Becoming with things - bodies, objects, practices

Bodies and things are part of the world’s becoming. In recent decades a variety of paradigms, such as (historical) anthropology, phenomenology, practice theory, post-humanism, actor-network-theory or new materialism have engaged with the critical examination of the boundaries between bodies and things. Our issue of ‘Body Politics’ aims to contribute to this debate on the joint becoming and co-construction of bodies and things. This issue negotiates the entanglement of bodies and things through the practices of fitting clothes to bodies, engaging with mountains in interviews, dancing and immobilized body-parts, moving means of transportation and carefully parked bodies, hearing enhancement, the history of bodies in museums and war invalid bodies. The contributions suggest that bodies and things cannot be defined on their own. The demarcation of materiality as body or thing is not redefined, but happens within practices. Further, bodies and things cannot be treated as separate entities, but evolve into various and ever-changing constellations of body-things.