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"De « l’objet social total » à la « sociologie par l’objet ». L’igname comme contexte chez les Abelam de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée"

In this paper, the author tackles an old theme of the relationships between artefacts and their “contexts” as two separate domains, which disciplines concerned with material culture, such as art history, archaeology, museology or anthropology, have worked hard to reconcile or reconstitute. Using his own ethnographic research on decorated yams in Papua New Guinea, he suggests instead that considering the artefact as a “context” in itself might prove also useful to understand the multiple properties it possesses and which allow it to be an integral part of social relationships.