Sensitive Objects ─ Affect and Material Culture

Some objects seem especially personal and important to us ? be it a quickly packed suitcase, an inherited vase, or a photograph. In Sensitive Objects the authors discuss when, how, and why particular objects appear as ?sensitive’. They do so by analyzing the objects’ affective charging in the context of historically embedded practices. Sensitive Objects is a contribution to the upcoming field of ?affect research’ that has so far been dominated by psychology and cultural studies, and the authors examine the potential for epistemic gain by connecting the studies of affect with the studies of material culture. Objects, explored in ?real-life situations’, allow for insights that are not attainable via textual or iconic sources. The contributors, predominantly ethnologists and anthropologists, use fieldwork to examine how people project affects onto material objects and explore how objects embody or trigger affects and produce affective atmospheres. The editors hope that this book will be read across disciplines, not only to promote the value of ethnographic work, but also to incite further theoretically informed creative empirical approaches to affects and material culture.

Jonas Frykman is professor emeritus of European ethnology at the Department of Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Sweden. He co-edited this volume as professor II at Agderforskning, Kristiansand, Norway. His main research interests are culture and class, socialisation, body, memorials and phenomenological analysis of culture. Maja Povrzanovic Frykman is professor of ethnology and teaches at the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmo University, Sweden. She is also acting as part-time senior researcher at Agderforskning, Kristiansand, Norway. Her main research interests are war-related experiences, diaspora and transnational practices, highly skilled migrants, place, ethnicity and material culture.