Chapter 2, A Draft
Well, it has surely taken some time — let alone, a stubborn mind working too long with the introduction chapter — but I just finished chapter two this week. Or, more accurately, an initial, however by no means a first, draft thereof. It is titled Crafting Flows and it is a sensuously narrated invitation to the situated crafts* by which the makings of particular flows of olive oils from Southern Puglia occur undertaken. The chapter centers on the skilled practitioners that I have had the great pleasure to work with, and, in emphasising their craft, for it is really a craft to make the olive oils that they do and such as they do it — in accordance to quality standards, by technical means, through counteractive dynamics, and with a great sense of touch, taste, and smell — the chapter remarks the generative flows through which their work occurs done in time and space by means of specific apparatuses. Now, there is quite some theory to bite into, such as hinted in the wordings, for that kind of knowledgeable reader, and I do that; in the chapter as well as in the introduction [which I call Inviting, as I see it fit to curiously and exploratively invite to the reading and the context that it narrates; hence, to an anthropology of the situated crafts of olive oil from Southern Puglia]. Here, though, I will let the analytical be and rather invite to the crafting of the chapter and its content as such. For, that is a crafting too, to have undertaken fieldwork and then, from an immense set of fieldnotes and images, videos and audio recordings, interview material and diary entries, make any sense of the things experienced—such as they occurred lived by them, thus, became of matter to me and my research. Sort of.
Being on the matter of sort, I readily get to think about sorting through my own material, but also about the sorting taking place in the work of olive oil. Starting with the first point, that (sorting) is one reason that this chapter has taken quite some time. Maybe not so much the sorting itself, for much of that work occured processually done during the fieldwork. Rather, it is the time spent with the sorting while writing that has been a much enjoyable pace of work. I have namely let myself be in those moments of sorted fieldwork material, much like I were in them when they took place. I have truly allowed myself the space to take as much joy from narrating them as I took participating in them; the first time around that they took place that is, as those moments sort of takes place again, such as they occur re-lived in the moments of writing and such as they become (re)experienced in moments of reading. With that, and by means of moving on to the next point, the second part of chapter two is titled Separating Matters, and it narrates the importance of sorting — matters of sorts, especially out and away — that occurs during processes of making olive oils. Having understood the dual vitality of separating matters and separating matters contextually, this part deals with the separative occurrence taking place and it curiously situates how, why, for whom, when, and where separating matters. This part follows an entry (in)to many quality standards that the practitioners correspondinlgy and caringly relate to in their everyday work. That section is called Acidità and the Cared Crafts of Standardized Contents and, while inviting to for instance ideas about what constitutes wholesome fruit and the importance thereof — situating such matters within the context of dynamics of (de)gradable effects — that first part provides understandings of the flows through which olive oils become through technological, measurable, and situational means of crafting. Of huge interests in that section is to exemplify how properties of materials occurs in the makings per se, and how they do so such as (perceptually) cared for by given practitioners in given parts of the production process (as opposed to be inert to the materials used in its making). After having made some sense of all that, and that hopefully in a sensible way, the final part of the chapter, namely, that of Crafting Through Anticipation and Cultivars, details the habituated ways that all of the above comes — have come — to matter once the oils comes together as a particular commodity. For, in sensuously narrating situational matters such as they matter — materially and socially, historically and contextually, from the point of crafts and by means of flows, such as dynamisms and particularized substances — it literally acts a tasty wrap-up of that which has been while tickling a taste of that to come [it being the Cultivated Rhythms of chapter 3]. Some excerpts from chapter tow occur featured below.
*Situated craft is a concept that I have developed to describe 1) the skilled practice of the people that I conducted my fieldwork with, and 2) the feminist standpoint stance that I uphold (relationally the sensuous scholarship with which my research was undertaken and the crafts inherent also the anthropological undertaking). Below is an excerpt from the introductory chapter where I develop the conceptual framing:
“Cristina Grasseni (2014, 2007) advances apt reasonings on how people acquire particularized skills in relation to the work that they engage and the setting in which they engage it. She draws on what Tim Ingold (2000) refers to as enskilment in highlighting how undertakings of particular activities, in particular settings by particular people, advance environment-experienced perceptions of being and doing. As a case in point, the olive-oil-agronomic-laden skilled persona of Giorgio converses such a sensible development of competence; that which Grasseni (2014) refers to as a trained perception and conceptually labels skilled vision. Meanwhile, the sensuous horizon (Stoller 1989) of Giorgio’s craft centers as much on the touch of taste and smell as on the touch of place, time, and the situated person with which it comes to matter[1]. Thus, as the embodied outcome of these context-bound processes arguably corresponds to certain techniques of the body, such as that of sight highlighted in the conceptual framing of Grasseni [2], it too relates to spatiotemporal dimensions of practice. Let alone, to the perception of phenomena as (re)configured and experienced through the much body-bounded-apparatuses by which phenomena come to matter in specific settings for particular people in the undertaking of certain material workings of the world[3]. Hence, I find it apt to speak in terms of situated crafts (as opposed to skilled vision). Perhaps this stance is well furthered by underlining the feminist standpoint theoretical framing with which this study is concerned, and especially the point of this theoretical stance regarding knowledge as situated[4]. I namely follow the critical thinking of Donna Haraway (1997, 1988) and Sandra Harding (1993) in engaging the situated matters of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017) through which olive oils in this context become made, crafted, and produced. In short, for it will be exemplified further down – such as for instance related to the contextually prompted and analytically productive distinction upheld between made, crafted, and produced – I frame the engaged perspective of practitioners as fundamentally related to their situated being. I also find it apt to speak in terms of situated crafts since the term craft includes the skillful touch of hands and vocation that the people that I have worked with uphold fundamental to their work. Hence, its usage befittingly situates the sensuously crafted means and anthropologically experienced explorations of this study well.”
[1] See Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) and van Ede (2009) for critical readings regarding multisensorial perceptions of situated experience such as related ethical and political dimensions. For readings particularly concerned with material-semiotic aspects of touch, worldmaking, and being, see Barad (2007), Haraway (2007) and Hayward (2010). Latour (2004) feature an intriguing read adding to the critical notion of how situated knowers become concerned with certain aspects of knowing and being.
[2] Grasseni refers to embodied techniques in the Maussian sense, that is, as culturally, socially, biologically, and psychologically influenced means of corporeal movements in time and space (see also Noland 2009 for relevant discussions on the topics of embodied techniques, such as related to sensuous experiences of environments).
[3] See Barad (2007: 146, 170-71, 199, 206) for a sample of conceptual discussions with reference to embodied practice, apparatuses, phenomena, and the generative matter of things of sorts being of the world rather than existing in it. Her conceptualization of apparatuses as “boundary-making practices” (ibid. 148, emphasis in original) by which matters – be they corporeal or discursive, related to meaning-making or generative properties of materials represent – come to matter and make sense, represents a core stance of mine.
[4] Standpoint theory upholds that knowledge derives from specific positions. It is an epistemologically critical line of thinking that remarks that people learn, know, and interact with the surroundings based on how they are situated in it; socially, temporally, culturally, materially, economically, politically, and technologically, to mention a few dimensions influencing given perspectives of being and doing. These lines of thinking correspond to much of the sensuous approach of this study, which also situates learning and doing as a positional matter of people, practice, place, and time.
References
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Grasseni, Cristina. 2014. Skilled Visions: Ecologies of Belonging and Sensorial Apprenticeship. [online]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hgnANBpcGQ.
——, Cristina. 2007. Skilled Vision. Between Apprenticeship and Standards. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
Haraway, Donna. 2007. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
——, Donna J. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
——, Donna. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575-599. Doi: 10.2307/3178066.
Harding, Sandra. 1993. Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is “Strong Objectivity”?. In Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (eds.). Feminist Epistemologies. New York: Routledge, 49-82.
Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. Why Has Critique Run out of Stream? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry 30 (2): 225-248. Doi: 10.1086/421123.
Noland, Carrie. 2009. Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Puig de la Bellacasa, María. 2017. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than. Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things. The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
van Ede, Yolanda. 2009. Sensuous Anthropology: Sense and Sensibility and the Rehabilitation of skill. Anthropological Notebooks 15 (2): 61-75.
