STUDIO MICHAEL SHANKS ~ STANFORD

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS ARCHAEOLOGY DESIGN THINKING | STRATEGIC FORESIGHT POSTS

ABOUT THIS SITE

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY archaeolog.Stanford.edu

STUDIES (STS) AND Studio Michael

Shanks

ANTHROPOLOGY: WHAT IS THE An archaeology lab at

Stanford University.

STATUS OF OUR DESCRIPTIONS? A network of

JULY 30, 2011 by TIM WEBMOOR
collaboration and
commentary offering
archaeological
insights into the
“The goal of descriptive adequacy is unattainable but continually haunts the shape of history,
endeavor, lying alongside, but in another time, and speaking back, like the change and
immaterial ghosts of prophecy or the value of a currency.” (Maurer 2005, p. 54) innovation, design
What is it to describe? What ambitions and hopes do we attach to our and creativity.
descriptions? How do we make them “work” for us as policy advisers,
spokespeople, critics and ethnographers? While the goal of adequate Informing the future.

representation has been disputed for a long time, the status, construction and
[Link – personal site –
performativity of our descriptions remain an open question. In Mutual Life,
mshanks.com]
Limited (2005), Bill Maurer notes that despite consensus on the impossibility of
accurate and adequate descriptions, it continues to haunt “the [ethnographic]
endeavor”. Hereby he points to an aesthetics of ethnography which, despite
CONTACT
claims to relativism, in many cases still makes use of the persuasive rhetoric of
“being there” (see also Strathern, 2004, p. 10). Roland Barthes (1982) has similarly michael.shanks @
argued that the prose of a plethora of details and descriptions characterizing stanford . edu
ethnography is to create the “effect of the real”, which is part of constructing the
ethnographic authority (Barthes in Knuuttila 2002). mshanks.com

With the “crisis of representation” of the 1980s comfortably behind us, we now see
archaeographer.com
different questions about description, reflexivity and modes of writing emerging.
The anthropological style and prose of “being there” with its representational
Building 500,
effects is still deployed widely, leaving behind reflexivity debates as an issue of
Stanford University,
past concerns. Others add a few extra voices and confessions as a placeholder for
CA 94305 USA
epistemological self-awareness. A third position, lateral ethnography, uses
empirical descriptions to question the very practices of anthropological ways of
knowing. How can we understand these divisions in styles of ethnographic

STUDIO MICHAEL SHANKS ~ STANFORD

description? What are their implications? In this session, we explore how Science
and Technology Studies (STS) can offer alternative understandings for how
descriptions come to matter. Those working in the field of STS have long studied
HOME ABOUT PROJECTS ARCHAEOLOGY DESIGN THINKING | STRATEGIC FORESIGHT POSTS
how different representations are achieved, in production, assembly, and
circulation. Applying a sensitivity to the various ways in which the distinctions
between fact and fiction, culture and nature, are enacted, it offers a vocabulary for
exploring different modes of describing and writing. Taking our own descriptions
as a starting point, we discuss how various reflexive and post-reflexive moves can Search …
inform the manner in which our ethnographic descriptions are deployed.
At the upcoming American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings in
Montreal, Canada, a collaboration amongst anthropologists, archaeologists and
STSers will convene to delve deeper into these questions. In the session, the
following papers will be presented:

Thick Description On Diet – or What Does It Mean to Represent? Helene Ratner

(Copenhagen Business School)
Abstract: Within anthropology and STS alike, the enactment of a “realist genre” or
an authoritative voice such as the royal “we” has produced much concern (Clifford
and Marcus 1986; Woolgar 1988), with the call for multi-vocality or literary
experiments to “disrupt the apprehension of texts as ‘objective’ accounts” as a
result (Woolgar 1988). Such reflexive approaches, however, have been dismissed
for assuming that: “the most deleterious effect of a text is to be naively believed by
the reader as in some way relating to a referent out there. Reflexivity is supposed
to counteract this effect by rendering the text unfit for normal consumption
(which often means unreadable)” (Latour 1988, p. 168). According to Latour, the
problem is not one of being too persuasive in conventional writing but rather one
of engaging with the (more) serious concerns of the people we study (Latour
2005, p. 33). Descriptions perform not through representation but as “action at a
distance”. Revisiting the reflexivity debate, this paper addresses questions of how
descriptions perform and the implications beliefs about the performativity of
research has for writing. Instead of resorting to textual experiments as to break a
narrative calling to “represent”, it proposes to understand research as “partial
connection” (Strathern 1991). This is a work of mutual engagement and
experimentary articulations which is about adding agency to “observer” and
“observed” rather than representation (Jensen and Lauritsen 2005). This raises
different concerns with writing than those of epistemological angst.
Description As Prescription – or What Does It Mean to Say That Documents Are
Performative?: On ‘theory-Hope’ and ‘politics of Description’ In Performative
Science and Technology Studies Christopher Gad (IT University of Copenhagen)
Abstract: In STS, the concept of performativity has been used in an ontological
argument to counter a representationalist world-view (Pickering 1995).

STUDIO MICHAEL SHANKS ~ STANFORD

Performativity has later been used to conceptualize how market- worlds are
partially constituted by how they are described. Models, theories, etc. take part in
the cultural production of what they re-present (MacKenzie, Muniesa, and Siu
HOME ABOUT PROJECTS ARCHAEOLOGY DESIGN THINKING | STRATEGIC FORESIGHT POSTS
2007). This means that descriptions of all kinds must be investigated in terms of
their prescriptive and agential potentials and effects: ‘what they say’ is not as
important as what they (might) do (Dogonova & Eyquem-Renault 2009).
According to Michel Callon (2010), performative accounts allow us to imagine how
things could always be performed differently. Judith Butler (2010) suggests that
performative thinking allows engaging in a continuous ‘argument with the real’,
as an ongoing contestation of ‘truths’. In that regard, both suggest that politics
emerge from performative thinking. Paul Du Gay (2010), however, comments this
‘hope’ is strongly related to ‘a moment of theory.’ While claiming to be political,
what ‘practical politics’ flow from performativity in general remains unclear. This
paper addresses how ‘politics of description’ emerge through a Danish case. The
paper argues that what texts say and what they do have to be read in specific
juxtaposition. Complexities of reading and writing both with and against
performative texts (Jensen and Lauritsen 2005) is thus a central concern of the
paper. The case exemplifies how particular issues concerning the purpose of
description emerged in the moment of imagining a specific research topic as
performed.
Descriptions As Companions? Notes from an Uneasy Relationship Malte Ziewitz
(University of Oxford)
Abstract: Descriptions still tend to be conceptualized in terms of what Harvey
Sacks (1963) famously called the ”commentator machine”: a device consisting of
two parts, one of which engages in some practical activity and one of which
produces a form of language about the first part. But what happens if we
abandon this distinction and move beyond the various attempts at generating
‘correspondence’, ‘mirroring’ or ‘meaning’? What if we accept that our
descriptions lead a life of their own? What if they do not simply ‘describe’, but ‘do’
things? In this paper, I will mobilize recent ideas from STS about symmetry,
agency and performativity to explore an understanding of descriptions as actors
or, as Arthur Frank (2010) suggests with reference to Donna Haraway’s (2003,
2008) trope, “material semiotic companions”. Using material from a recent
ethnographic study of web-based feedback schemes, I will report on my
encounters with both my own and others’ descriptions and the heterogeneous
relations they entered, maintained and disrupted. I will sketch my attempts to
follow and take care of them as a ‘good’ companion, but also recount moments of
loss, betrayal and corruption. Rather than regarding descriptions as privileged
windows into some otherworldly reality or narrative devices at the hands of the
author, I will illustrate how they are implicated in the making of selves and
sociality, defying the unimportant difference between ‘discourse’ and ‘doings’.

STUDIO MICHAEL SHANKS ~ STANFORD

The Matter-Ing of Descriptions: Four Propositions Timothy Webmoor (University of
Oxford)
Abstract: So what difference to our descriptions, field notes and narratives make?
HOME ABOUT PROJECTS ARCHAEOLOGY DESIGN THINKING | STRATEGIC FORESIGHT POSTS
If we agree with Law (e.g. 2010:173) and other material semiotic sympathisers that
to be real something must make a difference, how do I begin to think my writings
in the field matter, where do I detect that difference? How would I trace their
matter-ing, their reality-making? Exhuming my own descriptions from recent
fieldwork at a software development lab in London, I suggest that the status of
ethnographic descriptions often involve several issues. First, closet
representationalism – and a coherentism at that. A working assumption is that I
am rendering faithfully what is going on in these interactions. Second, “out of the
box.” That is, already ready for assembly. My notes anticipate other obligations and
accountabilities, primarily write-up for publication. To matter beyond satisfying
my desire to understand this field setting I need to circulate my descriptions.
Third, visual outsourcing of rhetoric and creativity. To matter I want some
compelling visuals to supplement my textual narrative. This argument of the
visual as supplemental evidence is well rehearsed. Nonetheless, I still take them
for assembly with my text later on for this reason. Finally, temporal ebbs and flow.
There is a temporal path to matter-ing, but it doesn’t seem very linear or
sequential. Some of the process is anticipated, but there are many iterations to
how the descriptions – textual, visual and I should add auditory too – will be
involved in matter-ing along my research path.
Archaeological Description and Doubt Christopher L Witmore (Texas Tech
University)
Abstract: What role does skepticism play in archaeological descriptions? What
does the question of doubt reveal about the adequacy of a description? What is
the relationship of skepticism to the issues of accountability and ultimately trust?
This paper addresses these questions by taking a closer look at the modes of
articulation deployed in an archaeological excavation at the remains of a Roman
fort in Binchester, UK.
For more information about the session please contact Tim Webmoor.

Posted in ANTHROPOLOGY, DESIGN, FIELDS OF PRODUCTION, MEDIATION, VISUAL MEDIA

← OUTPOST exhibition | Call for Experimenting with the Dérive

contributions Experience of Landscapes →
STUDIO MICHAEL SHANKS ~ STANFORD
HOME ABOUT PROJECTS ARCHAEOLOGY DESIGN THINKING | STRATEGIC FORESIGHT POSTS