Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture offers a new approach to the study of contemporary objects, to give the reader a new understanding of the relationship between people and their material world. It asks how the very stuff of our world has shaped our societies by addressing a broad array of questions including:

* why do Berliners have such strange door keys?

* should the Isle of Wight pop festival be preserved?

* could aliens tell a snail shell from a waste paper basket

* why did Victorian England make so much of death and burial?