The material lives of ivory and elephants : a historical anthropology of the 19th-century ivory trade
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This interdisciplinary and multiscalar project, utilizing historical archaeology, anthropology and history, traces a longue durée of the ivory trade between East Africa and New England. In the mid-19th century, the ivory trade between East Africa and western centers of manufacture expanded rapidly to accommodate a booming industry of manufactured ivory in the form of billiard balls, piano keys, cutlery handles and hair combs. This ivory was obtained via caravan trade in the East African interior in exchange for glass beads, cotton cloth, guns and brass wire. Using an assemblage of ivory objects located in the Ivoryton Library in Essex, Connecticut, I trace the commodity chain of ivory from the East African interior to the Indian Ocean entrepôt of Zanzibar to the ivory-cutting factories of the Connecticut River Valley. These ivory objects embody an array of material histories that weave through grand meta-narratives of global expansion and capitalist circulation, revealing, ultimately, how material culture comes to anchor asymmetrical power relationships, across both time and space. My dissertation follows these objects through their ultimate recasting in local heritage discourse in Ivoryton, concerning New England complicity in the 19th-century slave trade, industrial nostalgia and contemporary elephant conservation in East Africa.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Kelly, Alexandra Celia |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology. |
| Primary advisor | Meskell, Lynn |
| Thesis advisor | Meskell, Lynn |
| Thesis advisor | Hodder, Ian |
| Thesis advisor | Lane, Paul, active 1990-1999 |
| Thesis advisor | Voss, Barbara L, 1967- |
| Advisor | Hodder, Ian |
| Advisor | Lane, Paul, active 1990-1999 |
| Advisor | Voss, Barbara L, 1967- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alexandra Celia Kelly. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Alexandra Celia Kelly
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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