MACMILLAN Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality

Review “Stone transports us into the quiet life of a mundane object that forms the backbone of our social and material lives. But stone does not stay silent for long in the pages of this captivating book. The lithic comes to life, forms networks and relationships, metabolizes with the growth of the city, coalesces into assemblages, and transports, transfixes and provokes memories and feelings. This multi-theoretical excavation reveals that Melbourne’s stone serves as a wonderfully adaptive tool with which to carve new and sophisticated theoretical understandings of urban materiality.” (Phillip Vannini, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Royal Roads University)“Stone is a fascinating, must-read for scholars of material culture, cities and society. Tim Edensor skilfully accounts of how the historical and experiential worlds of everyday urban life are tangibly and sensorially shaped by the movements, structures and feelings created by stone. This impeccably researched book delivers an important demonstration of how and why we need to engage with theoretical plurality in order to comprehend the complexity of the environments, processes and feelings that constitute our contemporary urban configurations.” (Sarah Pink, Professor of Design and Emerging Technologies, Monash University) Product Description In undertaking a systematic analysis of urban materiality, this book investigates one kind of material in Melbourne: stone. The work draws on a range of pertinent, current theories that consider materiality, assemblages, networks, phenomenology, resource and extraction geographies, memorialisation, maintenance and repair, place identity, skill, sensation and affect, haunting and the vitalism of the non-human.  In appealing to the general reader, academics and students, this book provides a highly readable account, replete with evocative examples and fascinating historical and contemporary stories about stone in Melbourne. From the Back Cover In undertaking a systematic analysis of urban materiality, this book investigates one kind of material in Melbourne: stone. The work draws on a range of pertinent, current theories that consider materiality, assemblages, networks, phenomenology, resource and extraction geographies, memorialisation, maintenance and repair, place identity, skill, sensation and affect, haunting and the vitalism of the non-human.  In appealing to the general reader, academics and students, this book provides a highly readable account, replete with evocative examples and fascinating historical and contemporary stories about stone in Melbourne. About the Author Tim Edensor is Professor of Human Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Principal Research Fellow in Geography at Melbourne University. He is the author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002) Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005) and From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (2017). He is the editor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Place (2020), Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020) and Geographies of Weather (2020).