1 - Suitcases, Selfies, and the Global Environment

Summary

This chapter introduces the handbook and outlines the volume’s organization, topics, themes, and intended audience. It clarifies the handbook’s goals of including both past and contemporary theory and practice as well as looking toward future trends in material culture studies. The authors discuss disciplinary contributions to material culture and provide the foundation for redefining the field’s relationship to disciplinarity. The guiding questions posed to contributing authors, what is material culture, and what are the implications of material culture scholarship, are presented. The chapter also introduces the geographic scope of the project, addressing and acknowledging differences and similarities that exist between the understanding of, framing of, and study of material culture in an international context.