Bovine Mobilities and Vital Movements: Flows of Milk, Mediation and Animal Agency.
by Richie Nimmo
Chapter in Jacob Bull (ed) 'Animal Movements, Moving Animals: Direction, Velocity and Agency in Humanimal Encounters', Crossroads of Knowledge Series, Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, February 2011.
Dairy milk is an intriguing hybrid substance. A supremely mundane artefact, routinely and unreflexively consumed on an... more
Dairy milk is an intriguing hybrid substance. A supremely mundane artefact, routinely and unreflexively consumed on an everyday basis by millions of humans, it also embodies and mediates a complex ensemble of human-animal-technological-economic relations. As a mass-produced and mass-marketed modern commodity, milk is the product of a highly systematic and rationalised 'humanimal' encounter, in which the cow often seems reduced to a disciplined unit of production. Yet in its irreducible materiality milk still retains the power to disrupt such rationalised systems, to transgress disciplinary boundaries, and to testify corporeally to the vital existence of the animal, as mediated through the milk itself.
This paper explores these tensions through a focus upon the complex and contradictory mobilities of milk – as a commodity, as a material substance, and as a dimension of bovine corporeality – in the historical and geographical context of the modernising British milk industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It proceeds from the vitalist assumption that the milk is the cow, that the animal is ontologically present in milk, which does not become fully humanised and separated from the cow in the process of milking, but retains an irreducible ‘cowness’. The multiple forms of expression of this vital ‘cowness’ and its tendency to subvert and disorder rationalised schemes of production and marketing are then examined and conceptualised as distinctive bovine mobilities, spaces and flows.
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Seen by:Actor-Network Theory and Methodology: Social Research in a More-Than-Human World
by Richie Nimmo
Methodological Innovations Online (2011), Vol. 6, No. 3, Special Issue on 'Crossing Methodological Boundaries'.
This article explores the methodological implications of actor-network theory for social research. Pointing to an... more
This article explores the methodological implications of actor-network theory for social research. Pointing to an increasing awareness of ANT in sociological discourse, but assuming that it is more widely known than well understood, the article outlines some of the key features of ANT as an approach to social life, before addressing the tricky question of how these ideas translate into methodological practice. The possibilities of the approach are illustrated by reference to my own ANT-inspired historical research on the socio-material history of dairy milk in the UK, which is used as a point of reference and an example throughout. Particular attention is given to the practical method deployed in the milk study, namely documentary historiography, leading to a critical exploration of the use of ANT in the analysis of historical texts. This involves considering the nature of the relationship between texts and lived practices, and drawing out how ANT offers a distinctive way of seeing texts which challenges the standard ethnographic view of texts and fundamentally transforms the issue. Given that documentary historiography is not a method strongly associated with actor-network theory because it raises considerable methodological dilemmas, this provides one particular account of how such dilemmas can be managed or overcome. Social researchers interested in the potential of actor-network theory should be able to draw upon this in exploring the possibilities of the approach for their own work.
Keywords
Actor-network theory; Methodology; Hybrids; Heterogeneity; Nonhuman Agency; Relational Ontology; Texts; Practices; Historiography.
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Seen by: and 21 moreAgency, Apotropaicism, and Amuletic Reliquaries in Early Medieval Gaul
Presented at: Found objects, past lives: archaeological perspectives on material and materiality.Boston University. 17-19 February 2012.
In archaeology and anthropology, the “agency” of material objects refers to the perceived role of objects... more
In archaeology and anthropology, the “agency” of material objects refers to the perceived role of objects as active agents of change in the physical world by a given culture. Such objects are often imbued with two characteristic abilities: (1) apotropaic power, the power to protect and deflect; and (2) transmutative power, the ability to change one thing from one status to another. Yet how was material agency constructed and expressed by ancient societies? What social role did such active objects play in ancient society?
This paper will examine the role of apotropaic objects as active material agents in early medieval Gaul. In order to do so, it will examine the production and use of a series of copper alloy belts engraved with scriptural and apotropaic images produced (possibly) by monastic communities between the 5-7th century and which seem to have been used by as reliquaries by men and women living in this area. These objects often contain pieces of textile and wax, materials which were distributed from local shrines associated with saints.
After describing a series of these belts, this paper will discuss the role of myth and ritual performance in giving these objects agency and meaning in early medieval society. Finally, it will examine the social use of active objects—the role such quasi-sentient objects played in early medieval society. In doing so, this paper illustrates the power of myth and ritual in giving meaning to material objects and that ideas about material agency had social currency in early medieval society.
Håndværksteknisk senso-motorisk læring - på vej mod en virkets psyko-semiotik
opgave på Materiel kultur DPU
From a constructivist view on learning and on the basis of Peirce´s categories this paper undertakes an abductional... more
From a constructivist view on learning and on the basis of Peirce´s categories this paper undertakes an abductional search into the signs employed in learning movements within the crafts. From the presentational, representational and interpretative characteristics of the triadic sign the process is conceptualized as
a semiosis of interactions constituted by totalities of movements by unities of body and materiality. The interplay between the individual and materiality is
– from the point of system theory – suggested to function as repeated perturbation and re-entry of subtle understandings of the very process itself. Finally a tentative model is suggested, depicting semiotic development and qualities of the learning process. Separate attention is given to the possible conflict between the applied theories.
52 views
Seen by:Frihed - et empirisk studie af rollatorers materialitet
Opgave Materiel Kultur DPU
Mine undersøgelser på Genoptræningscenteret i Lyngby
viste et komplekst og problematisk samspil mellem rollator... more
Mine undersøgelser på Genoptræningscenteret i Lyngby
viste et komplekst og problematisk samspil mellem rollator og den eksekutivt svækkede ældre. Jeg har søgt at identificere og analysere kritiske situationer i den observerede brug. En sådan dybere forståelse af rollatorens materialitet håber jeg kan fremme
en bredere tilgang til træning samt til indkøb, tilpasning og ultimativt design af rollatorer.
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Seen by:Håndværksteknisk senso-motorisk læring - på vej mod en virkets psyko-semiotik
opgave på Materiel kultur DPU
From a constructivist view on learning and on the basis of Peirce´s categories this paper undertakes an abductional... more
From a constructivist view on learning and on the basis of Peirce´s categories this paper undertakes an abductional search into the signs employed in learning movements within the crafts. From the presentational, representational and interpretative characteristics of the triadic sign the process is conceptualized as
a semiosis of interactions constituted by totalities of movements by unities of body and materiality. The interplay between the individual and materiality is
– from the point of system theory – suggested to function as repeated perturbation and re-entry of subtle understandings of the very process itself. Finally a tentative model is suggested, depicting semiotic development and qualities of the learning process. Separate attention is given to the possible conflict between the applied theories.
52 views
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