New books, materialised
Mattering Press is extremely happy, proud and excited to announce the publication of three new books. The books are:
- Ghost Managed Medicine: Big Pharma’s Invisible Hands
Sergio Sismondo - Inventing the Social
Edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim, and Alex Wilkie - An Anthropology of Common Ground: Awkward Encounters in Heritage Work
Nathalia Brichet
These in turn follow the publication in recent months of two further books:
- Energy Babble
Andy Boucher, Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael, Liliana Ovalle, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, and Alex Wilkie - The Ethnographic Case
Edited by Emily Yates-Doerr and Christine Labuski
With the exception of The Ethnographic Case, which is an interactive digital book, each book is available to purchase direct via our website at a low cost and to download for free on an Open Access basis.
Mattering Press is a UK registered charity led by STS scholars who give their time to the press for free. Donations and purchases of hard copies of our books help fund our work.
Our full catalogue is shown below.
- Download PDF
- Buy Paperback
- Publication date: 2018-07-23
- ISBN: 978-0-9955277-9-9
- DOI: http://doi.org/10.28938/9780995527799
- Read online
- Download PDF, ePub, Kindle (mobi)
- Buy Paperback
- Read online
- Download PDF, ePub, Kindle (mobi)
- Buy Paperback
- Read online
- Download PDF, ePub, Kindle (mobi)
- Buy Paperback
- Read online
- Download PDF, ePub, Kindle (mobi)
- Buy Paperback
An Anthropology of Common Ground
Awkward Encounters in Heritage Work
Nathalia Brichet

Paying attention to details and ‘small stories’ as that which make worlds (heritage projects as well as ethnography), the book proposes a kind of postcolonial scholarship. Rather than uncovering or building up one story about the Danish-Ghanaian past, the work insists on providing ‘inconclusive’ analyses, collaboratively generated in the course of the project work and…Read more
Ghost-Managed Medicine
Big Pharma's Invisible Hands
Sergio Sismondo
Ghost-Managed Medicine by Sergio Sismondo explores a spectral side of medical knowledge, based in pharmaceutical industry tactics and practices. Hidden from the public view, the many invisible hands of the pharmaceutical industry and its agents channel streams of drug information and knowledge from contract research organizations (that extract data from experimental bodies) to publication planners…Read more
Inventing the Social
Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim, Alex Wilkie
Inventing the Social, edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim and Alex Wilkie, showcases recent efforts to develop new ways of knowing society that combine social research with creative practice. With contributions from leading figures in sociology, architecture, geography, design, anthropology, and digital media, the book provides practical and conceptual pointers on how to move beyond…Read more
The Ethnographic Case
Emily Yates-Doerr and Christine Labuski
The Ethnographic Case is an experimental, online, Open Access book, that invites readers to interact with it in a process of post-publication peer review. The book challenges a widespread academic inclination to treat concepts as immutable mobiles. The contributions to this volume develop “ethnographic casing” as a technique of attending to heterogeneities in systems of thought. Medical cases. Legal cases. Briefcases. Detective cases. Some cases featured are violent, others compassionate; some set stereotypes in motion, others break them
Energy Babble
Andy Boucher, Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael, Liliana Ovalle, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, and Alex Wilkie
This is the story of a set of computational devices called Energy Babbles. The product of a collaboration between designers and STS researchers, Energy Babbles are like automated talk radios obsessed with energy. Synthesised voices, punctuated by occasional jingles, recount energy policy announcements, remarks about energy conservation made on social media, information about current energy…Read more
Modes of Knowing
Resources from the Baroque
John Law, Evelyn Ruppert

How might we think differently? This book is an attempt to respond to this question. Its contributors are all interested in non-standard modes of knowing. They are all more or less uneasy with the restrictions or the agendas implied by academic modes of knowing, and they have chosen to do this by working with, through,…Read more
Imagining Classrooms
Stories of Children, Teaching, and Ethnography
Vicki Macknight

In this book we go to five Australian classrooms, bustling with nine- and ten-year-old children. In each classroom, imaginations are being done, not just in minds, but with bodies too, using materials and words, laughter and ideas. Each classroom is part of a different type of school: a Waldorf/Steiner school, an exclusive private school, a…Read more
On Curiosity
The Art of Market Seduction
Frank Cochoy

What draws us towards a shop window display? What drives us to grab a special offer, to enter the privileged circle of premium newspaper subscribers, to peruse the pages of an enticing magazine? Without doubt, it is curiosity — that essential force of everyday action which invites us to break from our habits and to…Read more
Practising Comparison
Logics Relations Collaborations
Joe Deville, Michael Guggenheim, Zuzana Hrdličková

This book compares things, objects, concepts, and ideas. It is also about the practical acts of doing comparison. Comparison is not something that exists in the world, but a particular kind of activity. Agents of various kinds compare by placing things next to one another, by using software programs and other tools, and by simply…Read more