Book cover of "Among Tibetan Materialities: Materials and Material Cultures of Tibet and the Himalayas". On the image are pots with paint in different colours.

Zitationsvorschlag

Brox, Trine, Martin, Emma und Lange, Diana: Introduction: Materials, materiality and material culture, in Martin, Emma, Brox, Trine und Lange, Diana (Hrsg.): Among Tibetan Materialities: Materials and Material Cultures of Tibet and the Himalayas, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2025, S. 13–40. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1522.c23978

Lizenz (Kapitel)

Creative Commons License

Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 International.

Identifier (Buch)

https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1522
ISBN 978-3-98887-015-5 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98887-016-2 (Hardcover)

Veröffentlicht

28.10.2025

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Statistik

Autor/innen

Trine Brox , Emma Martin , Diana Lange

Introduction

Materials, materiality and material culture

This introduction advocates for the expansion of Tibetan studies by embracing new sources,  methodologies and frameworks to better understand the material culture of Tibet and the Himalayas. We start by reviewing the current state of the discipline’s engagement with material culture. While recognizing the positive trend over the past decade of moving beyond the largely descriptive nature of earlier literature on Tibetan material culture, the chapter emphasizes the need for greater interaction with other academic fields to make our work relevant beyond Tibetan studies. We also address the limits and boundaries of how Tibet is understood as a political and geographical entity, stressing the importance of highlighting the localized experiences of regions like Sikkim, Ladakh, Bhutan and Nepal in scholarship. Additionally, we explore key terminology related to materiality, materials, labour and material culture, welcoming diverse perspectives in materially-led research rather than settling on a single approach. Along the way, we discuss how each chapter bridges other disciplines and is an example to follow. We conclude with a brief overview of the volume’s structure, arguing that its chapters—both individually and taken together—promote the significance of knowledge produced when among Tibetan materialities.

Keywords material culture studies, methodologies, state of the field, sources, Tibetan studies

Trine Brox, Ph.D. (2009), University of Copenhagen, is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Buddhist Studies at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies. She has written extensively about Tibetan worlds and specializes in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism with topics such as aesthetics, materials and materiality, consumption and waste.

Emma Martin, Ph.D. (2014), SOAS (University of London), is Senior Lecturer of Museology at the University of Manchester. Her research and curation sit at the intersection of colonialism(s), Tibetan studies, museum activism, and material culture studies and moves between contemporary museum practice in Tibetan exile contexts and historical research on Tibetan materiality in British colonial archives.

Diana Lange, Ph.D. (2008), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, is Professor of History and Cultures of Central Asia at that university and a principal investigator at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg. Her research is focused on the history of knowledge and exploration, material and visual culture studies, cartography, and cultural interactions.