Part 1. Introduction. 1. To live in a materials world / Adam Drazin -- Part 2. On materials innovation. 2. What's in a plant leaf? : a case study of materials innovation in New Zealand / Graeme Were ; 3. Pharmaceutical matters : The invention of informed materials / Andrew Barry ; 4. Toward designing new sensoaesthetic materials : The role of materials libraries / Mark A. Miodownik ; 5. The science of sensory evaluation : An ethnographic critique / David Howes -- Part 3. From substance to form. 6. Wild silk indigo wrappers of Dogon of Mali : An ethnography of materials efficacy and design / Laurence Douny ; 7. Fashioning plastic / Tom Fisher ; 8. Dressing God : Clothing as material of religious subjectivity in a Hindu group / Urmila Mohan -- Part 4. The subversion of form by substance. 9. Introducing Fairtrade and Fairmined gold : An attempt to reconfigure the social identity of a substance / Peter Oakley ; 10. Subversive plasticity : Materials' histories and cultural categories in the Philippines / Deirdre McKay, with Padmapani Perez, Ruel Bimuyag and Raja Shanti Bonnevie ; 11. Diamonds, machines and colours : Moving materials in ritual exchange / Filipe Calvão -- Part 5. Ecologies of materials' social lives. 12. Sustainability and the co-constitution of substances and subjects / Sarah Wilkes ; 13. The peony and the rose : Social change and fragrance marketing in China's bath market / Chan Chow Wah ; 14. The woollen blanket and its imagined values : Material transformations of woollen blankets in contemporary art / Fiona P. McDonald -- Part 6. Conclusion. 15. Materials : the story of use / Susanne Küchler