Papers by Timothy Carroll
Routledge eBooks, Jan 16, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Nov 10, 2020
The London-based New Scientist Magazine has been publishing popular science and technology news s... more The London-based New Scientist Magazine has been publishing popular science and technology news since 1956. Each year it holds a large 4-day conference in London, called 'New Scientist Live', hosting talks and exhibitions from many of Europe's leading innovators and scientists, and attracting tens of thousands of visitors. The exhibition and speaker's space is divided into 5 main stage areas: Cosmos, Earth, Humans, Technology and Engineering. While these categories have always overlapped to varying degrees, their distinctions are increasingly becoming blurred. In 2018, a talk on 'Boosting your brain with electricity and magnets' on the Humans Stage was delivered simultaneously with a talk on 'Building bionic people' on the Engineering Stage, as well as two talks titled 'The posthuman future' and 'Our cyborg future' on the Technology Stage. One of the implications of this overlap, and an intellectual challenge for scholars in these disciplines, is that the material form of the human body and external material forms of engineering and technology are increasingly imbricated.
Anthropology & Medicine, 2022
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Orthodox Christians globally reacted to the possibility of contagio... more As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Orthodox Christians globally reacted to the possibility of contagion and risk in dialogue with theological positions about materials, their own long history which includes surviving previous pandemics and plagues, governmental and civil expectations and edicts, and pious – but often unofficial – understandings about protection and the sacrality of religious artefacts and the space of the temple. This article draws upon primary ethnographic research amongst Orthodox Christians in the UK, Serbia, Greece and Russia, as well as news articles about and primary ecclesiastical documents from Orthodox Churches more widely, to highlight commonalities and divergences in Orthodox Christian responses to the pandemic. Examining both the theological basis, and socio-political differences, this article considers how the Orthodox theology of apophaticism and relationality impacts wider discourses of contagion (both positive and negative), and consequently compliance with public health initiatives. Comparison across diverse Orthodox settings suggests that Orthodox Christians are concerned with the neighbour – both in terms of who may be watching (and reporting) them, and who may fall sick because of them.
Journal of Material Culture, 2016
In 1996, the first editorial in the first issue of this Journal defined material culture studies ... more In 1996, the first editorial in the first issue of this Journal defined material culture studies as the investigation of the relationship between people and things irrespective of time and space. The perspective adopted may be global or local, concerned with the past or the present, or the mediation between the two. Defined in this manner, the potential range of contemporary disciplines involved in some way or other in studying material culture is effectively as wide as the human and cultural sciences themselves. (Editorial Board, 1996: 5) In this way, the editors staked a ground for a non-sectarian, undisciplined approach to the study of the material world that they construed as inherently social. They also proposed that the methods, and theoretical frames, to draw out meaning from within objects, be grounded with relational perspective that they framed as a dialectic-in which persons and things are involved in a cyclical process of mutual constitution. The first issue contained articles on art and agency, landscape, pottery, consumption and religion, written by anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. Twenty years on, much has changed but the original ethos of the Journal-a commitment to a broad-based, undisciplined, global perspective on material culture-has remained. Since this initial framing, the analytic scaffold for understanding material culture studies has greatly expanded. It is not an exaggeration to say that an appreciation for material culture has become mainstream in many fields, from sociology to art history, philosophy and science studies. This remarkable growth of interest in and thinking about material culture has allowed us to refine several of the frameworks established in the first editorial. In the first instance, the language that we use to describe things, objects and artefacts has itself come under scrutiny. The frameworks we might draw on for the interpretation of the relations between people and things (broadly conceived) has been enriched by work that insists on not just a dialectical model, but rather draws on concepts of materialism (Fowler and Harris,
Anthropology and Medicine, 2022
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Orthodox Christians globally reacted to the possibility of contagio... more As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Orthodox Christians globally reacted to the possibility of contagion and risk in dialogue with theological positions about materials, their own long history which includes surviving previous pandemics and plagues, governmental and civil expectations and edicts, and pious – but often unofficial – understandings about protection and the sacrality of religious artefacts and the space of the temple. This article draws upon primary ethnographic research amongst Orthodox Christians in the UK, Serbia, Greece and Russia, as well as news articles about and primary ecclesiastical documents from Orthodox Churches more widely, to highlight commonalities and divergences in Orthodox Christian responses to the pandemic. Examining both the theological basis, and socio-political differences, this article considers how the Orthodox theology of apophaticism and relationality impacts wider discourses of contagion (both positive and negative), and consequently compliance with public health initiatives. Comparison across diverse Orthodox settings suggests that Orthodox Christians are concerned with the neighbour – both in terms of who may be watching (and reporting) them, and who may fall sick because of them.
Rather than viewing concepts such as failure, incoherence or incompetence as antithetical to soci... more Rather than viewing concepts such as failure, incoherence or incompetence as antithetical to social life, this innovative new book examines the unexpected and surprising ways in which failure can lead to positive and creative results.
World Art, 2017
This paper addresses the ritual aesthetics of mundane aspects within the global Eastern Orthodox ... more This paper addresses the ritual aesthetics of mundane aspects within the global Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgical practice. By comparing a variety of 'local practices' within the liturgical traditions of various Orthodox Christian communities, the paper explores how commonly held ethical commitments are expressed in radically different-and at times exactly opposite-practices of quotidian religion. In this evaluation of 'little traditions' within the 'great tradition' of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the paper focuses on the beauty, judgement, and affect of local practices and their relation within the larger canonically inscribed theology of 'correct practice' (orthopraxy). Drawing upon anthropological and sociological theory of art, aesthetics, and invention, the paper argues that aesthetics is localised ethics in practice.
The New Bioethics, 2016
Techniques and technologies of and on the body are always social. Thinking through these practice... more Techniques and technologies of and on the body are always social. Thinking through these practices can tell us something of the concerns and complexities of the people who practice them. This collection addresses the body as a technical apparatus of aesthetic performance and ethical commitments. Each of the papers work through intrusions in and extensions out of the body in order to understand the sociocultural genesis of the body as its boundaries are negotiated, contested, and blurred. Ethnographic accounts exploring intrusions into the body such as artful body modifications, medical interventions, and cyborgian movements of enhancement are taken alongside extensions out of the body into institutional, architectural, and ecological environments. In so doing, this short collection of papers seeks to understand how people partner themselves with techniques and technologies of and on the body to form new subjectivities in their aesthetic engagement with internal and external realities. It furthermore helps to fill a need within interdisciplinary discussions of the body to think through the human body as a site of technical engagement enmeshed within complex negotiations of value and meta-values. In this way it defines these delimitations of the body as complex bioethical issues. This special issue is the result of two symposia: one held at University College London in July 2015; the other, in Denver, Colorado as part of the programme of the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in December 2015. As such, this collection is the product of a collaborative effort on the part of the authors and associated colleagues (most notably David Jeevendrampillai, with whom we organized the original July symposium). Together we have sought to understand how people ally themselves with technology, render the body a sited technology, use bodily techniques, and extend themselves within medical, urban, and religious environments to form new subjectivities. This collection pulls together research exploring a range of engagements with the body such as: artful body modifications, medical interventions, cyborgian movements of enhancement, and interactions with the 'deceased' body, as well as the potentiality of objects and artefacts within the wider material ecology external to the body to act as a sort of 'living prosthetic', oftentimes linked to material-discursive claims of ownership and control. The papers presented in this collection are ethnographically diverse, but they each bring to the conversation a key aspect needed to understand our overarching
The New Bioethics, 2016
This paper addresses the Christian religious tradition of understanding the human body as the 'te... more This paper addresses the Christian religious tradition of understanding the human body as the 'temple of the Holy Spirit' within the context of body modification in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Drawing on ethnographic research in Jerusalem and Kansas City, interviews with artists and Orthodox Christians, and theological discourses on the body and art, this paper seeks to understand how the body is treated by Orthodox Christians and evaluates the ethical commitments and contestations around the human body and religious practice. The paper focuses specifically on tattooing practices, which, though typically prohibited in conservative forms of Christianity, are nonetheless practiced as a means of devotion in specific Eastern Orthodox Christian settings. These modifications to the body are taken in dialogue with ritual and practical concerns exhibited in Eastern Orthodox burial practice. The paper argues that while there are commonalities across Eastern Orthodox practice, the ethical implications of specific actions are highly contextualised and must be interpreted within local regimes of aesthetic behaviour. In many forms of Christian tradition, the human body is taken to be a temple of the Holy Spirit 1. What this means is interpreted in a number of different ways, in dialogue with various theological understandings of the person, the Holy Spirit, and wider cultural systems. In most cases, it is used to restrict the kinds of things that can be done to the body-against sexual promiscuity, tattooing, piercing, or other practices which may be seen to blemish the body in some way and thereby make it less suitable as a dwelling for the Holy Spirit. What I pursue here is an understanding of the body-as-temple trope within the practice of Orthodox Christians. While this is done with some mind to the Oriental 1 Taken from such passages of the New Testament as 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19-20, or Ephesians 2:19-22. Orthodox practices-such as those spoken of in Antohin's work on Ethiopian tattooing practice (this volume)-I focus on those practices done by Eastern Orthodox Christians. 2 Eastern (Antiochian, Russian, Greek, Serbian, etc.) and Oriental (Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian, etc.) Orthodoxies have some clear overlap, particularly in those local populations, such as in Egypt and the Levant, wherein the two Christian traditions live alongside each other and, at times, worship at the same sacred sites. Both principle case studies discussed in this paper, in fact, arise from contexts wherein there is active cross-pollination between Eastern and Oriental Christian tradition. But, while there is no doubt that the respective traditions are related, it is worth noting from the outset that they have different theologies of the image-something that will become important as the paper turns to discuss icons in relation to the body. The paper first outlines the body-as-temple trope within a close network of related, often refracting, tropes of the person, the icon, and the church. Drawing from Orthodox Christian religious tradition-both in doctrine and practice-I develop these three tropes as the space within which the human body, and consequently its delimitations, can be understood. Looking at the ethical concerns around the body, I will address one specific type of temple renovation-the devotional tattoo-in order to offer insights into the Orthodox Christian body as a socio-cultural artefact. It is worth noting that while there is an extensive body of literature on tattoos in anthropology (see, for one example, Gell 1993), I reference none of it in this paper. This is because the kind of tattoo discussed here, what I am calling a 'devotional tattoo', is something of a specific practice better understood
Surgical interventions are not often the focus of medical anthropological projects and yet offer ... more Surgical interventions are not often the focus of medical anthropological projects and yet offer a way in which anthropologists might go 'beyond the body proper' (Farquhar and Lock 2007). This call for a different type of engagement with the body, alongside approaches that seek to include more material aspects of health and illness within an ethnographic study, challenge a division between the biological (or 'nature') as the site of investigation for medicine, and the social (or 'culture') and the point of interest for anthropology. Instead, this position argues that we can never be separated from the material world-our bodies and our health are both constituted of, and made through, the material. A more traditional anthropological approach to surgery might focus on accounts of the experience of (in this case) the women undergoing surgery, decisions they have made around this, and attitudes towards their body and to medicine. It might also consider relations between medical professionals and how they interact with patients. By focusing on accounts and experiences and leaving everything within the skin as the domain of medicine, a distinction between the biological and the sociocultural is set up, with clinicians working in the domain of the former while the anthropological gaze is restricted to the latter. This dualist separation suggests that 'nature' and 'culture' can, and should, be examined separately, the boundaries between both clear and stable. Such a separation is directly challenged by work both within medical anthropology and in biomedicine, for example, on chronic conditions, epigenetics, and so-called lifestyle diseases. Through such examples, the social and biological cannot be so clearly drawn apart, and medical anthropologists increasingly look to include the materiality of the body in their work. Such an approach also challenges an acceptance of the body as a universal, uniform, and standard 'body proper.' The body is obviously not a new focus within anthropology and has generated many different approaches, such as Durkheim's (1995 [1912 ]) split between higher socialised bodies and the physical body, Mary Douglas' (1973) natural bodies used as social analogies, and Foucauldian disciplinary bodies of governmentality (
The London-based New Scientist Magazine has been publishing popular science and technology news s... more The London-based New Scientist Magazine has been publishing popular science and technology news since 1956. Each year it holds a large 4-day conference in London, called ‘New Scientist Live’, hosting talks and exhibitions from many of Europe’s leading innovators and scientists, and attracting tens of thousands of visitors. The exhibition and speaker’s space is divided into 5 main stage areas: Cosmos, Earth, Humans, Technology and Engineering. While these categories have always overlapped to varying degrees, their distinctions are increasingly becoming blurred. In 2018, a talk on ‘Boosting your brain with electricity and magnets’ on the Humans Stage was delivered simultaneously with a talk on ‘Building bionic people’ on the Engineering Stage, as well as two talks titled ‘The posthuman future’ and ‘Our cyborg future’ on the Technology Stage. One of the implications of this overlap, and an intellectual challenge for scholars in these disciplines, is that the material form of the human ...
A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age
The Material Culture of Failure
In the opening chapter, the editors outlined a general theory of failure such that 'material fail... more In the opening chapter, the editors outlined a general theory of failure such that 'material failure' can be understood to occur when 'objectifi cation ceases to adhere'. The language used in this defi nition assumes a processual decomposition: a shoe falling apart, moving from a state wherein the subject can be seen to successfully concretize themselves into an object to one wherein the agentive work of the subject may no longer be the master over the material indexicalities of the thing. In this chapter, I work with a more processual phenomenon of 'failure'. Rather than the material conforming and then not, the materials discussed in this chapter-a parish church building, to be exact-never fully matches the aspirations of the community. Each week, the Orthodox Christian parish of St AEthelwald's enters the space of a homonymous 1 Church of England building in order to set up the space for their weekly liturgy. And while the transformation of the space is successful, such that each week the liturgy is carried out, I argue that the sensual quality of 1 The Orthodox parish and the Anglican parish, both of which have the same patronage and name, are given the same pseudonym here.
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Papers by Timothy Carroll