Thomas Yarrow
Durham University, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- I am a senior lecturer in social anthropology. The key theoretical and empirical focus of my research has been to ... moreI am a senior lecturer in social anthropology.
The key theoretical and empirical focus of my research has been to better understand the practices and social relations through which expert knowledge is produced and circulated. Rather than understand such knowledge as abstract propositional claims, my research demonstrates how expertise is grounded in a range of practices that are indisollubly social and material. Through a series of projects I have examined how different kinds of expertise are linked to social and material interventions that can have a range of more or less intended consequences.
My most recent research explores how the historic environment is produced through the intersecting practices of a range of professionals, including conservation experts, craft practitioners, architects, conservation scientists and planners. These issues are examined through ongoing ethnographic research based at Historic Scotland (British Academy funded). I am exploring similar issues through a project on the effects of conservation science on understandings of historic value and significance of historic monuments (AHRC funded),and through a project on the tensions between heritage conservation and energy conservation in the built environment (EPSRC and AHRC funded). Collectively these projects help to illuminate the complex social dynamics through which heritage practice constructs the historic environment, and with what broader social consequences.
A second strand of my research examines ‘development’ as an idea that sustains multiple and conflicting practices (Differentiating Development: Beyond an Anthropology of Critique, Berghahn). Research on the Volta Resettlement Project, Ghana, (funded by a Leverhulme fellowship) focuses on the materialisation of ideas of ‘development’ and ‘modernity’ and how these ideas are embedded in the everyday lives of resettlers. Research on Ghanaian NGOs, looks at the social relations and practices through which they pursue various forms of ‘social action’ (Development Beyond Politics, Palgrave Macmillan). The theoretical significance of this work lies in its challenge to the political reductionism of prevailing development scholarship, and the ‘Afro-pessimism’ of wider social theory pertaining to the post-colonial state in Africa. More recently my work has increasingly focused on the problematic relationship between anthropology and development, arguing for the need for approaches that bridge this gap by being ‘useful’ but not narrowly ‘applied’.
A final strand of my research focuses on the construction of archaeological knowledge (Archaeology and Anthropology: understanding similarity, exploring difference, Oxbox).Ethnographic work on excavation constitutes a new perspective on the processes by which archaeological data is produced .edit
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right... more
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing?
This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society.
This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society.
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In anthropology and beyond, discussions of character have more often focused on this as a quality of human subjects than of the material world. How is character figured as a quality of historic buildings, monuments and places? The paper... more
In anthropology and beyond, discussions of character have more often focused on this as a quality of human subjects than of the material world. How is character figured as a quality of historic buildings, monuments and places? The paper situates this question through an ethnographic focus on conservation professionals in Scotland, tracing the practices through which ‘character’ is recognised, understood and conserved. The account explores the practices and dispositions through which practitioners attune themselves to this quality, and highlights the role character plays in resolving a central dilemma for conservation: how things can remain as they are, even while changing. This ethnographic focus questions some of the materially essentialist analytic frameworks that have prevailed in literatures on both conservation and character while highlighting forms of practice that are elided more than illuminated by countervailing deconstructive approaches to these topics: actions, ideas and commitments that stem from heritage professionals’ own sense of character as ‘in built’.
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This paper focuses on ideas of historic conservation, examining the multiple ways in which these are constructed in practices of renovation. By-passing normatively inflected literatures on heritage I adopt a more ‘agnostic’ ethnographic... more
This paper focuses on ideas of historic conservation, examining the multiple ways in which these are constructed in practices of renovation. By-passing normatively inflected literatures on heritage I adopt a more ‘agnostic’ ethnographic approach. This focus brings to light a series of dynamics that have received limited attention, demonstrating how conservation is practically substantiated in a range of ways including materially, bodily, emotionally, ethically and conceptually. The paper highlights how conservation both constructs and is constructed through these interactions in a multiplicity of ways.
Research Interests: Architecture, Cultural Heritage Conservation, Heritage Conservation, Materiality (Anthropology), Architectural Heritage, and 4 moreTemporality, Materiality in art, conservation of contemporary art, memory and memorial objects, Material Culture & Materiality, and Restoration and Conservation of Ancient and Historic Buildings and Structures
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A meeting on meeting between the editors of two recent anthropological volumes on 'meeting'
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Focusing on a planned scheme of resettlement undertaken in Ghana in the wake of Independence in 1957, this paper explores how mid-century plans for modernization exist in disjunctive relation to unrealized material infrastructures.... more
Focusing on a planned scheme of resettlement undertaken in Ghana in the wake of Independence in 1957, this paper explores how mid-century plans for modernization exist in disjunctive relation to unrealized material infrastructures. Drawing on ethnographic research in resettlement townships, the account describes the contemporary afterlives of the plan, tracing how its promised futures shadow present understandings of contemporary and future life. The paper examines the distinctive form that ruination takes not as once functional, now decaying infrastructure but as the ongoing effects of an unrealized plan. Here experiences of ruination are associated with a set of spatial and temporal dynamics that emerge as the felt negation of linear time and Cartesian space. The central argument is that insofar as the recent "turn to ruins" assumes the existence of modernization, it eclipses what is conceptually at stake in situations where modernization exists only as a promise.
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This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to... more
This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to the mundane forms through which these work. Seeking to develop a distinctively ethnographic focus to these quotidian and ubiquitous procedures, we outline an approach that moves attention beyond a narrow concern with just their meaning and content. We highlight some of the innovative strands that develop from this approach, describing how the negotiation of relationships within meetings is germane to the organization of external contexts, including in relation to time, space, organizational structure and society. . The essay offers a set of provocations for rethinking approaches to bureaucracy, organizational process and ethos through the ethnographic lens of meeting.
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Drawing on ethnographic research at Historic Scotland , the national agency responsible for conserving the historic environment, the paper explores meetings as organisational devices for differentiating and relating various forms of... more
Drawing on ethnographic research at Historic Scotland , the national agency responsible for conserving the historic environment, the paper explores meetings as organisational devices for differentiating and relating various forms of epistemic, social and material context. The account describes how the bureaucratic ideal of institutional consistency is achieved through staged encounters between the perspectives of the various people who meet, and the buildings that are the objects of their meeting. These ethnographic examples are used to develop two linked points. Firstly, it is suggested that the lens of ‘meeting’ complicates the relatively monolithic characterisations of heritage expertise evident in widely influential deconstructive critiques of heritage practice. Secondly it is argued that heritage practitioners’ own accounts of these negotiations highlight material and spatial dimensions of bureaucractic conduct that have that have received relatively little ethnographic attention in prevalent textually oriented accounts.
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Since the mid-nineteenth century, craft has been characterized by relations of engagement, resonating with broader romantic discourses that idealize craftsmen in explicit contrast to forms of alienation linked to capitalist production. In... more
Since the mid-nineteenth century, craft has been characterized by relations of engagement, resonating with broader romantic discourses that idealize craftsmen in explicit contrast to forms of alienation linked to capitalist production. In recent work on craft, the analytic lens of engagement usefully highlights the dynamic interplay of human and non-human agencies. Our own account builds on these ideas but suggests that the conceptual privileging of engagement creates interpretative problems, precluding ethnographic attention to the role of detachment in craft. Focusing on the skilled practices of conservation stonemasons, we describe the specific constellations of ideology and practice involved in cutting and fixing stone. Through elucidating masons’ own understandings of their work, we highlight their commitment to the ‘disciplined’ embodiment of tradition as a means of separating personal subjectivity from the stones they carve. Our analysis of the skilled practices required to work stone questions the primacy of engagement, suggesting instead that detachment and engagement are mutually implicated relational forms. This finding sheds new light on craft practice and offers a position from which to reconsider broader anthropological commitments to concepts of engagement.
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This article explores how authenticity is produced through different forms of expertise and skill, as they are negotiated and aligned in the daily practices of conservation. Focusing on the traditional craft practices of stonemasons, the... more
This article explores how authenticity is produced through different forms of expertise and skill, as they are negotiated and aligned in the daily practices of conservation. Focusing on the traditional craft practices of stonemasons, the authors trace their relations to the broader nexus of experts responsible for conserving Glasgow Cathedral. They show that authenticity is a distributed property of distinct forms of expert practice as they intersect with one another and, crucially, with the material conditions of specific heritage sites. It is argued that, in the context of conservation practice, authenticity is neither a subjective, discursive construction nor a latent property of historic monuments waiting to be preserved. Rather it is a property that emerges through specific interactions between people and things.
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The relationship between theory and place has remained a central problem for the discipline of anthropology. Focusing on debates around the concepts of human rights and networks, specifically as these traverse African and Melanesian... more
The relationship between theory and place has remained a central problem for the discipline of anthropology. Focusing on debates around the concepts of human rights and networks, specifically as these traverse African and Melanesian contexts, this article highlights how novel ideas emerge through sustained comparison across different regions. Rather than understanding places as sources of theories to be applied to other contexts, we argue that anthropologists need to recognize how new concepts are generated through reflexive comparison across different regions. This analysis leads us to question a widespread propensity to understand places as the sine qua non of anthropological theory, proposing instead that place emerges retrospectively as an artifact of comparison. We conclude that while it is therefore necessary to acknowledge the analytic construction of Africa and its sub-regions, there remain compelling reasons to recognize its analytic utility.
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Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of 'development' as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume... more
Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of 'development' as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field.
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This article examines the contested ways in which the international development concept of “indigenous knowledge” has been used and understood by a variety of actors within Ghana including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian development... more
This article examines the contested ways in which the international development concept of “indigenous knowledge” has been used and understood by a variety of actors within Ghana including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian development workers, chiefs, and members of beneficiary communities. While an ostensibly simplistic opposition between “indigenous” and “western” knowledge underscores this discourse, I argue that it has acted to frame a number of complex and geographically specific debates concerning the respective roles of chiefs and elites in the development of the country. The article also explores how the assumed incommensurability of these knowledge systems creates the need for various kinds of “mediation” and “translation” in which both chiefs and development workers foreground a “dual” identity. Against the prevailing anthropological tendency to critique the opposition between “indigenous” and “western” knowledge, I suggest that it is important to understand how these terms are used by different actors in the negotiation of identities and relations that are not reducible to the binary logic of the terms themselves.
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Widespread assumptions about the extractive and self-serving nature of African elites have resulted in the relative neglect of questions concerning their personal ethics and morality. Using life-history interviews undertaken with a range... more
Widespread assumptions about the extractive and self-serving nature of African elites have resulted in the relative neglect of questions concerning their personal ethics and morality. Using life-history interviews undertaken with a range of Ghanaian development workers, this article explores some of the different personal aspirations, ideologies and beliefs that such narratives express. The self-identification of many of those interviewed as ‘activists’ is examined in terms of the related concepts of ‘ideology’, ‘commitment’ and ‘sacrifice’. Much recent work within history and anthropology uses the ‘life-history’ as a way of introducing ‘agency’ that is purported to be missing in accounts focusing on larger social abstractions. Yet it is the very opposition between abstractions such as ‘history’ and ‘society’ and their own more ‘personal’ lives that such narratives themselves enact. The article thus interrogates the various ways in which development workers variously imagine their lives in relation to broader social and historical processes.
Résumé
Les idées répandues sur la nature extractive et intéressée des élites africaines ont conduit à un désintérêt relatif des questions concernant leur éthique personnelle et leur moralité. À travers des entretiens de récits de vie menés auprès d'un éventail d'agents de développement ghanéens, cet article explore les différentes aspirations personnelles, idéologies et croyances qu'expriment ces récits. Il examine l'étiquette d'activiste que se donne un grand nombre de personnes interrogées, en termes de concepts liés d'〈idéologie〉, d'〈engagement〉 et de 〈sacrifice〉. Beaucoup de travaux récents menés en histoire et en anthropologie utilisent le 〈récit de vie〉 comme moyen d'introduire l'〈action〉 qui est censée manquer dans les récits centrés sur des abstractions sociales plus larges. C'est pourtant l'opposition même entre des abstractions (comme l'〈histoire〉 et la 〈société〉) et leur propre existence plus personnelle que ces récits interprètent eux-mêmes. L'article interroge ainsi les différentes manières dont les agents de développement imaginent leur existence par rapport à des processus sociaux et historiques plus larges.
Résumé
Les idées répandues sur la nature extractive et intéressée des élites africaines ont conduit à un désintérêt relatif des questions concernant leur éthique personnelle et leur moralité. À travers des entretiens de récits de vie menés auprès d'un éventail d'agents de développement ghanéens, cet article explore les différentes aspirations personnelles, idéologies et croyances qu'expriment ces récits. Il examine l'étiquette d'activiste que se donne un grand nombre de personnes interrogées, en termes de concepts liés d'〈idéologie〉, d'〈engagement〉 et de 〈sacrifice〉. Beaucoup de travaux récents menés en histoire et en anthropologie utilisent le 〈récit de vie〉 comme moyen d'introduire l'〈action〉 qui est censée manquer dans les récits centrés sur des abstractions sociales plus larges. C'est pourtant l'opposition même entre des abstractions (comme l'〈histoire〉 et la 〈société〉) et leur propre existence plus personnelle que ces récits interprètent eux-mêmes. L'article interroge ainsi les différentes manières dont les agents de développement imaginent leur existence par rapport à des processus sociaux et historiques plus larges.
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Over the past two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the ways in which overtly progressive ideas of `development' have been used, paradoxically, to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty on a global scale. Such... more
Over the past two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the ways in which overtly progressive ideas of `development' have been used, paradoxically, to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty on a global scale. Such critiques have fed into a wider `postmodern challenge' which has importantly questioned previously held assumptions about development. However, this prevailing critical approach has led to a number of problems. In particular the deconstruction of development discourse has unwittingly re-inscribed many of the binary oppositions it seeks to overcome, without appreciating the complex ways in which development workers employ these. Moreover, a critical impulse to uncover what development practice `hides' focuses attention away from the ideas and practices that development practitioners actively privilege. In this article I argue that it is necessary to go beyond a critical, deconstructive approach in order to appreciate the socially and discursively complex ways in which development workers employ such oppositions. Through an ethnographic account focusing on how oppositions between `local' and `global' and `policy' and `practice' are used to frame a variety of development interventions in Ghana, I outline the mobile ways in which such oppositions are deployed and highlight the diverse ideas and agendas that they are used to articulate.
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A number of recent theories have argued that archaeological objects and data reflect the social and subjective interpretation of the archaeologists excavating them. These interpretative or post-processual approaches have importantly... more
A number of recent theories have argued that archaeological objects and data reflect the social and subjective interpretation of the archaeologists excavating them. These interpretative or post-processual approaches have importantly called into question the empirical assumption that the world exists as an object prior to interpretations that archaeologists give it. However this perspective fails to look at the ways in which the social and subjective factors are themselves constructed through fieldwork. In contrast to an approach that seeks to investigate how social and subjective factors 'determine' different kinds of archaeological objects, this article therefore examines the particular fieldwork practices and conventions through which an opposition between subjectivity and objectivity is itself created.
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Drawing on interdisciplinary research focusing on Durham University estate, we describe how buildings constructed as part of an eighteenth century transition to a high carbon coal-based economy, are used and understood by their current... more
Drawing on interdisciplinary research focusing on Durham University estate, we describe how buildings constructed as part of an eighteenth century transition to a high carbon coal-based economy, are used and understood
by their current inhabitants. Applied heritage research has tended to focus on the thermal and energetic properties of historic buildings, as distinct from their social meaning and use. A similar separation between the physical building and its social use is inherent in methodologies such as energy audits that constitute key devices through which buildings are institutionally managed. We argue that these perspectives have overlooked how a significant element of energy use arises from the complex practical interactions between people and infrastructure. From this perspective we argue that better outcomes for energy and heritage would result if greater contextual consideration was given to the existing possibilities afforded by historic buildings and their users.
by their current inhabitants. Applied heritage research has tended to focus on the thermal and energetic properties of historic buildings, as distinct from their social meaning and use. A similar separation between the physical building and its social use is inherent in methodologies such as energy audits that constitute key devices through which buildings are institutionally managed. We argue that these perspectives have overlooked how a significant element of energy use arises from the complex practical interactions between people and infrastructure. From this perspective we argue that better outcomes for energy and heritage would result if greater contextual consideration was given to the existing possibilities afforded by historic buildings and their users.
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"Architects is an insightful anthropological study of architects at work. There are amazing ethnographic descriptions of architectural work throughout." Albena Yaneva, University of Manchester, and author of The Making of a Building... more
"Architects is an insightful anthropological study of architects at work. There are amazing ethnographic descriptions of architectural work throughout." Albena Yaneva, University of Manchester, and author of The Making of a Building
"Thomas Yarrow's book is extremely valuable and opens up anthropological writing to folks who aren't already a part of the conversation. Anyone will be able to read and relate to Architects." Keith M. Murphy, University of California, Irvine, and author of Swedish Design
"Tacking deftly between vivid narrative description and rich theoretical reflection, this outstanding book will appeal to a wide readership in anthropology, design, art, and architecture." Anand Pandian, Johns Hopkins University, and author of Reel World
"A beautiful description of the struggle and doubts of the design process, Yarrow's anthropological gaze is enchanted by the practice office that represents a way of life, contains bits of everything, and has little room for more. Architects is one of the most generous books I have read." Prue Chiles, Newcastle University and Chiles Evans + Care Architects
What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal questions spring to the fore in Thomas Yarrow's vivid exploration of the life of architects. Yarrow takes us inside the world of architects, showing us the anxiety, exhilaration, hope, idealism, friendship, conflict, and the personal commitments that feed these acts of creativity. Architects rethinks "creativity," demonstrating how it happens in everyday practice. It highlights how the pursuit of good architecture, relates to the pursuit of a good life in intimate and individually specific ways. And it reveals the surprising and routine social negotiations through which designs and buildings are actually made. Thomas Yarrow is a social anthropologist whose work focuses on the social life of expertise. He is particularly interested in everyday interactions through which professional knowledge is produced, the personal and ideological commitments that propel this work, and the routine ethical dilemmas that arise. For Architects, Yarrow turned his attention to the lives and work of ten architects who comprise the Millar Howard Workshop, an architectural firm in the Cotswolds, UK. Yarrow is also the author of Development Beyond Politics, and the co-author of Detachment, Differentiating Development, and Archaeology and Anthropology.
"Thomas Yarrow's book is extremely valuable and opens up anthropological writing to folks who aren't already a part of the conversation. Anyone will be able to read and relate to Architects." Keith M. Murphy, University of California, Irvine, and author of Swedish Design
"Tacking deftly between vivid narrative description and rich theoretical reflection, this outstanding book will appeal to a wide readership in anthropology, design, art, and architecture." Anand Pandian, Johns Hopkins University, and author of Reel World
"A beautiful description of the struggle and doubts of the design process, Yarrow's anthropological gaze is enchanted by the practice office that represents a way of life, contains bits of everything, and has little room for more. Architects is one of the most generous books I have read." Prue Chiles, Newcastle University and Chiles Evans + Care Architects
What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal questions spring to the fore in Thomas Yarrow's vivid exploration of the life of architects. Yarrow takes us inside the world of architects, showing us the anxiety, exhilaration, hope, idealism, friendship, conflict, and the personal commitments that feed these acts of creativity. Architects rethinks "creativity," demonstrating how it happens in everyday practice. It highlights how the pursuit of good architecture, relates to the pursuit of a good life in intimate and individually specific ways. And it reveals the surprising and routine social negotiations through which designs and buildings are actually made. Thomas Yarrow is a social anthropologist whose work focuses on the social life of expertise. He is particularly interested in everyday interactions through which professional knowledge is produced, the personal and ideological commitments that propel this work, and the routine ethical dilemmas that arise. For Architects, Yarrow turned his attention to the lives and work of ten architects who comprise the Millar Howard Workshop, an architectural firm in the Cotswolds, UK. Yarrow is also the author of Development Beyond Politics, and the co-author of Detachment, Differentiating Development, and Archaeology and Anthropology.
Research Interests: Sociology of Work, Design practice, Ethnography, Sociology of Knowledge, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 9 moreCritical design practice, STS (Anthropology), Design Anthropology, Anthropology of Work, Imagination and Creativity in Design Thinking, STS, ethnography, Ethics of Everyday Practice, Anthropology and Design, and Architecture and Ethnography
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right... more
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing?
This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society.
With new contributions on an emerging area of research, this timely collection will be of value to students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, geography and engineering.
This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society.
With new contributions on an emerging area of research, this timely collection will be of value to students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, geography and engineering.
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This interdisciplinary volume questions one of the most fundamental tenets of social theory by focusing on detachment, an important but neglected aspect of social life. Going against the grain of recent theoretical celebrations of... more
This interdisciplinary volume questions one of the most fundamental tenets of social theory by focusing on detachment, an important but neglected aspect of social life. Going against the grain of recent theoretical celebrations of ‘engagement’, this book challenges us to re-think the relational basis of social theory. In so doing it brings to light the productive aspects of disconnection, distance and detachment. Rather than treating detachment simply as the moral inversion of compassion and engagement, the volume brings together empirical studies and theoretical comments by leading anthropologists, sociologists, and science studies scholars. Taken together, these illustrate the range of contexts within which distance and disconnection can offer meaningful frameworks for action. Positioned at the cutting edge of social theory, this landmark volume will be widely read by students and academics across the social sciences and humanities.
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Is 'development' a solution for positive social change or a cynical western strategy for maintaining inequality? Do African NGOs represent a flourishing civil society or the strategic allocation of external resources by local elites?... more
Is 'development' a solution for positive social change or a cynical western strategy for maintaining inequality? Do African NGOs represent a flourishing civil society or the strategic allocation of external resources by local elites? Moving beyond an increasingly polarized debate about the role of NGOs, this book reveals the practices and social relations through which ideas of development are concretely established. Rather than reducing these to a single, encompassing development 'logic', Yarrow argues for the need to understand the multiple and conflicting epistemologies through which development interventions practically proceed. Through ethnographic description, he brings to life the everyday realities of development professionals in Ghana. The result is a profound challenge to theories of development and public culture in Africa and beyond.
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Buildings change in response to various social processes and emerge through the different practices and understandings of people who use, inhabit and work on them. Over time structures acquire a range of meanings as authentic embodiments... more
Buildings change in response to various social processes and emerge through the different practices and understandings of people who use, inhabit and work on them. Over time structures acquire a range of meanings as authentic embodiments of the past, including values attached to original fabric, period features, and the patina of worn and weathered materials. Such understandings are associated with cultural, social and economic values that lend support to the importance of conserving and caring for old buildings. However these ideas have the potential to conflict with an increasing emphasis on energy-efficient renovation, entailing a radical transformation of the built environment in response to fears about climate change. Concretely, a range of measures including the installation of micro-generation technologies, insulation, new windows and the adoption of 'smart' technologies, all have the potential to improve the energy performance of older buildings, but also to compromise the historic value of existing structures.
This project examines how ideas about heritage conservation, a set of beliefs about the value of continuity and tradition, exist in relation to ideas about the need for environmentally motivated changes to a range of historic buildings. The project aims to understand the cultural meanings and social dynamics through which heritage and energy futures are constructed, through a study of the attitudes, values and beliefs of a range of building professionals and home owners. The project uses a mixture of methods, including interviewing and sustained detailed observation in relation to case-study buildings, combined with analysis of the broader discourses and cultural understandings that inform the positions of the professionals and clients involved.
This project examines how ideas about heritage conservation, a set of beliefs about the value of continuity and tradition, exist in relation to ideas about the need for environmentally motivated changes to a range of historic buildings. The project aims to understand the cultural meanings and social dynamics through which heritage and energy futures are constructed, through a study of the attitudes, values and beliefs of a range of building professionals and home owners. The project uses a mixture of methods, including interviewing and sustained detailed observation in relation to case-study buildings, combined with analysis of the broader discourses and cultural understandings that inform the positions of the professionals and clients involved.
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The Materiality, Authenticity and Value in the historic environment project is a one year study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the Science and Heritage call. The project looks at the role of heritage... more
The Materiality, Authenticity and Value in the historic environment project is a one year study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the Science and Heritage call. The project looks at the role of heritage science in the conservation process, focusing specifically on whether and how such interventions uphold or reconfigure the values and meanings attached to historic monuments
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■ Over the past two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the ways in which overtly progressive ideas of ‘development ’ have been used, paradoxically, to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty on a global scale. Such... more
■ Over the past two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the ways in which overtly progressive ideas of ‘development ’ have been used, paradoxically, to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty on a global scale. Such critiques have fed into a wider ‘postmodern challenge ’ which has impor-tantly questioned previously held assumptions about development. However, this prevailing critical approach has led to a number of problems. In particular the deconstruction of development discourse has unwittingly re-inscribed many of the binary oppositions it seeks to overcome, without appreciating the complex ways in which development workers employ these. Moreover, a critical impulse to uncover what development practice ‘hides ’ focuses attention away from the ideas and practices that development practitioners actively privilege. In this article I argue that it is necessary to go beyond a critical, deconstructive approach in order to appreciate the socially and discursively co...
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In a large room, on the third floor of an old woollen mill in the South West of England, nine architects spend most of their working lives, designing buildings and overseeing their construction. Asked where these come from, architects... more
In a large room, on the third floor of an old woollen mill in the South West of England, nine architects spend most of their working lives, designing buildings and overseeing their construction. Asked where these come from, architects admit a kind of ignorance: 'Total magic!' as one puts it, 'Something comes from nothing!' Focusing on the everyday lives of architects, the book explores how buildings are assembled through an intimate and elusive choreography of people, materials, places, tools and ideas. Through these interactions, it asks and answers some questions of wider interest: What is the relationship between a working and a personal life? What is creativity? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? What does it mean to claim to know with authority? Most basically but most fundamentally the book is concerned with the question of what it is like to be an architect, and what lessons others might learn from the example the...
Often I watch the architects at work, captivated by the process through which designs develop and evolve. Much of this happens in silence. Eyes concentrate on screens, computer-generated images of more or less realized structures moved... more
Often I watch the architects at work, captivated by the process through which designs develop and evolve. Much of this happens in silence. Eyes concentrate on screens, computer-generated images of more or less realized structures moved and remade through barely perceptible movements of the mouse. The movement of hand on tracing paper seems a more literal relationship—eye-arm-hand-pencil-paper—but the question of what it is that animates the process is no less enigmatic. Asked where their designs come from, architects offer thoughtful reflections but confess their own uncertainty about a process that is both familiar and mysterious: “total magic,” as Megan once put it during a group discussion in the office; “something comes from nothing!”...
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Introduction: Matei Candea, Jo Cook, Catherine Trundle and Thomas Yarrow Part I: Professionalism and expertise 1. Some merits and difficulties of detachment - Maryon MacDonald 2. Virtuous detachments in engineering practice - on the... more
Introduction: Matei Candea, Jo Cook, Catherine Trundle and Thomas Yarrow Part I: Professionalism and expertise 1. Some merits and difficulties of detachment - Maryon MacDonald 2. Virtuous detachments in engineering practice - on the ethics of (not) making a difference - Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox 3. Artisanal affection: detachment in human-animal relations within intensive pig production in Britain - Kim Crowder 4. Comment - Veena Das Part II: Ritual and religion 5. Engaged disbelief: problematics of detachment in Christianity and in the anthropology of Christianity - Joel Robbins 6. Detachment and ethical regard - James Laidlaw 7. Detachment, difference and separation: Levi-Strauss at the wedding feast - Caroline Humphrey 8. Comment - Michael Carrithers Part III: Detaching and situating knowledge 9. The capacity for re-description: environments for hyphens - Alberto Corsin Jimenez 10. Test sites: attachments and detachments in community-based ecotourism - Casper Bruun Jensen and ...
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Introduction. Anthropology and Development: critical framings Thomas Yarrow and Soumhya Venkatesan Part I: Anthropology and Development reconsidered Chapter 1. On Text and Con-text: toward an anthropology in development John Friedman... more
Introduction. Anthropology and Development: critical framings Thomas Yarrow and Soumhya Venkatesan Part I: Anthropology and Development reconsidered Chapter 1. On Text and Con-text: toward an anthropology in development John Friedman Chapter 2. Framing and Escaping: Contrasting Aspects of Knowledge Work in International Development an Anthropology Maia Green Intersection 1: Economies of Knowledge Veena Das Part II: Enacting Development Chapter 3. The Progress of the Project: Scientific Traction in the Gambia Ann Kelly Chapter 4. Recursive partnerships in global development aid Casper Bruun Jansen and Brit Ross Winthereik Intersection 2: A Gift Back: the village and research Annmarie Mol Part III: Doing and Knowing Chapter 5. Beyond an Anthropology of 'the Urban Poor': rethinking peripheral urban social situations in Brazil John Gledhill and Maria Gabriela Hita Chapter 6. Extraordinary Violence and Everyday Welfare: The State and Development in Rural and Urban India Amita Bav...
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ABSTRACT It is widely recognised that the historic environment provides a source of cultural enrichment and enhances people’s quality of life and wellbeing. However, it also undergoes cycles of material transformation, of decay and... more
ABSTRACT It is widely recognised that the historic environment provides a source of cultural enrichment and enhances people’s quality of life and wellbeing. However, it also undergoes cycles of material transformation, of decay and renewal, which inform the meanings and values associated with it and contribute to the experience of authenticity. In this interdisciplinary project, we have used ethnographic methods including interviews and participant observation to examine the kinds of value attached to deterioration and decay in historic buildings. We use these methods firstly to ask how processes of deterioration and decay inform the cultural values attached to historic buildings, and secondly to explore when and why we use science-based interventions to retard or arrest these processes. Through case studies drawn from Scottish buildings in the care of National Trust Scotland and Historic Scotland, the study explores how these interventions impact on perceptions of authenticity and value. The project puts conversations with practitioners at the heart of the field of inquiry. It is oriented toward initiating discussion between research and practice, demonstrating the role of qualitative research and providing analysis that will inform the application of heritage science to problems of material degradation and decay. The aim of the project workshop was to engage with stakeholders from conservation groups, practitioners, heritage scientists and academics from humanities and social disciplines to share the project results and to discuss the wider context and impact of this work. The summary that follows condenses the broad ranging discussion into some key points for reflection.
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ly this absence is understood in terms of ‘development’, ‘modernity’, ‘progress’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘urbanisation.’ More concretely such ideas are literalised in various aspects of the built environment. Buildings in poor repair are... more
ly this absence is understood in terms of ‘development’, ‘modernity’, ‘progress’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘urbanisation.’ More concretely such ideas are literalised in various aspects of the built environment. Buildings in poor repair are described as ‘ramshackle’ and ‘uncivilised’. The ‘temporary’ nature of makeshift kitchens and bathrooms, fashioned from ‘swish’ and corrugated iron is similarly highlighted as evidence of a gap between vision and reality. More generally, the ‘bushy’, ‘weedy’ and ‘chaotic’ nature of the town are imagined as evidence of ‘backwardness’ and ‘under-development’, that highlights the failed promises that attended resettlement. Such discourses evoke an understanding of ruination and decay that is partly elicited by the material remains of these infrastructures but which do not deterministically arise from these (Stoler 2008; Edensor 2012; Johnson 2013; Schwenkel 2013). Rather these relate to an ontology that enlists archetypes of the modern and the urban, and a...
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This article focuses on ideas of historic conservation, examining the multiple ways in which these are made to matter through practices of renovation. Bypassing normatively inflected literatures on heritage, the author adopts a more... more
This article focuses on ideas of historic conservation, examining the multiple ways in which these are made to matter through practices of renovation. Bypassing normatively inflected literatures on heritage, the author adopts a more ‘agnostic’ ethnographic approach, highlighting how conservation involves an imperative of continuity that is elaborated in a multiplicity of ways by conservation and construction professionals, and inhabitants of old buildings. This focus brings to light a series of dynamics that have received limited attention, demonstrating how conservation is practically substantiated in a range of ways including materially, bodily, emotionally, ethically and conceptually.
Research Interests: Archaeology, Anthropology, Architecture, Cultural Heritage Conservation, Heritage Conservation, and 7 moreMateriality (Anthropology), Architectural Heritage, Material Culture, Temporality, Material Culture & Materiality, Historical Studies, and Restoration and Conservation of Ancient and Historic Buildings and Structures
Focusing on a planned scheme of resettlement undertaken in Ghana in the wake of independence in 1957, this essay explores how midcentury plans for modernization exist in disjunctive relation to unrealized material infrastructures. Drawing... more
Focusing on a planned scheme of resettlement undertaken in Ghana in the wake of independence in 1957, this essay explores how midcentury plans for modernization exist in disjunctive relation to unrealized material infrastructures. Drawing on ethnographic research in resettlement townships, the account describes the contemporary afterlives of the plan, tracing how its promised futures shadow present understandings of contemporary and future life. The essay examines the distinctive form that ruination takes not as once-functional, now-decaying infrastructure, but as the ongoing effects of an unrealized plan. Here, experiences of ruination are associated with a set of spatial and temporal dynamics that emerge as the felt negation of linear time and Cartesian space. Insofar as the recent scholarly turn to ruins assumes the existence of modernization, it in fact eclipses what is conceptually at stake in situations where modernization exists only as a promise.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Archaeology, Expertise, Cultural Heritage, Qualitative methodology, and 13 moreValues, Cultural Heritage Conservation, Authenticity, Heritage Conservation, Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage Management, Architectural Heritage, Conservation Science, Science for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, Materiality, Historical Studies, Stone Weathering, and Elsevier
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This article looks at the documentary practices of Grassroots Empowerment (GEM)1, a small development Non Governmental Organisation based in England. The organisation provides environmental information to 'grassroots' groups,... more
This article looks at the documentary practices of Grassroots Empowerment (GEM)1, a small development Non Governmental Organisation based in England. The organisation provides environmental information to 'grassroots' groups, working in West Africa and Eastern Europe and through this and other activities aims to 'build capacity'. By examining how documentary practices are able to facilitate such 'capacity building', I set out to reveal something of the creativity of textual production, arguing that this has tended to be overlooked by anthropologists focusing more narrowly on issues of meaning. My initial meeting with Matt, the GEM director, was framed by the various documents we had exchanged before the meeting. Having looked at their brochure, I was struck by the overt familiarity of the language employed as well as by the fact it contained passages on anthropological themes such as 'globalisation' and 'cultural difference'. Yet as we started to discuss some of these topics it became apparent that whilst we didn't exactly disagree we did not, it seemed, hold 'different perspectives' on manifestly 'the same' subjects our perspectives often seemed at a tangent. A common terminology only appeared to compound the problem of communication and as the discussion developed, I was increasingly perplexed by the extent to which shared terms and concepts seemed to disguise profoundly different ways of using language. Matt himself articulated something of this difference. Language, he informed me, should be 'as simple as possible'. 'I write well', he continued, 'but it took me years to be able to write the way I do and I'm still learning'. Simplicity, for him, was a discursive and textual skill acquired over the course of a lifetime and something to be valued as an end in itself. This idea initially puzzled me. His words appeared to
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Lucas's discussion of contemporaneity makes an important contribution to archaeological understandings of chronology and dating and to broader debates about temporality. Extending his earlier work on time (Buchli and Lucas 2001; Lucas... more
Lucas's discussion of contemporaneity makes an important contribution to archaeological understandings of chronology and dating and to broader debates about temporality. Extending his earlier work on time (Buchli and Lucas 2001; Lucas 2001; 2005), Lucas's central insight is that contemporaneity is not a function of a shared unit of time but of the specific relations through which objects are imbricated. The approach is likely to have profound implications for archaeological approaches to chronology. Whether or not it undermines the current preoccupation with absolute dating, it should certainly give renewed impetus to those branches of archaeology that make it possible to examine time as a matter of the specific material properties of artefacts. This is important, first, because it opens up the possibility of more nuanced empirical understanding of the very stuff of time (literally how it is materially manifest) and, second, because such empirical understandings enable conce...
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This article explores how authenticity is produced through different forms of expertise and skill, as they are negotiated and aligned in the daily practices of conservation. Focusing on the traditional craft practices of stonemasons, the... more
This article explores how authenticity is produced through different forms of expertise and skill, as they are negotiated and aligned in the daily practices of conservation. Focusing on the traditional craft practices of stonemasons, the authors trace their relations to the broader nexus of experts responsible for conserving Glasgow Cathedral. They show that authenticity is a distributed property of distinct forms of expert practice as they intersect with one another and, crucially, with the material conditions of specific heritage sites. It is argued that, in the context of conservation practice, authenticity is neither a subjective, discursive construction nor a latent property of historic monuments waiting to be preserved. Rather it is a property that emerges through specific interactions between people and things.
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Widespread assumptions about the extractive and self-serving nature of African elites have resulted in the relative neglect of questions concerning their personal ethics and morality. Using life-history interviews undertaken with a range... more
Widespread assumptions about the extractive and self-serving nature of African elites have resulted in the relative neglect of questions concerning their personal ethics and morality. Using life-history interviews undertaken with a range of Ghanaian development workers, this article explores some of the different personal aspirations, ideologies and beliefs that such narratives express. The self-identification of many of those interviewed as ‘activists’ is examined in terms of the related concepts of ‘ideology’, ‘commitment’ and ‘sacrifice’. Much recent work within history and anthropology uses the ‘life-history’ as a way of introducing ‘agency’ that is purported to be missing in accounts focusing on larger social abstractions. Yet it is the very opposition between abstractions such as ‘history’ and ‘society’ and their own more ‘personal’ lives that such narratives themselves enact. The article thus interrogates the various ways in which development workers variously imagine their l...
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This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to... more
This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to the mundane forms through which these work. Seeking to develop a distinctively ethnographic focus to these quotidian and ubiquitous procedures, we outline an approach that moves attention beyond a narrow concern with just their meaning and content. We highlight some of the innovative strands that develop from this approach, describing how the negotiation of relationships 'within' meetings is germane to the organization of 'external' contexts, including in relation to time, space, organizational structure and society.. The essay offers a set of provocations for rethinking approaches to bureaucracy, organizational process and ethos through the ethnographic lens of meeting.
This brief update introduces the framework of a newly funded research project enti- tled ‘Iron Age and Roman Heritages: Exploring ancient identities in modern Britain’ to be undertaken collaboratively by Durham University and the UCL... more
This brief update introduces the framework of a newly funded research project enti- tled ‘Iron Age and Roman Heritages: Exploring ancient identities in modern Britain’ to be undertaken collaboratively by Durham University and the UCL Institute of Archaeology, and supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (2016– 2019).
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The historic environment undergoes cycles of material deterioration, and these processes have a powerful impact on the meanings and values associated with it. In particular, decay informs the experience of authenticity, as a tangible mark... more
The historic environment undergoes cycles of material deterioration, and these processes have a powerful impact on the meanings and values associated with it. In particular, decay informs the experience of authenticity, as a tangible mark of age and 'the real'. This article examines the intersection between material transformation, scientific intervention and cultural value. Drawing on qualitative social research at three Scottish historic buildings, we show that there are a complex range of cultural values and qualities associated with material transformation. Furthermore, we highlight how the use of science-based conservation to characterise, and intervene in, processes of material transformation can affect these values and qualities. We argue that it is necessary and important to consider the cultural ramifications of such interventions alongside their material effects. This requires a case-by-case approach, because the cultural values and qualities associated with material transformation are context-specific and vary with different kinds of monuments and materials. We conclude with a series of recommendations aimed at integrating humanities and science-based approaches to transformation in the historic environment.
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This chapter is concerned with archaeological 'context sheets', pro forma documents that are central to the way in which most British archaeological sites are recorded.1Whilst ostensibly unremarkable, they pose a number of... more
This chapter is concerned with archaeological 'context sheets', pro forma documents that are central to the way in which most British archaeological sites are recorded.1Whilst ostensibly unremarkable, they pose a number of interpretive challenges. As with documents more ...
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This article explores how authenticity is produced through different forms of expertise and skill, as they are negotiated and aligned in the daily practices of conservation. Focusing on the traditional craft practices of stonemasons, the... more
This article explores how authenticity is produced through different forms of expertise and skill, as they are negotiated and aligned in the daily practices of conservation. Focusing on the traditional craft practices of stonemasons, the authors trace their relations to the broader nexus of experts responsible for conserving Glasgow Cathedral. They show that authenticity is a distributed property of distinct forms of expert practice as they intersect with one another and, crucially, with the material conditions of specific heritage sites. It is argued that, in the context of conservation practice, authenticity is neither a subjective, discursive construction nor a latent property of historic monuments waiting to be preserved. Rather it is a property that emerges through specific interactions between people and things.
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Since the mid-nineteenth century, craft has been characterized by relations of engagement, resonating with broader romantic discourses that idealize craftsmen in explicit contrast to forms of alienation linked to capitalist production. In... more
Since the mid-nineteenth century, craft has been characterized by relations of engagement, resonating with broader romantic discourses that idealize craftsmen in explicit contrast to forms of alienation linked to capitalist production. In recent work on craft, the analytic lens of engagement usefully highlights the dynamic interplay of human and non-human agencies. Our own account builds on these ideas but suggests that the conceptual privileging of engagement creates interpretative problems, precluding ethnographic attention to the role of detachment in craft. Focusing on the skilled practices of conservation stonemasons, we describe the specific constellations of ideology and practice involved in cutting and fixing stone. Through elucidating masons’ own understandings of their work, we highlight their commitment to the ‘disciplined’ embodiment of tradition as a means of separating personal subjectivity from the stones they carve. Our analysis of the skilled practices required to work stone questions the primacy of engagement, suggesting instead that detachment and engagement are mutually implicated relational forms. This finding sheds new light on craft practice and offers a position from which to reconsider broader anthropological commitments to concepts of engagement.
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In a large room, on the third floor of an old woollen mill in the South West of England, nine architects spend most of their working lives, designing buildings and overseeing their construction. Asked where these come from, architects... more
In a large room, on the third floor of an old woollen mill in the South West of England, nine architects spend most of their working lives, designing buildings and overseeing their construction. Asked where these come from, architects admit a kind of ignorance: ‘Total magic!’ as one puts it, ‘Something comes from nothing!’ Focusing on the everyday lives of architects, the book explores how buildings are assembled through an intimate and elusive choreography of people, materials, places, tools and ideas. Through these interactions, it asks and answers some questions of wider interest: What is the relationship between a working and a personal life? What is creativity? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? What does it mean to claim to know with authority? Most basically but most fundamentally the book is concerned with the question of what it is like to be an architect, and what lessons others might learn from the example their experience provides. Amongst other things, these have to do with the nature of expert knowledge, design, creativity and the central but less celebrated arts of administration.
Research Interests: Design, Creativity, Design practice, Sociology of Expertise, Professions and expertise, and 3 moreSociology of the architecture profession, modern history of the architecture profession and architectural design practice in Turkey, corporate modernism in architecture., Architects and Architectural Practice, and Architectural Practice Knowledge
This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to... more
This introductory essay describes a novel approach to meetings in relation to broader literatures within and beyond anthropology. We suggest that notwithstanding many accounts in which meetings figure, little attention has been given to the mundane forms through which these work. Seeking to develop a distinctively ethnographic focus to these quotidian and ubiquitous procedures, we outline an approach that moves attention beyond a narrow concern with just their meaning and content. We highlight some of the innovative strands that develop from this approach, describing how the negotiation of relationships ‘within’ meetings is germane to the organization of ‘external’ contexts, including in relation to time, space, organizational structure and society. . The essay offers a set of provocations for rethinking approaches to bureaucracy, organizational process and ethos through the ethnographic lens of meeting.