Abstract
That the meanings and value of things can be transformed through their circulation was brought to the foreground of anthropological studies more than 30 years ago with the publication of The Social Life of Things (Appadurai 1986b). The last decade, however, has seen a move away from “object biographies” in favor of frameworks that better account for objects’ complex entanglements. Recent work on object itineraries extends and challenges many elements of the biography approach and represents an intersection with critical interventions regarding materiality and agency, networks and circulation, and heritage discourses. This review evaluates the legacy of The Social Life of Things in the context of anthropological studies of the material world and suggests that thinking about itineraries rather than biographies allows us to collapse the distinctions between past and present (and future) and, thus, fully consider objects’ present entanglements as central to their story.
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