‘Knowing’, Absence, and Presence: The Spatial and Temporal Depth of Relations

Abstract

Through the lens of 'knowing', which is simultaneously an expression in colloquial English and a set of cognate practices, this paper considers the ways in which relations come to have ontological depth which is both spatial and tempwral. The signiflcance of knowing people and places in everyday life exceeds a simple 'familiarity with' or 'knowledge of. Instead, knowing speaks to what it is that is said to matter in the webs of relations which connect (and sometimes disconnect) people and place, connections that accumulate in uneven and unequal ways. The paper thus builds on recent literature in human geography on absence, presence, and postindustrial ruins and weds it with anthropological theory on connectedness, relatedness, and ruination to examine knowing. This cross-fertilisation of disciplinary perspectives permits me to pay critical attention to seemingly incommensurate and yet overlapping webs of relations (relations with people aUve and dead, relations with places present and absent, relations with memory, relations with change and the past). Following Navaro-Yashin's recent work in Northern Cyprus, I argue that knowing in regard to absence sheds light on the theoretical bind of object-centred versus subject-centred approaches. IntroductionThis paper examines the depth of feeling forged between people through place and time. I focus on the processes by which people, places, and objects become "mutually possessive" (Candea, 2010, page 127) or, in other words, the ways in which they become interconnected, as well as the temporal and spatial dynamics of these processes. The ethnographic locale where I conducted the research motivating this piece, however, is one where erasure and absence inform social relations as much as presence and continuity do. What, then, are the consequences of mutual possession in such an ethnographic context where people, places, and objects occupy seemingly incommensurate" domains of the living and the dead, the present arid the erased, the visible and the eradicated? These domain crossings are premised on cultural logics that, as I will argue here, can contribute to larger debates over subjectivity and affect. 1 shall be arguing that 'knowing' people and places, and 'being known', are relational aspects whereby people can be connected to (as well as disconnected from) each other through place (Ingold, 2011) and through social memory. Dodworth, the village where this fieldwork was based, is a setting of intense localism. Social interaction and public discourse here are characterised by the regular exchange of stories about shared historical experiences and of the micro-details of individual villagers' biographies as well as those of their wider family networks. Knowing thus reveals a set of practices of how people position themselves in multiple ways within overlapping webs of relations: relations with people, relations with places, relations with memory, relations with change and relations with the past.

Suburban ethnicities: Home as the site of interethnic conviviality and racism

“…Mary repeats that she “knows” the “Asian ladies.” It is also worth recalling that in Guido’s explanation of how England and Southtown have come to be home for him, he emphasized how his children came to “know” English families. Degnen () has eloquently written about the meaning of “knowing” in a village in the north of England where she conducted ethnographic fieldwork. For according to Degnen (, p. 555), “knowing is about more than a familiarity with, information acquired, or social networks, as might be commonly assumed.…”

“…Degnen () has eloquently written about the meaning of “knowing” in a village in the north of England where she conducted ethnographic fieldwork. For according to Degnen (, p. 555), “knowing is about more than a familiarity with, information acquired, or social networks, as might be commonly assumed. This is because knowing is often evoked by people when seeking to explain what it is that matters in the webs of relations binding them to others and to where they live.” I would like to suggest that it is some of the weight of this kind of knowing that Mary evokes in her description of her relationships with her “Asian” neighbors.…”

When politicians fail: Zombie democracy and the anthropology of actually existing politics

“…Contrary then to Beck's narrative that "individualization" means "dis-embedding without re-embedding" (Beck, 2001: 276), ethnographers have shown how people remain embedded in particular localities (Degnen, 2013;Edwards, 2000;Smith, 2012;Tyler, 2012;, often under conditions of precariousness and massive social and economic change (Evans, 2006;Koch, 2015;Mollona, 2009). To give just one example, for Cathrine Degnen, knowing a place and its people is "more than a familiarity with, information acquired, or social networks, as might be commonly assumed" (2013: 2).…”

“…These examples not only linked Tracey to the individual biographies and relationships of other people but also demonstrated the importance of particular sites where she had time with them. Taken together, they emphasised the importance of "knowing" as a phrase and as a practice of asserting belonging, a point made in the ethnographic literature on Britain (Degnen, 2013;see also Degnen 2016;Edwards, 2000). Individual connections could also be scaled into a more general sense of belonging to the neighbourhood or what residents referred to as the "local estate".…”

Interaction design, heritage, and the self

“…Social anthropologist Catherine Degnen, drawing on her lengthy ethnographic study within a particular U.K. town, maintains that "[t]he significance of knowing ... exceeds a simple 'familiarity with' or 'knowledge of.' Instead, knowing speaks to what it is that is said to matter in the webs of relations which connect (and sometimes disconnect) people" [4].…”