DME for Peace Thursday talk Follow that car! Telling the story of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

DME for Peace Thursday talk Follow that car! Telling the story of conflict & peacebuilding through material objects

Roger Mac Ginty University of Manchester roger.macginty@manchester.ac.uk

Crisis of access for researchers – very difficult to access many conflict zones

The hunt for alternatives

Rather than following words or people – why not follow objects?

A History of the World in 100 objects

“The social life of things”

Arjun Appadurai, The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 3.

‘The object becomes a document not just of the world for which it was made, but for the later periods which altered it.’

Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (London: Penguin Books, 2012) p. xxi.

A head-hurting thought

‘objects create subjects much more than the

• ther way around’
• Daniel Miller, The Comfort of Things (Cambridge: Polity, 2008) p. 298

• At around 11:00hrs on 11 June 2008, one (1)

Land Rover pickup vehicle rented by [name of INGO removed] was carjacked by unknown armed bandits at water point inside the IDPs Camp in Shangil Tobay. The INGO national staff member, who was driving the car, is missing.

• - UN report on carjacking in Darfur, 2008.