There is broad acceptance across the Humanities and Social Sciences that our deliberations on the social need to take place through attention to practice, to object-mediated relations, to non-human agency and to the affective dimensions of human sociality. This Companion focuses on the objects and materials found at centre stage, and asks: what matters about objects?

Objects and Materials explores the field, providing succinct summary accounts of contemporary scholarship, along with a wealth of new research investigating the capacity of objects to shape, unsettle and exceed expectations. Original chapters from over forty international, interdisciplinary contributors address an array of objects and materials to ask what the terms of collaborations with objects and materials are, and to consider how these collaborations become integral to our understandings of the complex, relational dynamics that fashion social worlds.

Objects and Materials will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, including in sociology, social theory, science and technology studies, history, anthropology, archaeology, gender studies, women’s studies, geography, cultural studies, politics and international relations, and philosophy.

Penny Harvey is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and Director of CRESC, the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change.

Eleanor Conlin Casella is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Manchester.

Gillian Evans is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.

Hannah Knox is a Research Fellow at CRESC, the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester.

Christine McLean is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.

Elizabeth B. Silva is Professor of Sociology at the Open University.

Nicholas Thoburn is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester.

Kath Woodward is Professor of Sociology at the Open University.