The “material turn” in the social sciences and humanities at the turn of the 20th century has drawn attention to the ways in which things (materials, matter, non-human forces) have their own agency and affects, i.e., the material world is not just a background to human dramas, but also influences human actions and events. Eschewing the binaries of subject and object, humans and non-humans, scholars focusing on the “agency of things” show, for example, how objects, nonhuman forces, and affect (sounds, feelings, stimuli) act upon, with, and through human and non-human bodies to shape situations and events. Drawing on at least two of the works by anthropologists Pascal Menoret, Diana Allan, and/or Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, reflect upon what you have learned about the “agency of things.” In what ways do the material environments shape people’s social realities? How have waste, toxins, sounds,
vibrations, and other stimuli besieged humans and/or influenced events?
i included the book by pascal menoret (joyriding in riyadh) and the chapters of waste siege by Sophia Stamatopoulou