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'Stone is stone': engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry
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'Stone is stone': engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry
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'Stone is stone': engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry
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Journal Article
'Stone is stone': engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry
2014
Overview
Since the mid-nineteenth century, craft has been characterized by relations of engagement, resonating with broader romantic discourses that idealize craftsmen in explicit contrast to forms of alienation linked to capitalist production. In recent work on craft, the analytic lens of engagement usefully highlights the dynamic interplay of human and non-human agencies. Our own account builds on these ideas but suggests that the conceptual privileging of engagement creates interpretative problems, precluding ethnographic attention to the role of detachment in craft. Focusing on the skilled practices of conservation stonemasons, we describe the specific constellations of ideology and practice involved in cutting and fixing stone. Through elucidating masons' own understandings of their work, we highlight their commitment to the 'disciplined' embodiment of tradition as a means of separating personal subjectivity from the stones they carve. Our analysis of the skilled practices required to work stone questions the primacy of engagement, suggesting instead that detachment and engagement are mutually implicated relational forms. This finding sheds new light on craft practice and offers a position from which to reconsider broader anthropological commitments to concepts of engagement. Depuis le dix-neuvième siècle, l'artisanat est caractérisé par des relations d'engagement en résonance avec les discours romantiques plus larges qui idéalisent les artisans, explicitement décrits comme échappant à l'aliénation de la production capitaliste. Dans un récent travail sur l'artisanat, le prisme analytique de l'engagement donne un éclairage utile sur l'interaction dynamique entre l'agencéité humaine et non humaine. Notre récit s'appuie sur ces idées mais suggère que les concepts privilégiant l'engagement posent des problèmes d'interprétation en empêchant de s'intéresser du point de vue ethnographique au rôle du détachement dans l'artisanat. En nous concentrant sur les pratiques et compétences des maçons spécialistes des monuments historiques, nous décrivons les constellations spécifiques d'idéologie et de pratique intervenant dans la taille et la mise en place des pierres. En faisant la lumière sur la compréhension que les maçons ont de leur propre travail, nous éclairons leur engagement pour la mise en application « disciplinée » de la tradition comme moyen de séparer leur subjectivité personnelle des pierres qu'ils taillent. Notre analyse des pratiques qualifiées nécessaires pour travailler la pierre remet en question la primauté de l'engagement et suggère qu'au contraire, le détachement et l'engagement sont des formes relationnelles mutuellement imbriquées. Ces observations jettent un éclairage nouveau sur la pratique de l'artisanat et offrent un point de vue à partir duquel reconsidérer les attitudes anthropologiques plus larges envers les concepts d'engagement.
