ABSTRACT
Anthropologists have studied the relations between people and things since the emergence of the discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. A fascination with technology and the circulation of goods underpinned early scholarship, and it continues to be of interest to those whose efforts to better understand human and environmental connections are viewed through the lens of materials and making. For museum professionals, the complexities of relations between people and things are evident from their daily engagements with collections, yet their experiences of how these relations are manifested are not just matters for theoretical or ethnographic exploration. They are apparent in the ways in which visitors and researchers relate to collections, in galleries and museum workrooms, and which museum staff witness daily as part of their work practices. Such engagements can be challenging, intensely powerful, and are often transformative for those involved; they make clear that meaning does not reside in objects themselves, but in human, other-than-human, and environmental interactions with them.
