For those with wistful memories of the Mk 1 and 2 Ford Escort - motoring classics - then the following article on the BBC website will revive fond memories. It did for me: the third and final car I bought in 1990 was a secondhand Mk 2 Ford Escort, sky blue with imitation chrome wheels. It got stolen twice though both times I recovered it undamaged, albeit stereo system missing. I think the car thieves used a duplicate set of keys each time, which was a bit alarming.

In any case, my point is that the article - on the BBC Magazine website - is worth reading for enthusiasts of far-away British colonial outposts, and most interestingly, Ford Escorts. Given the difficultly of shipping goods to St Helena in the South Atlantic, any former owner of a Ford Escort can understand why this special car can endure on this remote island. I remember one of the main reasons that I bought my Escort was because it was then one of the easiest cars to maintain.

For those more interested anthropology and material culture, small islands and cultures of repair seems like an interesting area to explore.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8465785.stm

I have always been drawn to anthropological research I never intended to undertake, but just couldn’t help myself. I am writing this towards the end of a period of fieldwork in Trinidad. I am here with Mirca Madianou to study the way new media impact upon transnational relationships in comparison with research undertaken last year in the Philippines which we are working up as a book, probably to be called Distant Parenting. But I just know that I wont be able to stop myself writing at least some papers if not a book about Facebook in Trinidad, because the country seems in the grip of something like a Facebook frenzy which I seem to have been increasingly researching as the fieldwork progresses. To be `Fas’ in Trinidad is to be too quickly into someone else’s business another related word is Maco, that is to view others peoples private business and Facebook is also called Maco book. Since this is seen as a national characteristic leading to the disorder of bacchanal there is a general feeling that Facebook was invented to exacerbate the very nature of being Trinidadian. Indeed as consistent with my previous work I now see Facebook as something invented by Trinidadians. As it happens the word Friending or to Friend is also a common traditional expression in Trinidad unfortunately it meant to have sex with, I am not quite sure about the implications of that particular semantic juxtaposition.

What makes Facebook a natural topic of enquiry is its ubiquity in the country resonating with the anthropological sensibility towards the holistic. It has been important in galvanising the response to the recent catastrophe of fellow Caribbeans in Haiti, as well as in more local politics. It is at the heart of our intended topic of transnational relationships but equally in the reinvigorisation of specifically Trinidadian identity. It provides considerable insights into traditional topics such as the nature of community and family, with a marked effect on both. It may be used for religious expression, and is a common way to conduct business and economic transactions. As such the given literature on the social networks which tended to presume that their early use, mainly for student sociality, was also their given property, is only a very partial insight into the nature of Facebook as it establishes itself as a global phenomenon. Actually the topic had already arisen in our previous work in the Philippines and we had submitted a journal publication called `Should you accept a mother’s friends request?’ which looks at the clash between two networks that, of kinship and peergroup, (not yet heard if this was accepted). But already it is evident that Facebook is becoming so much more than networking.

Let me end with one particular characteristic of Facebook that demonstrates its particular relevance to material and visual culture. In the previous paper we hasd discussed the issue of making relationships visible as an extension of theoretical discussion by Marilyn Strathern. I had also been made aware of the consequences of relationship breakup for deactivation in research work by the anthropologist Ilana Gershon. But here in Trinidad the concern is not only with the consequences of breakup but with the way the very visibility of one’s partners other relationships makes it harder to sustain relationships. For example in an interview yesterday a young woman talked of four of her friends relationships she was convinced had ended almost entirely because of this effect of being on Facebook. This is just one of many instances where at least Trinidadians are convinced that the technology in and of itself is changing what it means to be Trinidadian. Something I am hoping to give time to think about more deeply over the next few months.

The Asian/Pacific American Documentary Heritage Archives Survey is the first systematic attempt to map available and potential Asian/Pacific American archival collections in the New York metropolitan area. The project seeks to address the underrepresentation of East Coast Asian America in historic scholarship and archives by working with community-based organizations and individuals to survey their records and raise awareness within the community about the importance of documenting and preserving their histories.

There are some amazing archival resources from private collections, through art galleries, foundations, and theatres..

Copenhagen, 16-19 September, 2010

The 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held at the University of Copenhagen, 16–19 September, 2010.

This year’s cross-disciplinary conference focuses on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary developments in medical science and technology.

The image of medicine that emerges from most museum galleries and exhibitions is still dominated by pre-modern and modern understandings of an anatomical and physiological body, and by the diagnostic and therapeutical methods and instruments used to intervene with the body at the ‘molar’ and tangible level – limbs, organs, tissues, etc.

The rapid transition in the medical and health sciences and technologies over the last 50 years – towards a molecular understanding of human body in health and disease and the rise of a host of molecular and digital technologies for investigating and intervening with the body – is still largely absent in museum collections and exhibitions.

The contemporary transition in medical and health science and technology towards molecularisation, miniaturisation, mediated visualisation, digitalisation and intangibilisation is a major challenge for the museum world; not only for medical museums, but also for museums of science and technology, and indeed for all kinds of museums with an interest in the human body and the methods for intervening with it, including art museums, natural history museums and museums of cultural history.

Contemporary medicine is not only a challenge to exhibition design practices and public outreach strategies but also to acquisition methodologies, collection management and collection-based research. How do museums today handle the material and visual heritage of contemporary medical and health science and technology? How do curators wield the increasing amount and kinds of intangible scientific and digital objects? Which intellectual, conceptual, and practical questions does this challenge give rise to?

The conference will address questions like (but not limited to):

+ How can an increasingly microanatomical, molecularised, invisible and intangible (mediated) human body be represented in a museum setting? Does the post-anatomical body require new kinds of museum displays?

+ How can museums make sense of contemporary molecular-based and digitalised diagnostic and thereapeutic technologies, instrumentation and investigation practices in their display practices?

+ How can museums make use of their older collections together with new acquisitions from contemporary medicine and health science and technology?

+ What is the role of the visual vs. the non-visual (hearing, smell, taste, touch) senses in curatorial practice and in the public displays of contemporary medical science and technology?

+ What can museums learn from science centers, art-science event venues etc. with respect to the public engagement with contemporary medical science and technology? And, vice versa, what can museums provide that these institutions cannot?

+ How can museums draw on bioart, ‘wet art’ and other art forms to stimulate public engagement with the changing medical and health system?

+ How does physical representations of contemporary medicine in museums spaces relate to textual representations in print and digital representations on the web?

+ How can museums integrate emerging social web technologies (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) in the build-up of medical and health exhibitions?

+ What kind of acquisition methods and policies are needed for museums to catch up with the development of contemporary medical science and technology, especially the proliferation of molecular and digital artefacts and images?

+ What kind of problems do museum encounter when they expand the acquisition domain from traditional textual, visual and tangible material objects to digital artefacts (including software, audio- and videorecordings, and digitally stored data) and non-tangible scientific objects.

+ How can participatory acquisitioning, crowd-sourcing, wiki-based methods, etc. (‘museum 2.0’) be employed for the preservation and curation of the contemporary medical heritage?

+ How can curatorial work in museums draw on medical research and engineering and on academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences? And, vice versa, how can museums contribute to medical teaching and research and how can their collections stimulate the use of physical objects in the humanities and social sciences?

The conference will employ a variety of session formats. In addition to keynotes and sessions with individual presentations of current research and curatorial work there will also be discussion panels and object demonstration workshops.

We welcome submissions from a wide range of scholars and specialists – including, for example, curators in medical, science and technology museums; scholars in the history, philosophy and social studies of medicine, science and technology; scholars in science and technology studies, science communication studies, museum studies, material studies and visual culture studies; biomedical scientists and clinical specialists, medical, health and pharma industry specialists with an interest in science communication; engineers and designers in the medical device industry; artists, designers and architects with an interest in museum displays, etc.

We are especially interested in presentations that involve the use of material and visual artefacts and we therefore encourage participants to bring illustrative and evocative (tangible or non-tangible) objects for demonstration.

100-300 word proposals for presentations, demonstrations, discussion panels, etc. shall be sent before 28 February 2010 to the chair of the program committee, Thomas Soderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk.

For further information, see http://tinyurl.com/ylx5atx or contact Thomas Soderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk. For practical information about travel, accommodation, etc., please contact Anni Harris, konference2010@sund.ku.dk, after 4 January 2010.

The 15th biannual conference of EAMHMS is hosted by Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen.

This article on the BBC Technology website presents some of the latest gadgets designed for use in schools. It shows some of the new devices used for administering student attendence, interactive teaching and immersive teaching environments. As the school classroom becomes increasingly technologically sophisticated, how much do we really learn at school anyway? And what is wrong with the trusted ruler, compass and blackboard? Surely, these are questions to be asked by anthropologists.
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_8459000/8459207.stm

Graeme Were, UCL

BBC Radio 4 recently kicked off a new series on the collections of British Museum called A History of the World in One Hundred Objects. The programme, written and presented by BM director Neil MacGregor, aims to tell the entire history of the world in a 100 15-minute episodes focusing on key objects in the BM's permanent collections. Each episode will concentrate on one 'thing' in the museum, explore its context and significance in the culture that produced it, together with its collection history and interpretation.

More about the series can be found by clicking: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/explorerflash/

Editorial Comment: If the story of the world can be told in 100 objects, maybe the BM can start thinking about giving back some of its 7 million or so objects it has in its collections.

The start date for the postholder is 1st September 2010.

The successful applicant must hold a PhD and be able to demonstrate a strong record of research and publication. Applications from qualified candidates specialising in any area of the world are welcome.

For more information and how to apply:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/vacancies/adverts/job-list.html

“A place dwelt in by the same person over a period of time becomes a portrait unto itself, through the objects (present or absent) and the uses that they suppose…” (De Certeau y Giard, 1999).

Domesticity defined as an interdisciplinary field of study of social space traditionally linked with the house, home and everyday life implies the analysis of daily practices, discourses and images that produce and reproduce it in time (Cieraad; 2000; Blunt y Dowling 2006) .

Within this focus my research tries to outline some interpretative elements in the construction of domesticity in Santiago –Chile between 1930-1960. On the one hand, the research approaches the everyday practices of domesticity in the context of Santiago elite, taking the historical perspective of inhabitants of the first garden suburb called Barrio El Golf. This suburb was inaugurated in the 30’s and represented the definitive abandonment of the city centre by the elite in favor of a new suburban family and domestic way of life (Fishman, 1987, Sennett 1975). The suburban process as a historically situated phenomenon, produced a specific domesticity that spread as one of the central elements of western culture. In this way, we can link suburbanization, with a particular moment of domesticity, in which emerges new imaginaries of living at home (Mumford; 1979; 641).

On the other hand, the research includes the analysis of discourses and images within the social imaginaries of the period, present in the weekly women’s magazines that proliferate from the beginning of the 20th century, and in institutional publications that reproduced an official discourse about home. In this way, the research connects an analysis ofthe specificity of the elite within the frame of a suburban ideal with a more general reflection about the social meanings of domesticity that circulated in that period.

From this juxtaposition the research tries to identify the particular meanings that domesticity takes within a process of modernization of urban life that begins in the early twentieth century and represents both certain continuities and breaks with a more traditional meaning of domesticity linked to the values of family and home along with patterns in the use of domestic space that were deeply rooted in earlier Chilean society.

Seminar Programme, Spring Term 2010

Guest convenor: James Kneale, UCL

19th January 2010
David Beckingham (University of Cambridge)
Liberalism, liberty and the geography of the Inebriates Acts, 1879-1914

2nd February 2010
Stella Moss (University of Oxford)
Spitting and Sitting: Gender, Space and the English Public House, 1918-39

16th February 2010
James Brown (University of Oxford)
Drinking Geographies in Early Modern England

2nd March 2010
Deborah Toner (University of Warwick)
Everything in its Right Place? Drinking Spaces and Popular Culture in 19th Century Mexican Literature

16th March 2010
James Nicholls (Bath Spa University)
The pub and the people: drinking spaces and UK alcohol policy, past and present

LGHG is grateful to the Historical Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway, Kings, UCL, the Open University and the IHR for supporting this series.