Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft: Issue Multdimensional

The term materiality is used to mean material things and their social effects in cultural practices. This article advocates a further differentiation of this term in order to sharpen it for analyses and ready it as a tool to explore the scope of experience in material culture research. To this end, an exemplary item of clothing is placed in analogue and digital contexts and systematically questioned as to how the experiences of its materiality are structured in the various contexts. The observations illustrate that objects can migrate through the contexts and that their matter, their meaning and their effects always intercept in experiences in distinct ways. The aim of this article is to create an overview of the range of experiences materiality provides and to serve as a resource for researchers who work with the term.

Keywords
Material Culture Research, Ethnography, Materiality, Clothing Research, Object Analysis