Patricia Spyer – författare

The essays in Border Fetishisms explore the cultural, commercial, political and erotic dimensions that distinguish fetish formations in fractured colonial and postcolonial spaces. Spanning such topics as Surinamese conversion to Christianity to shoplifting in Georgian England, to face the fetish, the contributors neither demagicalize the fetish nor normalize the commodity. Instead, they call for the inclusion of material things -- as fetishes or not -- within the experience of human sufferings and joy. Contributors: Robert J. Foster, Webb Keane, Susan Leg6~ne, Annelies Moors, Peter Pels, William Pietz, Adela Pinch, Patricia Spyer, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig.

The essays in Border Fetishisms explore the cultural, commercial, political and erotic dimensions that distinguish fetish formations in fractured colonial and postcolonial spaces. Spanning such topics as Surinamese conversion to Christianity to shoplifting in Georgian England, to face the fetish, the contributors neither demagicalize the fetish nor normalize the commodity. Instead, they call for the inclusion of material things -- as fetishes or not -- within the experience of human sufferings and joy. Contributors: Robert J. Foster, Webb Keane, Susan Leg6~ne, Annelies Moors, Peter Pels, William Pietz, Adela Pinch, Patricia Spyer, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig.

The Memory of Trade is an ethnographic study of the people of Aru, an archipelago in eastern Indonesia. Central to Patricia Spyer’s study is the fraught identification of Aruese people with two imaginary elsewheres-the ‘Aru’ and the ‘Malay’-and the fissured construction of community that has ensued from centuries of active international trade and more recent encroachments of modernity.Drawing on more than two years of archival and ethnographic research, Spyer examines the dynamics of contact with the Dutch and Europeans, Suharto’s postcolonial regime, and with the competing religions of Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism in the context of the recent conversion of pagan Aruese. While arguing that Aru identity and community are defined largely in terms of absence, longing, memory, and desire, she also incorporates present-day realities-such as the ecological destruction wrought by the Aru trade in such luxury goods as pearls and shark fins-without overlooking the mystique and ritual surrounding these activities. Imprinted on the one hand by the archipelago’s long engagement with extended networks of commerce and communication and, on the other, by modernity’s characteristic repressions and displacements, Aruese make and manage their lives somewhat precariously within what they often seem to construe as a dangerously expanding-if still enticing-world. By documenting not only the particular expectations and strategies Aruese have developed in dealing with this larger world but also the price they pay for participation therein, The Memory of Trade speaks to problems commonly faced elsewhere in the frontier spaces of modern nation-states.Balancing particularly astute analysis with classic ethnography, The Memory of Trade will appeal not only to anthropologists and historians but also to students and specialists of Southeast Asia, modernity, and globalization.

The Memory of Trade is an ethnographic study of the people of Aru, an archipelago in eastern Indonesia. Central to Patricia Spyer’s study is the fraught identification of Aruese people with two imaginary elsewheres—the ‘Aru’ and the ‘Malay’—and the fissured construction of community that has ensued from centuries of active international trade and more recent encroachments of modernity.Drawing on more than two years of archival and ethnographic research, Spyer examines the dynamics of contact with the Dutch and Europeans, Suharto’s postcolonial regime, and with the competing religions of Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism in the context of the recent conversion of pagan Aruese. While arguing that Aru identity and community are defined largely in terms of absence, longing, memory, and desire, she also incorporates present-day realities—such as the ecological destruction wrought by the Aru trade in such luxury goods as pearls and shark fins—without overlooking the mystique and ritual surrounding these activities. Imprinted on the one hand by the archipelago’s long engagement with extended networks of commerce and communication and, on the other, by modernity’s characteristic repressions and displacements, Aruese make and manage their lives somewhat precariously within what they often seem to construe as a dangerously expanding—if still enticing—world. By documenting not only the particular expectations and strategies Aruese have developed in dealing with this larger world but also the price they pay for participation therein, The Memory of Trade speaks to problems commonly faced elsewhere in the frontier spaces of modern nation-states.Balancing particularly astute analysis with classic ethnography, The Memory of Trade will appeal not only to anthropologists and historians but also to students and specialists of Southeast Asia, modernity, and globalization.

Less than a year after the end of authoritarian rule in 1998, huge images of Jesus Christ and other Christian scenes proliferated on walls and billboards around a provincial town in eastern Indonesia where conflict had arisen between Muslims and Christians. A manifestation of the extreme perception that emerged amid uncertainty and the challenge to seeing brought on by urban warfare, the street paintings erected by Protestant motorbike-taxi drivers signaled a radical departure from the aniconic tradition of the old colonial church, a desire to be seen and recognized by political authorities from Jakarta to the UN and European Union, an aim to reinstate the Christian look of a city in the face of the country's widespread islamicization, and an opening to a more intimate relationship to the divine through the bringing-into-vision of the Christian god.Stridently assertive, these affectively charged mediations of religion, masculinity, Christian privilege and subjectivity are among the myriad ephemera of war, from rumors, graffiti, incendiary pamphlets, and Video CDs, to Peace Provocateur text-messages and children's reconciliation drawings. Orphaned Landscapes theorizes the production of monumental street art and other visual media as part of a wider work on appearance in which ordinary people, wittingly or unwittingly, refigure the aesthetic forms and sensory environment of their urban surroundings. The book offers a rich, nuanced account of a place in crisis, while also showing how the work on appearance, far from epiphenomenal, is inherent to sociopolitical change. Whether considering the emergence and disappearance of street art or the atmospherics and fog of war, Spyer demonstrates the importance of an attunement to elusive, ephemeral phenomena for their palpable and varying effects in the world.Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, and Appearance in Indonesia is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

Less than a year after the end of authoritarian rule in 1998, huge images of Jesus Christ and other Christian scenes proliferated on walls and billboards around a provincial town in eastern Indonesia where conflict had arisen between Muslims and Christians. A manifestation of the extreme perception that emerged amid uncertainty and the challenge to seeing brought on by urban warfare, the street paintings erected by Protestant motorbike-taxi drivers signaled a radical departure from the aniconic tradition of the old colonial church, a desire to be seen and recognized by political authorities from Jakarta to the UN and European Union, an aim to reinstate the Christian look of a city in the face of the country's widespread islamicization, and an opening to a more intimate relationship to the divine through the bringing-into-vision of the Christian god.Stridently assertive, these affectively charged mediations of religion, masculinity, Christian privilege and subjectivity are among the myriad ephemera of war, from rumors, graffiti, incendiary pamphlets, and Video CDs, to Peace Provocateur text-messages and children's reconciliation drawings. Orphaned Landscapes theorizes the production of monumental street art and other visual media as part of a wider work on appearance in which ordinary people, wittingly or unwittingly, refigure the aesthetic forms and sensory environment of their urban surroundings. The book offers a rich, nuanced account of a place in crisis, while also showing how the work on appearance, far from epiphenomenal, is inherent to sociopolitical change. Whether considering the emergence and disappearance of street art or the atmospherics and fog of war, Spyer demonstrates the importance of an attunement to elusive, ephemeral phenomena for their palpable and varying effects in the world.Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, and Appearance in Indonesia is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

The essays in Border Fetishisms explore the cultural, commercial, political and erotic dimensions that distinguish fetish formations in fractured colonial and postcolonial spaces. Spanning such topics as Surinamese conversion to Christianity to shoplifting in Georgian England, to face the fetish, the contributors neither demagicalize the fetish nor normalize the commodity. Instead, they call for the inclusion of material things -- as fetishes or not -- within the experience of human sufferings and joy. Contributors: Robert J. Foster, Webb Keane, Susan Leg6~ne, Annelies Moors, Peter Pels, William Pietz, Adela Pinch, Patricia Spyer, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig.

The essays in Border Fetishisms explore the cultural, commercial, political and erotic dimensions that distinguish fetish formations in fractured colonial and postcolonial spaces. Spanning such topics as Surinamese conversion to Christianity to shoplifting in Georgian England, to face the fetish, the contributors neither demagicalize the fetish nor normalize the commodity. Instead, they call for the inclusion of material things -- as fetishes or not -- within the experience of human sufferings and joy. Contributors: Robert J. Foster, Webb Keane, Susan Leg6~ne, Annelies Moors, Peter Pels, William Pietz, Adela Pinch, Patricia Spyer, Peter Stallybrass, Michael Taussig.

The study of material culture is concerned with the relationship between persons and things in the past and in the present, in urban and industrialized and in small-scale societies across the globe. The Handbook of Material Culture provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. It is cutting-edge: rather than simply reviewing the field as it currently exists. It also attempts to chart the future: the manner in which material culture studies may be extended and developed.

The Handbook of Material Culture is divided into five sections.

• Section I maps material culture studies as a theoretical and conceptual field.

• Section II examines the relationship between material forms, the human body and the senses.

• Section III focuses on subject-object relations.

• Section IV considers things in terms of processes and transformations in terms of production, exchange and consumption, performance and the significance of things over the long-term.

• Section V considers the contemporary politics and poetics of displaying, representing and conserving material and the manner in which this impacts on notions of heritage, tradition and identity.

The Handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes an unique and fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human. It will be of interest to all who work in the social and historical sciences, from anthropologists and archaeologists to human geographers to scholars working in heritage, design and cultural studies.

The study of material culture is concerned with the relationship between persons and things in the past and in the present, in urban and industrialized and in small-scale societies across the globe. The Handbook of Material Culture provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. It is cutting-edge: rather than simply reviewing the field as it currently exists. It also attempts to chart the future: the manner in which material culture studies may be extended and developed.

The Handbook of Material Culture is divided into five sections.

• Section I maps material culture studies as a theoretical and conceptual field.

• Section II examines the relationship between material forms, the human body and the senses.

• Section III focuses on subject-object relations.

• Section IV considers things in terms of processes and transformations in terms of production, exchange and consumption, performance and the significance of things over the long-term.

• Section V considers the contemporary politics and poetics of displaying, representing and conserving material and the manner in which this impacts on notions of heritage, tradition and identity.

The Handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes an unique and fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human. It will be of interest to all who work in the social and historical sciences, from anthropologists and archaeologists to human geographers to scholars working in heritage, design and cultural studies.