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DOI: 10.1177/1359183509346184

2009 14: 411Journal of Material Culture

Myriem Naji and Laurence DounyEditorial

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EDITORIAL

◆ MYRIEM NAJI AND LAURENCE DOUNY

University College London, UK

Abstract

The editors of this special issue on ‘“Making” and “Doing” the Material World’examine some aspects of the anthropology of techniques, a relatively under-studied branch of anthropology, which considers the embodied and cognitiveengagement of human beings in their lived material world. They suggest thatthe use of new theories of embodiment, cognition and performance allowsfor a consideration of the role of the senses, perception, emotions and mater-iality in the formation of knowledgeable, gendered subjects. They argue thatthe Francophone and Anglophone traditions in the anthropology of techniquesare complementary, despite their divisions (between and within them).

Key Words ◆ embodiment ◆ materiality ◆ performance ◆ subjectivation◆ technology

‘“MAKING” AND “DOING” THE MATERIAL WORLD’:

A WORKSHOP

The multidisciplinary workshop ‘“Making” and “Doing” the MaterialWorld’ held at University College London (UCL) in January 2008 was thestarting point of a new dialogue between the material culture group atUCL’s Department of Anthropology and the members of the TechnologieCulturelle group (Francophone scholars spread over several institutions).Subsequently, a series of workshops and seminars1 were held in Marseille,at the Museum of the Quai Branly in Paris, and at UCL. A special issueof the French journal Techniques & Culture (no. 52) will be published in parallel with this one.

We hope that the selected papers will stimulate a renewed interest inthe study of technology. They answer some of the questions raised duringthe workshop and work towards a definition of techniques or technology

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that allows us to further expand our understanding of materiality (the physicality of the material world). Under the heading of ‘Making andDoing’ we argue that technology encompasses both production and con-sumption or use, making and unmaking,2 creation and destruction.

CONTRIBUTION OF FRANCOPHONE

ANTHROPOLOGY OF TECHNIQUES:

PERFORMED MATERIALITY

A human universal technique has been defined by the FrancophoneTradition of Anthropology of Techniques (FTAT)3 as efficacious action onmatter; technology is the study of techniques (see discussions by Coupayeand Warnier, this issue). In this issue, techniques encompass any mun-

dane material activity or performance, such as craft production (Portisch),religious or magical practice (Coupaye, Richards, Warnier), but also thecultivation of crops (Coupaye) or clothing in the context of war (Richards).In their separate contributions, the four authors engage with and criticizethe main conceptual apparatus of the Francophone School of Techniques, which we present in this editorial.

One of the main specificities of the FTAT is its definition of technol-ogy as practices or performances rather than as ready-made things andtheir emphasis on the physicality of matter. They argue that objects cannot

be considered outside their manipulation: they only come to life throughhuman action on them (Cresswell, 1978, 1983, 1996, 2001; Haudricourt,1987[1968]); Lemonnier, 1992, 1993; Leroi-Gourhan, 1943, 1945). Tech-nology or material culture is studied as resulting from and as trans-forming performance (Haudricourt, 1987[1968]: 76; Pillon and Vigarello,2007; Sigaut, 2007). This approach to materiality and the body meansthat the symbolic, although also the object of analysis (i.e. Lemonnier,2004; Mahias, 2002a), is not the starting point of their exploration of human relationship to the material world. Arguably, a step towards such

an emphasis on bodily engagement with materiality has recently beenmade in British archaeology (e.g. Boivin, 2008; Knappett, 2004, 2006).In his two volumes L’Homme et la matière (1943) and Milieu et tech-

niques (1945), Leroi-Gourhan provided a detailed description of materialsand substances from the perspective of their manipulation. His originality was to link the properties of materials (chemistry, flexibility, fluidity) withthe properties of performing bodies (muscular energy, forces) whetherhuman or animal. Rather than the more conventional ethnographicalclassification into types of tools or artefacts, he classified techniques

according to types of action (grasp, percussion) and other means of trans-forming matter (fire, water, wind, force) (see Audouze, 2002; de Beaune,2004). This dynamic perspective (Haudricourt, 1987[1968]: 58) on thedialectical relationship between materiality and performance anticipated

J o u r n a l o f MA T E R I A L C U L T U R E 1 4 ( 4 )

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theories of psychologists (Gibson, 1979) and neuroscientists on affordance,i.e. the fact that the perception of the properties of things activates pre-determined motor schematas (Jeannerod, 1994).

Given the FTAT’s explicit endeavour to examine technology as per-formed and their dynamic view of techniques where matter, actors, toolsand knowledge, including representations (i.e. Lemonnier, 1992, 1993) aredialectically related, their unwillingness to take these concerns further tothe level of embodiment theories (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980;Lave and Wenger, 1991; Sternberg and Wagner, 1994; Suchman, 1987;Varela et al., 1991), including situated cognition theories is surprising.

Ingold’s approach, with his emphasis on skills, his advocacy for adetailed study of the properties of materials and his concern for situated practice, shares many of the preoccupations of the Cultural Technologists

(Ingold, 1988). It is, however, from a phenomenological and Gibsonianecological perspective that he argues that materiality is ‘in-the-making’rather than given (Ingold, 2000a, 2000b, 2007). The situated action theoryrepresents a major shift in learning theory from traditional psychologicalviews of learning (mechanistic and individualistic) to a view of learning,as well as cognition, as a continuous construction within a dialecticbetween people, context of activity and the situation. Situated cognitiontheorists4 differ according to whether the focus is on the subject, theenvironment or the ‘structural couplings’ of the actor with the situation,

but they all share a concern with the role played by the material environ-ment in the construction of knowledge and cognition and a rejection of the disembodied stance of cognitivism. Ingold (2000a) considers the process and practice of making, skills and intelligence as emerging froma progressive and continual adjustment of practitioners’ perception andbody movements in relation to their environment. Questions concern-ing the working of the mind–body complex and the relationship betweendesigning and making, as much as between representation and action,have been more the focus of Anglophone anthropology (Ingold, 2000a,

2000b, 2001; Keller, 2001; Keller and Keller, 1996; Marchand, 2007).Ingold’s concern with embodiment and materiality does not go as faras considering the implication of such a processual approach with regardto the construction of subjects. Seeking to collapse the dichotomy betweensubject/object, mind/body, cognition/emotion (Csordas, 1990), however,offers a paradigm for embodiment that focuses on the self, using bothBourdieu’s (1977) habitus and Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology toanalyse ritual practices. Yet his focus on perception and habitus doesnot include a consideration of the materiality of performance. We argue

later that Warnier’s approach to embodiment provides a way of bringingtogether subjects and technology in their continual and dialectical cominginto being. Although this is suggested in much of the FTAT literature, itis however rarely applied on the micro-level of detailed ethnographies.

Naji and Douny: E D I T O R I A L

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The FTAT’s most known and misunderstood notion in anthropologyis that of chaînes opératoires (Lemonnier, 1992; see Coupaye, this issue).It is an epistemic tool used during fieldwork to collect, organize, verifyand then to analyse data (Audouze, 2002: 287; Dobres, 1999: 124). Itconstitutes a visual narrative that supports and complements technicalbut also phenomenological and thick ethnographic description (Geertz,1973). As a cyclical set-up of choices and constraints (Lemonnier, 1993)that denies temporal linearity (Douny, 2007b; Sillar, 2000), the chaîneopératoire enables us to highlight aspects of a people’s social and rituallife such as beliefs, taboo and moral values, conceptions of space, andtime and the transmission of knowledge.

ON THE CONCEPTS OF ‘MAKING’ AND ‘DOING’

Our approach draws on both the UCL material culture researches andthose of the FTAT, which represent two different traditions of working with material culture and technologies but share an interest in everydaymaterial practices (Bray, 2007).

First, we would like to provide a bridge between what has beencoined the Francophone versus Anglophone study of materiality (Bray,2007; Faure-Rouesnel, 2001). The complementary and dialectical rela-tionship of production and consumption (see Mackenzie, 1991) was high-

lighted by Leroi-Gourhan (1943, 1945), who viewed the techniques of making as being part of a system that included techniques of acquisition(hunting, husbandry, agriculture) and techniques of consumption (food,clothing and dwelling). Gell’s (1988) definition of technology is not farfrom that of Leroi-Gourhan5 but he distinguishes between technologiesof production, technologies of reproduction and technologies of enchant-ment. Fine and Leopold’s (1993) system of provision provides a way of exploring the connections between production and consumption.

Second, we want to bring together Lemonnier’s (1992) definition of

‘technological’ action as one that involves ‘at least some physical inter-vention, which leads to a real transformation of matter in terms of currentscientific laws of the physical world (p. 5), and that of Pfaffenberger(2001). Pfaffenberger noted that ‘what interests the anthropology of tech-nology concerning techniques is the interpenetration of material andsocial factors in the creation, use, maintenance, and disposal of “artefacts”(technically modified objects)’ (p. 15,516).

Our argument is that a praxeological (Warnier, 1999, 2001, 2006) and phenomenological approach allows us to extend the exploration of mater-

iality beyond the dichotomy production/consumption, given/unfinishedmateriality (Ingold, 2007). Warnier’s praxeology encompasses both the performative (efficacious action on matter) and the sensory and emo-tional. Informed by FTAT, Anglophone and Francophone anthropology


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of the body, recent research in cognitive and neuroscience (Julien andRosselin, 2009) and Foucault’s (1987[1984], 1994[1980–8]) subjectivationand techniques of the self, the article by Warnier (and the Matière à penser group, MàP ) brings into the FTAT the subjective, sensual and emotionaldimension of the subject–object relation (see Diasio, 2009). We willdescribe this approach more extensively later.

To this, we add a phenomenological dimension (Jackson, 1983; Tilley,1994) because we feel that knowing the world through the body’s senses plays an important role in the experience of matter and substances, and provides indications about people’s conceptions of society and the naturalenvironment (see Thomas, 2006, for an exposition of the complexity of a theoretical approach to phenomenology and material culture). In thisissue, Portisch warns against a phenomenological approach that, in trying

to avoid the body/mind dualism, may in fact reproduce it. However, while we see phenomenology as ‘being’, we consider praxeology as ‘making’and ‘doing’. Hence, we place both approaches in a dialectic relationship;that is, through ‘making’ and ‘doing’, we create ourselves.

Phenomenology, according to Thomas (2006), may also provide a wayof ‘moving beyond the conventional focus on production and consump-tion’ by means of an ‘investigation of the haptic qualities of objects’,including mass-produced ones. He argues that, through the subjectiondimension of embodied experience of the material world, phenomenology

may also help explore ‘moods, attunements and emotional states’ (p. 57).Furthermore, phenomenology, in association with the notion of afford-

ance (Gibson, 1979; see Knappett, 2004, 2005), particularly complementsthe investigation of the properties of materials and the body, as advo-cated by Leroi-Gourhan and Ingold. Indeed, the dynamic engagement of ‘agents’ and matter implies that, on top of particular properties, ‘everyartefact embodies a particular sensory mix’ (Howes, 2006: 166) which isculturally determined but also individually felt. This is shown by Dreyfusand Dreyfus (1998: 104–5) who argue that Merleau-Ponty’s intentional

arc covers the three ways our bodies determine how things show up inour world (‘innate structures, general acquired skills, and specific cul-tural skills’).

Finally, in addition to the ‘making’ (corresponding to the manufac-turing process and the ‘object-coming-into-being’, Ingold, 2000a), Douny(2007b) proposes considering the neglected aspects of the ‘doing’ whichexamines the process of using a finished object. She argues that ‘making’and ‘doing’ are intertwined in everyday life and complement each other.Extending the study of materiality beyond production or use to include

its maintenance, recycling, disposal and destruction, she further arguesfor a consideration of how ‘making’ and ‘doing’ are part of a cycle whichincludes also the ‘un-making’ or ‘un-doing’, e.g. the consumption of foodleading to (human) waste.


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PRACTICE, PERFORMANCE, PERFORMATIVITY AND

THE SHAPING OF THE SUBJECT–BODY

FTAT’s processual or performative approach to technology can be situ-

ated in a tradition of theorizing that analyses embodied practice asshaping people and society (for a recent summary on performance andmaterial culture, see Mitchell, 2006). Although he does not emphasizethe embodied aspect of practice, Miller’s work (1985, 1987) exemplifiesthe relevance of Bourdieu’s concept of practice in relation to materialculture. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as the reproduction of social normdoes not, however, give enough space to agency and social change.

The theory of practice and habitus as developed by Bourdieu (1977) was influenced on the one hand by Mauss and Leroi-Gourhan, two

important thinkers on technology, and on the other by the philosophyof phenomenology (despite Bourdieu’s disavowal of it). Two precursorsof FTAT, Leroi-Gourhan and Haudricourt were themselves students of Mauss and were influenced by his Techniques of the Body (1979[1936]).By ‘body techniques’, Mauss refers to the ways people use their bodies inany given society: bodily postures, demeanour, movements and gestures(see Warnier, this issue).

Although it has been argued that both Bourdieu’s thought (Sterne,2003) and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophy (Crossley, 1996,

2004) are relevant to the study of techniques, both of these authors arerather absent in the Francophone tradition of technology. Warnier’s praxeo-logical approach addresses this gap. Despite his rejection of phenomen-ology’s emphasis on consciousness, Warnier’s Foucauldian approachconsiders action, the senses and perception as part of the embodied andmaterial processes of subject formation.

Another perspective that avoids the pitfalls of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, despite being heir to the long tradition of theorizing practice setby Bourdieu, and influenced by ethnomethodologists and anti-essentialistfeminists (Morris, 1995), is that of performativity (Butler, 1990). Putsimply, Butler conceptualizes gender as the materialization of continuousor repeated embodied and discursive practices which the subject findsimposed on itself but which it may also manipulate and negotiate. ThusButler provides a definition of identity as dynamic and strategic, accom-modating resistance and change.

Feminist theory and gender studies provide valuable perspectives when examining how performed material culture contributes to defininga man or a woman in a given society (see, for example, Chamoux, 1981;Mahias, 2002b; Mellström, 2004; Wajcman, 1991, 2000). This approach

can be extended to include a consideration of the role of technology inshaping other aspects of subject formation, such as age, ethnicity andsocial status.

In their extensive analysis of the transformation of matter at thehands of efficacious practitioners, cultural technologists have avoided


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the pitfalls of analysing the body as representation or symbol; but theyhave been less concerned with how the materiality of matter can affectthe materiality of the body. Body techniques are more than expressionsor an outcome of social norms: they are used to shape the self in un-conscious as well as strategic ways. This is one of the contributions of Warnier and the MàP group: they have foregrounded a consideration of materiality’s agency on subjects by arguing that the body is not just atool affecting the material world, it is also modelled by materiality. Thismeans that one cannot limit issues of learning and knowledge acquisi-tion to technical skills alone, but must investigate thoroughly throughthick ethnographies, the way the body itself is shaped by the material world and how it plays a central role in the construction of our relationto others and self (see also Portisch, this issue).

FTAT cultural technologists have argued for a study of everythingobservable about the human body, from adornment and dress through tobody modification (Haudricourt, 1987[1968]: 112; Leroi-Gourhan, 1945).Unfortunately, this area has been little studied by them in recent years.Feminist scholars have contributed detailed ethnographies on the issueof body alteration (dieting, anorexia, body building, cosmetic surgery,body piercing and tattooing) mainly in relation to body image, notions of beauty and medical technology. Feminist theorists consider the mater-iality of the biological, anatomical, physiological body as the ground for

emotions, experiences and desires (Balsamo, 1996; Barad, 2003; Bordo,1993; Butler, 1990, 1993; Davis, 1995; Grosz, 1994). They show how thetransformation of bodies affects subjects in their emotions and identity.On the other hand, however, what is missing in these studies, which areoften concerned with subject/object boundaries and issues of prostheticrelations, is materiality as a discrete focus of ethnography (Küchler andMiller, 2005). In addition, if neither the relationship to the body nor therelationship to materiality are universal, then anthropology becomescrucial in developing a dynamic appreciation of local/emic understand-

ings of these relationships.

THE CONCEPT OF INCORPORATION AND THE QUESTION

OF PROSTHETICS

A material perspective that emphasizes movement, perception and emo-tions as intrinsically interrelated opens a space for a consideration of how objects, materials or substances not only extend the capacity of thesubject and economize their energy (Bril, 2002; Leroi-Gourhan, 1943,

1945; Pillon and Vigarello, 2007; Sigaut, 2007) but also how things are perceived as part of one’s body. With the concept of incorporation (Julien,1999; Julien and Rosselin, 2005, 2009; Rosselin, 2006, 2009), Warnier andthe MàP group (but see also Sigaut, 2007) provide precisely an embodiedand micro-level perspective of the dialectical relationship between subject


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and object in the dual process of structuration/objectification (Miller,1987; Tilley, 2006). The ‘material dimension of socialization’ that consti-tutes this concept of incorporation/excorporation (Diasio, 2009), updatesMauss’s body techniques with recent psychology and neuroscienceresearch on the ‘image of the body’ (Schilder, 1935) or ‘bodily schema’(see Warnier, this issue). ‘Bodily schema’, both a neurophysiological anda symbolic construct, refers to the psychology of bodily feedback, thatis, the sensation one has of one’s bodily position, shape and movement.To perceive the environment is to perceive oneself as moving throughit (Gibson, 1979; Merleau-Ponty, 1962). In other words, if objects havematerial properties (shape, volume, weight), so do our bodies, and we allhave a perception of it, however inaccurate or unconscious. The highly plastic ‘bodily schema’ implies potential actions that can be realized by

a given subject (Rosselin, 1999: 108). Thus, a focus on the constrainingand enabling dimension of technology allows for the exploration of howaffordances (of both materiality and the body) in symbiosis with other parameters, such as the brain and sensory-motor capacities, also shapecognitive processes (Naji, 2009b). The malleability of the embodied mindseems to be more a concern of Anglophone anthropologists (Downey,2005, 2007; Keller and Keller, 1996; Marchand, 2008; O’Connor, 2005;Portisch, 2007), who have contributed exciting ethnographies on howtechnology dynamically shapes the mind and body. Each embodied per-

formance implies the development of specific cognitive and perceptualabilities whether more visual (Cornu, 1991; Delaporte, 2002; Downey,2007; Goodwin, 1994; Gowlland, 2009; Grasseni, 2007a, 2007b), tactile(Oakley, 2008), olfactive (Candau, 2000; Jeanjean, 2006), vestibular(Boutroy, 1999; Faure, 2000; Julien and Rosselin, 2006; Pálsson, 1994;Potter, 2008), or a combination of touch and sight (Roustan, 2003; DeFornel, 1993; Hoarau, 1999), or touch and hearing (Mellström, 2004).

TECHNOLOGY AS CONSTRAINING AND ENABLING THE

BODY–SUBJECT

The body is a materiality, which collides with other physical materiali-ties (Warnier, 2002). Acting on matter implies acting on the self (body andmind), that is: dealing with one’s own resistance when mastering one’sown gestures and movements (Julien and Rosselin, 2002; Warnier, 2002,2004). In reminding us of the subjective effects of the materiality of thebody on the self, the MàP also allows us to look at issues of pain, physicalstrain and discomfort, and at pleasure and satisfaction, both physical

and cognitive. Apart from medical anthropology (Scarry, 1985; Scheper-Hughes, 1993; Seremetakis, 1994), pain has been little analysed in relationto technology. The disciplining and agentive dimensions of technologiesmould a subject that is not just mastering its body and learning skills, but


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also constructing value through experiencing particular sensations andfeelings (Naji, 2009a). A subject formation approach, which considersthe meeting between feeling and perception about the body and bodyrepresentation as ideal models and as lived experience, allows for a lessessentialist description of practitioners, and for considering change andresistance. Winance (2001, 2006, 2007) in her research on people sufferingfrom neuromuscular diseases, using an actor-network theory approach,shows how pain is part of a hard and lengthy work of adjustment of the person to the wheelchair that transforms both human and technologicalentities. Winance (2006) shows that, through this process of adjustment,the subject gains both new possibilities of action and new (dis)abilities.She argues that such an analysis leads to a particular conception of the person as made up through his or her relations to other entities (human

and nonhuman).

TECHNIQUES OF THE SELF, SUBJECTIVATION OR SOCIALIZATION

In the past decade or so, several seminal studies in French have offeredexcellent ethnographies on the question of socialization or incorporationof social norms through material and embodied performance – althoughthey did not directly draw on the study of technology. They address theissue of mastery over the body’s resistance (Julien and Rosselin, 2009;

Wacquant, 1995, 2004). Kaufmann’s (1997) subtle exploration of the inter-nalization of social norms through the practice of household mainten-ance (tidying, cleaning, ironing, etc.) and their associated pleasure anddiscomfort, is a good example of ethnographic use of cognitive sciencestudies and situated cognition theories.

In modifying their bodies, subjects alter their identity and emotions:they may do so as a strategic action as in the ‘body works’ (see Gimlin,2007, for a review of this concept) performed in the Western context of work, sport, hygiene or beauty (Davis, 1995; Wacquant, 1995), a technique

for shaping appearance to fit cultural standards, or as a way of gainingmoral value through repeated drilling (Kondo, 1990; Mahmood, 2005).We are here at the centre of the Foucauldian notion of the techniques

of the self which can be described as a work of transformation of the self by the self. Warnier analyses the body as the object of material efficacy,as the site through which the subject is touched, affected and shaped byhis or her engagement with the material world. He has shown that thisexercise of power over the self is material, both in terms of materialculture and the body to the extent that it involves body techniques

performed on materiality. For technical efficacy to become socially effi-cacious, MàP argues, it needs to pass through the efficacy of the self ortechniques of the self, which play a central part of the process of subjec-tivation or subject construction (Julien et al., 2002). In his article, Richards


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(this issue) shows that a Durkheimian approach can account for theefficacy of technology in disciplining of the body through material andsymbolic transformations.

TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

Cultural technologists have long emphasized the social context of tech-niques and have shown how ‘the manipulation of materials and bodilyforces, conventions and representations’ (Gosselain, forthcoming) are a‘privileged channel for the construction of social ties’ and a ‘way of livingtogether particular to a group, a social organization and a cultural system, partially constructed and reinforced, and recalled to those who share it’(Lemonnier, 2004: 174). This describes accurately the concept of com-

munity of practice and legitimate peripheral participation (Chaiklin andLave, 1993; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Wenger et al., 2002).Originating in situated cognition theory, this concept provides us with adynamic way of exploring not only the individual and subjective butalso the social, intersubjective and intercorporeal dimensions of subjectformation.6 A community of practice is a particular group, where membersare mutually engaged in a joint enterprise, using a shared repertoire of skills, discourses and artefacts. It describes the process through whichmaking and doing are not just about the production or use of objects but

also about the learning of values and norms through participation insocio-cultural practices. Knowledge is a way of being in the world, where‘agent, activity, and world mutually constitute each other’ (Lave andWenger, 1991: 33). Learning, then, is not just about expressing one’sidentity but is also the process whereby learners are active creative participants in developing and maintaining identity through sharing asense of cultural knowledge. Things (or ‘technologies of practice’) areintrinsically linked to cultural practice and social organization, and playa central role in mediating and carrying knowledge (Lave and Wenger,

1991). Techniques therefore constitute a ‘system where the coherencebetween ways of doing, ways of thinking and ways of being are con-tinuously recreated by actors’ (Gosselain, forthcoming). Although fewcultural technologists have exploited it (Geslin, 2003; Gosselain, 2008;Gosselain and Livingstone Smith, 2005), this paradigm promises to be atool for investigating more dynamically questions of learning, appropri-ation and transmission (Gosselain, forthcoming), particularly cognitive processes taking place during collective or joint performance, such ascommunication, imitation or memory, in a way that takes into account

the possibility of conflict and competition as well as strategies, agencyand resistance. Accounts of cultural technologists focusing on the role of transmission, imitation or memory in learning or practice tend to be lessconcerned with cognitive and neurological details (with the exception of


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Martinelli, 1995, 1996, 1998). Marchand (2007, 2008, forthcoming 2010),in particular, explores the questions of imitation, communication, creativ-ity, appropriation and the learning of skills through thick ethnographiesinformed by recent research in the cognitive and neurosciences. Heshows how the incessant intersubjective experiencing of spatiality impliesexchanges with others and, thus, an understanding of existing propertiesin the self, people and materials (Marchand, 2008). Community of practicecan be combined with the Foucauldian notion of networks of action toargue that action on matter is also action on others (i.e. through public performance), where the subject is also the object of the actions of others(Hoarau, 2009; Julien and Rosselin, 2006; Naji, 2009a). Another areathat needs further investigation is the ‘sociality’ of affordance (Knappett,2004, 2005).

TECHNIQUES AS A COSMOLOGY ‘IN THE MAKING’

We suggest that techniques can serve in the exploration of the social world and dynamics in a community of practice that locates itself on a particular space–time continuum. In other words, techniques constitutea means of uncovering a people’s history, life trajectory or biography, as well as social relations (Douny, 2007b). Hence, an examination of themanufacturing process of things and their daily uses can inform us of the

way in which people perceive, conceive and create the world in whichthey live and in which the society reunites with the cosmic realm (DeCoppet and Iteanu, 1995). From this perspective, the study of techniquesenables us to highlight what we define as a cosmology, here understoodas a gathering of worldviews that consist of a dynamic network of sharedknowledge defining a society’s socio-political order and ethics, as well asits attitudes towards nature (Lovin and Reynolds, 1985). Worldviews, which are relative, relational and always ‘in the making’ (Barth, 1987),enable individuals to achieve particular goals and ideals (Lambek, 1993)

and serve to guide people in their world and their choices for stabilizingtheir surrounding environment (Matthews, 1991). Worldviews are pro-duced through daily embodied practice (Bourdieu, 1990) or human agency(Weiss, 1996) and express relationships between self, nature and society(Douny, 2007b). In other words: through processes of transformation of the world, knowledge about the world is shaped and contained. In fact, worldviews may be embedded, materialized and worked on through processes of containment (Warnier, 2006: 188–91, 2007, 2009). Douny(2009) defines containment as the making of symbolically or physically

bounded protective spaces that, in stabilizing or fixing people, create asense of ontological security (Giddens, 1991); this ordering of one’s world through containment allows one to attribute meaning to it throughcontinuous experiences of the world (Douny, 2007b). Hence, containment


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can be said to be a process of gathering (Heidegger, 1962[1927]), desig-nating the way people act upon, engage with, dwell within and organizethe world for and around themselves through daily embodied techniquesthat create ontological boundaries.

UNMAKING AND UNDOING

Following Pfaffenberger’s (2001:15,516) suggestion that the study of maintenance and disposal of objects should be a part of the programmeof the anthropology of technology, we now propose concentrating on the‘unmaking’ and ‘undoing’ of the material world. By this, we mean the processes of maintenance (or lack of maintenance), repair, disposal, divest-ment, destruction and recycling of things. We are interested in how, at

the micro-level of subject–object relationship in everyday life practice,‘undoing’ or ‘unmaking’ also participate in the construction (or destruc-tion) of the body, self and society. All these states/stages of materiality(including doing and making) can be represented through a (not neces-sarily linear) chaîne opératoire illustrating the life-cycle of things (Kopytoff,1986) as they are made and unmade, done and undone. This life cycle isnot static and its boundaries are shifting; artefacts circulate between thevarious categories composing the sequence. As will be shown in the nextsection, some artefacts may belong to several categories.

UNMAKING

We understand ‘unmaking’ not just to include intentional ‘destructive’human acts upon the materiality of objects leading to their ‘end’ butalso unintentional actions or events, such as natural disaster. However,destructive acts remain ambivalent since they can in themselves openup a constructive space of engagement (Latour and Weibel, 2002). ‘Un-making’ implies that there is no complete renewal or way back based

upon the evaluation of the state of materials and its functioning. This‘coming-to-an-end’ of objects also implies the parallel fracturing of soci-eties and damage to the individual self, as in the case of memory lossand trauma (Edkins, 2003; Hoskins, 1998). Some examples of destruc-tion are notably found in studies dealing with the technology of war, orthe destruction of national and religious heritage through violent politi-cal acts hidden behind powerful religious symbols (Bell, 2008; Chapman,1994; Højbjerg, 2002, 2005; Meskell, 2002; Sarro, 2009). ‘Unmaking’ asde-containment (Douny, 2007b) also applies to things that have become

damaged or are dysfunctional, often through technological failure, andthus no longer serve their initial purpose: they leak, or are unbounded,emptying themselves of their contents. This loss of substance (whichapplies also to the human body) may lead to chaos and disorder. Finally,‘unmaking’ can include cases where things are left to rot or to return to


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a stage of waste, as in the case of Malanggan effigies left to decay assymbolic representations of the dead (Küchler, 2002). Ruins have beendescribed as material decay in the absence of maintenance and repair(Edensor, 2005), to be subsequently recovered by the heritage industry.

REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE

Repair and maintenance of things (Graham and Thrift, 2007) can fit eitherin the ‘making’ or the ‘recycling’ category. The notions notably abound inthe heritage literature dedicated to the curation, preservation and conser-vation of things and their restitution to the local community (Bedaux etal., 2003; Sully, 2007). On a domestic level, it can also include the dailytasks of women in the maintenance of the household (Kaufmann, 1997)

as well as the repair and maintenance of technologies, such as cars (Dantand Bowles, 2003).

UNDOING AND RECYCLING

We see ‘undoing’ as a process of divestment (Gregson et al., 2007), dis-sembling, unpacking or separating, involving some physical transforma-tion but with no damage or radical change to the original material. Forinstance, the recycling of things such as textiles in India (Norris, 2004),

the disposal of home possessions or dispossession (Buchli and Lucas,2001; Lucas, 2002) offer cases of ‘undoing’. In other words, ‘undoing’ isa stage of reduction rather than disintegration. The repair of a technicalobject can also be considered as a process of dismantling something intoits separate parts, to identify the damaged ones in order to rebuild a working object.

Recycling is more drastic, radically or integrally transforming mater-ials that are considered as waste into a new form of materiality. Anexample of this, in the context of Dogon society, is when a building is

dismantled and its materials (stones and wooden beams) are used torecreate a new house. This strengthens lineage relationships, solidarityand cultural transmission between the owners of houses belonging to thesame family (Douny, 2007b). ‘Undoing’ increases the potentiality of recovering and re-using the whole or the parts. The relationship to wastematter (human or animal) and its treatment is another case in point,drawing together aspects of gender, caste, ethnicity or economy, etc.(Douny, 2007a; Jeanjean, 1999, 2006, 2009a, 2009b; Mahias, 2002a).

CONCLUSION

Francophone researchers in the Anthropology of Technology have en-deavoured explicitly to situate technology as a product of embodiedengagement with matter and of specific social, cultural and historical


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contexts in a way that anticipated the new theories of embodiment.These concerns need to take on board recent conceptual shifts that havetaken place throughout anthropology (of the body, emotion, knowledge)and other social sciences (feminism, gender studies, theory of the mind).There is scope, however, in the FTAT’s emphasis on performed mater-iality (and with the help of Warnier’s praxeology) for an exploration of how the construction, use, maintenance and disposal of things occursconcomitantly with a production of subject and worldviews from anembodied, phenomenological, or skill-based perspective. The contribu-tions of the FTAT have not yet been fully exploited and, in combination with the Anglophone concern for cognitive sciences in anthropology(Downey, Ingold, Küchler, Marchand, Were), will no doubt bring outfurther promising developments.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Michael Rowlands for his support in the organization of the workshop and all the speakers who presented papers: Joshua Bell, LudovicCoupaye, Tim Dant, Lars Fosberg, Dorian Fuller, Olivier Gosselain, SusanneKüchler, Paul Lane, Jerome Lewis, Trevor Marchand, Paul Richards, MichaelRowlands, Volker Sommer, Chris Tilley and Jean-Pierre Warnier. Finally, we thankthe reviewers, as well as Geoffrey Gowland, Céline Rosselin, Michael Rowlandsand Olivier Gosselain, for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper, and

Jan Geisbusch and Frank Smith for the copyediting.

Notes

1. The organizations include CREDO, GDRI Anthropology and History at theUniversity of Provence, EHESS, ULB (Belgium), Université Paris X Nanterre,Université Paris I-Sorbonne and UCL, Department of Anthropology.

2. Weiss (1996) uses the terms of ‘making’ and ‘unmaking’ to describe how theHaya of Northwest Tanzania make and unmake their world and themselvesthrough consumption practices.

3. To gain an idea of how diversified this tradition is, see for example Lemonnier,1993; Latour and Lemonnier, 1994.4. Situated cognition theory emerges from philosophy (pragmatic and phenom-

enological), sociology (Chicago School, ethnomethodology and social phen-omenology), cognitive anthropology, psychology and the engineering sciences.

5. He defines technology as a ‘roundabout’ way of securing some desired result,thus encompassing ‘those forms of social relationships which make it sociallynecessary to produce, distribute and consume goods and services usingtechnical processes’ (Gell, 1988: 6).

6. Sigaut (1992) defines the sharing of experience between the self (ego), thereal and others as the ‘triangle du sens’ .

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◆ MYRIEM NAJI is based at University College London. Her main researchinterests are craft production and trade, domestic economy, anthropology of tech-nology, cognition, gender and value. She conducted her fieldwork in Morocco. Address: Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 TavitonStreet, London WC1H 0BW, UK. [email: [email protected]]

◆ LAURENCE DOUNY is a Leverhulme Postdoctorate Fellow at the Depart-ment of Anthropology, University College London. Since 2001, she has conductedresearch in West Africa on the anthropology of techniques in relation to thedomestic space and landscape. Address: Department of Anthropology, UniversityCollege London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK. [email: [email protected]]


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