On being and care. Joining the conversation on the symmetries/asymmetries of human–thing relations

Abstract

Having followed the scholarship related to new materialisms, the call for a symmetrical archaeology, its critiques and subsequent responses, I believe that this dialogue is one of the more interesting ones as it illustrates the problematic and reiterative nature of debate within a symmetrical/asymmetrical framework. There is some clarity achieved through the utterly collegial challenges posited in emails between Ian Hodder and Gavin Lucas; enjoyable as it is at once intimate, rigorous and immediate. This is a useful discussion of something I have come to find to be an unnecessary theoretical insistence (i.e. symmetrical archaeology).