Yale French Studies 36/37: Structuralism (1966)

An early English-language collection of French structuralist writings.

Essays by André Martinet, Philip E. Lewis, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Harold W. Scheffer, Sheldon Nodelman, Jan Miel, Jacques Lacan, Geoffrey Hartman, Jacques Ehrmann, Michael Riffaterre, and Victoria L. Rippere. Bibliographies compiled by Elizabeth Barber, Allen R. Maxwell, Jacques Lacan, Anthony G. Wilden, and T. Todorov.

Edited by Jacques Ehrmann
Publisher Yale University Press, 1966
272 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

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Sophia Roosth: Crafting Life: A Sensory Ethnography of Fabricated Biologies (2010)

“This ethnography tracks a diverse set of practices I term ‘constructive biologies,’ by which I mean efforts in the post-genomic life sciences to understand how biology works by making new biological things. I examine five fields of constructive biology – synthetic biology, DIY biology, hyperbolic crochet, sonocytology, and molecular gastronomy – investigating how they are enmeshed in sensory engagements that employ craftwork as a means of grasping biology.

Synthetic biology is a community of bioengineers who aim to fabricate standardized biological systems using genetic components and manufacturing principles borrowed from engineering. DIY biology is a community of “biohackers” who appropriate synthetic biologists’ terminologies, standards, and commitment to freely exchanging biomaterials in order to do hobbyist biological engineering in their homes. The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is a distributed venture of thousands of women who are cooperatively fabricating a series of yarn and plastic coral reefs in order to build a material simulation of oceanic morphologies and evolutionary theories. Sonocytology, a technique in nanotechnology research, uses scanning probe microscopes to “listen to” cellular vibrations and “feel” the topologies of cells and cellular components. Molecular gastronomy is a movement in which practitioners – physical chemists and biochemists who study food, and chefs who apply their results – use biochemical principles and laboratory apparatuses to further cooking and the culinary arts.

In analyzing these fields, I draw on histories of experimental biology, anthropological accounts of artisanship, science studies work on embodiment and tacit knowledge in scientific practice, and sensory ethnography. Based on data gathered from participant-observation and interviewing, I argue for thinking about making new biological things as a form of ‘crafting,’ an analytic that illuminates five aspects of contemporary biological manufacture: 1) sensory cultivation, 2) ongoing participation with biological media and forms, 3) the integration of making biological things and practitioners’ selfmaking, 4) the embedding of social relations, interests, norms, and modes of exchange in built artifacts, and 5) the combination of making and knowing. In this study, I argue that both biology the substance and biology the discipline are currently being remade, and that increasingly, life scientists apprehend ‘life’ through its manufacture.”

Dissertation thesis
Supervisor: Stefan Helmreich
Publisher Massachussetts Institute of Technology, September 2010
326 pages

Publisher

PDF (24 MB)

Cultural Anthropology: Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen (2016–2017)

“The idea of an Anthropocene has spread with astonishing speed, dislodging familiar terms like nature and environment from their customary preeminence as signs of the world beyond ourselves. These developments pose a peculiar challenge for those of us in anthropology. To be sure, everyone suddenly seems to share our concern for that singular creature, anthropos. Yet, the Anthropocene is a gift armed with teeth, with a hau of demands and reciprocal tethers that have left many anthropologists rightly cautious about embracing its tale of an overwhelming human agency. What would it take, we wonder, to see this time and its configurations, agencies, and effects otherwise? With this lexicon we hope to develop a resource that is helpful for this task.

This Theorizing the Contemporary series is meant to confront the challenge of vision and sensibility, of finding new ways of conceiving, engaging, and expressing the felt impasses of the present. It first sprung to life as a “pop-up” panel at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, with contributions emerging on the fly amid the tumult of an annual academic carnival.”

Terms: Address, Carbon, Care, Cloud, Cosmos, Distribution, Dream, Earths, Ecopolitics, Environing, Expenditure, Flatulence, Generation, Gluten, Heat, Hyposubjects, Leviathans, Melt, Models, Nature, Nemesis, Petroleum, Photosynthesis, Plastic, Power, Predation, Preparedness, Probiotic, Relationships, Ruin, Shit, Species, Stability, Steps, Sustainability, Timely, Vulnerability, Wildness, Zoonosis. (list updated on 2016-10-6)

Edited by Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian
Publisher Society for Cultural Anthropology, 2016
Theorizing the Contemporary series
ISSN 1548-1360

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Book edition (2020, added on 2020-12-1)