10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17006
application/pdf
2038-3460
17006
1
en
Paolo Magaudda
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Philip Vannini, Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life. Ethnographical Approaches, Peter Lang, 2009
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
2
Book Reviews
2011-06-27
2023-05-22
2011-06-27
2023-07-03
122-124
TS
Paolo Magaudda
2011/06/27
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17006
122
Università di Padova
2038-3460
1
en
124
Philip Vannini, Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life. Ethnographical Approaches, Peter Lang, 2009
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17006/15902
2
122   BOOK REVIEWS



      gramme is rooted: the sociology of                               Philip Vannini
      knowledge, and foucauldian discourse                  Material Culture and Technology
      analysis. Second, he delivers a number                in Everyday Life. Ethnographical
      of very user friendly tools and concepts                        Approaches
      for the analysis of empirical data. The                    2009, Peter Lang, 254 pp.
      success of his research programme in
      German academia can be taken as a                                 Paolo Magaudda
      guarantee for its applicability in a                            (Università di Padova)
      whole spectrum of issues, varying from
      global environmental controversies,                       The book edited by Philip Vannini
      over science and technology in society,               – one of the more eclectic and prolific
      to social identity politics.                          emergent scholars in the intersection
                                                            between culture and technology – is a
                                                            very useful step to fill a gap in the on-
                                                            going process of interconnection be-
      References                                            tween different perspectives on the so-
                                                            cial studies of technology. This gap
      Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The So-          consists in the partial lack of dialogue
          cial Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the   between, on the one side, the science
          Sociology of Knowledge, London, Penguin           & technology studies and, on the other
          Books.                                            side, the material culture studies and,
      Hajer, M.A. (1995) The Politics of Environmen-
          tal Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and       more in general, the context of cultural
          the Policy Process, Oxford, Clarendon.            studies intended in their broader sense.
      Keller, R. (2005) Analysing Discourse. An Ap-         Indeed, while these two areas of con-
          proach From the Sociology of Knowledge, in        temporary social sciences have hardly
          “Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Fo-
          rum Qualitative Social Research”, 6(3), Art.
                                                            found explicit convergences, at a closer
          32, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:01-        look they reveal a common feeling on
          14-fqs0503327.                                    the fact that social relations, technolo-
      Keller, R. (2010) WDA/SKAD – An Interpretive          gies and objects are strictly interwoven
          Approach to Discourse and Politics of             with each other and, also, that at their
          Knowledge, Proceedings of IPA2010 “In-
          terpretative Policy Analysis conference”, 23-     junction it is possible to find a crucial
          25 June 2010, Grenoble.                           dimension for the development of con-
      Foucault, M. (1969) L'archéologie du savoir, Par-     temporary world. However, in spite of
          is, Éditions Gallimard.                           this, it is pretty hard to find scholars
                                                            that are effectively committed to de-
                                                            velop these connections and links.
                                                            Philip Vannini and some of his col-
                             ***                            leagues certainly are among these few
                                                            scholars.
                                                                As the editor recognizes in his in-
                                                            troduction, the boundaries between
                                                            these fields – STS and material culture
                                                            – have remained solid more as the re-
                                                            sult of accidental scientific practices,
                                                               TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)         123



rather than as a consequence of moti-          is a loose and mostly interdisciplinary
vations and planning. While we can             sector at the overlapping of anthropol-
partially agree with this idea, we could       ogy, archaeology and, at a lesser extent,
also add other kinds of considerations         sociology. Explicitly rooted in the her-
to this “casual” explanation. The main         itage of the archaeological attention to
one is that these two different tradi-         ancient objects, material culture stud-
tions have sometimes developed as              ies have decisively developed toward
“congregations”         with        specific   the understanding of the role of ob-
“buzzwords” and vocabularies, which            jects in the contemporary society, and
have been at the same time good cata-          the book “The social life of things”,
lysts for grouping scholars and re-            edited by Arijun Appadurai in 1986,
searches, but also obstacles and imped-        can be considered a founding text.
iments for the involvement of neo-             Other references of this perspective
phytes and scholars belonging to dif-          can be found in the works carried out
ferent debates. Thus, seen from this           by archeo-antropologist Chris Tilley
more intricate perspective, a metaphor         and by the socio-anthropologist of
for this book could be found not in a          consumption Daniel Miller. The se-
bridge connecting two hills separated          cond realm the book intends to involve
by nature or casualty, but rather in a         is the social study of technology, which
bridge between two cities that have            includes scholars who are already
developed with different infrastruc-           known to “Tecnoscienza” readers,
tures, policies and mayors – meaning           such as Wiebe Bijker, Bruno Latour,
different languages, perspectives, and         Trevor Pinch, Donald MacKenzie and
major scholars – but that today find           so on. As we know, this field presents
themselves on the same side of the bar-        different articulations of the relation
ricades: the side that believes in the         between technology and society, but it
need to develop an understanding of            can be generally unified by highlight-
the role of materiality and artefacts in       ing the relevance accorded to the role
society. It is to be said that the book is     of technologies as material artefacts in
not the first attempt to build this            the social context. The strategy to mix
bridge and probably it is neither the          together these different scientific uni-
more analytically coherent and theoret-        verses is based on the common empha-
ically sophisticated one. Anyway, I            sis given to two specific dimensions.
guess that, at this date, it is perhaps the    The first one is a common preference
most variegated and inclusive one, and         for ethnographical methods, intended
also the one with the clearer tendency         in their heterogeneous and open sense.
to favour the dialogue between differ-         The second one is the common atten-
ent domains and to enable readers to           tion to the realm of everyday life,
understand some of the coordinates of          which is not regarded as a taken-for-
this dialogue.                                 granted domain, but as a dimension of
    As we have said, the book is based         the social world constantly under ques-
on the idea of making two different            tion.
domains dialogue. The first one is the             More concretely, the book is divid-
field of material culture studies, which       ed into three parts, which present re-
124   BOOK REVIEWS



      spectively theoretical, methodological      rial culture studies. The second exam-
      and empirical chapters. Part one is de-     ple is the chapter by Bryce Merrill,
      voted to the different theoretical per-     which considers the practice of home
      spectives involved in the two different     music recordings from a perspective
      fields. Vannini and Ian Woodward            directly based on the SCOT approach.
      take it upon themselves to outline the      Probably, the different standpoints of
      area of material culture from a more        these two chapters highlight the fact
      anthropological perspective, while          that while the book represents a good
      Trevor Pinch and Grant Kien are in          step toward an integration of different
      charge of making sense of the STS           perspectives on artefacts and technolo-
      side, undertaking the task, respectively,   gies, there is still much work to do in
      of tracing the legacy of the “Social        order to fully integrate these stand-
      Construction of Technology” (SCOT)          points. This last consideration proba-
      approach and of the Actor-Network           bly helps highlight the major limit of
      Theory (ANT) perspective.                   the book, which can be regarded more
          The second part of the book has a       as a first attempt to combine the work
      more methodological vocation, pre-          of different scholars, rather then the
      senting different ways to articulate        result of an actual and broader process
      ethnography in relation to the material     of integration.
      world. These chapters engage not only            Anyway, even if not always com-
      in common forms of ethnography, but         pact and coherent in developing its
      also in more heterodox ones, such as        analysis, this collection has the unques-
      the practice of autoethnography (by C.      tioned merit of bringing novelty and
      Noy) and video ethnography (by D.           excitement to the current development
      Tutt and J. Hindmarsh), also dedicat-       of the studies on artefacts and technol-
      ing a specific chapter to the use of        ogies. For STS scholars unused to be
      “Grounded        Theory”       (by    A.    involved in social anthropology of
      Hanemaayer). Part three of the book is      things and consumption, the book will
      characterised by the presentation of        open a door to an entire world that is
      specific ethnographies of material cul-     not adequately known in the STS con-
      ture belonging to the everyday world.       text, and will do that from a useful and
      We can take two of these chapters to        understandable perspective. Moreover,
      exemplify the way to analyse the mate-      methodological and ethnographical
      rial technologies of everyday life. The     chapters definitely offer valuable in-
      chapter of Chris Tilley considers the       sights into the ethnographic research in
      practice of gardening and its meaning       everyday life things and objects.
      in contemporary England, discussing
      eleven reasons why people garden and
      what that means in their lives. In this
                                                                    ***
      case, the analysis of gardens as material
      culture represents an example of a per-
      spective mainly rooted in the anthro-
      pological tradition and in the current
      trend of the more contemporary mate-
