Use Of Material Objects Research Articles

‘A Return, a Mirror, a Photograph’: Return Journeys, Material Culture and Intergenerational Transmission in a Greek Cypriot Refugee Family

During times of war, displaced families carry various material items that later serve as means for preserving the memories of lost homes and maintaining a sense of identity. In divided Cyprus, the use of material objects by people displaced before and during the 1974 Turkish invasion has been influenced by the opening of checkpoints between the two sides in 2003. This paper explores how different generations in my family reacted to and interpreted the rediscovery of a lost material item—a handmade mirror piece—during the return journey. It discusses how my mother located the item, photographed it, and placed its photograph in the family’s photographic archive. During the research project upon which this paper follows from, both items re-emerged through my mother’s storytelling about her experience of return, transforming the project into a form of intergenerational transmission. The paper portrays how the storytelling about the mirror piece and its photograph was interpreted differently by me and my mother, influenced by the different politics of memory. The paper also showcases the resourcefulness of refugee families in maintaining the memory of their lost homes, which simultaneously reveals their views and hopes regarding the political future of the island.

Syncretism Narrative and the Use of Material Objects within Some Neo-Pentecostal Circles in Contemporary South Africa

African Pentecostal Christianity presents interconnectedness with African cultures, spiritualities, and religiosity in many ways. Among many other practices that demonstrate this interconnectedness is the use of material objects common within some African Pentecostal Christian spaces, African cultures, spiritualities, and religions. The advent of neo-Pentecostalism in South Africa has brought some controversies in the use of material objects within the broader African Pentecostalism. This has led to the outright demonization and to the conclusion that this practice was fundamentally syncretistic. This article investigated the syncretism narrative given the use of material objects within some neo-Pentecostal spaces in contemporary South Africa. It scrutinized the syncretism narrative and problematized it as the continuation of the missionary-colonial project that demonized African religious and cultural practices. It was argued that this constitutes coloniality that uses a “cultural bomb” that seeks to eradicate African customs, cultures, religions, and practices including the use of material objects. The study was conducted through the desktop research methodology focusing on secondary literature on African Pentecostalism, African neo-Pentecostalism, and syncretism. The findings indicated that the syncretism narrative is often applied to African Pentecostalism and seldom used with other Christian traditions, especially those of Western descent. Again, when the term is used, non-syncretistic elements are often not acknowledged. Thus, the need to transform the current narrative was highlighted.

Exploring the materiality of science learning: analytical frameworks for examining interactions with material objects in science meaning-making

ABSTRACT Background With a growing new materialism paradigm and research on multimodality, there is an increasing attention on the role of material objects in science teaching and learning. However, there is currently no available framework, coding scheme, or method of inquiry to specifically analyze the use of material objects in science meaning-making. Purpose This paper presents and discusses two analytical frameworks developed to examine teachers’ and students’ interaction with material objects during classroom discourse. Design and methods The first analytical framework was theoretically informed by multimodal interaction analysis (MIA), focusing on humans’ situated interaction using embodied and disembodied modes located in the material world. The second framework was informed by social semiotics multimodal analysis (SSMA), focusing on material interaction as a semiotic mode with unique affordances for sign-makers to make meaning alongside other semiotic modes (e.g. speech, gesture). Sample Both frameworks are used to analyze two vignettes of classroom discourse generated from video data to illustrate their applications, coding procedures, and interpretative potential. Results The MIA-informed framework highlighted the dynamic and reciprocal relations between students’ experiences and the transformation of materials, while the SSMA-informed framework highlighted the subtle meanings constructed with the unique affordances of the material mode. Conclusion The affordances and limitations of the two frameworks are discussed, along with their compatibility and complementary relations. This work contributes to the emerging field of materiality in science education research and provides a foundation for future studies on the analysis of material interaction in science meaning-making.

Orchestrating moral bearability in the clinical management of second-trimester selective abortion

In present-day Denmark, second-trimester selective abortion has become a regular medical event, which has turned selective abortion care into a routinized task for health staff. In this article, we explore what forms of care practices abortion providers in Danish public hospitals engage in. Using in-depth interviews, medical documents and social media data, we show that at the center of selective abortion care provision is not only securing safe medical outcomes, but moral labor orientated towards achieving a morally manageable medical event, permeating institutionally developed clinical guidelines, relational face-to-face care, and ideologically driven encouragement of parental-fetal attachment through the use of material objects and visibility practices. We propose to view these entangled realms of practices as aiming towards generating what we term “moral bearability”, meaning that selective abortion care is orchestrated in particular ways to make the abortion, and the implied making and handling of death, simultaneously bearable for couples and health staff.

Technological and pedagogical requirements for the functioning of the system of mixed learning in the field of higher education in Ukraine

Technologization and informatization of society create new ideas about the process of higher education and its results, which cannot be achieved in traditional education. The introduction of new technologies, the creation of information and educational environment, the involvement of active learning methods, design and distance technologies open new prospects for improving the efficiency of the educational process. At the same time, the shortcomings in using new technologies, especially distance learning, reduce the productivity of learning due to the unusualness and the need to adapt both sides of the educational process. Real communication, emotional contact, use of material objects and devices are an integral part of effective mixed education.
 These shortcomings can be overcome and the productivity of the educational process can be increased through the introduction of blended learning, which allows combining the advantages of traditional (full-time) and distance education, rational use of study time, increase student prepairing through the optimal ratio of online and classroom activities. Mixed learning systems have already been implemented in the West, the results of existing research confirm the high efficiency of this model of education, which opens a new space for both students and teachers, bringing the effectiveness of higher education to a new level. However, such a result is possible only if the whole list of technical and pedagogical requirements to which this article is devoted is satisfied.
 The article examines the basic requirements for the effective functioning of mixed learning in higher education. The components of pedagogical competence of the teacher, which are necessary for the implementation of the system of mixed learning, are identified and the potential ways of their development are given. The advantages and disadvantages of mixed learning in the current state are listed.

Enhancing Meaning-Making in Research through Sensory Engagement with Material Objects

There has been increasing awareness and interest in the role of the senses in qualitative research. We build on this work by focusing on the use of material objects in research. Using material objects in qualitative research, particularly those selected by research participants, offers a different kind of engagement that can add richness and complexity to the knowledge generated. Material objects can either be participant-selected or researcher-selected, each having its own benefits and challenges. Using examples, we explore how participants sensorially engage with these objects, using visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile means. This engagement with material objects, particularly those that are personally meaningful to participants, is useful when examining research topics that may be sensitive or abstract; it offers the potential for participants to identify salient associations and/or express what may be otherwise unsayable. We discuss practical strategies in using material objects as well as the ethical challenges and possible products of such research.

Реализация политики в области сохранения материальных объектов культурного наследия: европейский опыт

Each country has a unique experience in the protection of material cultural heritage sites. The preservation of heritage is an essential condition for the economic development of any state. Most modern countries are actively promoting their cultural heritage in order to attract professionals and experts in the feld of preservation of cultural heritage sites, making efforts to organize and cooperate in this feld. The study of foreign experience in preserving cultural heritage continues to be relevant for identifying the positive aspects of this kind of activity and its possible further use. Many countries have accumulated valuable techniques and have their own models of security activities in the feld of cultural heritage. A special place in the world experience of preserving cultural heritage is occupied by European countries (France, Italy, Great Britain), which have developed effective mechanisms of security activity of the state over the centuries of practice. The article discusses the main models of state regulation in the feld of protection, disposal and use of material objects of cultural heritage, reveals the specifcs of the legislative framework, organizational and economic support and the role of public organizations. It concludes that the foundations of the cultural policy of European countries are the decentralization of cultural management, as well as the creation of effective mechanisms of public-private partnership and wellfunctioning interaction of the main actors involved in the protection of cultural heritage.

Embodied musical meaning-making and multimodal viewpoints in a trumpet master class

This paper analyzes how an instructor in a trumpet master class exploits multimodal viewpoints while addressing sound in verbal and/or visuospatial terms in order to conceptualize the interpretation of a piece of music. We show how musical meaning emerges as both an abstract and locally situated, embodied discursive activity, in which speech is connected with metaphorical hand gestures and the material world. Multimodality of musical meaning involves not only abstract gesture and speech about musical ideas, but also implies the concrete use of material objects and actions, such as the instrument, the (breathing) body of the trumpet player, as well as reference to the musical score. Viewpoint is a central issue in this conceptual process: both teacher and student constantly put themselves in the shoes of the performer, simultaneously abstracting over and embodying both their own and the other's body-in-music as they perform and both verbally and gesturally address past and future trumpet playing.

Pentecostal Urbanism? The Voices of Religious Objects in Harare, Zimbabwe

In this article I coin the term ‘Pentecostal urbanism’ to understand the ‘new’ phenomenon of materiality of urban religion in the form of Pentecostalism. I look at the use of material objects in the daily lives of Pentecostal adherents in Harare, Zimbabwe. The use of objects such as wrist bands, stickers, anointed pens, anointed condoms and turning of ordinary everyday objects into sacred things has dominated the urban landscape and lifestyle in the city for the past decade in Zimbabwe. Using observations, conversations and interviews with Pentecostal adherents, I seek to add to the puzzle of this development. The public omnipresence of Pentecostalism through images, symbols and sounds in the city brings another alternative in explaining and understanding urban life hence the concept, ‘Pentecostal urbanism‘. Instead of disappearance of religion in the public sphere into the private with increased modernity as some in the social science and humanities had predicted the reverse seem to be the case. A focus on the spiritualisation of modernity in this article will add to the puzzle which tries to explain the development. Moving from historical accounts on Pentecostalism, ethnographic work and, theoretical and conceptual reflection, this article seeks to make the puzzle more complex.

India in Africa: Trade goods and connections of the late first millennium

Archaeological approaches to the study of Indian Ocean connections tend to focus on “foreign” objects that appear in different contexts. In East Africa, these objects are found at settlements on what would become the Swahili coast, and they show that these settlements were linked to Indian Ocean networks from as early as the 7th century AD. The limited quantities of these remains mean that these earliest connections are difficult to see; they become much easier to identify from the 11th century onwards, when the largest numbers of goods are known. Yet our ability to trace these earliest connections is not only affected by the amount of evidence at our disposal. The ways that archaeologists have approached this topic have been dominated by historical paradigms that focus on the Persian Gulf and the agency of Arab merchants and consider Indian Ocean connections primarily in terms of trade. This article reviews the ways that this commercial emphasis creates a particular way of thinking in archaeological scholarship and discusses the fact that within this framework connections between India and Africa are poorly accounted for. It then turns to think about traces of these connections in the archaeology of the 7th to 10th centuries in both of these regions. Drawing on the strengths of archaeology in thinking through the meaning and use of material objects, it explores the ways in which a variety of artefact categories evoke a number of different types of connections between the people of India and Africa across the Indian Ocean.

Models for the Blind

<p class="MsoNormal">When displayed in museum cabinets, tactile objects that were once used in the education of blind and visually impaired people, appear to us, sighted visitors, as anything but tactile. We cannot touch them due to museum policies and we can hardly imagine what it would have been like for a blind person to touch them in their historical context. And yet these objects are all about touch, from the concrete act of touching something to the norms that assigned touch a specific pedagogical role in nineteenth-century blind schools. The aim of this article is twofold. First, I provide a historical background to the tactile objects of the blind. When did they appear as a specific category of pedagogical aid and how did they help determine the relation between blindness, vision, and touch? Second, I address the tactile objects from the point of view of empirical sources and historical evidence. Material objects are rarely used as historical testimonies for the simple reason that they, unlike archival material, do not present historians with written documents that can be held as evidence of the past. However, as I point out, certain historical questions of which archives remain silent could be approached by other means such as the use of material objects. Rather than delivering concrete methodological suggestions, this second part reflects upon the historical use of material objects - both their possibilities and their limits - within the context of blindness.

Material Culture and the Study of Hinduism and Buddhism

AbstractThis essay surveys the history of material culture in relation to the study of Buddhism and Hinduism. The essay opens by exploring the factors in Reformation and Enlightenment Europe that led to the marginalization of material culture in relation to religion, and how these attitudes towards the use of material objects in religion entered the academic study of religion as the discipline developed. Colonial attitudes towards Buddhist and Hindu material culture are also addressed as an example of how the western move towards a privileging of texts and doctrines over matter impacted the early study of Indian religions by western academics. The more recent shift towards including data from material sources is also demonstrated with a focus on two fields within religious studies: the history of religions and lived religions. In relation to the history of religions, the essay demonstrates that incorporating material sources both questions accepted scholarship based solely on texts and allows for a more complete historical context through which scholars can explore both texts and objects together. The discussion of lived religions and material culture emphasizes the movement towards understanding religion as embodied and that a study of how objects are produced, exchanged and understood gives us insight into everyday religious practice and the social relationships that are constructed through the use of ‘stuff’.

Memory and Private Mourning in an English Country House during the First World War: Lady Alda Hoare’s Musical Shrine to a Lost Son

Considered in the context of contemporary, upper-class mourning practices on the British home front, Lady Alda Hoare’s annotated sheet music collection symbolized a shrine to her son, who was killed in the First World War. Such use of material objects as sources of consolation became substitutes for the normal ritual of a burial, since soldiers’ bodies were not sent home. Departing from the existing literature’s focus on the public and professional musical responses to the War, Lady Alda’s music reveals an alternative, intensely private way in which music, as a symbol of memory, aided in the grieving process.

The Politics of Affect in Confucius Institutes: Re-orienting Foreigners towards the PRC

AbstractThis article examines the use of material objects and interactive technologies in Confucius Institutes (CIs) as a means of affectively engaging foreign audiences. By asking for an emotional investment in Chinese culture on the part of foreigners, CIs work to re-orient audiences outside China towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in positive ways. In particular, I examine a museum-like exhibit space in CI headquarters titled the

Medieval Domestic Devotion

AbstractFor generations, scholars of history, religion, anthropology, theology and other disciplines have pored over texts, artifacts, and ritual behaviors, seeking to understand better the nature of medieval religious experience. Yet until recently, the intriguing intersections of home and the holy during the Middle Ages received little sustained attention – a circumstance due to issues of both limited sources and historiographical emphasis. Informed by interdisciplinary contributions from gender studies, anthropology, spatial studies, and other fields, however, recent research has cast new light on how medieval women and men constructed and enacted devotional practice in domestic spaces. This article introduces readers to both the historical and historiographical patterns shaping current understandings of domestic devotion during the Middle Ages. After a brief survey of key scholarly shifts in the late twentieth century that set the stage for new approaches, focus turns to ways in which medieval people encountered the sacred at home: these include prayer, reading (devotional books and books of hours), and the use of material objects in spiritual practice such as relics, rosaries, and portable altars. The final section suggests several possible directions for future research.

Cancer Nursing: The Modern Era

To identify critical elements of the major shift in cancer nursing practice, education, and the expectations of professional nursing immediately following World War II that were precursors of contemporary oncology nursing preparation and practice. General healthcare, medical, and nursing literature, particularly in the American Journal of Nursing, published after World War II and before the inception of the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS); archival materials in the collection of ONS; nursing history literature; and personal communications. Nurses in a wide variety of practice settings with varied levels of experience, including staff nurses, homecare nurses, and high-level leaders and decision makers of the time, were responsible for bringing attention to and addressing the challenges and joys of cancer nursing. Professional nursing in general and cancer nursing in particular underwent significant changes and a distinct paradigm shift in cancer nursing education and practice in the period of time surrounding World War II, which promoted the advancement of cancer nursing. This historical review provides lessons for contemporary cancer nursing clinicians, executives, researchers, and educators with regard to imagining ways to approach issues, the necessity of collaboration and public-private partnerships, and maintaining the passion for this increasingly complex nursing specialty.

The use of material objects in understanding the process of recovery from a first episode of schizophrenia

Primary objective: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how material objects symbolizing recovery from a first episode of schizophrenia (FES), captured in photographic images, contributed to the development of a theoretical model of the process of recovery. Research design: This study combined in-depth qualitative interviews with an auto driven elicitation technique. Specifically, young adult participants were asked to select a material object that symbolized their recovery from FES and to describe its inherent meaning. The use of material objects provided an additional layer of data which was triangulated with other data sources in efforts to enhance the understanding of the phenomenon being studied. Methods: In order to aid the analysis of the objects, questions were consolidated and adapted from the literature. Results: In discussing their objects, participants described that maintaining personal interests, taking medications, acknowledging the necessity of time, and continuing to pursue personal ambitions all played a role in promoting recovery and were represented in their self-selected objects. Conclusion: The selected material objects informed the development of a theoretical model of recovery from a FES. They also provided a visual representation of the dimensions that reflect its subjective nature. This paper highlights the value of incorporating image-based methods in future studies. In particular, the use of material objects with carefully chosen elicitation techniques has the capacity to access understanding of a phenomenon under study; the significance of which may not otherwise been fully acquired.

Found objects in clinical practice: Preliminary evidence

Few published studies have examined the use of material objects in art therapy or psychotherapy, yet objects have been part of our lives since birth and are part of the lived lives of people across all cultural and ethnic groups. Considering the importance of material objects in human development, it seems worthwhile to explore their use in clinical work. Using an embedded case study design, a type of material object, the found object, was introduced to people in individual and group therapy. Thematic analysis resulted in 19 identified themes, which were classified within four domains: clinical rationale, responses to found objects, impact of found objects and function of found objects. The use of found objects were favourably endorsed and discovered to be surprisingly useful tools within therapy that helped to enhance engagement, increase curiosity, reduce difficult feelings, evoke memories and provide a sense of agency through increased physical activity and environmental action, among other results. Clinicians are encouraged to consider the potential use of material objects as therapeutic tools and researchers are urged to design protocols to further examine a range of object use in clinical and community settings and with different populations.

Material Religion and Popular Culture

In Material Religion and Popular Culture, King examines the interrelationship of material religion and collective identity. Using interviews with Catholics in Northern Ireland as well as historical narrative, King provides an interesting perspective on the role of material religion in the contemporary world, suggesting that we need to continue to pay attention to the ways in which material objects hold meaning for people, even as, particularly in the post-Vatican II context for Catholics, we might think the importance of such objects has diminished. King argues that collective identity solidifies through engagement with material objects, even as they serve to mark identity boundaries between groups. The most helpful contribution the book makes concerns the use of material religion in the formation and perpetuation of social boundaries between groups. In the context of tensions between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, King suggests that the identity of these groups, although her focus is on Catholics primarily, is both constituted by and constitutes their use of material objects. While the discussion could have been further developed by a more systematically comparative approach, the overall point that material practices and objects are implicated in the construction of identity and, more importantly for King, in boundaries established against other groups, is an important one.

The Living Cosmos: A Fabric That Binds Art and Science

The authors, an astronomer and an artist, have collaborated on a series of seven mixed-media constructions and prose pieces that follow the flow and themes of Impey's book on astrobiology, The Living Cosmos. The book summarizes recent research on astrobiology, from the origin of life on Earth and its environmental range on this planet to the search for life in the solar system and beyond. The artist's work encapsulates these ideas with its use of material objects, textures, images and metaphors that mirror the elements of the scientific approach to astrobiology.