From Yams to Printers… and Beyond: Towards an Ethnography of Technical Objects?

Whilst the notion of technical objects has been examined in STS, media studies and philosophy, anthropology has, so far, mostly focussed on their agencies from a human-centred perspective. This talk examines the contributions, possibilities, difficulties and limits posed by an ethnography of technical objects which could document how their functioning both actualises and generates relations which, whilst still concerning humans, extend to their whole milieus. Drawing on examples from Papua New Guinea and observations of the relations between networked printers at our university, as well as based in the emerging field of anthropology of technics, the talk will present elements of what could help develop an ethnography of technical objects, as parts of a future project.

Ludovic Coupaye is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at University College London and Director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Technics and Technodiversity (CATT, UCL). His research covers: material and visual culture in Oceania; art and aesthetics among the Abelam; anthropology of techniques, skills and materiality; anthropology of technology and modernity and museum ethnography.