University of Bristol -Explore Bristol Research General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms The taxidermist's apprentice: stitching together the past and present of a craft-skill Merle PatchettUniversity of Bristol, UK Abstract How do you witness the development and reproduction of a craft practice? This essay explores this provocation in relation to the craft practice of taxidermy and, in so doing, aims to stitch together non-representational and historical geographic concerns within the discipline. Mobilising and developing on an Ingoldian perspective on the process of skill, the author places herself in the position of apprentice to a practising taxidermist in recognition that the position of learner is a highly instructive context in which to enquire into how present-day practice relates to a representational culture charting the development of the craft in historical 'how-to-do' manuals. When juxtaposing contemporary ethnographies of taxidermy practice with descriptions of practice in historical 'howto-do' manuals, the author shows how past and present practice resonates rather than replicates. Overall, this article aims to introduce and develop theoretical and methodological pathways for studying and storying (historical) geographies of craft and skilled practices.
Geographers have long demonstrated an interest in charting the geographical and bodily dynamics of work and employment. However, within this scholarship very little attention has been paid to historical geographies of craftwork. This paper seeks to address this deficit while also engaging with the evident and evidentiary methodological issues associated with the historical study of practices worked through the body. To do so, the paper experiments in the recuperation of the working spaces and working practice of three Scottish taxidermists. The creative challenge of this type of recovery work is to ascertain what can conceivably be said from those things that remain to mark the working of bodies and bodies at work at these sites. Yet from curated remainders we glean vital insights into the practices and class politics of 19th‐century natural history enquiry, the silenced agencies of a workshop devastated by the First World War and the more‐than‐human histories of elite blood sports and land ownership in the Scottish Highlands. And this is to emphasise that these materials, even in their textual representation in this paper, count: that they can create knowledge and invite affective experience of the past. Overall the paper seeks to emphasise the serious commitment to conceptual and methodological innovation required when geographers engage in researching bodies (both human and animal) ‘at work’ in the past.
Post-humanist theories shaping contemporary geographic research have unsettled the privileged position of the "human" as a common reference to apprehend social life. This decentring of the human demands that we rethink our expectations of, and approaches to, methodological practice and the traditional distinctions made between the theoretical and the empirical. In this introduction and the following interventions, we explore how a material situatedness and attention to nonhuman agencies within post-humanist thought complement and extend existing methodological innovations within human geography. We do so with reference to a series of Masters workshopsa somewhat overlooked space of research-creationeach of which explored the implications of post-humanism on methodological practice. The introduction concludes with three key tenets that were followed in each of the individual workshops, and which set out an ethos for practising post-humanism more broadly. K E Y W O R D S experimentation, geographic method, Masters workshops, nonhuman intensities, post-humanist theory, theory/practice divide 1 | PRACTISING POST-HUMANISM: WHY NOW?Recently, there has been a push to explore more experimental orientations to the "doing" of research and to develop practices that problematise methodological assumptions pertaining to rigour, reliability, and representation within geography (Dowling et al., 2016(Dowling et al., , 2017(Dowling et al., , 2018Vannini, 2015;Whatmore, 2006). In this paper we contribute to these exciting debates by engaging with the way post-humanist theoretical innovations shaping contemporary human geography require us to rethink the empirical demands and methodological responsibilities of geographical research. In bringing the material and affective registers of social life to the fore, post-humanist theories have the potential to reconfigure our relation to research practices in ways that trouble the traditional distinction between the theoretical and the empirical. It is in this potential for capturing novel aspects of contemporary social and cultural life, in excess of human durations, that we situate our concern for the practice of post-humanism within human geography.Responding to the call to experiment methodologically, the turn to more-than-human geographies has done much to broaden the remit of contemporary research to include the agency of the nonhuman in shaping social life. As Bastian et al. (2016, p. 2) note, a key concern here is "to take nonhuman life, and the entanglements of human/nonhuman life seriously" in the production of geographical knowledge. This concern is precisely about the challenge of attending to diverse nonhuman agencies in ways that demand different approaches to the act of doing geographical research. In turning to the relationship between post-humanism and geographical research (Braun,
Geographers are demonstrating increasing interest in the power and significance of craft and artisanal practices. However within this scholarship very little attention has been paid to theorising or tracing the conveyance of craft practices over time and place. This paper seeks to address this deficit by demonstrating how craft conveyance has been achieved through historical geographies of apprenticeship. To do so the paper firstly reviews how the figure of the apprentice and the forms and geographies apprenticeship have been recently reconfigured. Secondly, and by drawing on the work of anthropologists and geographers, it argues that the model of learning between master and apprentice is more dynamic, relational and context-dependant than that espoused in Richard Sennett's seminal text on craftsmanship. Moreover while geographers have begun to think through how craft practices become sedimented in place over successive generations, the main contribution of this paper is to think and work through how craft practices travel from place to place over successive generations. Specifically this is to examine how the corporeal and material practices of a workshop gain not just temporal duration but also spatial extension. This will be achieved empirically by retracing how the 'Wardian-style' of taxidermy practice travelled from London to Glasgow through the movements of Wardian apprentice Charles Kirk. Following nonrepresentational theorisations of practice, and what I shall term the 'journeyings' of Kirk, the paper demonstrates that rather than passively absorbing the 'secrets' of a workshop the apprentice actively co-and reproduces its corporeal and material practices and carries them forward where they are actively reworked into and by new communities and ecologies of practice. The paper concludes by emphasising the relevance and resonance of apprenticeship for rethinking and retracing craft conveyance.
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