Property, Substance, and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things

Marilyn Strathern's book "Property, Substance, and Effect" explores the complexities of social life, examining the reification of social relations and the increasing visibility of conceptual or intellectual work as property. It challenges the reader to reflect on the kind of lateral reflection afforded through the "ethnographic effect" and brings together a wide range of studies that deliberately bring into conversation claims people make on one another through relations imagined in the form of body-substance.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 16 March 2023
Publisher: Hau

Property, Substance, and Effect by celebrated anthropologist Marilyn Strathern explores the complexities of social life, focusing on the reification of social relations. With the world shrinking in terms of resources and access, new candidates for proprietorship are emerging. The essays in this book address questions about property, ownership, and knowledge, bringing together diverse perspectives. Twenty years since its publication, the book's opening challenge remains relevant: if one were to invent a method of enquiry to configure the complexity of social life, one might wish to invent something like the anthropologists' ethnographic practice. Studies deliberately bring into conversation claims people make on one another through relations imagined in the form of body-substance, as well as the increasing visibility of conceptual or intellectual work as property. Whether one lives in Papua New Guinea or Great Britain, categories of knowledge are being dissolved and reformed at a tempo that calls for reflection and the kind of lateral reflection afforded through the "ethnographic effect."

Weight: 636g
Dimension: 151 x 228 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780999157077