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Ethnography through Thick and Thin, George E. Marcus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 275 pp.

Looking High and Low: Art and Cultural Identity. Brenda Jo Bright and Liza Bakewell. eds. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. 210 pp.

The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History. James E. Young, curator.The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History. James E. Young, ed.

How do objects mediate human relationships, and possess their own social and political agency? What role does material culture--such as prestige consumption as well as commodity aesthetics, biographies, and ownership histories--play in the production of social and political identities, differences, and hierarchies? How do (informal) consumer subcultures of collectors organize and manage themselves? Drawing on theories from anthropology and sociology, specifically material culture, consumption, museum, ethnicity, and post-socialist studies, Materializing Difference addresses these questions via analysis of the practices and ideologies connected to Gabor Roma beakers and roofed tankards made of antique silver. The consumer subculture organized around these objects--defined as ethnicized and gendered prestige goods by the Gabor Roma living in Romania--is a contemporary, second-hand culture based on patina-oriented consumption. Materializing Difference reveals the inner dynamics of the complex relationships and interactions between objects (silver beakers and roofed tankards) and subjects (Romanian Roma) and investigates how these relationships and interactions contribute to the construction, materialization, and reformulation of social, economic, and political identities, boundaries, and differences. It also discusses how, after 1989, the political transformation in Romania led to the emergence of a new, post-socialist consumer sensitivity among the Gabor Roma, and how this sensitivity reshaped the pre-regime-change patterns, meanings, and value preferences of prestige consumption.

"How do objects mediate human relationships, and possess their own social and political agency? What role does material culture--such as prestige consumption as well as commodity aesthetics, biographies, and ownership histories--play in the production of social and political identities, differences, and hierarchies? How do (informal) consumer subcultures of collectors organize and manage themselves? Drawing on theories from anthropology and sociology, specifically material culture, consumption, museum, ethnicity, and post-socialist studies, Materializing Difference addresses these questions via analysis of the practices and ideologies connected to Gabor Roma beakers and roofed tankards made of antique silver. The consumer subculture organized around these objects--defined as ethnicized and gendered prestige goods by the Gabor Roma living in Romania--is a contemporary, second-hand culture based on patina-oriented consumption. Materializing Difference reveals the inner dynamics of the complex relationships and interactions between objects (silver beakers and roofed tankards) and subjects (Romanian Roma) and investigates how these relationships and interactions contribute to the construction, materialization, and reformulation of social, economic, and political identities, boundaries, and differences. It also discusses how, after 1989, the political transformation in Romania led to the emergence of a new, post-socialist consumer sensitivity among the Gabor Roma, and how this sensitivity reshaped the pre-regime-change patterns, meanings, and value preferences of prestige consumption."--

1.The origins and history of outstations as Aboriginal life projects /Fred Myers and Nicolas Peterson --2.From Coombes to Coombs : reflections on the Pitjantjatjara outstation movement /Bill Edwards --3.Returning to country : the Docker River project /Jeremy Long --4.'Shifting' : the Western Arrernte's outstation movement /Diane Austin-Broos --5.History, memory and the politics of self-determination at an early outstation /Fred Myers --6.The interwoven histories of Mount Liebig and Papunya-Luritja /Sarah Holcombe --7.Out of sight, out of mind, but making the best of it : how outstations have worked in the Ngaanyatjarra lands /David Brooks and Vikki Plant --8.Outstations through art : acrylic painting, self determination and the history of the homelands movement in the Pintupi-Ngaanyatjarra lands /Peter Thorley --9.What was Dr Coombs thinking? Nyirrpi, policy and the future /Nicholas Peterson --10.Homelands as outstations of public policy /Kingsley Palmer --11.Challenging simplistic notions of outstations as manifestations of Aboriginal self-determination : Wik strategic engagement and disengagement over the past four decades /David F Martin and Bruce F Martin --12.Peret : a Cape York Peninsula outstation, 1976-1978 /Peter Sutton --13.People and policy in the development and destruction of Yagga Yagga outstation, Western Australia /Scott Cane --14.Imagining Mumeka : bureaucratic and Kuninjku perspectives /Jon Altman --15.Thwarted aspirations : the political economy of a Yolngu outstation, 1972 to the present /Frances Morphy and Howard Morphy --16.A history of Donydji outstation, north-east Arnhem Land /Neville White.

We focus on the anthropology of art from the mid-1980s to the present, a period of disturbance and significant transformation in the field of anthropology. The field can be understood to be responding to the destabilization of the category of "art" itself. Inaugural moments lie in the reaction to the Museum of Modern Art's 1984 exhibition "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art, the increasing crisis of representation, the influence of "postmodernism," and the rising tide of decolonization and globalization, marked by the 1984 Te Maori exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Changes involve boundaries being negotiated, violated, and refigured, and not simply the boundaries between the so-called "West" and "the rest" but also those of "high" and "low," leading to a re-evaluation of public culture. In this review, we pursue the influence of changing theories of art and engagements with what had been noncanonical art in the mainstream art world, tracing multiple intersections between art and anthropology in the contemporary moment.