Øivind Fuglerud is professor of social anthropology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research interests include Diaspora formations, politics of cultural representation and aesthetics. He has published a number of works on the conflict in Sri Lanka and its consequences, including Life on the Outside - the Tamil Diaspora and Long-Distance Nationalism (Pluto Press 1999).

List of Illustrations

Introduction
Øivind Fuglerud & Leon Wainwright

PART I: MUSEUMS

Chapter 1. Contemporary Iroquois Art between Ethnographic Museum, Art Gallery and Global Market Place: Reflections on the Politics of Identity and Representation
Sylvia S. Kasprycki

Chapter 2. De-connecting Relations: Exhibitions and Objects as Resistance
Peter Bjerregaard

Chapter 3. Materializing Islam and the Imaginary of Sacred Space
Saphinaz-Amal Naguib

PART II: PRESENCE

Chapter 4. Visible While Away: Migration, Personhood and the Movement of Money amongst the Mbuke of Papua New Guinea
Anders Emil Rasmussen

Chapter 5. Being there while Being here: Long-distance Aesthetics and Sensations in Tamil National Rituals
Stine Bruland

Chapter 6. Food Presentations Moving Overseas: Ritual Aesthetics and Everyday Sociality in Tonga and among Tongan Migrants
Arne Aleksej Perminow

Chapter 7. Imaginations at War: The Ephemeral and the Fullness of Life in Southwest China
Katherine Swancutt

Chapter 8. How Pictures Matter. Religious Objects and the Imagination in Ghana
Birgit Meyer

PART III: ART

Chapter 9. Art as Empathy: Imaging Transfers of Meaning and Emotion in Urban Aboriginal Australia
Fiona Magowan

Chapter 10. Transvisionary Imaginations: Artistic Subjectivity and Creativity in  Tamil Nadu
Amit Desai and MaruSka SvaSek

Chapter 11. An Indian Cocktail of Value/s and Desire: On the 'Artification' of Whisky and Fashion
Tereza Kuldova

Notes on Contributors
Index

Despite the wide interest in material culture, art, and aesthetics, few studies have considered them in light of the importance of the social imagination - the complex ways in which we conceptualize our social surroundings. This collection engages the "material turn" in the arts, humanities, and social sciences through a range of original contributions on creativity in diverse global and contemporary social settings. The authors engage with everyday objects, art, rituals, and ethnographic exhibitions to analyze the relationship between material culture and the social imagination. What results is a better understanding of how the material embodies and influences our idea of the social world.