The Material World

Abstract

The material world encompasses human-made and naturally-occurring objects, the built and natural environments and material phenomena such as light and fire. This chapter considers the ways that materiality reflects and produces human emotions, and how it functions as a source for emotions history. Theoretical approaches to the relationship between materiality and historical emotions are explored, including how objects and places acquire emotional value, how it varies for different individuals and emotional communities, and how it can change as material moves between cultural, physical and temporal contexts. Challenges in the field are addressed, including the problems of dealing with the emotional histories of undocumented material, fictional objects and those which only survive in written and visual records.