SKILLED VISIONS

Between Apprenticeship and Standards

Edited by Cristina Grasseni
With an Epilogue by Michael Herzfeld

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“I found the volume to be consistently stimulating and was excited by a new visual anthropology dwelling not in the image but in how people actually look and see…and important and timely volume that does much to further our understanding of vision. It will be of great interest to researchers and students concerned with studies of sensory perceptions.”  ·  Social Anthropology

Most arguments for a rediscovery of the body and the senses hinge on a critique of “visualism” in our globalized, technified society. This approach has led to a lack of actual research on the processes of visual “enskillment.” Providing a comprehensive spectrum of case studies in relevant contexts, this volume raises the issue of the rehabilitation of vision and contextualizes vision in the contemporary debate on the construction of local knowledge vs. the hegemony of the socio-technical network. By maintaining an ethnographic approach, the book provides practical examples that are both accessible to undergraduate students and informative for an academic audience.

Cristina Grasseni, Cambridge M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science, Manchester Ph.D. in Social Anthropology with Visual Media, holds a full-time research position at the Centre for Research on the Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity (CE.R.CO.) at the University of Bergamo, Italy. She has produced an ethnographic documentary in the Italian Alps and published articles and monographs on the anthropology of vision and skill in European ethnography.

Related Link: European Association of Social-Anthropologists (EASA)

Series: Volume 6, EASA Series

Contents

List of Figures
Introduction
Cristina Grasseni
PART I: SKILLED VISIONS AND THE ECOLOGY OF PRACTICE
Chapter 1. ‘To have the world at a distance’: Reconsidering the Significance of Vision for Social Anthropology
Rane Willerslev
Chapter 2. Good Looking: Learning to be a Cattle Breeder
Cristina Grasseni
Chapter 3. Icons and Transvestites: Notes on Irony, Cognition and Visual Skill
Francesco Ronzon
PART II: POSITIONING GESTURES OF DESIGN IN ART, ARCHITECTURE AND LABORATORIES
Chapter 4. Seeing and Drawing: the Role of Play in Medical Imaging
Simon Cohn
Chapter 5. Learning within the Workplaces of Artists, Anthropologists and Architects: Making Stories for Drawings and Writings
Wendy Gunn
Chapter 6. Maps and Plans in ‘Learning to See’: the London Underground and Chartres Cathedral as Examples of Performing Design
David Turnbull
PART III: THE SOCIAL SCHOOLING OF THE EYE IN SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL SETTINGS
Chapter 7. CT Suite: Visual Apprenticeship in the Age of the Mechanical Viewbox
Barry Saunders
Chapter 8. Training the Naturalist’s Eye in the Eighteenth Century: Perfect Global Visions and Local Blind Spots
Daniela Bleichmar
Chapter 9. Navigating the Brainscape: When Knowing Becomes Seeing
Andreas Roepstorff
Epilogue: Envisioning Skills: Insight, Hindsight, and Second Sight
Michael Herzfeld
Notes on Contributors
Index