
































The Interconnectedness of Objects and Imagination 

Review by Lin Bentley Keeling

Objects and Imagination: Perspectives on Materialization and Meaning

by Øivind Fuglerud & Leon Wainwright (eds) 

Berghahn Books, 2015

Physical objects have tremendous associative power embodying more than remembrance and mental

connections. They connect with us individually, affecting us bodily through all of our senses creating

strong feelings through their use and presence and collectively as they create and re-create our social

relations. This is the premise of Øivind Fuglerud and Leon Wainwright’s edited volume, Objects and

Imagination:  Perspectives  on  Materialization  and  Meaning,  which  proposes  a  new  integrative

approach to the study of the social aspects of art and material culture. Each of the contributors focuses

on  the  relationships  between  the  physical  and  ideational  realms,  examining  the  ways  individual

imaginations combine into shared imaginaries in which objects are created and, in turn, how objects

create and maintain social relations. 

Objects and Imagination grew out of a series of meetings and conversations spanning 2010 to 2013 and

is the third in a series of volumes edited by Birgit Meyer (who contributes chapter 8 to this volume)

and Marušcka Svašek (who is a coauthor of chapter 10) titled, Material Mediations: People and the

Things in a World of Movement. In this series, theoretical debates grounded in ethnographic studies,

look  at  the  “dynamics  of  material  production  and  cultural  mediation  in  an  era  of  intensifying

globalization  and transnational  connectivity”  (p.  ii)."  The contributors  and editors  of  Objects  and

Imagination come from a variety of backgrounds including social anthropology, cultural history, the

anthropology of religion, and contemporary art history and bring their diverse perspectives to focus on

specific contexts which illustrate the ongoing relationships created and perpetuated by the objects we



make and use.  

In  their  “Introduction,”  Fuglerud  and  Wainwright  outline  their  theoretical  perspectives  pointing  in

particular to the work of Birgit Meyer who invokes Aristotle’s concept of aesthesis, the use of all our

senses in perceiving the world, in her emphasis on the importance of the mediation of our perceptions

through material  objects.  Other  theoretical  perspectives  cited by Fuglerud and Wainwright  include

Alfred Gell’s theories of art and agency, ideas of embodiment, practice theory, Actor-Network Theory,

as well as perspectives from art history, particularly the study of evolving contexts for ethnographic

objects as well as artworks in the globalized world. For Fuglerud and Wainwright, “what is at stake in

this volume is the specificity of the social imagination as it produces human relationships and comes to

have a distinctive impact on them” (p. 20).

To illustrate their approach to objects and imagination, they conclude with a diagram (p. 21) of a set of

concentric circles: the central circle is the “Object,” surrounded by “Situated production, creativity,

individual  imagination,”  surrounded  by  the  “Institutional  field,”  surrounded  by  the  “Field  of  the

socially imagined.” This diagram points to the privileged place they see for objects in the creation and

perpetuation  of  our  social  worlds.  As  Fuglerud  and  Wainwright  note,  until  recently  linguistic

approaches were privileged in social  science research,  particularly in the study of the semiotics of

material culture. But the imagination is not necessarily language based and, as this volume asserts,

understanding the imagination,  particularly as it  relates  to social  formation and perpetuation,  must

include ideas and values as expressed in non-verbal forms. In looking at ethnographic collections, for

instance,  Fuglerud and Wainwright  argue that  a  semiotic  approach to  these artifacts  is  inadequate.

However, the turn to aesthetics in more recent research should not turn away from ethnography. They

argue that the need for ethnography and anthropology has never been greater, particularly now when

ethnographic objects, contemporary art and the global art market combine into a “network of sites”

working in new ways outside the defined settings for art, ethnography and commerce of the past” (p.

9).

Birgit Meyer’s work, as illustrated by her chapter in the volume, is very relevant to research into these

new relationships between humans and objects as well as to how materials work in the creation and

perpetuation  of  meaning  and  values.  Meyer’s  concept  of  “aesthetic  formation”  is  a  constructive

approach linking individual  imagination into shared “social  imaginaries” which both represent and

create the world. The complex interconnectedness of the imagined and the material manifests for her in



“the materiality of the imagination and the imaginary dimension of matter” (p. 179). Building on Tim

Ingold’s formative view of imagination, Meyers argues that the imagination requires mediation and

media  and  advocates  for  research  which  synthesizes  an  ideational  approach  relating  to  abstract

meanings and values while taking into account the anchoring material forms of objects and practices

with objects in the world (p. 179; 163). She joins these ideas and provides guidance which, whether

explicitly  cited  or  not,  connects  the  work  of  the  other  contributors  in  this  volume:  “From  the

perspective of mediation, all pictures and objects act as media that are materially present  and point

beyond themselves; they are both immanent  and transcendent, tangible  and elusive. …these material

items are not just there, in their sheer materiality, but reach out to something else” (p. 179, italics

original).

 In  this  volume,  Fuglerud  and  Wainwright  have  collected  the  chapters  into  three  parts  under  the

headings “Museums,” the representation of objects and art, often of the ‘Other’; “Presence,” the active

use of objects and the ways objects act upon their users; and “Art,” the creation and use of objects with

heightened aesthetic value. The headings “Museums” and “Art” imply traditional concepts of divisions

between  artifact  and  art,  while  “Presence”  implies  the  ethnographic  view of  objects  within  fixed

cultural contexts. Each of the chapters, however, moves well beyond these constraints and looks at

contemporary instances of the tensions, conflicting drives and competing needs of individuals and the

ways the objects  in their  lives affect them. Focusing on contemporary contexts for diverse objects

within the framework of the volume’s theoretical discussion, these chapters provide nuanced and rich

explorations  of  the  relationships  between  objects,  individual  imaginations  and  social  imaginaries.

Objects act as a prism within each of these studies to focus attention on the interrelatedness of objects

and human actions, beliefs and meanings. Several themes cross-cut the three headings including the

continued  struggles  of  “native”  artists  who  work  in  continual  dialogue  between  their  personal

experience as individuals and allegiance to their heritage (chapters 1, 9 and 10); the ritual use of objects

which facilitate and renew connections to homelands for diasporic populations (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and

9); the transformation of art and value in the global art market (chapters 1, 9, 10, 11); and the agency of

objects for their makers (chapters 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10); and for their active users (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

8, and 11).

  

While I  have focused here primarily  on the theoretical underpinnings of this  volume and the new

ground it covers in the study of art, objects and the human imagination, I would be remiss if I failed to

note that each of these chapters is  an individual  and important contribution to this  discussion and



deserves in-depth examination not possible within the scope of this review. In this volume, Fuglerud

and Wainwright  and their  contributors  break new theoretical  ground in the  study of  human-object

relationships in a synthesis of ideational and material studies. The new material perspective of Objects

and Imagination succeeds in synthesizing physical and ideational perspectives with a collection of

ethnographic  studies  grounded  in  social  imaginaries  which  lays  new foundations  for  the  study of

human-object relations.

Lin Bentley Keeling is an artist and independent researcher focusing on the non-verbal communicative

value of art.  She exhibits her work nationally and teaches courses, workshops and lectures on art and

culture;  Native  American  fiber  technologies;  creativity  and  spirituality  and  the  practice  of

contemporary art.  Keeling received her MA in Anthropology from New Mexico State University in

2008..

© 2016 Lin Bentley Keeling


