-piece installations that speak to
histories of tapestry and wall hangings.
Turning to Canada, in 2010, Liz Magor created eight sculptural works from
blankets that she installed in a self-entitled exhibition in Toronto, Ontario. Sonny
Assus engagement with the woollen blankets has taken many forms, in particular his Silenced series, which consists of stacked hide drums painted to look
like piles of trade blankets. Assu also incorporates the blanket as a material is
his sculptural work 1884/1951 (2010), where he uses the blanket unchanged
as a plinth upon which he places 67 copper cast Starbucks cups to commemorate each year that the traditional potlatch ceremonies were banned in Canada
(McDonald 2013). Other notable works that work directly with the Hudsons Bay
Company Point blanket are Leah Decters Trade Value (2011present) and
Teresa Burrows Rupert land Regalia: The (Sul)fur Queen (2008).
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the incorporation of woollen blankets produced
both in the United Kingdom and in Aoteaora New Zealand is equally distinctive.
In 2009, Tracey Williams created the site-specific installation My Ship | Te-nei
Wakahe-ra where she clad a model ship with woollen blankets. Also since 2009,
textile designer and sculptor Jo Torr has created a series of Victorian gown sculptures made from woollen blankets and tapa cloth. And Rona Ngahuia Osborne,
who has worked with woollen blankets since the late 1990s, recently collaborated
with Alexis Neal for a site-specific installation entitled, Whare Taonga (2012) at
the Sargent Gallery in Whanganui (A/NZ).
These works offer a snapshot, if only a partial one, of the larger global
phenomenon of the aesthetic transformation of woollen blankets in art, craft and
Indigenous regalia.
Case study 1: United States

One prominent artist whose larger artistic practice is centred on transforming
woollen blankets is contemporary artist Marie Watt. Since 2003, Watts work with
woollen blankets has ranged from towering totem pole-like structures made
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of stacked woollen blankets, to large-scale stitched installations that hang

upon the wall like a tapestry when installed in the gallery, to her small intimate
sampler works. In particular, Watts Blanket series (Figure 14.2), started in
2003, is a strong example of how the blanket, what Watt calls a humble yet
loaded object,7 is transformed from a serviceable object into a work of art.8 Her
most recent and largest work, a welcome pole, was created from hundreds of
donated blankets from people across North America. They were accompanied
by stories of love, loss, birth, travel, home, youth, and life. This site-specific work,
Blanket Stories: Seven Generations, Adawe, and Hearth (2013), was installed at
the National Gallery of Canada as a key work in the first quinquennial exhibition,
Sakahn: International Indigenous Art (MaySeptember 2013). Watt, who is from
the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation (Iroquois/Haudenosaunee), is fully aware
of the history of woollen blankets as a trade item between Indigenous and nonIndigenous communities in the United States. She speaks about the blanket as
what Bill Brown might call a storied object. Watt notes:
Blankets hang around in our lives and families they gain meaning through
use. My work is about social and cultural histories imbedded in commonplace
Figure14.2 Marie Watt Blanket Stories Blanket Stories: Three Sisters, Cousin Rose, Four
Pelts, and Sky Woman, 2005. Each approximately 2020180. Stacked and folded wool
blankets, salvaged cedar. Installation view, Hoffman Gallery, Lewis & Clark College, Portland,
Oregon. Image courtesy the artist.
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objects. I consciously draw from Indigenous design principles, oral traditions,

and personal experience to shape the inner logic of the work I make. These
wool blankets come from family, friends, acquaintances and secondhand
stores (Ill buy anything under $5). As friends come over and witness my blanket project in progress, I am struck by how the blankets function as markers
for their memories and stories.9
It is hard to write about Watts work without referencing her most heavily cited
statement on her work. Watt writes:
We are received in blankets, and we leave in blankets ... I am interested in
human stories and rituals implicit in everyday objects ... I find myself attracted
to the blankets two- and three-dimensional qualities: On a wall, a blanket
functions as a tapestry, but on a body it functions as a robe and living art
object. Blankets also serve a utilitarian function. As I fold and stack blankets,
they begin to form columns that have references to linen closets, architectural braces, memorials (The Trojan Column), sculpture (Brancusi, for one),
the great totem poles of the Northwest and the conifer trees around which I
grew up. In Native American communities, blankets are given away to honor
people for being witnesses to important life events births and comings-ofage, graduations and marriages, namings and honorings. For this reason, it is
considered as great a privilege to give a blanket away as it is to receive one.
In this statement on her website, Watt touches upon several personal values and
meanings that she brings to her interpretation of the woollen blanket. According
to curator and anthropologist Rebecca J. Dobkins, who curated Watts work in an
exhibition entitled Lodge at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (2012), Watt began to
use woollen blankets as a form and material as well as conceptual vehicles. The
blankets carry associations not only with an array of life experiences but specifically with tribal communities, which have a long history of exchanging blankets for
resources and other goods with settlers and traders as well as marking life transitions with the giving and receiving of blankets (Dobkins 2012: 35). While Dobkins
addresses the way woollen blankets have been engaged with historically, from
exchange value to gift value (which begs a Marxist reading from a commodity
fetish perspective, or a Maussian one informed by the notion of the gift), art historian Janet Catherine Berlo unpacks Watts work to suggest that her use of woollen
blankets evoke[s] a 500-year saga of inter-cultural relations (Berlo 2005: 112).
Watts own statements regarding her work with the blanket, however, favour a
reading of woollen blankets in relation to their (e)valuation as an heirloom. As Watt
states: My work explores human stories and rituals implicit in everyday objects.
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I am interested in wool blankets and their heirloom-like quality. Freud considered

blankets as transitional objects, but I like to consider how these humble pieces
of cloth are transformational (Watt cited in Dobkins 2012: 72).
This transformational dimension is also the transformation of blankets from
serviceable object to artistic medium. It is the infinite transformational possibilities of the woollen blanket that have allowed Watt to use this objects histories,
values and meanings to engage diverse experiences. Her works demonstrate
the unpredictability of the permutations and combinations mapping the meanings and values of woollen blankets and the unpredictability of the reactions of
people who experience her work. Dobkins has suggested that Watts works have
the sensibility of Joseph Beuys social sculptures, in that art should be participatory and has the power to affect transformations in the self and society (Dobkins
2012: 11). When works from Watts Blanket Series are installed in a gallery setting,
a book is left in the gallery to allow others to record their responses to her work,
and their sentiments when interacting with woollen blankets in a non-domestic
setting. From conversations with Watt, I have learned these statements tend to
address personal memories evoked by the materiality of the work.10 While Watts
work articulates multiple meanings and values at once, her work engenders the
mutability of the blanket through recontextualization (Thomas 1998: 18). The
Blanket Series offers a number of iterations, transformations, and experiences
through which Watts personal experience with blankets, as well as the viewers
own material and sensory experience, can play out.
Case study 2: Aotearoa New Zealand

In the second example in this discussion, contemporary multimedia artist Tracey
Williams takes up the malleability of woollen blankets through her site-specific
installation entitled, My Ship | Te-nei Wakahe-ra (Figure14.3), exhibited at the
Tauranga Art Gallery, Toi Tauranga, in 2009.11 It is composed of several components: a two-channel video projection of still images of 67 constellations, a
looped video work of a model boat that floated in and out of the frame, a sculptural ship clad in woollen blankets and renewed textiles, as well as site-specific
elements mounted to walls. The larger context of this work speaks to Williams
exhaustive research into the regions local histories, so as to move past master
narratives by looking for specifically a little history or a forgotten history or some
kind of tangential history.12 In the creation of this work, Williams noted:
I went looking for sub-texts of Tauranga Moanas multifarious written history. I
wanted to spotlight the points that meta narratives unravel, rupture and split.
Figure14.3 Tracey Williams. MY SHIP | Te-nei Wakahe-ra, 2009. Recycled woollen blankets, wood, cotton. Image courtesy the artist and the Tauranga Art Gallery, New
Zealand.
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This was an amnesiac experience. Smaller narratives still interlace popular

history, concealing private stories ... Unexpectedly, the information I sought
was lyrically embedded in old textiles and craftwork. The[se] objects inherently
cite Otherness, holding implicit narratives. They are containers of ephemeral
and intangible aspects of identity; and preservers of oblique cultural tales.
They also signify protection and labour. (Williams and Jackson 2009: 1)
This mention of the history of labour illuminates yet another value associated with
woollen blankets, their manufacture and their transportation to settler states.
Regarding Aotearoa New Zealand, more expansionist historical interpretations of Captain James Cook have argued that his 1779 mission aboard HM
Endeavour might have been the first moment when woollen blankets were gifted
or traded with Mori communities. I cannot confirm this. After Cooks first explorative mission, which followed the travels of Abel Tasman, it was the South Pacific
Trading Company that likely played a vital role in moving woollen blankets to
Aotearoa New Zealand, just as both the Hudsons Bay Company and Northwest
Trading Company did in Canada and the United States respectively. A century
after Cooks first voyage, as documented in historical text, The Authentic and
Genuine History of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), woollen blankets are noted in the attire of principle Native chiefs of several tribes (Colenso
1890:15) during the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Colenso notes that:
Some [are] clothed with dogskin mats made of alternate longitudinal stripes
of black and white hair; others habited in splendid-looking new woollen (sic)
cloaks of foreign manufacture, of crimson, blue, brown, and plain, and indeed,
of every shade of striking colour ... while some were dressed in plain European
and some in common Native dresses. (Colenso 1890: 15)
The appearance of woollen blankets at this moment in the colonial history of

Aotearoa New Zealand points to the value of the woollen blanket as a new material in trade and treaty relations. Shortly after their introduction to Aotearoa New
Zealand many settler communities began to appear, and with them mills were set
up across both the North and South islands. These mills were modelled on the
post-Industrial Revolution technology where mechanized manufacture replaced
the previous hand- and steam-powered looms that started the blanket making
industry in Europe. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the dynamic
system of supply and demand that Adam Smith devoted much of his life to
understanding was visible in the blanket-making industry not only in England but
in Aotearoa New Zealand. Consequently, the import of wool from various settler
colonies across the British Empire from India to Aotearoa New Zealand and
elsewhere in the British Isles was well underway (Smith, 1776; MacKay 1935:
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4549; Rex 1958: 33).13 Aotearoa New Zealand, however, was able to not only
produce the raw wool needed to manufacture the blankets in England, but they
were able to produce enough wool to manufacture these much-coveted blankets whose essentialized materiality bodes well in the cool winter months in the
South Pacific. Petone Woollen Mills, Mosgiel, Omaru and Robinswurl are just a
few examples of key mills that supported communities across both the North
and South Islands (McDonald 2014). Today, Williams uses blankets manufactured by these mills as a ready-made material on her sculptural ship.
Looking to the designs of the aforementioned ships captained by Tasman
and Cook, Williams collaborated with a local ship builder to design her own ship,
one that fuses together elements from a variety of historical vessels but doesnt
represent a single one.14 According to Williams, the ship is an allegory of hope
and desire. In preparation of her sculptural ship, Williams sought out textiles
similar to those aboard these original ships, which she would subsequently
transform as cladding of the ships hull, deck and masts. In appropriating and
transforming a blanket into her art as a ready-made material, Williams makes
visible the material qualities that seem impractical for a ship and the labour
involved in this transformation. By literally wrapping the hull and masts of the
ship in woollen blankets, Williams unwraps the history of labour associated with
the woollen blanket in Aoteaora New Zealand, and the labour involved in articulating the conceptual framework and historical content of My Ship | Te-nei
Wakahe-ra. Gathering together a community of sewers, she employed the skills
of several women to blanket-stitch this project together. In response to the woollen blanket materials on the boat, Williams noted that visitors, mostly women,
said, Oh I know this stuff. I made this stuff.
This stuff, for Williams, is a way of materially talking to some of the other
ideas, such as the complexity of colonial histories and some of the darker politics of trading between European and Ma-ori.15 But in talking to these histories
through the use of a specific object, Williams felt she was also:
talking to ideas of womans histories [that] are never mentioned in the histories like in those mainstream narratives. Those culture-defining narratives are
always by men for men and they are linear ... We dont hold onto those histories of labour, and the histories of love which is what sort of underpins that.
The people that stitched and made the blankets, and not just the blankets but
made the meals and made the clothes.16
Conscious of the symbols she uses ships, birds, land, sea, and storied textiles
Williams notes that through her larger methodology (if we refer back to Dantos
comment earlier about using objects and materials laden with meaning), You
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are maybe taking something and you are reprocessing it and representing it;
but it is all to do with and all tied up with these histories and the distribution of
knowledge.17
Conclusion
From these two examples, it is palpable how complex the woollen blanket is
within a contemporary work of art. The varied values and meanings of a woollen blanket have accumulated to illuminate the way material culture is used,
consumed, read or mis-read, collected, distributed and ultimately transformed in
our multiplex material world, so as to make political statements, articulate identity
and engage with history. When woollen blankets are considered within the larger
system of contemporary art, they give us access to new perspectives on how
cultures come to form values and meanings that reflect past historical happenings and personal narratives transferred into the materials by artists. Not only
are artists active agents in reiterating and even recontextualizing such values as
birth, death, warmth, disease and reconciliation but also the transformation of a
woollen blanket into an artists work also brings additional economic and cultural
value to this object. By consciously using a woollen blanket in their art, the artists
presented in this chapter have placed this humble, potent, utilitarian, serviceable, trade, and gifted object into another complex context. This consequently
increases its monetary value and exclusivity because it becomes, in a way, at a
distance, within a new system of commerce and value (Gell 1998).
Bill Brown notes, These days, history can unabashedly begin with things
and with the sense by which we apprehend them (Brown 2001: 2). The woollen blankets in the two works of art presented in this discussion fundamentally
evoke a sensory relationship with objects for the artist, an experience that in
turn enhances the mnemonic value of such objects and reminds us, the viewer,
of the passage of mundane objects through our own lives and into the system
of the art world. In Canada, the United States, and Aotearoa New Zealand, the
presence of a woollen blanket in a work of art provokes a reading of this material
object not only as a ready-made object and artistic medium but also one that is
laden with social and cultural meanings and values independent of, and sometimes at odds with, the historical narrative of an artefact with exchange-value that
is traced back to the seventeenth century. The manifold and mutable uses of the
woollen blanket enable a more in-depth understanding of how things become
objects that possess value and meanings that are simultaneously mnemonic,
poetic and potent.
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In conclusion, what these two examples show is a synoptic glimpse into how
artists have the agency to make us aware of the materials that are present yet
obscure in our everyday lives. By taking an item as mundane as a woollen blanket, an artists intervention and transformation bring awareness of its meanings
and values and allow a distinct reading of how we come to experience the materiality of our current historical moment. By placing the woollen blanket within the
conceptual category of contemporary art, artists evoke synesthetic experiences
that confront the way we experience woollen blankets beyond their essentialized materiality and come to more deeply understand their values and meaning
within and across cultures.
Notes
1. For the sole purpose of this publication, Bloomsbury has full permission to reproduce the
images provided to accompany my written contribution. I have secured full-permission from
each artist to use the images provided for publication. All images have been provided by the
artists and galleries where exhibitions have been displayed. In accordance with the wishes
of each contributor, I have labelled the images accordingly with title, date, medium, photographer, etc.This chapter is an extraction from a larger material ethnography that not only
looks at contemporary art but also considers how blankets have been used in contemporary
craft in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as their past and present use in traditional ceremonial
regalia along the Pacific Northwest Coast. See McDonald (2014).
2. Annie E. Coombes writes of Benjamins essay: The essay describes translation as an art of
exchange that has the potential to transform both the object (the subject of translation) and
the very tools that effect this transformation. Understood as a thesis about exchange and
transformation, his suggestive essay has fundamental implications for the way we think about
the relations between cultural value, historical narrative, and agency (Coombes 1997: 237).
3. With these theoretical frames in place, the geographically expansive nature of this discussion may not then seem so unwieldy. For it is only through showing the movement and uses
of the blankets more broadly (and historically) that the unique transformations, values and
meanings associated with woollen blankets today emerges.
4. Other blanket field colours included, but were not limited to, red, blue, pale green and navy.
Historically, they were more prevalent during the height of the fur trade in North America,
whereas the purple woollen blanket with the white band and markings (Figure 14.1) was
created by Whitney Mills in England to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth
II. In Making Sense Out/Of the Visual: Aboriginal Presentations and Representations in
Nineteenth-Century Canada, Ruth B. Phillips comments that throughout the fur trade
era, red woollen cloth was preferred because of its analogic relationship to red ochre and
Indigenous scarlet dyes (Phillips 2004: 606). The red colour that Phillips mentions is Turke
Red. According to Textiles from the Fur Trade: A Textiles Glossary for the York Factory
Indents, 1801 to 1860, turke red was a bright durable red dye for cotton and wool cloth originally made from madder and later from alizarian in connection with an aluminium mordant
and fatty matter. The earliest date cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1784. The 1830
York Factory indent listed 1032 yds. Turked red and Blue stripe cotton Druggets (Textiles
From the Fur Trade: A Textiles Glossary for the York Factory Indents, 1801 to 1860, found at
the Royal Alberta Museum Archives Search File: Fur Trade Textiles).
261
5. Such extensive visibility through various media has overshadowed the participation of
numerous other trading companies intimately involved in the Canadian fur trade throughout the last three centuries. For example, the North West Company, with its home base in
Montral, competed with the Hudsons Bay Company for access through Hudson Bay until
they officially merged in 1821.
6. In the chapter, in terms of the economic value of blankets, the giving and gifting of woollen
blankets for land in treaty agreements with the British Crown was common practice in many
settler states such as Canada, the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand.
7. In The System of Objects, Jean Baudrillard also refers to objects as humble (Baudrillard
1996: 26).
8. Marie Watt is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Portland, OR (US). Born in 1967
to the son of Wyoming ranchers and a daughter of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation
(Iroquois / Haudenosaunee), Watt identifies herself as half Cowboy and half Indian.
Formally, her work draws from [I]ndigenous design principles, oral tradition, personal
experience, and Western art history. Her approach to art-making is shaped by the protofeminism of Iroquois matrilineal custom, political work by Native artists in the 1960s,
a discourse on multiculturalism, as well as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Like
Jasper Johns, she is interested in things that the mind already knows. Unlike the Pop
Artists, she uses a vocabulary of natural materials (stone, cornhusks, wool, cedar) and
forms (blankets, pillows, bridges) that are universal to human experience (though not
uniquely American) and noncommercial in character (from her own website: http://www.
mkwatt.com/).
9. See: http://mkwatt.com/index.php/content/work_detail/category/blanket_stories_objects/.
10. Marie Watt, personal communications, 20122014.
11. Tracey Williams is a multidisciplinary artist based in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She
obtained her MFA with Honours from the University of Auckland (Elam School of Fine Arts).
She has exhibited widely in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the United States and
her work takes up the notion of little narratives nested in larger metanarratives. Williams is
a founding member of the community-based artistic group, The Friendly Girls Society, and
a founding member of the research-based group, Paper Does Not Refuse Ink.
12. Tracey Williams, personal communication, 20 July 2011.
13. Douglas MacKay addresses the history of the woollen blanket examined from the perspective of the Hudsons Bay Company. He comments that Point blankets are made from
selected wools from England, Wales, Aotearoa New Zealand and India, each bringing a
definite quality which contributes to the water resistance, the warmth, the softness, and the
strength of the final article (MacKay 1935: 4549). This summary on wool corresponds with
a letter dated 4 July 1923 from C. V. Sale to C. W. Veysey (General Manager, Hudsons Bay
Company, Winnipeg), however, it is noted: Australia is not one of the sources from which
the particular type of wool used in these blankets originated (p.1). Kay Rex also notes that
South America and South Africa also supplied wool used in the blankets (Rex 1958: 33;
McDonald 2006).
14. Tracey Williams, personal communication, 20 July 2011: I like the way the work becomes
ambiguous. I like that ambiguity. Thats why with the ship itself I made sure it didnt look like
a specific ship so that people couldnt go oh that its the such-and-such or its this ship.
I took a whole lot of ships from the periods I was interested in and I kind of extrapolated
bits of them and made my own ship. In the end that is why it is called My Ship. Because
that is the only position I can really speak from with authority ... You can take on the whole
of these histories and go out looking for these histories where you find some little narrative
that will hold a spotlight to you [for] you [to] know history in another way.
262
15. Tracey Williams, personal communication, 20 July 2011.

16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
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Part6
Conclusion
Chapter15
Materials: The story of use
Susanne Kchler
While the twentieth century is known for its unprecedented growth in population and the expansion of the global economy (Krausmann et al. 2009), the
twenty-first century is fast becoming characterized by the flourishing of a materials economy. This economy is being driven by a flood of engineered materials
that are highly mobile, moving from institution to institution as they are adopted,
transformed and manufactured into products to suit a number of distinct object
functions (Ashby and Johnson 2002; Ball 1997; Bensaude-Vincente 2004). The
increase in materials productivity, and its heightened significance as a general
feature of economic development, have led some to speculate about a fundamental shift in the fabric of capitalism away from industry, as the distinction
between production and consumption gives way to a socially informed material production via the co-creation of commodities with consumers (Barry 2005;
Bennett 2010; Kchler 2008; Thrift 2006). It is, however, not production alone that
is notable for the changes that have put societal forces into the driving seat but
also the nature and scale of use itself.
The 2009 report on the growth in global materials use by Fridolin Krausmann
and others deploys the image of metabolism to assess the efficiency with which
materials, and energy, are used, and this metabolism of use they see as having
increased eight-fold over the twentieth century. This accompanies the shift
from a dominance in use of renewable biomass towards mineral materials, a
well-known by-product of the transition from an organic to a mineral economy
that defined the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom (Wrigley 2008). It is
no secret that this increase in the societal use of materials has had a massive
impact, transforming natural systems and society-nature-relations alike in unprecedented ways (McNeill 2000: 3).
The understanding of materials use has so far only ever figured in research
as a by-product of a concern with forecasting trends to inform the research and
the co-production of materials, in anticipation of their eventual designation to a
specific commodity function. By reducing use to patterns of consumption, global
268
policy makers have been able to fully embrace the potential of cutting-edge
scientific research that takes the societal benefit of newly invented materials as
axiomatic and unproblematic. A bifurcated picture emerges against this background that pitches science against social science. In science, innovation for its
own sake is privileged, with a trajectory that goes from invention to successful
initial application on a case-by-case basis; failures are not highlighted or even
acknowledged. From this perspective, new technology looks entirely positive and
tends to be adopted by policy makers without a broad evidence base as to its
potential consequences. From the perspective of social science, which focuses
on the societal use of new materials after initial application, over a prolonged
period of time, the view is very different. From this perspective, production quickly
segues into overproduction, and use often into misuse. Reduced to a critical
voice that resonates with debates reflecting on matters that lie outside of and
independent of materials, from sustainable resources and climate change to the
environment, social science has lost its perspective on materials. This chapter
will review the reasons behind the neglect of the study of materials use in social
science research, and reflect on the methodological challenges involved in filling
this gap, richly demonstrated in the chapters assembled in this book.
A short history of materials

in social science research
One hundred years ago, the art historian Alois Riegl published his now classic
piece, The Modern Cult of Monuments: its Character and its Origin (1903[1982]),
originally written in German as a document on the restoration of public architecture. His observation of a decisive change in early twentieth-century attitudes
towards materials, shifting from a valuation of the old to a valuation of the new,
reflected on the rapid diversification of new materials and new commodity forms
and functions that had dominated the previous century. Riegls note on the
preoccupation with newness at the start of the twentieth century is reflected in
research by historians on the role of materials in commerce and politics in early
modern Europe (Schiebinger and Swan 2005; Smith and Findlen 2002)and in
the rise of institutions devoted to the archiving of materials whose properties
promised the creation of new worlds.
Londons Museum of Economic Botany at Kew documents that at the close
of the nineteenth century botanical specimens were no longer of interest for
consumption alone but as a knowledge resource able to convert new materials into political power and economic capital for the industrial world system
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(Brockway 2002; Desmond 2007). The Museum collection (now known as the
Economic Botany Collection) contains many thousands of biomaterials, dominated by rubber, gutta percha and other exudates, textiles and fibres, papers,
timbers, adhesives and dyes. Following Gottfried Sempers (1854/2004) foundational text on the technical uses of materials for an emerging field of architecture,
materials were now of explicit scientific interest, inspiring the search for ways to
imitate and substitute for more expensive materials, and to innovate new material properties and object forms and functions. The purchase of materials and
their properties for envisioning new forms of living and being was thus wellestablished at the time of Riegls publication. What, we might ask, went wrong,
leaving social science materials research out of step with the rapidly accelerating innovations in materials science that came to shape much of the lived in
social world of the twentieth century?
A glimpse into the popular imagination that attached itself to all things material
during the early industrial revolution has come down to us in Johann Wolfgang
von Goethes novel Elective Affinities, which, published in 1809, captured the
prevailing use of chemical and alchemic analogies in debates about the nature
of familial relationships (Adler 1990; Kim 2003). Chemical substances were
said to unite like friends and acquaintances or stay as strangers side by side
depending on their different reaction to one another, projecting a covert and
inner connection, hidden from view, that could validate new forms of contractual
relations where previously overt relations sanctioned by marriage had prevailed
(Raistrick 1950, 1953). A whole array of moral lessons were drawn from the
behaviour of chemical substances and their human analogues, making chemistry an authentic discipline with prestige and public visibility well before the onset
of the Chemical Revolution and nearly a century earlier than modern physics. The
affective qualities of materials, apparent in their mutability and their capacity to be
turned into something completely new, were increasingly harnessed in the nineteenth century, pivotally leading to the controlling of the properties of iron in the
production of steel, and of rubber in the production of the precursor of modern
plastics, Bakelite (Mossmann and Smith 2008). The manifold uses to which these
materials were put are still visible in the staircase banisters, doors and balcony
railings of Victorian townhouses built to house an industrial class. The literature of
the time offers a less-known trace of a conscious appreciation of materials (Wolff
etal. 2005), used to create and authenticate new ways of living and fuelling the
consumption of a seemingly irrepressible stream of commodities in ways that
have not substantially changed until today (Forty 1986; Phillip 1998).
The diversification of commodities at the close of the nineteenth century,
however, masqued a fundamental change in the conception of materials, laying
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the foundation for the relentless search for new material properties and functions
and their eventual synthetic replication, which came to dominate the twentieth
century. Drawing on Gottfried Sempers notion of a truth to materials, the art
historian Monika Wagner (nd.) has argued that before the middle of the nineteenth century, both the form and the style of an object were inseparable from its
materials, on account of the constraint the material exercises on tools and on the
manufacturing processes. This is described well by Michael Baxandall (2008) in
his narration of the consequences for the technique of carving, and the resulting
style of religious sculptures, when switching from oak to limewood at the onset
of the Renaissance in Germany, a change itself resonant of complex transformations in the social fabric at the time.
The discovery of new malleable materials in the nineteenth century,
promising liberation from manual labour and the capacity for machinic transformation, led to the separation both conceptually and concretely of the
design of an object, its form and function, from its material, which in turn
became secondary and passive in relation to the chosen form. Design itself,
in turn, now was no longer thought to have an inherent materiality and could
be transferred to many different materials. Monica Wagner cites the example
of the unveiling of a victory column made from one single piece of vulcanized caoutchouc, or natural rubber, at the 1873 World Fair in Vienna as a
historical moment that galvanized a new imaginary both around the potential
of design and the potential of materials that offer themselves up to an infinite range of forms. The shock of caoutchouc, as she calls it, resulted from
the fact that although the form of this victory column was conventional, and
greatly resembled a similar triumphal column inaugurated in Berlin that same
year, it was produced from a single inauspicious vegetable material, soon
found in numerous other commodities. Since rubber could be transformed to
resemble many other materials, both hard and soft, and could take on many
different forms, it sparked the invention of new object functions, such as fire
hoses, bouncing balls and diving suits. Semper was therefore at a loss as to
how to classify this material, which could be used for inflatable boats, victory
columns and waterproof building coating, into his system of style-generating
materials, signalling an ending that arguably provoked him to write a manual
for style in the techtonic arts.
Malleable materials had in fact existed long before the shock of caoutchouc,
for example, in the form of bronze or papier mch, but rubber was incomparable
in its manifold applications as it could be changed chemically at the microstructural level and with no physical effort through a small pinch of sulphur. The
shock of caoutchouc therefore had brought to light a new way of conceiving of
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the nature of a prototype, as functionality and form were no longer thought to be

linked to the material, but instead relied exclusively on design.
This idea of design as both preceding and independent of the material within
which it is taking on form has given way to new technical ways of creating form
so that today prototypes may exist virtually on a computer, to be materialized in
many different materials. As Monika Wagner shows in her work on the history
of twentieth century art, an intimate relationship with and knowledge of materials remained active only in the world of fine art, chemistry and physics, a world
away from commodity manufacture and consumption, which had become
the playground for design and the experiential domain open to introspection
by social and historical sciences (Wagner 2001). Today, the materials industry
in the United Kingdom has an annual turnover of around 200 billion, contributing 15 per cent of GDP to the economy and employing 1.5 million people
directly and supporting a further 4million jobs. Yet we could be forgiven for being
entirely oblivious to it as it is largely invisible. The twentieth century, as well as the
twenty-first, have inherited the legacy of the nineteenth-century separation of the
noumenal from the phenomenal, leaving materials to the peculiar concrescence
of science, inaccessible to all but the expert and rendering all other acquaintance with materials subject to the experience of design.
Global policy makers today have embraced the potential of cutting-edge
scientific research that takes the societal benefit of newly-invented materials as
axiomatic. The development of advanced materials is being posited by governments in the United States, Germany, China, Japan and South Korea as crucial
to global competitiveness and national security and essential for addressing
the broader challenges of clean energy, food security and human health and
well-being. As a result, the early twenty-first century is being defined by a new
materials economy driven by a flood of engineered technological materials
whose capacities offer far-reaching promises.
Consequently, in science, innovation for its own sake is privileged, with a
trajectory that goes from invention to successful application on the basis of
individual materials. From this perspective, the discovery and deployment
of ever-new materials looks entirely positive. From the perspective of social
science, which focuses on the use of materials after invention and first application, the view is very different. On-the-ground research shows that a staggering
percentage of materials invented and manufactured at great cost fail within the
first five months to establish a secure market, often for social rather than scientific reasons. For every lasting success, many materials come into circulation
and then fail, exacerbating the very problems that new materials are supposedly
developed to solve. At the same time, the privileging of innovation drives the
272
development of yet more new materials, instead of fully exploring the potential
and qualities of recent inventions, leading to waste, overproduction, increased
risk and uncertainty, and an increasingly-felt lack of knowledge about the materials that surround us. Indeed, there is a general resistance to thinking about
materials at all.
The precedent for this was set in the 1950s with the commercialization of the
first mass-market new material plastic. The consequences unleashed by the
unbridled development of plastics is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our times, and yet people are still hypnotized by what some have called
the exuberant proliferation of design and new materials. In our obsession with
novelty, we overlook the fact that materials are not inert, they leak, transform and
interact with what is around them in ways that are invisible and unsuspected.
There are at present two competing approaches to how best to mitigate the
uncertainty and risk that surround the discovery, deployment and disposal of
materials. One calls for increased governance, the other for deregulation and
global connectivity, but both are hampered by existing economic and management systems set up for commodity production, that either unnecessarily restrict
movements of materials or are totally unaware of the possibilities. But on closer
inspection both have the potential to make the problems worse.
The governance model directs attention almost exclusively to identifying and
securing materials resources, driven by narratives of risk, volatility, scarcity, frontiers, resilience and governance. It calls for a holistic approach that includes: (a)
strategic diplomatic efforts in the international arena to boost supply through
trade agreements and knowledge exchange; (b) increasing the efficiency of
resource use; and (c) improving the husbandry of resources through reuse,
remanufacture and recycling in secondary markets. The governance model
argues that it is de facto resource politics, not environmental preservation or
sound economics that is set to dominate the global agenda, played out through
trade disputes, climate negotiations, market manipulation strategies, aggressive
industrial policies and the scramble to control frontier areas.
The global connectivity model, however, is all about finding innovative
advanced alternatives, with narratives of opportunity, experimentation and
collaboration. It advocates speeding up the movement of materials from discovery through to deployment, on un-precedented scales. This typically involves
public-private partnerships granting open access to generic materials databases within an evolving IP framework. Examples of its implementation include
the United Statess Materials Genome Initiative, launched in 2011, which aims
to double the speed of new materials innovation and deployment through
computational research and develop a national infrastructure to integrate data
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generated in materials science and engineering, based upon a public-private

open access model. The computational research uses algorithms to generate
millions of potential new materials and model their physical properties, without
their ever having been manufactured, and it models spatially and temporally the
new materials behaviours and properties, building supposedly accurate predictive algorithms into product design tools.
In another example, supercomputing clusters at Berkeley have been harnessed
for the Materials Project, which aims to compute the properties of all known materials and make them available to researchers. This will improve softwares predictive
capacities for new material combinations and allow for targeted screening of the
potentially most useful materials before they have been synthesized in a lab. It
is claimed that such advanced combinatorial techniques accelerate tenfold the
transition from new materials discoveries to practical applications. Another project
seeking a clearly defined advanced material solution to a practical problem is
Harvards open access Clean Energy Project, currently the worlds largest computational chemistry experiment, which aims to develop high-performance organic
photovoltaic candidates for solar cell materials. Using IBMs World Community
Grid, the general public can participate by donating idle computer time for computational research. This has so far generated 2.3million candidate materials, whose
properties have been made available in online databases, allowing other materials
scientists and engineers to design experimental new products.
The screening and selection of suitable virtual candidates results in what
Andrew Barry (2005; this volume) has termed informed materials, whose properties are simulated by computers and whose proposed use is built into their
very existence if they are selected for actual manufacture, yet whose real social
use cannot be predicted or imagined. The emergence of informed materials interestingly is bringing us back to an acknowledgement of the capacity of
materials to both resist and attract potential transformation, modalities of manufacture and functionality, reasserting an active element in the project of design
that had been lost to western thought since the height of the industrial revolution (Bennett 2010). The problem of recapturing what we have lost sight of is
fundamentally an anthropological one: How do people from very different and
overlapping cultures interact with, use and understand materials in their changing environments? With theoretical traditions that balance cultural relativism with
universalist principles, and a foundation in fine-grained ethnography as a methodology, anthropological studies of cultural perceptions of materials in use have
never been more urgently needed.
Ironically, in a world in which potentially millions of materials compete to be
turned into objects with rather more limited forms and functions than they are
274
technically capable of, we are now generally ignorant of the properties, levels of
sustainability and future impact of the material objects that surround us. And this
is precisely at a moment when materials are beginning to take over the technical
functions we once associated exclusively with object forms. The step-change in
both the quantity and inherent qualities of materials is swift, and largely unrecognized outside of the laboratory environment, arriving in the marketplace as a
fait accompli apparently undifferentiated from previous materials. This leaves
existing structures of training, monitoring and planning for materials long-term
impact hopelessly behind and unable to respond intelligibly. Without a deep
understanding of the role of the social in materials development and use, how
can we define criteria of success and understand how and why some materials
fail? How are we to evaluate the usefulness of materials and, by the same token,
avoid wasting their potential and simply creating more waste? Understanding
the value of materials through a deeper understanding of social and cultural
values associated with them is a core contribution that social science ought to
be making, and this volume presents the starting point for such work.
Materials use has today a hollow ring, conjuring up images of desperation,
standing in front of do-it-yourself shelves searching for the right glue or in the
supermarket searching for the right ingredient among dozens all seemingly
alike, all made with use already designed into the fabric of the good. Armies of
advisors, from the nutritionist to the new job type of the materials librarian, are
standing by to broker the bewildering manifold of materials choices now available to decision makers in the kitchen and in design, all equally ill-equipped to
handle each others specialist knowledge: that of materials properties and that
of use (cf. Kchler 2010). The lack of interest in understanding of materials
use beyond potential for the market, and the disconnect of interest from the
lived-in social world in which people are desiring to make informed decisions, is
suddenly no longer surprising. Yet these are crucial problems for a twenty-first
century eager to rectify the fall-out from the excesses of the previous centuries.
Between invention and innovation

The conceptual separation of material from design paradoxically gave way to one
of the most astonishing innovations of the twentieth century: the advent of materials by design. In her work on the history of materials innovation, the historian
of science Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (2004) discusses the cultural and epistemic impact of advancements in materials science, such as the development
of high-performance materials, biomimetic materials and nano-biomaterials,
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outlining three generations of materials designed to offer optimal solutions to

specific problems or requirements of an end product. The social and political
context of the first generation of high performance materials emerged as a result
of the military space programmes of the 1970s with their strong demand for
materials with never-seen-before properties for rockets and missiles. In the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, the invention of new materials was further
encouraged by science policy, leading to the innovation of composites that had
several advantages over more traditional materials: they were especially strong
as a result of the reinforcing carbon or aramid fibres they contained. They were
able to combine the properties of various families of materials, such as the lightness of plastics, toughness of metals and heat resistance of ceramics. And, they
could be designed to specification.
As a result of the substitution of these new materials-by-design for conventional materials, whole pieces of machinery, like the helicopter, were redesigned
to be much more efficient and lighter. The production of composites used for
parts of machines, such as aircraft wings or engines, required a complete
departure from industrial machine mass production and a shift of manufacture
to artisanal activity in that each piece is unique, produced for a specific task, with
a customized design. As well as a change in the manufacturing process, the
development of performance materials also saw a change in the traditional linear
model of materials production. Whereas traditionally, production would begin
with a raw material that is processed and used to manufacture the end product,
which then reaches the consumer, with materials-by-design, the application or
requirements often come first, and the material is then concocted to meet those
needs. Materials development now no longer follows a linear model, but requires
a systems approach, with continuous feedback from end users and design
specialists into the production and ongoing modification of materials.
Materials by design have thus shifted the concern with innovation to what Barry
(2002, 2005)has called invention; that is, to a practice of iterative improvement,
with the iterative process itself providing added value. Co-creation, the direct
involvement of the concept of the ideal consumer in the design of a commodity,
once happening at the consumption stage, has now moved to the process of
materials manufacturing, pervading and structuring into sequences the entire
process of production, from primary research into materials manufacture through
to the purposing of the material for commodity function.
A notable recent example of an ethnography that inquires into the way ideal
use informs manufacture and production is De Monchauxs (2011) detailed
reconstruction of the selection of materials used in the construction of the
Apollo spacesuits, whose image came to shape the way we think of the world
276
we inhabit today and future worlds beyond. Rather than hard materials engineered for the purpose of space exploration, which projected the image and
mind set of the mastery of nature through technology, soft materials originally
designed with very different uses in mind were chosen. De Monchaux shows
that the membrane-like quality of this material, comprised of layered, additive
composition rather than external reinforcement, embodied and perpetuated an
accommodation between nature and technology, representing a literal extension
of the astronauts body, and setting the precedent for new ways of thinking about
materials and their transformations.
Another ethnography, by Kaori OConnor (2011), of the invention and commercialization of Lycra, reveals how social forces and cultural factors inform what
new materials are developed and how sometimes actual take-up and use can
be very different. There can be very different consequences for production and
for society than originally envisioned when the material was designed and put
to market.
This new understanding of innovation as an iterative process of inventive
discovery and deployment has come to blur not just the distinction between
production, distribution and consumption, but also has shifted, as Nigel Thrift
(2006) has argued, the entire fabric of capitalism. The world, according to Thrift,
has become a continuous and inexhaustible process of inventions, creating
new interactive senses of causality. This is a world of indirect but continuous
expression, a new epistemic ecology, with commodities made persuasively
empathetic by bringing them literally close to hand and appealing via the senses
as the undertow of thought and decision (Thrift 2006: 286). Reminiscent of Jane
Bennetts (2010) theory of an emergent conception of an agentive vital materialism, cut loose from its moorings in materials that offer real constraints, the work
of design has effaced the very basis from which it once arose as made plain
in the work of Bensaude-Vincent and Thrift. This requires in turn new forms of
marketing through the medium of websites, known as honey traps, that serve to
increase the stickiness of commodities by engaging sensory registers, conjuring
up future consumers from the scaffold of an idealized image of what it is to be
human. With the hope of true innovation long past, invention now is not just referring to new commodities, but the capture and configuration of new worlds via
materials that are discovered and deployed from within laboratory environments
(cf. Barry 2005; Ingold 2010; Thrift 2006: 288).
Light, flexible, multifunctional, optimized and responsive materials-by-design,
invented in laboratories appear as the new natural when compared to old
materials that are rigid, uni-functional, inert, heavy and limited in their performance and also take on much of their seemingly pre-hermeneutic properties.
Materials
277
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Michael Newmann (2007) point to a collapsing of the categories of the artificial and the natural, as there are no longer any
limitations to control the properties and performance of materials, allowing the
material scientist to assume the role of the demiurge. Writing about the Inhuman
in the late 1980s, Lyotard reflected on the potential realization of a dream of
mankind to overcome the constraints of matter in its entirety, suffusing it with
mind, and allowing for what Theodore Adorno (1970) had called the irreducible
materiality of things to be overcome in a world in which immaterial information
takes precedent.
Philip Balls (2014) book on the invisible and the lure of the unseen draws out
this history, of the dream of mankind to evade material constraints and aspire
to giving concrete expression to an idea of transcendence. The tragic human
quality of this idea was famously captured by the anthropologist Claude LeviStrauss, who argued that humankind dreams of that fleeting moment when it [is]
permissible to believe that the law of exchange could be evaded, that one could
give without losing, enjoy without sharing (Levi-Strauss 1969: 496). Science and
design have triumphed in giving texture to the dream of escaping the shackles
of nature, by creating an artificial one in their own image.
Nature, in the words of Bensaude-Vincent (2004), has become a model for
the ability of materials to act as complete materials systems that self-assemble
at low temperatures, are smart and responsive and are easily produced and
recycled with no low energy costs. We now know however that this hoped-for
capacity of engineered materials will likely remain a dream, as it was soon realized that, while nature was an insuperable engineer, using it as model was not
as simple as adapting natures elegant solutions to our human technology.
Bensaude-Vincente demonstrates convincingly that the principles underlying
natural technologies diverge quite considerably from those underlying human
technologies, as nature uses predominantly soft, organic materials behind which
there is no grand design. The reference to the human element in production,
assumed to be generic and natural rather than culturally specific and socially
motivated, is thus steeped in misconception, requiring us to look closely at how
materials are used outside of the laboratory, where materials are perceived as
indexes of complex intentions that are embedded in complex relations.
Materials use beyond laboratory life

The art historian Hans Belting (1995) famously once stated that art is for those
who do not feel at home. Arguably indeed, a world of consociates who share
278
a lived-in social world, as captured by the Austrian sociologist and philosopher

Alfred Schtz (1932), do not require the aid of an image or performance to
recognize ways of thinking and being that bind people together in the myriads
of actions in the everyday. Schtzs manifesto for a phenomenology of the social
world described a world of consociates in which empathy and intersubjective
understanding rest on the unmediated experience of the everyday, a world
whose unquestionable existence was, at the time of the original publication of
the work, about to end. The idea of a shared social world may have ended while
it was being extended into a myriad of social networks through war, exile and
migration; yet empathy and inter-subjective understanding grew even stronger
when carried, refracted as index of what is relational about actions, in the form of
poetry, literature and art, to the far reaches of the world. The question is how the
lessons of art, and its capacity to unleash empathetic understanding and lasting
intersubjective attachment, can be learnt by those keen to address the lack of
indexicality built into materials by design; materials which paradoxically, in-spite
of or perhaps because of their aspiration to speak to a generic human element,
have effectively disabled understanding, evaluation and lasting attachment with
materials in general and their use.
In their recent essay on the use of mundane materials as interfaces, Michael
Barany and Donald MacKenzie (2014) discuss the role of chalk, blackboards and
scrap paper in the development of theoretical approaches and developments in
mathematics. Chalk here is introduced as material surrogate for the practices that
constitute mathematicians as community, as it is the very material properties of
chalk that enable abstract thought. Chalk serves both as metaphor and as device
in the construction and circulation of new concepts, presenting a potent resource
in its implicit relation to other materials and serving as constraint that combine to
shape mathematical research in innumerable ways. Chalk writing and its relation
to tracing out mathematical thought verbally and manually, fashion the intrinsic
necessity of the unfolding of the argument in mathematical exposition.
Barany and McKenzie challenge Bruno Latours argument that preparatory practices such as paper and pen materialize and stabilize unruly natural
phenomena in the form of data, plots and other representations (Latour 1990).
They show instead that while mathematicians expend a remarkable amount of
labour to materialize their concepts of study, they do that with the goal of coaxing
those thought objects to behave in some new way rather than disciplining them
to hold some stable and circulatable form. Mathematical thinking, therefore,
is markedly dependent on material media, an insight that recalls Alfred Gells
(1998) theorization of the cognitive stickiness of certain artefacts embedded in
an artefacts indexical, internally held relations.
Materials
279
Science and Technology Studies has long pointed out that the take-up of
material technologies of all kinds is a social process par excellence (Bijker 1997;
Latour 1992). Latour (1993) in his work on the Pasteurization of France points
out that Pasteur neither discovered nor invented microbes, but that the invention was the result of the interactions between Pasteur and resources and allies
such as politicians, hygienists, laboratories, experiments, cattle, and bacilli, that
worked to transform microbes from entities to qualified things with definite and
stable attributes. In the same way as a mathematicians intuition and imagination spring forth from the properties of the chalk, the worlds of potential that
pasteurization came to conjure up similarly sprang from the recognition of the
material properties of microbes and their capacity to manifest sequences of
processes and relations in ways that propelled attention to new understanding
and vocabulary.
The quasi-magical capacity of materials to conjure up associations and attach
vocabularies and modalities of attention to its aesthetic qualities is born out in
a number of case studies brought together in this volume. Fiona P. McDonald
shows how the multiple resonances of woollen blankets, industrially produced
and distributed as the signature piece of colonial intervention, provoke their
transformations into art, craft and indigenous cultural property. Rather than eliciting a uniform response, the chapter shows how the perception of blankets
as indexical of complex relations and complex histories provokes distinct and
diverse actions upon the material, whose mattering pervades a social and
cultural imagination that is both radical and mainstream.
In contrast to the response invited by an already-transformed material whose
resonances call up forms of labour and loyalty rooted in industrial and colonial worlds, Laurence Douny takes us to the space of imagination and social
action afforded by a material whose own futurity attracts other transformational
materials, with a logic that relations between materials act as a site of cultural
imagination. Wild silk, collected and laboriously prepared for threading and
weaving, almost invites indigo dye as the substance that, reminiscent of Semper,
is true to the material. Indigo dye resonates as index of transformation with the
futurity of becoming, that is so subtly made tangible by the cocoons whose
discarded shells offer up the resource for silk. Relations that are seen in or are
built out of materials, are in both cases the vital ingredients for understanding
relations between persons and between persons and things. They enable people
to make informed decisions about what to do or what to think about seemingly
completely removed domains of social, political and economic life.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have chapters that discuss the problems
that occur when materials no longer offer up an understanding of relations. Sarah
280
Wilkes takes us through the minefield of what is sustainable about materials,

revealing the open-ended and uncertain nature of this question when directed
to engineered materials, whose relations, once so wonderfully grasped via classificatory regimes, have long ceased to function. Mark A. Miodownik outlines the
slippage of these regimes, and speaks from the engineering perspective on the
need to understand once again the relations that materials harbour and offer up
for our engagement.
These and other chapters in this volume bring together perspectives both
on the indexicality of materials and associated problems of classification and
analysis as well as on the methodological challenges of conducting ethnographies of materials use. Together they seek to address the blind spot that
materials occupy in social and historical sciences in the hope of paving the
way for a new vocabulary and a new intellectual engagement, with what the
anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss has long ago identified as the science of
the concrete, to build bridges across the divide between the noumenal and the
phenomenal that has remained a lasting shadow cast by the industrial world
onto the twenty-first century.
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Index
aesthetics xx, 19, 69, 71, 75, 778, 82, 105,

109, 110, 112, 11415, 123, 126,
129, 13941, 14850, 1778, 1812,
1889, 2457, 249, 251, 279
of deity clothing 1434, 145, 149
of diamonds 1979, 2014, 206n6, n11
goals for materials innovation 69, 712
of gold 1589
of heirloom trade beads 184, 188, 190
implications of materials 148
of indigo xxiii, 104, 109, 11214, 116
opulence 140, 14314, 1478, 149
of plastics 1234, 1267, 12932, 177,
1802, 185
properties of xx, 69, 75
of replica trade beads 184, 185,
187, 188
of silk 1047, 109, 11415
symmetry 143, 149
transformation 246, 252, 258
of woollen blankets 246, 249, 252, 257,
258, 260n4
seealsobeauty; pattern; style
affect 137, 1401, 269
affordances 212, 223, 224
agency xxi, 3, 1517, 1921, 314, 52, 54,
122, 123, 145, 155, 170, 183, 189,
1901, 225, 245, 246, 260, 260n2,
276, 278
as active materials xxi, xxvi, 34, 35, 44,
56, 57, 77, 1035, 111, 112, 117,
120, 205, 273
as agents 34, 35, 54, 122, 259
of art 183, 246
of artists 19, 183, 259, 260
as enchantment 103, 11416, 160, 162,
168, 169, 183
human 52, 65n4, 123
as living materials 3, 49, 50, 103, 105,
110, 112, 117, 254
of materials 20, 21, 24, 32, 183, 1901

of networks 155, 170
resistant materials 212, 218, 224, 273
as stickiness 224, 276, 278
alchemy 3, 3, 71, 1323n1, 160, 269
aloe vera 42, 44, 240
aluminium 73, 77, 93, 220, 260n4
alloys 73
environmental impact 220
processing 220
Angola 19, 1945, 198, 201, 205n2,
206n6, n11
Lunda 1945, 196, 205, 205n1, n2,
206n11
anthropology xxii-xxv, xxvi, xxvii, 5, 6, 12, 13,
16, 17, 19, 24, 27, 32, 35, 857, 89,
90, 93, 95n2, 149, 150, 170n1, 181,
187, 191, 194, 215, 224, 228, 245,
247, 250, 251, 254, 273, 277, 280
and ethnographic methods 20, 150n2,
157, 158, 175, 184, 191, 194, 211,
219, 228, 273
of materials xii, xvi, xxiixxv, 12, 13, 17,
19, 20, 27, 32, 35, 149, 150, 194,
224, 268, 2713, 2757
of the senses 16, 81, 857, 89, 90, 93,
95n2, 228
seealsosocial sciences
Appadurai, Arjun xxiv, 14, 27, 120, 137,
166, 170n2, 206n5, 247
application(s) 49, 51, 81
of materials 32, 34, 36, 39, 41, 45, 122,
1245, 128, 141, 220, 268, 270, 271,
273, 2756
seealsomaterials use
appropriation 12, 25, 26, 178, 250, 258
cultural 186, 187, 190
architecture xxiv, 69, 70, 724, 76, 87,
95n3, 177, 219, 254, 268, 269
and materials 69, 724, 269
284
ArQule 5861, 63
art xvii, xx, xxi, 3, 7, 1516, 19, 22, 70, 71,
738, 103, 121, 1323n1, 170, 1757,
1803, 185, 18990, 238, 2458,
25060, 260n1, n2, 261n8, n11, 268,
2701, 2779
agency of 183, 246
appropriations of social meanings
in 250, 258
art objects/artworks 239, 2458, 25060
art history 71, 73, 103, 268, 2701
art world 247, 259
and authenticity 1813, 190
as commodity 181
context 22, 251, 259
and cosmology 2456
distinction from craft 181, 183, 190
in history of materials 71, 73, 268
and museum effect 189
plastics in 19, 176, 182, 18990
and skill 181
social context of 181, 182, 248
transformation of materials in 247
transformative capacity of 255
and value 247
seealsotribal art
artefact xxii, xxiv, 10, 1820, 25, 33, 130,
140, 145, 150, 175, 236, 250, 259,
2789
agency of 33, 278
and the body 140, 145, 150
as index 279
in materials libraries 10
plastics as 19, 175
artificiality xxi, xxiv, 88, 94, 129, 177, 277
seealsoauthenticity
Ashby, Mike xixxx, 32, 73, 76, 267
association 16, 18, 21, 39, 42, 44, 546,
64, 756, 823, 86, 87, 90, 95n3,
123, 126, 12931, 1389, 148, 228,
229, 233, 240, 254, 279
of artificial colours and flavours 94
in chemistry 64
metaphysics of 16, 546
as science of associations 55
and fragrance 2289, 232, 233, 240
and materials 16, 21, 39, 42, 44, 254, 279
and psychophysical properties 756,
823, 86, 87, 8990, 95n3, 124
Index
association for Responsible Mining

(ARM) 1557, 163, 165
atoms/atomic xix, xxvi, 3, 15, 49, 51, 52, 53,
545, 64, 65n2, 74, 159, 161, 221
Australia 36, 261n11, n13
authenticity 18, 19, 43, 94, 105, 121, 1249,
1478, 177, 1803, 186, 1889,
1901, 21517, 239, 257, 269
and art 1813, 190
of materials 94, 177, 1823, 186, 18991
and plastic 19, 29, 94, 121, 124,
1259, 130-; 177, 17980, 182,
187, 1889
seealsoartificiality; imitation
Ball, Philip 32, 44, 46n2, 71, 73, 267, 277
Barth, Fredrik xxiii, 224
Barthes, Roland 94, 129
bath products 22, 227, 229, 2314, 237,
2401, 242
body wash 227, 229, 2323, 2401,
242n7
soap 227, 229, 2324, 2401, 242n7,
n8, n9
Baxandall, Michael 170, 270
beads 19, 119, 120, 127, 142, 143, 183,
1848, 190
plastic microbeads 119, 120, 127
and spiritual practice 142, 143, 1867
seealsotrade beads
beauty 103, 109, 114, 115, 119, 140, 141,
147, 187, 227, 233, 234, 237, 240,
242n7, n8
beauty products 119, 227, 233, 234, 237,
240, 242n7, n8
and deities 140, 141, 147
as sara in silk 17, 27, 103, 104, 10910,
11216
beer 8890, 196
Belgium 198, 199
BenCab Museum 176, 189
Bennett, Jane xxi, 3, 14, 32, 34, 37, 267,
273, 276
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette 4951, 54,
567, 59, 61, 64, 267, 274, 2767
Bergson, Henri 49, 50, 55
bias 82, 85, 89, 228, 2301, 242n6
Bimuyag, Ruel 175, 183, 189
blood 105, 108, 181, 221
Index
body, the 3, 4, 26, 33, 56, 60, 66n11, 89,

90, 94, 103, 1067, 109, 11112,
114, 140, 145, 150, 197, 206n3, 254
and age 73, 109
and disability 73
and fatness 90
as living labyrinth 567
as material xxv, 138, 139
and mind 34, 1378
and plastics 119, 120, 127, 131, 185, 221
and praxeology 150, 276
and praxis 193
and religion 1389, 150
seealsoembodiment
Bonnevie, Raja Shanti 176, 183, 189
Bourdieu, Pierre 24, 194
Boyer, Bob 251
British Museum 5
Brown, Bill 4, 5, 2467, 253, 259
Building Research Establishment
(BRE) 216, 225n4
Cameroon 102
Canada 889, 179, 245, 249, 2513, 257,
259, 260n4, 261n6
Montreal 89, 261n5
Toronto 252
Vancouver 179
capital 193, 195, 196, 198, 200, 205, 268
as loans and consignment 198200,
206n9
processes of capital reproduction 193,
200, 205
capitalism xxiii, 3, 20, 1323n1, 267, 276
consumer 3, 1323n1
and materials innovation 276
Carrier, James 215
Central St. Martins Design Materials
Library 5, 8, 9
ceramics xix, xx, 7, 71, 73, 122, 177, 184,
188, 275
CEU EduPack xix
cheese 902, 95n5
chemical(s) xix, 21, 22, 40, 49, 503, 557,
58, 614, 66n15, 104, 108, 110, 119,
127, 170, 241, 269, 270
bonding 74
element 53, 159
industry 93
285
innovation 53
materials 62, 66n15, 116
petrochemicals xvii, 23, 41, 44, 45, 94,
120, 222
pharmaceutical chemical research 56
principles 64
reaction 112, 160
R&D 50, 51, 53
structure of matter xxvi, 242n4
chemistry xxvi, 15, 4951, 53, 545, 5860,
612, 646, 734, 159, 221, 269,
271, 273
combinatorial chemistry 5860, 61,
66n10, n15
elements in 5, 524, 58, 64, 71, 73,
158, 167
in history of science 73
and metaphysics 16, 546
organic chemistry 59
as science of association 55
synthetic chemistry 589, 66n10
China 22, 110, 184, 227, 2312, 23342,
271
Beijing 70, 235, 237, 238
Hong Kong 164, 232, 235, 238, 242n12
Macao 236, 238
Classen, Constance 86, 88, 93, 94, 94n1,
95n2, 228, 232
clothing xxvi, 3, 7, 10, 13, 14, 18, 27, 36,
69, 70, 75, 88, 121, 123, 130, 132
3n1, 1378, 1401, 145, 14850,
203, 213, 239, 250, 257, 258
clothing deities 18, 137, 138, 140, 141,
1435, 14850
and fashion 3, 121, 123, 130, 1323n1,
239
and gender 27, 103, 11215, 116, 239
seealsotextile(s); wild silk indigo
wrappers
cognition xvii, 17, 334, 95n3, 126, 137,
145, 149, 150, 224, 2789
and materials 2789
and stickiness 224, 278
colonial(ism) 21, 22, 31, 34, 44, 104, 109,
177, 184, 250, 251, 2578, 279
and trade 184, 187, 190, 251, 2578
treaties 235, 2512, 257, 261n6
and woollen blankets 22, 2504, 2578,
261n6, 279
286
colour xxiii, xxv, 13, 36, 41, 73, 76, 81, 82,
845, 89, 93, 94, 95n3, 104, 105,
1079, 112, 125, 1301, 140, 142,
143, 149, 1589, 175, 177, 1815,
1967, 198200, 2012, 2034, 205,
206n12, n13, 233, 239, 242n5, 249,
2512, 257, 260n4
and cognition 95n3
of diamonds 197206
and experience xxv
of gold 1589
indigo xxiii, 104, 112
and perception 76, 84, 95n3
pigments 73
of plastics 94, 124, 177, 1802, 185
and woollen blankets 249, 257, 260n4
commodity 16, 39, 80, 93, 161, 166, 170n2,
181, 186, 1934, 197, 198, 200, 204,
206n4, 254, 26772, 275, 276
and co-creation of materials 267, 275
and consumption 269, 271
definition 170
fetish 254
as immaterial 206n4
New Zealand landscape as 39
complexity 155, 158, 168, 169
composites xx, 4, 8, 35, 412, 52, 53, 54,
65n2, 71, 73, 159, 194, 204, 275
biomaterial 35, 412
as chemical compounds 15, 60, 66n10
and invention 52, 275
seealsomaterials by design under
materials
Concordia Sensoria Research Team
(CONSERT) 85, 88
concrete 5, 6, 16, 71, 211
consumption 16, 25, 81, 867, 90, 92,
94n1, 120, 123, 12732, 149, 157,
206n5, 228, 2357, 2679, 271,
2756
and filial nationalism 2378, 241, 242n12
and identities 87, 240
mass 94n1
and modernity 2369, 240, 241
of places as brands 39, 92
sensory anthropology of 86
context xxiii, 4, 8, 10, 13, 16, 21, 223, 24,
34, 73, 76, 85, 87, 902, 95n3, 103,
110, 117, 124, 132n13, 141, 176,
Index
181, 182, 189, 193, 194, 197, 200,

213, 2335, 24551, 255, 259, 275
cultural xxiii, 103, 245
material 197
and sensory testing 87, 902, 95n3
social xxiii, 16, 73, 1812, 205, 2345,
245, 247, 248, 250, 275
Cook, Captain James 36, 250, 257, 258
cosmetics 39, 424, 94, 127, 130, 233
cosmology xxiv, xxv, 4, 17, 18, 23, 26, 27,
713, 103, 11012, 115, 11617,
148, 15960, 169, 238, 2456, 278
as approach to materials xxv, 27
and cultural contradiction 235, 238, 240
in Hinduism 1478, 151n5
and invention 276
and making 26, 11617
as world-making 33, 82
and materials xxiv, 4, 17, 18, 23, 26, 11617
seealsoreligion
cotton xxvi, 8, 10, 104, 105, 10810,
11216, 182, 248, 251, 260n4
blankets 248, 251, 260n4
as fibre 10, 248
as textile 1045, 10810, 11314
craft xvii, xxi, 4, 12, 17, 18, 235, 41, 45,
54, 58, 66n9, 73, 115, 116, 122, 132,
1758, 1803, 184, 187, 189, 190,
245, 252, 260n1, 272, 279
distinction from art 181, 183, 190
Indigenous 180, 182, 183
and making 17, 18, 23, 25, 175, 182
and materials 4, 73, 122, 132
and plastic 175, 1804, 187, 189
and production 115, 116, 181
skills 58, 66n9, 178, 181, 183, 189
seealsomaking
culture ii, xxiiiiv, 3, 9, 1416, 18, 21, 32, 39,
66n15, 73, 75, 77, 86, 94, 104, 117,
1214, 126, 1289, 1312, 1323n1,
137, 144, 147, 149, 177, 1812,
18991, 216, 228, 2312, 237,
2389, 245, 250, 258, 25960, 273
currency 104, 1601, 165, 169, 184, 197,
201, 241
Danto, Arthur 247, 2501, 258
data xxii, 24, 26, 58, 612, 63, 66n15, 175,
213, 224, 247, 278
Index
databases 59, 63, 64, 65, 66n12, 70, 74,

76, 2723
of materials 70, 2723
decay 27, 41, 148, 160
DeLanda, Manuel 31, 32
Deng Xiao Ping 236, 237, 238
design vi, vii, xxxxi, 5, 7, 8, 18, 23, 25, 31,
335, 39, 412, 45, 567, 60, 635,
70, 736, 81, 82, 85, 89, 92, 95n3,
101, 103, 109, 113, 114, 116, 120,
1225, 127, 165, 170, 177, 191, 237,
239, 240, 254, 258, 261n8, 2708
community 70
constraints of 34
forms of 34, 177
indigenous design principles 254, 261n8
and malleable materials 2701
Maori 42
and material aphorisms 11214, 116
and object form and function
through 2701
process 33, 57, 60, 70
products 39, 73, 74, 122, 123, 165, 273
prototypes 2701
and sustainability 191
seealsomaterials by design under
materials
development seedesign; innovation;
processes; R&D
diamonds 1920, 93, 148, 193206
classification 197201, 2034, 206n11
and devaluation 199, 204
as kamanga 193, 195, 1978, 2023,
205n1, 206n9
properties of 20, 1934, 198203, 205
social conceptions of value 20, 193, 194,
201, 205
and technical knowledge 193, 195, 200,
201, 202, 205
trading 1920, 193, 195206
valuation of 20, 193, 195, 197, 2005,
206n11
discovery xvii, 6, 8, 1415, 27, 45, 50, 524,
58, 601, 64, 65, 65n3, 66n9, 73,
2702, 276
and innovation 45, 50
and invention 15, 52, 64, 276
of new materials xvii, 15, 53, 272
seealsoinvention; innovation
287
disease 389, 61, 251, 259

Dobkins, Rebecca J. 254, 255
Dupont 33, 127, 132n6
ecologies 213, 119, 126, 276
materials ecosystems 21
Economic Botany Collection at Kew
Gardens 57, 10, 268
economy 32, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 45, 181,
190, 194, 195, 204, 205, 238, 267, 271
Chinese 238
global 190, 267
political economy of language 194
efficacy 26, 1013, 106, 110, 112, 11417,
13941, 200, 215, 224, 240
and knowledge 215, 224
of materials 26, 1012, 11617, 224
symbolic 102
Egypt 231, 232
embodiment xxiii, 1213, 17, 26, 57, 112,
1378, 140, 1445, 14950, 197,
246, 248
as approach to materials xxiii, 13, 150
and emotion 1445
and knowledge 26, 138, 145
and phenomenology 26, 138
and religion 1378, 140, 1445, 149
and the senses 1445
seealsobody; phenomenology
emotion 77, 81, 88, 95n3, 103, 106, 114,
116, 1445, 149, 162, 236
and sensory evaluation 81, 88, 95n3
seealsoempathy
empathy 139, 145, 166, 276, 278
energy xx, 21, 40, 43, 213, 215, 220, 267,
271, 273, 277
use and sustainability 213, 220
engineering vi, xixxxi, xxvii, 8, 15, 53, 70,
72, 74, 109, 120, 1223, 128, 132,
211, 21920, 267, 271, 273, 2767,
280
and materials vi, xixxxi, 8, 15, 72, 267,
271, 273, 276, 277, 280
and sustainability 21920
entity xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 18, 23, 312, 52, 548,
62, 645, 106, 127, 169, 225n7, 279
intangible 169
passive 312
288
environment(al) xx, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 17,

18, 21, 32, 346, 39, 402, 435,
501, 54, 578, 636, 76, 82, 845,
94, 106, 114, 115, 119, 120, 1279,
163, 169, 211, 21317, 21923,
225n4, 231, 268, 2725
assessment 216
and biomaterials 41
consciousness 35, 45
conservation of 36
credentials 213, 214
impact 32, 34, 3940, 11920, 1279,
163, 169, 177, 180, 185, 211, 215,
21823, 267, 2723
informational materials environment 50,
578, 634
natural 43, 85
and regulation 41, 43
and sensory evaluation 82, 845
social and cultural xxvii, 34, 45
seealsosustainability
ethics seemorality
ethnography xvi, xviii, xxii, xxiii, xxv, 34, 19,
20, 223, 33, 81, 86, 101, 115, 149,
1757, 189, 191, 193, 197, 205, 237,
247, 250, 260, 273, 2756, 280
and phenomenology xxv
as sensory ethnography 867
as study of materials xvi, xviii, xxii, xxiii,
xxv, 34, 1920, 223, 101, 103, 115,
149, 211, 247, 260, 2756, 280
europe 22, 23, 36, 43, 71, 110, 128,
1323n13, 159, 162, 163, 177, 187,
218, 231, 234, 238, 257, 258, 268
Everyday Objects exhibition 1756, 178,
1823, 185, 18990
experience xvixvii, xxxxi, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, 7,
9, 17, 22, 26, 32, 45, 101, 120, 129,
137, 139, 1445, 150, 188, 189, 191,
194, 204, 206n3, 212, 223, 2357,
246, 248, 251, 254, 257, 25960,
261n8, 278
and knowledge 7, 12, 145
and learning 11, 15
sensory experience 16, 27, 8991, 104,
142, 245, 248, 255
experiment(ation) xx, xxi, 6, 10, 15, 32,
46n1, 51, 613, 66n11, 71, 74, 824,
92, 109, 178, 185, 2723, 279
Index
extraction 31, 357, 414, 57, 116, 167,

169, 184, 205, 206n3, 213, 215, 220
of aluminium 220
of flax fibres 31, 357, 41, 45, 46n1
Fabian, Johannes 181, 189
failure (of materials) xvii, 14, 37, 45, 1567,
163, 1689, 271, 274
Fairtrade brand 19, 1623, 1667
Fairtrade Foundation 1556, 1625, 1689
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International (FLO) 162, 163, 168,
169
fair trade movement 1613
Fair Trade USA 167, 169
fashion 18, 69, 73, 110, 121, 1235,
12732, 1323n13, 239
and clothing 121, 123, 130, 1323n13,
239
fibre 10, 14, 313, 3541, 445, 46n1, 73,
93, 1036, 10810, 112, 212, 248,
269, 275
carbon fibre 73, 212, 275
elastane 33
glass 14, 41, 73
Indian jute 38
natural 37, 389, 41, 109
sisal hemp 36, 37, 38
synthetic 38, 93, 248
seealsocotton; flax fibre; glass; silk
First World War 236
flax fibre 1415, 3146
and colonialism 31, 34, 44
extraction 36, 37, 41
as harakeke in New Zealand 1415, 31,
3440, 415
properties 31, 33, 35, 36
as sustainable 41
flow xxv
of information in materials
governance 212, 21415, 218
of plastic 1214, 128
Fong, Vanessa 234, 236, 237, 240, 242n12
form(s) xxvi, 67, 10, 1315, 24, 25, 27, 34,
45, 58, 63, 65, 66n15, 94, 101, 120,
1214, 129, 131, 138, 139, 1778,
181, 185, 1901, 194, 199200,
206n12, 241, 246, 249, 252, 254,
261n8, 26871, 274, 278
Index
and function 2689, 2701, 273

immaterial 63
indigenous 177, 1823, 189
in relation to substance xx, 4, 5, 1011,
13, 1820, 22, 150, 191, 270
Forum for the Future 21617, 218
Foster, Robert J. 183, 190, 206n5, 232,
2345, 241
Foucault, Michel 212, 214
fragrance 212, 24, 22734, 2401, 241n1,
242n3, n4, n5, n6, n12
and association 229, 232, 233
and Chinese medicine 234, 240
classification of 2301
and colonialism 21
cultural branding of 2345
histories of 212, 228, 2312, 241, 242n6
as informed material 228, 241
materials in fragrance production 230,
240, 242n4
and the senses 21, 22, 228, 232
seealsoscent(s)
Frankenstein 72
FT/FM (Fairtrade and Fairmined) gold 19,
1558, 16270
failure of 1567, 163, 1689
history of 1557
as new material 155
production 156, 1659
provenance 161, 168, 169
regulation of 156, 163, 1669
Gell, Alfred xxvi, 15, 24, 334, 45, 102, 103,
183, 190, 194, 2478, 259, 2789
gender xxiv, 24, 33, 88, 103, 1067,
11115, 1412, 1456, 2289, 232
Gibson, James 4
gifts 182, 2013, 254, 257
glass 14, 71, 73, 76, 93, 95n3, 179, 184,
187, 188
beads 184, 187, 188
bottles 89
fibre 14, 41, 73
gold 3, 19, 26, 15561, 16270, 220, 241
and cosmology 15960, 169
as currency 160, 165
enchantment of 168
environmental impact of 159, 163, 220
289
fair trade seeFT/FM (Fairtrade and

Fairmined) gold
industry 166, 168, 169
as informed material 159
markets 159, 164, 166
production processes 157, 159, 1667,
169
properties 15860, 166, 194, 241
social identity of 158, 161, 168, 169, 241
supply chain 157
and value 160, 166
governance 212, 21415, 218, 224, 2723
graduate, The 934, 128
Graeber, David 245
granta Design 74, 76
Greenpeace 21618, 221
Hallie Ford Museum of Art 254
Hanfu movement 239
Heidegger, Martin 12
heritage 36, 1813, 235, 239, 242n13
Hinduism 18, 137, 138, 144, 1478, 150,
150n1, 151n3, n5
bhakti 138, 140, 150
darshan 138, 139, 140, 141
seealsoISKON (International Society for
Krishna Consciousness); religion
history xvii, 1415, 212, 31, 3740, 534,
71, 73, 934, 103, 1203, 125, 127,
129, 1613, 175, 180, 227, 228,
2302, 2356, 2389, 241, 242n6,
245, 249, 251, 253, 25561, 2678,
2701, 2745, 279
and art 71, 73, 103, 268, 2701
and China 227, 2302, 2356, 2389,
241
colonial 251, 257, 258
and discovery xvii, 1415
of fair trade movement 1613
of flax fibre 31, 378, 40
of fragrance 212, 228, 2312, 241,
242n6
of invention 534
labour 257, 258
linear 228, 232, 241, 242n6
local 175, 180, 255
of materials 71, 73, 2678, 2745
of plastics 39, 94, 120, 121, 122, 123,
125, 127, 129, 175
290
of the senses 93
womens 258
of woollen blankets 245, 249, 251, 253,
25561, 279
Hobson, Kersty 223
Holt, Douglas 235
Hudsons Bay Company 251, 252, 257,
261n5, n13
identity/identities 19, 33, 39, 65, 87,
177, 17980, 1812, 1845, 187,
198200, 205, 23941
Chinese 23941
Filipino 19, 177, 1812
gender 33
of materials 39, 101, 128, 15861, 168,
169, 175, 241
images xx, 33, 3940, 434, 53, 55, 127,
1301, 138, 140, 157, 1945, 203,
250, 255, 260n1, 278
in advertising 39, 43, 44
body 33
religious 138, 140, 141, 144, 270
imitation 52, 53, 94, 124, 1256, 234, 269
immaterial 12, 63, 1213, 1289, 1313,
137, 170, 206n4, 277
index 81, 175, 178, 179, 204, 206n13, 277,
278, 279, 280
hedonic index 81, 83
India 18, 38, 137, 140, 141, 150n2, 219,
232, 257, 261n13
Kolkata 147
Mayapur 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143,
146, 150n2
West Bengal 137, 143, 150n1, n2
indigo xxiii, 1014, 10817, 279
aesthetics of xxiii, 104, 109, 112, 113,
114, 116
as colour xxiii, 104, 112, 115
dyeing processes 104, 109, 110
and gender 103, 11112, 11215
plants 110, 11112, 115, 117n1, n2
properties
intrinsic 103, 110, 115
magical 112
medicinal 11112, 115, 116
strength as dye 112
transformative qualities of 112
types of 104, 11011
Index
seealsowild silk indigo wrappers

industrial revolution 3, 72, 249, 257, 267,
269, 273
information 24, 502, 70, 21314, 277
about materials 213, 2723
in materials governance 212, 214, 215,
218
in molecules 578, 60, 63, 66n15
seealsodata
informed materials 15, 16, 24, 50, 512, 57,
58, 60, 64, 65, 159, 228, 241, 273
Ingold, Tim xxv, 4, 24, 26, 32, 33, 35, 45,
102, 126, 132, 1934, 276
innovation xx, 1415, 23, 324, 45, 50, 57,
69, 71, 26873, 276
and cognition 334
and discovery 45, 50
of flax fibre 14, 3146
materials innovation xvii, 32, 33, 40, 44,
69, 74, 120, 269, 2714, 276
processes of 35, 267, 275
as product development 81, 233
of psychophysical properties 75, 76
and social sciences 268, 271, 274
seealsoinvention
Institute of Making 56, 10, 11, 69, 70
Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining
(IOM) 69, 211, 219, 225n1
intellectual Property xvii, xxv, 14, 356, 57,
58, 63
interfaces 70, 768, 2789
invention 15, 17, 23, 37, 50, 514, 5960,
64, 190, 268, 2702, 2746, 279
and co-creation 2756
and discovery 15, 52, 64
history of 534
theories of 15, 524, 275
seealsoinnovation
invisibility 120, 128, 131, 241, 271
Ireland 162
ISKON (International Society for Krishna
Consciousness) 1378, 1402, 144,
14850, 150n2
Japan 129, 130, 234, 236, 271
jewellery 156, 157, 1658, 1837, 190
Johnson, Kara 32, 73, 76
Journal of Sensory Studies 83, 85, 94n2
Index
Keane, Webb 193, 194, 198, 205

Keats, John 72
Kingston University materials library 5, 7,
70
Kleinman, Arthur 212, 223
knowledge(s) 13, 15, 26, 6971, 91,
106, 115, 138, 145, 197201, 204,
21315, 224, 234, 240, 268
constitutive 214
and embodiment 26, 138, 145
expert 181
Indigenous 36, 189
and learning 138, 141, 144
local 103
and making 256, 145
of materials 4, 9, 11, 12, 215, 2713
and materials libraries 56, 1112, 69
societies 32
technical 131, 193, 195, 2002, 205
Kockelman, Paul 194, 206n4
Kopytoff, Igor 27, 247
Krausmann, Fridolin 267
Krishna 1378, 1404, 1467, 150n1,
151n3
laboratory 323, 35, 51, 54, 568, 623,
66n11, 74, 274, 275
and sensory evaluation 85, 87, 90, 92
Lahne, Jake 81, 85, 902, 95n5
landscape xxiv, 35, 3940, 424, 72, 178,
222, 228, 250
sensory 228
language xxv, 36, 70, 77, 81, 138, 145,
1778, 1934, 197200, 202, 2045
Filipino 17980
Kalinga 178
Malinke 117n3
of mathematics 74
and negotiation 193, 194, 197, 198200,
202, 204, 205
and the senses 83, 86
of sustainability 40
Tagalog 17880
Latour, Bruno 33, 51, 56, 95n6, 1012,
2245, 278, 279
Law, John 158
Lemonnier, Pierre xxiii, 101
Leroi-Gourhan, Andr xxii, xxiv, xxvi, 101
Lvi-Strauss, Claude 102, 277
291
library 59, 61, 62

seealsomaterials libraries
light xxvixxvii, 42, 72, 76, 845, 89, 95n3,
1034, 106, 188, 196, 204
as material property xxvixxvii, 1034
Newtons theory of 72
reflectivity of gold 160
as sheen 103, 105, 108
Little, Arthur D. 81
Liushen 227, 228, 2335, 2402
Living Nature 423
London Bullion Market Association
(LBMA) 164, 166
Lux 227, 2324, 237, 240, 241
Lycra 33, 34, 44, 93, 276
McDonalds 237
making xxiii, xxv, 4, 8, 1213, 1718, 23,
256, 33, 36, 43, 82, 93, 1012, 112,
11517, 121, 123, 131, 141, 145,
1489, 162, 166, 175, 1812, 1846,
189, 216, 219, 220, 223, 257, 261n8
acts of xxv, 4, 17
art 181, 189, 261n8
chocolate 162
context of 117
and cosmology 26, 33, 82, 93, 11617
craft 17, 18, 23, 25, 175, 182
and fashioning 123, 131
jewellery 166, 1846
and materials xxiii, 4, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18,
23, 25, 219, 220, 223
papermaking 36
soap 43
and social relations 116
study of 13, 149
techniques of xxv, 17, 1012
as transformation 1718, 1012
seealsoproduction
Mali 101, 104, 110, 117n3
manufacturing xvi, 22, 26, 31, 357, 40,
41, 65n4, 109, 120, 1557, 159, 163,
1656, 168, 170, 187, 21718, 220,
222, 225, 267, 270, 2713, 275
and sensory evaluation 84
of woollen blankets 245, 24850, 2578,
279
mapping xvii, 21, 76, 84
292
market(s) 32, 35, 38, 156, 181, 1845, 187,

193, 205, 227, 231, 2334
bath products 227, 231, 2334
diamonds 194, 1968, 200, 204, 206n7
global 22, 33, 35, 378, 194, 1978, 200,
204, 206n7, 231
gold 159, 164, 166
marketing 3940, 434, 222, 2345, 240
advertising 39, 43, 44, 194, 232, 240
branding 16, 34, 3944, 45, 60, 127, 163,
2334
of bath products 232, 233
cultural branding 2345
of eco-products 41, 424
of places 3940, 43, 45
campaigns 33, 3940, 42, 44, 1558,
1623, 1679
Marx, Karl 14, 170n2, 254
mass production xvii, 33, 37, 41, 45, 59,
73, 93, 94n1, 275
material culture xxii, xxiv, 9, 25, 33, 69, 81,
120, 155, 175, 1834, 225n7, 238,
2457, 259
materialism 14, 94, 137, 1489
seealsovital materialism
materiality xxi, 14, 26, 105, 106, 115, 117,
121, 126, 131, 137, 140, 149, 150,
18890, 1934, 197, 2456, 255,
270, 277
essentialized 2489, 258, 260
materials
active xxi, xxvi, 34, 35, 44, 567, 77,
1035, 11112, 117, 120, 205, 273
and affect 269
affordances 212, 2234
and architecture 69, 269
and artificiality xxiv, 277
and association 16, 21, 279
and authenticity 94, 177, 1823, 186,
18991
biomaterials 13, 35, 40, 41, 44, 269
as/of the body xxv, 1389
botanical 6, 101, 268
classifications of xxi, 6, 78, 76, 107,
115, 117, 280
computational qualities of 46n2
and cosmology xxiv, 4, 17, 18, 23, 26,
11617
and craft 4, 73, 122, 132
Index
definition of xxvi, 7, 20
disposal 175, 185
engineered 267
environmental impact of 215, 219, 220,
221, 225n4
experience of xxxxi, xxv, 22
expressivity 15, 31, 32, 45
haptic materials 734
high performance 2746
historical study of 3, 31, 191
as index 204, 279, 280
indigenous 1012, 103, 110, 115, 117
industry 45, 46n3, 21113, 271
as interfaces 2789
inventions of 512, 2756
living 3, 49, 50, 103, 105, 110, 112, 117,
254
and making xxiii, 4, 8, 1213, 1718, 23,
25, 219, 220, 223
materials by design 2746, 278
as metaphor xxiv, 278
microscopic structures of 15, 32, 51
mineral 267
natural 182, 230
networks 170
non-natural-identical 230, 242n4
philosophy and xxi
politics of xvixvii, 22
as process 10
raw 230, 240, 242n3
raw or natural (and criticism of) xix, xvii,
xxii, xxiv, 245, 34, 42, 101
recyclable 70, 176, 178, 191
religious 18, 141, 1478
resistant 212, 218, 224, 273
revolution xvi, xviii, 73
and the senses 26, 27, 70, 71, 81, 245
as site of cultural imagination 279
sourcing 183, 184, 185
structure of 69
as subversive 175, 176, 183, 190
and sustainability xvii, xx, 21, 213, 215,
224, 274, 280
synthetic 177, 230
seealsocomposites; informed materials;
new materials; success; sustainable
materials; textile(s)
materials arts 73, 75, 77, 78, 170
Materials ConneXion 70
Index
materials libraries 412, 6970, 768

and art 1516, 70
philosophies of 5
as repositories of materials
knowledge 69
materials properties
accessible 178, 180
breakable 179
cheap 178, 179, 180
clarity 199, 201
controlled-life 222
convenient 177
corrosion resistant 70, 159, 160
creaminess 84, 89
defects 201, 202, 203, 206n6
degradable 223
disposable 180
ductile 159
dull 188
durability 93, 106, 166, 177, 187, 221,
222, 249
elasticity 74
fire retardant 222
flexibility 36
fragile 179
functional 70
hard 185
healing 43, 44, 45
heavy 158, 159
hydrating 44
impenetrable 249
itchy 249
kitsch 177
lightness of flavour 89
lightweight 177, 178, 187, 188
malleability 121, 159, 177, 178, 255,
270
metallic 158, 159
mutability 245, 250, 255
nourishing 43
opacity 32
portable 160
purifying 43
recyclable 222
redox potential 159
robustness 249
seamless 124
sensory 93, 121
silkiness 36
293
shiny 185
smart 128
softness 36, 261n13
stability 222
stasis 222
stiffness 33, 39, 41
strength 36, 70, 74, 106, 1089, 112,
222, 261n13
tensile strength 31, 35, 39, 41
stretch 33
tacky 177
thermal conductivity 77
thickness 249
toughness 74
transportable 178
versatility 178
vibrancy 32, 37
warmth 187, 249, 261n13
waterproof 36, 40, 261n13
materials sciences 69, 71, 734, 76, 77
and innovation 2689, 2712
and materials arts 778
and social sciences 268, 271
materials use 32, 36, 213, 223, 269
divergence from intended
application 2756
and global policy 2678, 2713
and morality 213, 220
social perceptions of 273, 274
studies of 2678, 2717
and sustainability 215, 267, 274
seealsoapplication(s)
material(s) world xvii, xxv, xxvii, 3, 4, 1214,
16, 17, 21, 24, 257, 94, 104, 149,
158, 206n5, 2456, 250, 259, 277
matter xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxiv, xxvi, 3, 15, 24,
278, 34, 51, 55, 77, 87, 1012, 106,
108, 1213, 126, 132n3, 150, 159,
260n4, 277, 279
Mauss, Marcel 102, 103, 254
Mazzarella, William 140, 194
meaning 87, 194
appropriations of in art 250, 258
in China 2312
of diamonds 205
of fragrance 233, 240, 241
of plastics 120, 124, 128, 180, 186, 191
of trade beads 186
of wild silk indigo wrappers 103, 11217
294
of woollen blankets 2456, 2501,

2545, 257, 25960, 279
measurement 31, 74, 76, 813
of materials performance 31, 74
memory 91, 241, 2545
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1378
metallurgy 54, 65n4, 159
metals xix, 1213, 37, 55, 71, 756, 116,
122, 132n3, 15960, 169, 185, 196,
21718, 222, 275
metaphor 59, 112, 127, 130, 160, 179, 228,
241
as materials/matter xxiv, xxv, 278
seealsoassociation
methods/methodology
as method of invention 534, 59
in natural sciences of the
Renaissance 71
of sensory evaluation 75, 82
seealsoanthropology; ethnography;
social sciences
Mexico 889
Michelson, Alan 2512
Middle East 231
Miller, Daniel 12, 24, 32, 126, 215, 225n7
mind 34, 256, 334, 76, 89, 126, 145,
261n8, 2767
minerals 23, 45, 1034, 159, 267
model/modelling xx, xxii, xxiii, 41, 58, 615,
84, 257, 2723, 275, 277
modern 131, 23640
Moeran, Brian 228, 229, 231
Mol, Annemarie 158
molecules 15, 32, 50, 51, 53, 5465, 65n8,
66n11, n13, n15, 221
morality 17, 27, 114, 138, 14850, 157,
15960, 168, 21112, 21415,
2234, 232
and gold 157, 15960, 168
moral order 138, 148
moral persons 211, 2234
moral value 17, 27, 114, 232
and sustainability 21112, 2234
Munn, Nancy 194, 206n3
Myers, Fred 246, 247
narrative 120, 130, 250, 2535, 2579,
260n2, 261n11, n14, 272
National Gallery of Canada 253
Index
natural materials xix, xxi, 88, 126, 177, 182,

186, 222, 261n8, 2767
Natural Step, The (TNS) 21617
nature xviii, xxii, 24, 42, 53, 64, 712, 94,
125, 126, 128, 130, 205, 212, 216,
221, 230, 242n4, 267, 2767
network(s) 3, 16, 334, 103, 155, 170
new materials 19, 33, 40, 51, 63, 69, 724,
76, 155, 177, 182, 257, 26871
and architecture 723, 74
discovery of xvii, 15, 53, 2712
Newton, Isaac 52, 62, 72
New Zealand 14, 15, 20, 31, 3545, 46n1
Aotearoa New Zealand 245, 247,
24952, 255, 2579, 260n1, 261n6,
n11, n13
Auckland 261n11
Northwest Trading Company 257, 261n5
object(s) 5, 9, 13, 14, 31, 345, 45, 190,
193, 245, 247, 254
agency of 245
form and function 269, 2701
social life of 14, 247
objectification 90, 101
objectivity 90, 92, 95n6
OConnor, Kaori 33, 44, 93, 276
ontology xvii, xxi, xxiv, 4, 18, 27, 49, 52, 56,
126, 149, 177, 1901, 223, 246
organoleptics 81, 91
seealsosensory evaluation
Oro Verde 167
Pacific Islands 44
Pacific Ocean 222
packaging 40, 424, 94, 128, 240
paper xvii, 4, 36, 43, 88, 195, 196, 199,
201, 211, 269, 278
pattern 104, 109, 11214, 116, 1835, 187,
249, 257, 260n4
perception xxiii, 4, 5, 23, 45, 76, 84, 856,
8993, 1612, 180, 1823
of art 180, 1823
and colour 76, 84, 95n3
of materials xxiii, 23
sensory 86, 90, 91
in sensory evaluation 84, 89, 903
seealsopsychophysical properties
Perez, Padmapani 175, 189
Index
performance 315, 39, 45, 75, 1845, 187,

215, 220, 224
cultural 184, 185, 187
of materials 313, 35, 45, 123, 215, 220,
224
and research and development 34
Pfizer 57
pharmaceuticals 15, 50, 53, 568, 605,
66, 128, 159
companies 5660, 623, 65n3
drug discovery process 58, 601, 65,
66n9
and regulatory authorities 65n5
phenomena xix, xxi, xxv, xxvii, 4, 9, 15, 18,
21, 70, 713, 123, 130, 145, 158,
165, 198, 228, 234, 237, 239, 246,
252, 278, 280
phenomenology xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 26, 1378,
141, 150, 278
in ethnographic research xxv
seealsoembodiment
Philippines, the 19, 38, 124, 175, 1778,
1802, 185, 187, 1901, 242n9
Baguio City 175, 176, 180, 1835
Manila 38, 178, 180, 185
Phillips, Ruth 250, 260n4
philosophy xxi, 5, 15, 21, 49, 50, 534, 55,
66, 712, 94, 145, 146, 150, 21617
of materials libraries 5
religious 138, 146, 148, 150
and science 15, 49, 50, 526, 712
physics 49, 54, 65n4, 269, 271
Pink, Sarah 85, 867, 95n4
plants 67, 10, 31, 32, 357, 3945,
57, 101, 107, 11012, 11516,
117n1, n2, 242n4
aloe vera 44
cotton 115
flax 31, 3540, 425
indigo 11012, 11516, 117n1, n2
mamuku fern 44
medicinal 57, 110, 11516
rose 242n4
Plastic Age 18, 120, 121, 125, 191
Plastic Man 94, 125, 129
plastics xix, xxvi, 5, 6, 18, 19, 324, 39, 42,
73, 934, 11933, 17591, 212, 220,
2224, 269, 272, 275
295
aesthetics of 123, 124, 126, 127, 129,

1301, 132, 180
agency of 183, 189
and art 19, 176, 182, 18990
and authenticity 19, 29, 94, 121, 124,
1259, 130, 177, 182, 1889
and class 19, 177
and colours 94, 124, 177, 180, 181, 182,
185
as craft object 175, 180, 1823, 189
and the environment 119, 120, 1279,
177, 180, 185, 222, 272
and fashion 18, 121, 124, 12833
and imitation 94, 1246
indigenous identity and 175, 178
industry 120, 127, 132n7, 21618, 220
ontology of 177, 190
as packaging 94, 128
performance of 33, 123
plasticity 121, 122, 124, 12632, 182
production processes of 1202, 1245,
127, 1312
properties of 934
accessibility/availability 178, 180
cheap 17880
convenient 177
degradable 223
disposable 180
durability 122, 177, 221, 222
fire retardant 222
hard 185
kitsch 177
lightweight 124, 177, 178
malleability 121, 177, 178
recyclable 222
sensory 93, 121
shiny 185
smart 128
stability 222
strength 222
tacky 177
transportable 178
versatility 178
repurposing of 178, 191
and self-making 121, 123, 1302
and social media 121, 12831, 1323n13,
179, 180
as subversive 1757
and sustainability 21618, 220, 221, 2223
296
types of
bioplastic (polylactic acid) 42, 126
(biopolymers)
bisphenol-A (BPA) 43
celluloid 73, 93
fibres 38, 93, 108
microbeads 119, 120, 127
oxo-biodegradable plastics 2223
packaging 94, 128
phenolic 124 (phenolic thermoset
resin), 125 (phenolic)
polyester 38, 108
polyethylene 119
polyethylene terephthalate (PET) 323,
34
polymers 73, 122, 128, 177, 220
polystyrene 124
PVC 129, 21617, 218, 2213
thermoplastic 119, 122
and value 19, 175, 177
as waste 127, 1778, 180, 1835, 191,
222
seealsoplastik
plastik 19, 175, 17780, 1823, 187, 188,
190
policy/policies 3, 214, 219, 268, 275
and materials innovation 32, 2713
and materials use 2678, 2713
power 3, 1718, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 345,
434, 72, 1034, 106, 108, 11112,
11417, 143, 161, 184, 196, 197,
200, 236, 247, 251, 255, 268
practice 18, 87, 90, 197
and knowledge 224
moral 214, 223
religious 138, 1405, 14850
praxeology xxiii, 137, 150, 276
praxis 13, 14, 25, 26, 168, 193
Primal Earth 434
principles 33, 51, 54, 61, 64, 71, 77, 85,
120, 128, 138, 159, 231, 254, 261n8,
273, 277
processes
harvesting 36, 38
historical 31
house-building 34
of inscription 95n6
of making 17, 112
Index
manufacturing 31
of materials by design 275
of materials innovation 32, 33, 35, 71,
267, 275
and perception 85, 93, 95n6
as processed foods 94
sensori-motor 138
sustainable production 215, 219, 221
of valuation 193, 195, 2014
Procter & Gamble (P&G) 22, 227, 231,
242n8
product(s) 10, 16, 35, 36, 40, 85, 923,
211, 234, 241
as commodity 16, 93
eco-products 41, 435, 163
profiling in food product testing 84
safety 234
success 234, 241
testing of 33, 34, 88
production 33, 401, 91, 92, 213, 272
artisanal 913
craft 115, 116, 181
of fragrance 22930, 233
of materials
of aluminium 220
of diamonds 196, 199200, 203
of gold 157, 159, 1667, 169
of plastics 1202, 1245, 127, 1312,
1835
of textiles 367, 41, 434, 46n1, 104,
106, 10810
and sustainability 211, 215, 218, 219, 221
of value 1931, 200, 205
seealsomass production
properties ix, xxiiixxivi, 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 17,
20, 51, 53, 73, 74, 76, 91, 93, 194,
279
aesthetic xx, 69, 75
artificial 88, 94
of capital 200
of diamonds 20, 193, 194, 198205,
206n6, n11
of drugs 56
and effect xxvi
extrinsic xviii, xxvi, 90, 91, 101
Indigenous cultural 279
intellectual property rights 356
intrinsic xviii, xxvi, 91, 101, 103, 104, 106,
110, 115, 170
Index
magical 106, 108, 112, 11517

and materials innovation 69, 75, 269
mathematical definitions of 74
medicinal 57, 106, 108, 11112, 11516,
117
of molecules 556, 60, 61, 63, 65
natural properties 88
pharmaceutical 56
physical 75, 76
as product qualities 83, 87, 93
profiling of in sensory evaluation
testing 84
property relations xxiiixxiv
sensual 69, 75
socially-embedded 91
as tendencies xxii, xxvi
prototype 34, 41, 2701
seealsoform(s); model/modelling
provenance 20, 43, 44, 187
of gold 19, 161, 1689
psychophysical properties 748
and association 756, 823, 867,
8990, 95n3, 124
Radha 140, 143, 151n3
Ramon y Cajal, Santiago 712
R&D 325, 501, 53, 73, 89
of flax fibres 31, 38, 40, 42, 45
of Lycra 33
pharmaceutical 50, 568, 602, 645,
66n9
of plastics 323
product testing 34
seealsosensory evaluation
rattan 1778, 1802
regulation 41, 43, 213
environmental 41, 43
and Fairtrade 156, 1623, 1669
of pharmaceuticals 65n5
of worship in ISKON 144
religion 18, 19, 108, 13741, 1446, 148,
150, 160, 270
and the body 1389, 150
and devotion 1379, 1401, 146, 147,
14950
and embodiment 137, 138, 140, 1445,
149
and gender 1412, 1456
images of 138, 140, 141, 144, 270
297
Islam 108
material religion 18, 137
and morality 138, 14850
seealsocosmology; Hinduism;
spirituality
Renaissance 71, 159, 231, 270
resin xix, 41, 124, 231
resources xxii, 34, 36, 40, 423, 221, 254,
268, 272
knowledge 268
natural 221
renewable 40, 43
Riegl, Alois 2689
ritual 1378, 1401, 1812, 194, 198, 200,
205
event 198, 205
exchange 1935, 198, 2003, 205
Igorot 181, 184, 186
in religious practice 137, 138, 141
space 1935
use of objects 1812, 184, 186
Romanticism 72
rubber xix, 10, 33, 69, 76, 122, 269, 270,
2712
impact on design 2701
discovery of 2712
sacred/ness 35, 104, 115, 160, 186
scent(s) 16, 212, 878, 147, 228, 232,
238, 240, 241
natural 88
and nostalgia 88;
seefragrance; senses/sensoriality;
smell(s)
science xvi, xvii, xxiii, 14, 16, 33, 49,
501, 535, 65n2, n4, 714, 77, 81,
945n2, 120, 125, 170, 268, 271,
275, 277, 280
scientific method 53
scientists 312, 345, 3941, 45, 69, 71
and social change 712
science and technology studies (STS) 170,
215, 279
Scion (a Crown Research Institute) 402, 46n4
Second World War 38, 41, 81, 120, 124,
125, 129, 131, 236, 275
self-identity 11214, 121, 123, 1302
self-creation 121, 123, 1302
self-display 11214
298
self-presentation 123, 188

senses/sensoriality xvii, xxv, xxvii, 16, 21,
22, 26, 27, 70, 71, 734, 8195,
945n2, 95n3, 104, 121, 138, 139,
141, 142, 1445, 149, 193, 198, 228,
232, 241, 245, 248, 255, 259, 276
anthropology of 16, 81, 857, 89, 90, 93,
95n2, 228
and embodied experience 1445
and empathy 139, 145, 276
and empirical research xxv
and the environment 85
and fragrance 21, 22, 228, 232
history of the 93
intersensory 139
and materials 26, 27, 70, 71, 81, 245
and memory 22, 91
sensorium 88, 945n2
sensory experience 16, 27, 90, 91, 104,
142, 245, 248, 255
sensory perception 90, 91, 193
sound 75, 76
taste 75, 76, 77, 85, 8990, 901, 95n3
temperature 82
touch 74, 76, 77, 139, 1423
seebody; embodiment; phenomenology;
psychophysical properties;
scent(s); sensory evaluation; smell;
subjectivity; texture; vision
sensory evaluation 80, 823, 856, 914
case studies 84, 845, 867, 88, 8890,
902, 934
and emotion 77, 81, 88, 95n3
of food products 816, 8890, 903
and gender 889
quantification of sensation 83
seealsopsychophysical properties;
senses/sensoriality
sensory testing 823, 86, 92, 95n3
factors of perception 89
hedonic tests 83, 84, 86
methods of 826, 87, 902
Shanghai Jiahua United Company 234, 240
Shapin, Steven 81, 82, 93
shell xix, 36, 104
tortoiseshell 122, 124
Shelley, Mary 72
signifier/signification 86, 90, 121, 179
silicon 5, 73
Index
silicone 13, 69
silk 5, 1718, 27, 37, 1019, 110, 11217,
147, 148, 279
aesthetics of 1047, 109, 11415
authenticity of 105
and beauty 103, 109, 11214, 116
and cosmology 103, 1068, 11517
protection from witchcraft 108
and gender 103, 1067, 11215
and power 103, 104, 106, 11416
production processes 104, 106, 1089
properties of 17
durability 106
efficacy of 103, 106, 11417
intrinsic properties of 103, 104, 106
magical properties of 106, 108, 11517
medicinal 106, 108, 11517
strength 106, 1089
sheen 17, 27, 1036, 109, 11317
silkworms 1089
value of 17, 27, 105, 106, 11214
seewild silk indigo wrappers
Simmel, Georg 161, 247
skill 245, 58, 66n9, 178, 181, 183, 1879, 191
smell 71, 75, 76, 81, 82, 87, 88, 185, 228,
229, 231, 233, 241, 248
seefragrance; scent(s)
Smith, Adam 257
Smith, Cyril Stanley 77
social 64, 74, 86
and materials innovation 268, 274
social change 32, 228, 235, 2401
social class 19, 177, 179, 188, 189
social effect 31, 103, 214
social environment xxvii, 34, 45
social life 14, 194
social mediation 194
social mobility 242n11
social status 113, 115, 184, 189, 238
social sustainability 211, 215
social worlds 32, 45, 278
social constructivism 256
sociality 88, 90, 91, 137, 149
social media 121, 12831, 1323n13, 179,
180
social sciences xviixxiii, xxv, 3, 1315, 103,
170, 191, 2689, 271, 280
methodological challenges of 268, 280
seealsoanthropology
Index
society xvi, xviii, xxiixxiv, xxvii, 3, 12, 1315,

17, 23, 32, 34, 35, 45, 52, 53, 72, 74,
77, 94, 147, 151n5, 214, 221, 228,
229, 234, 235, 255, 261n11, 268, 276
knowledge societies 32
Maori society 14, 31
soil 35, 110, 115, 200
sourcing 157, 161, 163, 1689, 1845, 198,
21314
South Korea 234, 271
South Pacific 258
South Pacific Trading Company 257
space 612, 63, 64, 1947
chemical space 612, 63, 64
trading room 1947
Spain 867
spirituality 35, 44, 141, 149, 160, 1867
seealsoreligion
steel 16, 72, 73, 211, 225, 269
Stengers, Isabelle 4951, 547, 59, 61, 64,
212
stone xix, xxiv, 7, 126, 1424, 261n8
beads 184, 1878
gemstone 93
Strathern, Marilyn xxiiixxiv, xxvii, 24, 64,
158, 21415, 224
structure(s) xxvi, 32, 50, 71, 746, 85
chemical structure of matter xxvi
of materials 74, 76
molecular 32, 50
style 34, 130, 140, 142, 143, 149, 190, 239,
270
constraints on 34
sense of 130, 190, 239
subjectivity 35, 75, 823, 87, 90, 95n6,
1378, 141, 14950, 175, 180, 223,
278
intersubjectivity 137, 138, 145, 149, 278
and judgement 90, 91
and making 35, 175
and material culture 149
of perception 95n6
and phenomenology 1378, 141
substance(s) xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 57, 15, 22, 35,
42, 51, 53, 56, 90, 934, 138, 139, 141,
156, 158, 168, 169, 170n1, 194, 269
indigenous perceptions of 102
in materials libraries 57
in relation to form xx, 4, 10, 13
299
as silkworm secretion 106, 108

subversive 177
as synonymous with materials xvi, xvii,
xxvi, 5
synthetic 93
transformative 10, 13, 139
success xvii, 14, 88, 211, 234, 241, 244, 274
of materials xvii, 14, 274
of product branding 88
of products 234, 241
of sustainable materials products 211, 244
supply chains 157, 1656, 170, 21315, 224
sustainability xvii, xx, 8, 21, 23, 40, 42, 91, 109,
147, 156, 191, 21125, 268, 274, 280
and authenticity 21516, 217
and carbon 217, 219
and climate change 220, 268, 272
and materials xvii, xx, 21, 213, 215, 219,
221, 224, 274, 280
and morality 211, 212, 223
and plastics 191, 21618, 2203
policy 216, 223
social sustainability 211, 215
seealsoenvironment; sustainable materials
sustainable materials xxi, 5, 78, 402, 211,
21315, 21819, 220, 2245
categorization of 211
and materials libraries 78
plastics as 217, 2203
sustainable producers 21112, 21518,
219, 223, 224
Synnott, Anthony 88, 94
synthesis
as approach to materials work xx
of molecular compounds 53, 58, 62
Tarde, Gabriel 50, 523, 54, 65n2
Tasman, Abel 257, 258
Tauranga Art Gallery 255
Taussig, Michael xxiiixxiv, 112
technical xxii, xxiv, 3, 31, 45, 70, 77, 93,
101, 102, 104, 131, 166, 167, 193,
194, 202, 204, 205, 206n6, 211, 218,
222, 225, 269, 271, 274
action xxiii
change 14
technique(s) xxv, 17, 74, 76, 1012, 188
of extraction 367, 167
of making xxv, 17, 1012
300
of mass production 33, 37

of the self 212, 214
of sensory evaluation 81, 82, 85
as technical action xxiii
technology xxii, 37, 40, 69, 712, 77, 159,
163, 1667, 249, 257, 2723, 277, 279
in diamonds valuation 20, 1957, 2016
digital 12, 73
and the Industrial Revolution 249
metallurgical 159
microscopes 74, 77
nanotechnology 77
natural vs. human 277
and operational sequences xii
as reproductive technologies xxiii
temporality 115, 181, 190
textile(s) xix, xx, 5, 13, 36, 101, 102, 103,
109, 110, 112, 11416, 213, 246,
255, 257, 258, 260n4, 269
carpets 38
as cloth 104, 109, 112, 114, 115, 139,
14950, 252, 255, 260n4
as fabric xxv, 7, 8, 105, 10910, 112, 131,
142, 143, 145, 147, 148, 149, 213, 247
production processes 110, 115, 116
brushing 104
carding 109, 248
drying 36
dyeing 104, 10910, 112, 248
fulling 248
sewing 149
spinning 104, 109
threading 279
twisting 36
washing 36, 104, 105, 109, 112, 248
weaving 36, 104, 109, 110, 112, 249, 279
upholstery 31, 38
seealsoclothing; cotton; fibre; silk; wild
silk indigo wrappers; woollen blankets
texture xxv, 70, 83, 84, 88, 93, 105, 108,
10910, 119, 122, 129, 131, 277
seealsosenses/sensoriality; sensory
evaluation
Thomas, Nicholas 251, 255
Thrift, Nigel 267, 276
Tilley, Christopher xxiv, 32
tools 1213, 74, 77, 82, 104, 116, 155, 158,
185, 190
in craft production 190
Index
Heideggerian notion of 12
scientific instruments 74, 82
tourism 3940, 52, 186, 237
trade beads 18390
tradition 34, 190
transcendence 140, 141, 148, 277
transformation(s) 12, 32, 34, 51, 72, 1012,
1389, 149, 216
and alchemy 3
and art 225, 247
of atoms and molecules 55
bodily 43
of flax 31, 35, 36
between form and substance 13, 150
through making 17, 18, 1012
as manufacturing 31
of materials 7, 910, 14, 42, 72, 246
of plastics 94, 189, 21718, 221
religious 1379, 14950
techniques of 101
as transubstantiation 138
and wild silk indigo wrappers 115, 117
of woollen blankets 2456, 249, 2513,
255, 258
seealsotranscendence
trials 57, 63, 65
tribal art 176, 1803, 1867, 18990
authenticity of 1801, 182, 190
collecting 176, 181, 182, 186, 187
and value 1812
Trubek, Amy 85, 902, 95n5
Turner, Terence 197, 200
uncertainty and risk 195, 204, 2723
in diamond trading 195, 199, 204
and materials policy 2723
Underwood, Jack 3
Unilever 22, 86, 95n4, 227, 231, 234
United Kingdom 5, 21, 867, 119, 125,
155, 157, 162, 165, 211, 212, 216,
218, 219, 224, 238, 245, 248, 249,
252, 267, 271
England 46n1, 249, 257, 258, 260n4,
261n13
Great Britain 36, 235
London 5, 9, 19, 74, 150n2, 155, 163,
164, 166, 184, 187, 188, 219, 268
Wales 261n13
United Nations 211
Index
United States xxii, 33, 38, 81, 93, 124, 127,

129, 132n6, 162, 163, 167, 169, 177,
197, 199, 202, 203, 214, 229, 234,
237, 238, 242n6, 245, 249, 251,
2523, 257, 259, 261n6, n8, n11,
271, 272
Chicago 88
New York 70, 1323n13, 164, 242n6
Texas 222
Vermont 902, 95n5
University of Mainz 84, 95n3
use/utility 32, 36, 45, 85, 87, 235
applications of materials 32, 36, 45
seealsomaterials use
valuation seediamonds
value(s) 36, 39, 40, 44, 89, 148, 160, 166,
1823, 190, 194, 204, 232, 245,
2478, 254, 259, 261n6
of art 247
of authenticity 188
devaluation 199, 204
economic value 40, 182
exchange value 247, 254, 259, 261n6
of gold 160, 166
and innovation 42
of materials 19, 148, 175, 177, 245
mneumonic 245, 247, 259
nutritional 81
regimes of 247
ritual 187
social 20, 1878, 190, 1934, 1978,
201, 203, 205, 206n3, 225, 232, 274
Vannini, Phillip 86, 88, 93
Verbeek, Peter-Paul 212, 223
visibility 127, 21415, 222
and morality 21415
vision 17, 95n6, 13841, 144, 205, 212
as moral vision 212
visuality 139
as visualization of taste 95n6
visual culture 33, 34, 39, 42, 44, 73
vital materialism xx, 14, 212, 276
active materials xxi, xxvi, 34, 35, 44, 56, 57,
77, 1035, 111, 112, 117, 120, 205, 273
living materials 3, 49, 50, 103, 105, 110,
112, 117, 254
resistant materials 212, 218, 224, 273
vibrant material 3
301
Warnier, Jean-Pierre 18, 102, 138, 145,

149, 170n1
waste 25, 27, 41, 127, 1778, 180, 1835,
189, 191, 212, 218, 272, 274
and biodegradability 2212
environmental problem of 32, 39
plastics as 127, 1778, 180, 1835, 191,
222
seealsoenvironment
water 5, 33, 41, 43, 54, 55, 104, 117n2,
177, 178, 185, 204, 219, 261n13, 270
as ice 77
Watt, Marie 2525, 261n8, n10
Welz, Gisela 32, 34
west, the 228, 232, 234
as visual-centric 228, 232
West Africa 17, 18, 101, 104, 115, 116
Whitehead, A.N. 50, 537, 64, 65n1, n4
wild silk indigo wrappers 17, 27, 101,
1036, 10810, 11216, 117n3
and beauty as sara 103, 10910, 11215
and gender 103, 11215, 116
as tombe toun 101, 102, 106, 112, 114,
116
seealsoindigo; silk
Williams, Tracey 252, 2558, 261n11, n12,
n14, 262n15
Witney Mills 249, 260n4
wood(s) xix, xx, 4, 5, 67, 10, 1213, 32,
401, 756, 93, 104, 108, 115, 116,
126, 177, 181, 182, 185, 230, 231,
26970
wool 20, 22, 389, 45, 215, 245, 248, 257,
258, 260n4, 261n8, n13
seealsowoollen blankets
woollen blankets 22, 2455, 25762, 279
aesthetics 246, 249, 252, 2578, 260n4
circulation of 249, 251, 257, 260n3, 279
as clothing 250, 257
and craft 252, 257, 260n1, 279
and disease 251
essentialized materiality of 2489, 258,
260
as gifts 254, 257
as heirloom 2545
as Indigenous cultural property 279
sensory experiences of 22, 246, 248,
251, 255, 25960
value(s) 2468, 2501, 255, 25960

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The Social Life

Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

To live in a materials world

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Dressing God: Clothing as material of religious

Part4 The subversion of form by

Introducing Fairtrade and Fairmined gold: An attempt

Subversive plasticity: Materials histories and

Deirdre McKay, with Padmapani Perez, Ruel Bimuyag and

Diamonds, machines and colours: Moving materials

Part5 Ecologies of materials

Sustainability and the co-constitution of substances

The peony and the rose: Social change and fragrance

Chan Chow Wah

The woollen blanket and its imagined values:

Materials: The story of use

1.1 In the Economic Botany Collection, Kew, with Mark Nesbitt

1.2 In the Sustainable Materials Library, Kingston, with Jakki Dehn

1.3 In the Design Materials Library, Central St Martins, London

1.4 In the Institute of Making Materials Library

4.1 Figure showing scale, structure, psychophysical properties and

6.1 Dogon gwara dyer showing a tombe toun wrapper worn

6.3 Inside of a goro dialen cocoon showing caterpillars and moths

8.2 Students practising turban construction, Mayapur Academy, 2012 142

10.1 Everyday Objects exhibition postcard, 2012

10.2 Replica Kalinga bongeh in plastic, Lubuagan, Kalinga, April 2012

13.1 Liushen soap

13.2 Michael Edwards fragrance wheel

13.3 Hanfu fans in Singapore

14.1 Queens Coronation Hudsons Bay Point Blanket

14.2 Marie Watt Blanket Stories Blanket Stories: Three Sisters,

14.3 Tracey Williams. MY SHIP | Tnei Wakahra, 2009

Andrew Barry is professor of Human Geography at University College London.

being transposed, however, it has been substantially modified and expanded.

Why conduct ethnographic studies of materials and society?

Why conduct ethnographic studies

Preface: Materials transformations

Preface: Materials transformations

What disciplinary approaches

Preface: Materials transformations

We cannot attempt any kind of comprehensive bibliography here, just a few

Preface: Materials transformations

Preface: Materials transformations

Coole and Frost (2010) explore the range of philosophical presentations of

Preface: Materials transformations

Anthropological approaches meanwhile are the main concern of this volumes

What anthropological approaches

Preface: Materials transformations

Preface: Materials transformations

Preface: Materials transformations

What terms and terminologies can be used?

Preface: Materials transformations

Preface: Materials transformations

Preface: Materials transformations

Deirdre McKay, with Padmapani Perez, Ruel Bimuyag and