A Return to the Object

Reviews / Votes

'This book is at once penetrating and kaleidoscopic, full of exposition coupled with evocative ethnographic illustration. It extends Gell's ideas into new domains... The synthesis is extraordinary. Ranging across time and space and diversity of perspectives compared and contrasted, this volume will take its place alongside others-one thinks of The Savage Mind, Purity and Danger.'

- Frederick H. Damon, University of Virginia 'This book is at once penetrating and kaleidoscopic, full of exposition coupled with evocative ethnographic illustration. It extends Gell's ideas into new domains... The synthesis is extraordinary. Ranging across time and space and diversity of perspectives compared and contrasted, this volume will take its place alongside others-one thinks of The Savage Mind, Purity and Danger.'

- Frederick H. Damon, University of Virginia, USA

"Kuechler and Carroll have brought their different anthropological experiences and deep knowledge together in a book to engage the anthropology of art with a deep reading and extension of Alfred Gell's framework. Calling for a "return to the object," a theoretical project that follows Gell's movement away from the emphasis on signification and to the study of "relations immanent within objects", the book is ethnographically detailed and philosophically articule. Readers may find it a challenging formulation, spanning over numerous case studies, but it rewards us in profoundly enriching the possibilities of the anthropology of art."

- Fred Myers, New York University, USA

"Vivid, generous, and theoretically exciting, Kuechler and Carroll bring the Anthropology of Art back to the world of big ideas. But never at the expense of the objects themselves. Featuring an extraordinary array of ethnographic detail and insight, this landmark publication is a must-read for anyone seeking to become more alive to the generative, relational, and conceptual capacities of images and objects. The work of apprehension it argues for-and offers up-is astonishing."

- Jennifer Deger, James Cook University, Australia