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Daniel Miller

UCL Anthropology - Danny Miller

 

Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 8624           

Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 8632

E-mail: d.miller@ucl.ac.uk

Room: 133

PhD, Anthropology and Archaeology,
Cambridge University, 1983

Professor of Anthropology

Daniel Miller currently runs the MSc in Digital Anthropology and is director of the Centre for Digital Anthropology at UCL. Over ten years he directed first the Why We Post project on the use and consequences of social media. Followed by the The Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA). The project comprised 11 researchers who conducted simultaneous 16 month ethnographies across nine countries. The two projects have resulted in the publication of twenty volumes.

Danny is on Twitter as @DannyAnth.

General Interests

  • smartphones, ageing, mHealth. 
  • digital anthropology and social media
  • material culture and consumption
  • the relationship between anthropology and philosophy
  • transnational domestic labour, motherhood

Digital Anthropology 

Daniel is teaching a course within our MSc programme in Digital Anthropology. He is currently also the Director of our Centre for the Study of Digital Anthropology.

BOOKS

Publications listed on UCL Discovery

Daniel has written/edited 43 books. Here is a selection of the most recent publications.

The Good Enough Life

Cover for The Good Enough Life
 

Miller gives a nuanced analysis of what it means to live well – or at least relatively well – in modernity…..it does act as a stimulating way of shifting the debate on what constitutes progress.

THE IRISH TIMES

 Miller set out to compare the writings of philosophers on virtue and happiness with ethnographic fieldwork and ended up stumbling into what he considers an exemplary community. According to Miller it is a society freed by feminism and no longer beholden to theocracy.

THE GUARDIAN

ASSA

The Global Smartphone Beyond a youth technology
by Daniel Miller, Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya de Vries, Marília Duque, Pauline Garvey, Laura Haapio-Kirk, Charlotte Hawkins, Alfonso Otaegui, Shireen Walton, and Xinyuan Wang

The Global Smartphone Book

The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them.

`The most in-depth study yet of adult smartphone use' The Sunday Times

`A landmark study' The Guardian

Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland - When life becomes craft
by Pauline Garvey and Daniel Miller

Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland

Based on two ethnographies, one within Dublin and the other from the Dublin region, the book shows that people, rather than seeing themselves as old, focus on crafting a new life in retirement. Our research participants apply new ideals of sustainability both to themselves and to their environment.  The smartphone has become integral to this new trajectory. For some it is an intimidating burden linked to being on the wrong side of a new digital divide. But for most, however, it has brought back the extended family and old friends, and helped resolve intergenerational conflicts though facilitating new forms of grandparenting.

'An innovative and thorough description and analysis of how one small piece of technology has changed the way Irish people live their lives.'
Tom Inglis, Professor Emeritus of Sociology in University College Dublin

'This is the best ethnographic monograph on the changing dimensions of Irish society that has been written by anthropologists in the last twenty years. It should serve as a model of engaged, responsive, respectful, and beneficent ethnography, not just for scholars of and in Ireland, but also for a global anthropology that seeks a better public role. Its explicit comparative framework, interlaced with remarkably empathetic appreciation of the project’s participants’ everyday and daily lives, reminds us that anthropologists can contribute often and well to the social sciences and the humanities.' - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Why We Post

This series explores and compares the results of nine ethnographic studies in China, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, India, England, Italy and Trinidad on the uses and consequences of social media. The team studied not only platforms but the content of social media to understand both why we post and the consequences of social media on our lives. Their findings indicate that social media is more than communication - it is also a place where we now live. 

As with all UCL Press titles, the books are be available as free PDF downloads, and in low-cost print versions.

"(Why We Post is) the biggest, most ambitious project of its sort...These fly-on-the-wall perspectives refute much received wisdom… 'Why We Post' thus challenges the idea that the adoption of social media follows a single and predictable trajectory." - The Economist

"This is a nuanced picture of a world coming to terms with a rapidly evolving way of connecting, or even disconnecting, with something unexpected pretty much everywhere the researchers looked." - BBC Click

"What's really heartening about this study and the research is you see people taking the technology seriously...actually looking at how it affects us as people. It's really vital that this work continues… It's a sense... that the discipline of anthropology is properly embracing social media as an important part of human society… - Bill Thompson, BBC 

The Comfort of People

Comfort of Peeople

As part of the Why We Post project Miller conducted a study of how hospice patients use various media to engage with their social universe at this stage in their lives. The Comfort of People consists of 18 stories and a general reflection on key issues such as loneliness and isolation. 

`The Comfort of People reveals, in both technicolor and shades of grey, the ordinariness, the drama, the simplicity and the complexity of networks as people live out their lives in the shadow of a serious diagnosis. These stories need to be read by all those working with dying people.' Dr Ros Taylor Clinical Director of Hospice UK

“The book is not just a poem to the hospice, but also, in some measure, to its patients… It is first, and splendidly so, a book of stories…. Yet the strength of The Comfort of People is how deftly it places the reader alongside Miller the interviewer, rather than the theorist, in the homes of hospice patients, and calls upon our empathy and reverence for the ordinary strength and ingenuity of the human spirit.” - European Journal of Sociology

SOCIAL MEDIA IN AN ENGLISH VILLAGE

social-media-english-village

Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village, tracking their use of the different social media platforms. Following his study, he argues that a focus on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram does little to explain what we post on social media. Instead, the key to understanding how people in an English village use social media is to appreciate just how 'English' their usage has become. He introduces the 'Goldilocks Strategy': how villagers use social media to calibrate precise levels of interaction ensuring that each relationship is neither too cold nor too hot, but 'just right'.

"This fine study is located in anthropology, and there will therefore be some jarring interpretations for scholars in internet, media, communication and cultural studies. This disciplinary dissonance is productive and potent… Delicately textured case studies entwine around this local study… Miller's rich research unearths how the local use of digital media reveals opportunities, strategies and challenges for guarding and freeing the spaces between public and private communication." - Times Higher Education

HOW THE WORLD CHANGED SOCIAL MEDIA (with Costa, Haynes, McDonald, Nicolescu, Sinanan, Spyer, Venkatraman, and Wang)

how-the-world-changed-social-media

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet?

Supported by an introduction to the project's academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences.

VISUALISING FACEBOOK (with Jolynna Sinanan)

visualising facebook

Since the growth of social media, human communication has become much more visual. This book presents a scholarly analysis of the images people post on a regular basis to Facebook. By including hundreds of examples, readers can see for themselves the differences between postings from a village north of London, and those from a small town in Trinidad. Why do women respond so differently to becoming a mother in England from the way they do in Trinidad? How are values such as carnival and suburbia expressed visually? Based on an examination of over 20,000 images, the authors argue that phenomena such as selfies and memes must be analysed in their local context. The book aims to highlight the importance of visual images today in patrolling and controlling the moral values of populations, and explores the changing role of photography from that of recording and representation, to that of communication, where an image not only documents an experience but also enhances it, making the moment itself more exciting.

WEBCAM

webcam book

"This book will appeal to scholars from much of the social sciences and beyond, for its contents and core arguments pose important questions for what it means to be human, and connect with others in an age of instant global communication. The subtle and engaging ways in which Webcam covers a wealth of social and cultural perspectives is certainly an achievement." - Society and Space

"It offers the reader rich and fascinating insights into the ways that the webcam is used to maintain transnational relationships… it raises some important questions about how we talk and write about human relationships that are mediated via digital technologies." - Cultural Sociology

"…the result is far more than a book about Trinidadian webcam use or webcam use in general, and instead…offers evidence for Miller and Sinanan's main theoretical contribution - their 'Theory of Attainment'...throughout the text the personalities of the informants shine through along with the warmth that Miller and Sinanan feel towards them." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

CONSUMPTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES (The Times Higher Education Book of the Week)

consump

Published by Polity this is the sequel to Stuff.

This engagingly written book addresses some of the central dilemmas of contemporary global society: how to sustain a developed-world, consumerist lifestyle in the face of wrenching economic shifts and accelerating climate change. The topic is urgent, the prescriptions for change coming from academic and policy leaders, paltry. Miller makes the conversation more interesting, more lively, and more honest. Bill Maurer

By seeing localization where others see globalization, by putting forward an alternative theory of value, Miller provides some clues as to how scientists, politicians and citizens can work together towards more fair and sustainable practices and systems. The Global Journal

His insights here deserve a wider hearing. Times Higher Education Book of the Week 

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4yXRiuYsI

POLYMEDIA

polymedia

Published by Routledge this book is the result of joint research with Mirca Madianou discussing the impact of new media on the relationship between Filipina mothers and their left behind children.

"An exemplar and groundbreaking study, with contributions to theory and our understanding of polymedia in everyday life, this stands out as an extraordinary read on the technology of relationships." Zizi Papacharissi

"This fascinating, richly detailed book investigates the role that fluency across multiple digital platforms plays in enabling mothering and caring to be sustained at a distance. A genuine breakthrough." Nick Couldry

"The book succeeds in what many authors fruitlessly pursue: deriving convincing theory from an abundance of vast qualitative data. It is a highly engaging book that is rich in detail without drowning the reader in it. Its empirical and theoretical innovations make it a highly recommended book for any scholar working on media and migration, long-distance communication and the increasingly complex media environments that enfold us." Communications

"[A] compelling read about the 'connected transnational family' … The most compelling aspect of this book, this reader would argue, is its simultaneous engagement with a broad range of entangled issues. It convincingly puts mothers/children, migration/communication, mediation/relationship, past/present/future as well as theory/research practice into close encounter throughout." LSE Review of Books

BLUE JEANS

BLUE

Published by University of California Press, this is intended to be a case study in Material Culture.

Blue Jeans is an engaging and highly readable account that explores a largely taken-for-granted aspect of global material culture to launch a comprehensive re-examination of some of the foundational building blocks of modern social theory. (Social Anthropology)

Written with Sophie Woodward. The miracle of Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward's treatise is just how wide its insight stretches. Through the lens of something as ordinary as blue jeans, we are offered a view of culture, immigration, women's issues, and social and familial structures. Most of all we are offered a unique view of ourselves. Rachel Louise Snyder.

"The conclusions they present are applicable far beyond this sample, however, and offer us a peek elements of human nature that go beyond culture. It is well worth a look for anyone interested in anthropology in practical practice." - Scientific American

DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY

dIGITAL

This contains fourteen chapters by leading researchers in the field to constitute a first text book for this new sub-field.

"Researchers and teachers alike have long been waiting for this invaluable guide to the tricky terrain of digital anthropology. Demonstrating what anthropology brings to the study of the digital and vice versa, Horst and Miller's book provides a firm launching-off point for new investigations of the remediations, remodulations, and reconfigurations associated with digital media and technology." --Paul Dourish, Professor of Informatics, University of California, Irvine

"This remarkable volume provides a provocative survey of an emergent territory we are all coming to inhabit. Broad in coverage yet acutely attentive to the particulars, offering multiple perspectives yet elegantly integrative, and epistemologically bracing while deeply anthropological, this is a work of lasting value for experts and non-experts alike." --Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Digital Anthropology is a beautifully curated book that reveals the importance of anthropological insight for understanding different aspects of networked society, from the spectacular to the mundane. In this formative book, Horst and Miller call attention to the ways in which digital technologies make visible our humanity." --danah boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research


TALES FROM FACEBOOK

Tales from Facebook

Tales From Facebook derives both from observations on Facebook itself and fieldwork in Trinidad. Apart from 12 portraits that indicate the impact of Facebook on peoples' lives, the book includes a theory of Facebook and a discussion of its likely impact in the future. A brief introduction to the book may be found on youtube.

"Tales from Facebook is a genre-busting tour de force." Tom Boellstorff

"Previous research into Facebook tended to fall into the pop-psychology bracket or concentrated on specific subjects… Miller's study was wide-ranging and followed the intimate Facebook habits of up to 200 people, logging the way they used the site and the impact it had on their wider relationships." The Independent

"Tales from Facebook is a must read for those interested in the way the internet is mediating social and cultural life. Miller's 12 portraits are delivered in an appealing narrative fashion. As an academic text, this book is both accessible and engaging." Cultural Sociology

"It is Miller's focus on Trinidad and his beguilingly intimate style of writing that makes this work special. Prepare to have your expectations confounded. The Age (Melbourne)

GLOBAL DENIM

Global Denim

"A bold statement but what better reason for a book, they argue: the study of the omnipresent jeans can provide insights into fashion - more than any other item." - Financial Times

This is a collaborative project with Dr Sophie Woodward. An initial paper called A Manifesto for a Study of Denim was published in the journal Social Anthropology (January 2008). It later resulted in Blue Jeans (see above).


STUFF

Stuff

A summary of all my previous work is being undertaken in  two new volumes Stuff published by Polity in 2009 and Consumption and its Consequences which will be published by Polity in 2012

"[Stuff] really is a little gem. Timely, well-written and highly accessible, it is a concise and grounded resource in the struggle to analyse the complexities of contemporary cultural life . . . For undergraduates and general critical readers alike, it will be a welcome and thought-provoking reminder that the material world of things we have created, and which in turn helps to create us, needs to be understood dialectically - for better and for worse." Times Higher Education

"[T]here are fascinating things here: a seven-page description of how a woman who wears a sari navigates daily life through the garment; a portrait of council tenants as "artists" redecorating their flats in different ways; and analyses of fashion, furnishing and "mobile phone relationships" in Jamaica. When Miller is focused on the details, the writing hums with empathetic colour and detail." The Guardian

CLOTHING AND  WASTE 

I am supporting Dr. Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello of the Dept. of Anthropology UCL in her research which forms part of a larger ESRC funded called The Waste of the World and led by Prof. Nicky Gregson of the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield. This included an ethnography of hand loom and waste in Kannur, north Kerala, India, and a current study of shoddy (textiles from previously used fibres).

 

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

Anthropology and the Individual

A collective project based on work by PhD students in the department has recently been completed and was published in November 2009 by Berg. The book takes a material culture perspective on the way anthropologists discuss individuals.

 

THE AU-PAIR EXPERIENCE

Au Pair

This is a collaboration with Dr. Zuzana Burikova of the Institute for Ethnology in Bratislava. The study consisted of a years ethnographic research on the experience of Slovakian au-pairs and their host families in London. The project was funded by the Leverhulme foundation.

Our book Au Pair is now published with Polity Press.

"Au Pair is a ripping good read, full of salacious details of the indignities of trying to live and work as a foreigner in middle-class London households." Times Higher Education

"With its fine-grained ethnographic detail, skilfully presented in vivid prose, this book illuminates every aspect of the hopes, fantasies and frustrations that constitute the frequently troubled ties and misunderstandings between au pairs and their employers. A huge pleasure to read, Au Pair provides a definitive, indispensable text for addressing this increasingly prevalent facet of family life, with its own suggestions for improving the lives of both au pairs and the families in which they reside." Lynne Segal, author of Why Feminism?

THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF LOSS 

The Comfort of Things

Fieldwork on the use of material culture in helping people deal with loss was carried out mainly in a single street with Fiona Parrott.

This continues the theme of relating material culture to love and care that was explored in an earlier book A Theory of Shopping.

The Comfort of Things was published by Polity Press in 2008. A paper by Daniel Miller and Fiona Parrott addressing the more academic issues raised by this work was published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in August 2009.

"The very best kind of micro-ethnography. Miller writes better - and with more insight and compassion - than most novelists." Kate Fox, author of Watching the English

"An outstanding piece of work: a fine example of modern anthropological fieldwork, a powerful corrective to the banal notion that materialism is synonymous with excessive individualism and, perhaps above all, an informed, sensitive, and wholly sympathetic guide to the human diversity to be found through the keyholes of our capital city." Laurie Taylor, The Independent

"A wonderful and unusual antidote to the fear that humanity and individuality is losing its battle with modern consumerism. In his book, even the most trivial product of consumerism can be rendered almost magical by its owners." The Financial Times

"Daniel Miller's moving account, The Comfort of Things, is a stout defence of that pejorative notion: "only sentimental value". He builds up a tapestry of the variety of ways in which people use things to express themselves and make meaning in their lives. The nondescript, the ordinary, can be invested with great value. In Miller's account, people knit rich associations with objects, caring for each, using them to express relationships." The Guardian

THE IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA ON LOW INCOME HOUSEHOLDS IN JAMAICA

The Cell Phone

This ethnography was carried out jointly with Dr. Heather Horst, who currently teaches at the University of Berkeley, California.

The results have been published in the book Horst, H and Miller, D. The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. (Oxford: Berg) 2006.

"Horst and Miller give a dazzling display of new and innovative methods, combined with sophisticated use of anthropological theory." Richard Wilk, Indiana University

"A landmark in mobile phone studies that will appeal to a wide audience and that is likely to frame debates in this field for some time to come." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

THE CONCEPT OF VALUE
This includes case-studies based on the Best Value inspectorate of local government, and the rise of shareholder value as well as the colloquial use of the concept of value. This expands his previous work on virtualism and political economy. A paper called The Uses of Value which sumarises this research was published in the journal Geoforum.

MATERIALITY

Materiality

A return to the wider issues of materiality that have recently surfaced in the work of Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour and others and in my earlier writings.

"This book makes the reader engage with a range of old and new arguments on materiality and pushes their boundaries in a way that makes it important reading for a broad anthropological public." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"A magisterial and highly original collection." Marilyn Strathern,

"A milestone collection." George Marcus

"Throughout the chapters, the analyses are of high quality. The authors know their cases and present them well." American Journal of Sociology

CLOTHING AS MATERIAL CULTURE

Clothing as Material Culture

This edited collection with Susanne Kuechler includes contributions from many of our PhD. Students working on topics such as Lycra, women's wardrobes, re-cycling of cloth and clothing in the Pacific. It was published by Berg in 2005.

THE SARI

The Sari

Based on fieldwork in India, the book The Sari written with Mukulika Banerjee and published by Berg in 2004. It has recently been republished, in 2008, by Berg.

"A fascinating look at this great Indian traditional wear told through the voices of women who love and live with it on a daily basis." Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend It Like Beckham

"The strength and charm of this book is the ease with which it distils in an extremely readable, vivacious, and often witty manner the ethnographic perspectives set within a broader context of social, political, and religious changes." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

 

The Dialectics of Shopping

The Dialectics of Shopping

This is the third volume of research based on a study of shopping in North London - It is based on the Morgan Lectures of 1998.The book's concern is to relate micro and macro perspectives in anthropology by examining in turn kinship, community, civil society and political economy as they are revealed by the study of shopping.

Car Cultures

Car Cultures

This edited volume is the first to study the car in comparative contexts.
It contains papers ranging from Ghana, US, Australian Aboriginal societies and Norway, examining topics such as car audios, road rage, gender, colonialism and modernity.

"At last! A book which not only takes a wide-ranging and nuanced approach to the contradictory relations between humans and cars, but also places that research within a cosmopolitan empirical and theoretical framework." The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 

"Car cultures does offer a rather different take on car use and abuse than found in the usual anti-car environmentalist genre."Environmental Politics

The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach

The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach

Written with Don Slater on the use of the Internet in Trinidad. This ranges from its effects on relationships and the family, through the political economy of internet supply to religious and commercial uses of the net, and the specific implications of email, chat and websites respectively.

"Essentially thrilling ... this is the best piece of research on social uses of the internet that I have come across." The Independent

"Now a remarkable new book has raised the discussion to a new level." The Observer

"The book is impressive, well argued and written  and I would suggest that it is essential reading for all students and researchers examining the relationship between new internet technologies and society." Sociology

Home Possessions

Home Possessions

This is the second volume of edited studies of Daniel's Post-graduate students.
It develops a number of new perspectives on the material culture of the home including several papers on the study of mobility, the agency of homes and possessions, and the general problem of privacy and of research in the domestic sphere.

"[Home Possessions] presents a series of themes indicative of a key shift in the study of material culture and the home, placing the material agency of the home firmly on the agenda for future empirical and theoretical work on the home. It should be popular amongst undergraduates and is important reading for any researcher working in this area." Anthropological Theory

Commercial Cultures

Commercial Cultures

This jointly edited book is concerned to examine the relationship between people and commerce ranging from historical perspectives on the development of modern commerce through to aspects of consumption.

Daniel Miller's section is concerned with issues of exchange and the production of value, with papers on exchange over the internet, and on second hand clothing.

Virtualism

Virtualism

A New Political Economy jointly edited with James Carrier which is concerned with new developments in political economy that generalize trends that have become evident over the last twenty years.

Themes include the rise of auditing, international economic bodies and abstracted models of the consumer.

"This volume ...  is a worthy turn-of-the-century successor to Karl Polanyi's 'The great transformation' (1957)." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

A Theory of Shopping

A Theory of Shopping

This volume summarises the results of an ethnography of shopping in North London and constructs a general theory as to the nature of provisioning as the technology of love. It then relates this theory to anthropological studies of sacrifice.

"Miller begins with an excellent and sensitive ethnography of shopping firmly rooted among his own native north Londoners. It is a fine example of what an anthropologist can achieve at home."Times Higher Education

"His demystification of what appears to be, on the surface, straightforward juggling of cost, quantity and quality is absorbing reading." Will Self, New Statesman and Society

Unwrapping Christmas

Unwrapping christmas

"Vastly entertaining." The Spectator

"Stimulating and highly readable." Sunday Telegraph

"Stunning...a good deal of enlightenment and academic entertainment." Church Times

"This book has its delights and surprises...and it lights the fuse of many an odd train of thought." The Times Literary Supplement

Material Culture and Mass Consumption

Material culture and mass consumption

"Miller's well-written book opens exciting prospects for a fertile but underdeveloped area of Anthropology. It certainly deserves your attention." American Anthropologist

"Miller's analysis of material  culture, mass consumption and the theoretical bases by which both are understood, promises to spark some lively and potentially fruitful debate." International Journal of Comparative Sociology

"Daniel Miller's new book is excellent and deserves to be widely read, not only be specialists in material culture, but also be all anthropologists and social scientists who are concerned with the cultural characteristics of "modern" society." Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford

Some Recent Publications

Copyright law does not allow reproduction of the published version which should be sought through the journals or books, but final drafts of papers are included here.

Unpublished Papers

2012 Dying, Anthropology and new communication media. Paper given at 2012 conference for Centre for Death and Society

Paul Thompson and the Problem of Communities in London, Paper given at Fetschrift for Paul Thompson

Thinking a North London Street, Paper given at Tate Modern, not published in English but published in French as Une rue du nord de Londres et ses magasins : imaginaire et usages. In Ethnologie Francais 2005 (1) special issue Négoces dans la ville Ed. Jean-Pierre Hassoun pp 17-26

London: Nowhere in particular, Paper given at EASA 2008

Hospices - The Potential for New Media. - An applied anthropology report requested and submitted to the Hospice of St Francis in Berkhamsted 

Selected Published Papers

1997 How Infants Grow Mothers in North London. Theory, Culture and Society (Nov 1997) vol 14 No 4: 67-88

2001 Possessions. In D. Miller Ed. Home Possessions. Oxford: Berg pp. 107-121

2001 Driven Societies. In D. Miller Ed. Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg pp. 1-33

2001 Home possessions: Material culture behind closed doors. Berg.

2002 (with A. Clarke) Fashion and Anxiety Fashion Theory 6: 191-214

2003 The Virtual Moment Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9: 57-75

2003 Could the Internet de-fetishise the commodity? Environment and Planning D Society and Space. 21: (3) 359-372

2004 The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem? In K. Ekstrom and H. Brembeck Ed. Elusive Consumption Oxford: Berg. pp 113-127

2005 Introduction. In S. Küchler, and D. Miller. Eds. Clothing as Material Culture. Oxford; Berg pp 1-19

2005 Materiality: An Introduction. In D. Miller Ed. Materiality. Durham: Duke University Press pp 1-50.

2005 What is Best Value? In P. du Gay ed. The Values of Bureaucracy. Oxford : Oxford University Press, pp. 233-254

2006 The Unpredictable Mobile Phone. In BT Technology Journal 24 (3) July 2006 pp 41-48

2007 Very big and very small societies. In A. Ribeiro Ed. The Urgency of Theory Manchester: Carcanet Press pp 79-105

2007 What is a relationship? Kinship as negotiated experience. Ethnos 72 (4) 535-554

2007 (with S. Woodward). A Manifesto for the Study of Denim. Social Anthropology 15 (3) pp 335-351

2008 The Uses of Value. Geoforum. 39: 1122-1132

2008 So, what's wrong with Consumption? RSA Journal (Journal of the Royal Society for the Arts). Summer 2008: 44-4

2008 Migration, material culture and tragedy In P. Basu and S. Coleman (eds.), Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures, special issue of Mobilities 3(3) 397-413.

2009 (with F. Parrott). Loss and material culture in South London. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Association 15: 502-510

2009 Individuals and the aesthetic of order. In: Anthropology and the Individual. (3 - 24). Berg Publishers: Oxford. 

2009 The Christian and the Taxi Driver: Poverty and Aspiration in Rural Jamaica. Anthropology and the individual: a material culture perspective: 69.

2010 Anthropology in Blue Jeans American Ethnologist Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 415-428

2010 Designing Ourselves In A. Clarke Ed. Design Anthropology. New York: Springer, 88-99

2011 (with M Madianou) Mobile Phone Parenting: reconfiguring relationships between Filipina mothers and their children in the Philippines. New Media & Society 13: 457-470,

2011 The Limits of Jeans in Kannur, Kerala. In Global Denim Ed. D. Miller and S. Woodward 87-101

2011 Introduction (with S. Woodward)  In Global Denim Ed. D. Miller and S Woodward 1-21

2011 Consumption beyond Dualism In Ekstrom, K and and Kay Glans. Eds. Beyond the Consumer Bubble. London: Routledge 70-82

2011 The Power of Making. In D. Chaney Ed. The Power of Making. London V&A Publishing. Pp14-27 

2011 (with M. Madianou) Crafting Love: letters and cassette tapes in transnational Filipino communication In M. Johnson and D. McKay Eds. Mediated Identities, Diasporic Lives: Situating Filipinos and Philippine Studies in a Translocal Space South East Asia Research 19, 2, pp. 249 272

2011 Getting THINGS right: Mothers and Material Culture. Studies in the Maternal 3:2

2012 Social Networking Sites In Horst H and Miller, D. Eds. Digital Anthropology. Oxford: Berg 156-161

2012 With Mirca Madianou. Polymedia, Communication and Long Distance Relationships. International Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (5)1-19

2012 With Mirca Madianou, Should you accept a friends request from your mother. And other Filipino dilemmas. International Review of Social Research 2: 9-28

2012 The Digital and the Human: a prospectus for Digital Anthropology In Horst H and Miller, D. Eds. Digital Anthropology. Oxford: Berg 3-36

2012 Open Access, Scholarship and Digital Anthropology Hau 2: 395-411

*2013 People that make machines that script people. Anthropology of this Century 6: Issn 2047-6345

*2013 Not Getting the Internet Fair Observer 6-2-13

*2013 DR 2: What is the relationship between identities that people construct, express and consume online and those offline? Driver document for Future Identities: Changing identities in the UK - the next 10 years. London: Government Office for Science, 15pp - download it here.

2013 With Mirca Madianou Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication. International Journal of Cultural Studies 16.2: 169-187