SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This response is a reflection on this volume and its possible implications, staged in three parts. The first part outlines the importance of the volume and the work being done by its editors and contributors to place the ‘thing’ as a central point of anthropological investigation and places the perspective of the editors as expressed in the Introduction into a wider lens. It highlights the manner in which working to bridge the differences between medical anthropology and material culture studies has potentially wide-reaching implications because of their common ground. The second part focuses on the role of collections within anthropological enquiry and points out that the work of medical materialities, as expressed in this volume, has a strong affinity with the kind of work done by Henry Wellcome, who amassed a huge collection of medical artefacts as a way to help understand and explain the history and knowledge of medical practices the world over. In the final part, Were unpacks a case study from his own research, the New Ireland kapkap, thinking through the new avenues for investigation offered by the concept of medical materialities.