Cultural Techniques

In a crucial shift within posthumanistic media studies, Bernhard Siegert dissolves the concept of media into a network of operations that reproduce, displace, process, and reflect the distinctions fundamental for a given culture. Cultural Techniques aims to forget our traditional understanding of media so as to redefine the concept through something more fundamental than the empiricist study of a medium’s individual or collective uses or of its cultural semantics or aesthetics. Rather, Siegert seeks to relocate media and culture on a level where the distinctions between object and performance, matter and form, human and nonhuman, sign and channel, the symbolic and the real are still in the process of becoming. The result is to turn ontology into a domain of all that is meant in German by the word Kultur. Cultural techniques comprise not only self-referential symbolic practices like reading, writing, counting, or image-making. The analysis of artifacts as cultural techniques emphasizes their ontological status as “in-betweens,” shifting from firstorder to second-order techniques, from the technical to the artistic, from object to sign, from the natural to the cultural, from the operational to the representational. Cultural Techniques ranges from seafaring, drafting, and eating to the production of the sign-signaldistinction in old and new media, to the reproduction of anthropological difference, to the study of trompe-l’oeils, grids, registers, and doors. Throughout, Siegert addresses fundamental questions of how ontological distinctions can be replaced by chains of operations that process those alleged ontological distinctions within the ontic. Grounding posthumanist theory both historically and technically, this book opens up a crucial dialogue between new German media theory and American postcybernetic discourses.

This volume presents the preliminary results of the work carried out by the interdisciplinary cultural techniques research lab at the University of Erfurt. Taking up an impulse from media studies, its contributions examine —from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—the interplay between the formative processes of knowledge and action outlined within the conceptual framework of cultural techniques. Case studies in the fields of history, literary (and media) studies, and the history of science reconstruct seemingly fundamental demarcations such as nature and culture, the human and the nonhuman, and materiality and the symbolical order as the result of concrete practices and operations. These studies reveal that particularly basic operations of spatialization form the very conditions that determine emergence within any cultural order. Ranging from manual and philological "paper work" to practices of opening up and closing off spaces and collective techniques of assembly, these case studies replace the grand narratives of cultural history focusing on micrological examinations of specific constellations between human and nonhuman actors.

The first of its kind, this series is devoted to the use of physical principles in the study and scientific conservation of objects with cultural heritage significance. It begins with a review of the modern museum, which discusses new techniques employed in the conservation of museum artifacts such as X-ray tomography and other techniques used to study Egyptian mummies, bones and mineralization of bones in the archaeological context, and the degradation of parchment. All of these topics and techniques are essential for the preservation of our history. This includes finding ways to preserve parchment documents and letters, which much of our written heritage is documented on, so that it can be used and understood for generations to come. This book is a must have for any museum as well as any university that teaches or employs the techniques discussed. Written in a style that is readily understandable by conservation scientists, archaeologists, museum curators, and students Provides an introduction to the advanced fields of synchrotron radiation science, neutron science, and computed tomography Outstanding review of the use of modern technology to study museum and archaeological artifacts Offers solutions through advanced scientific techniques to a wide range of problems facing museum staff

Aerobiology is the science that studies the biological component of the atmosphere and its effects on living systems and on the environment. This term was used for the first time in 1935, but the attention of scientists to the biological component of the atmosphere goes back to 1769, when the Italian biologist Spallanzani carried out a series of experiments that disproved the concept of spontaneous generation of life and proved the presence of viable microorganisms in the air. Aerobiology has marked characteristics of interdisciplinarity: its application fields range from respiratory diseases to the airborne outbreak of animal and vegetal diseases and to the biodegradation of substances and materials. The latter is the subject of this book. The purpose of aerobiological research applied to the conservation of cultural heritage is to evaluate the risk of alteration by airborne microorganisms of materials forming artefacts of historical, artistic and archaeological interest. Airborne spores and vegetative structures may develop on different substrates and may be a cause of degradation, in relation to the types of materials, the microclimatic situation and the pollution of the conservation environments. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the biological component of air, performed by means of targeted analysis campaigns, and of the characteristics of materials and environments, supplies indispensable information for the evaluation of the actual risk and the planning of interventions. This book is divided into four main parts.

Intended to bridge the gap between the latest methodological developments and cross-cultural research, this interdisciplinary resource presents the latest strategies for analyzing cross-cultural data. Techniques are demonstrated through the use of applications that employ cross national data sets such as the latest European Social Survey. With an emphasis on the generalized latent variable approach, internationally–prominent researchers from a variety of fields explain how the methods work, how to apply them, and how they relate to other methods presented in the book. Syntax and graphical and verbal explanations of the techniques are included. A website features some of the data sets and syntax commands used in the book. Applications from the behavioral and social sciences that use real data-sets demonstrate: The use of samples from 17 countries to validate the resistance to change scale across these nations How to test the cross-national invariance properties of social trust The interplay between social structure, religiosity, values, and social attitudes A comparison of anti-immigrant attitudes and patterns of religious orientations across European countries. The book is divided into techniques for analyzing cross-cultural data within the generalized-latent-variable approach: multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis and multiple-group structural equation modeling; multi-level analysis; latent class analysis; and item-response theory. Since researchers from various disciplines often use different methodological approaches, a consistent framework for describing and applying each method is used so as to cross ‘methodological borders’ between disciplines. Some chapters describe the basic strategy and how it relates to other techniques presented in the book, others apply the techniques and address specific research questions, and a few combine the two. A table in the preface highlights for each chapter: a description of the contents, the statistical methods used, the goal(s) of the analysis, and the data set employed. This book is intended for researchers, practitioners, and advanced students interested in cross-cultural research. Because the applications span a variety of disciplines, the book will appeal to researchers and students in: psychology, political science, sociology, education, marketing and economics, geography, criminology, psychometrics, epidemiology, and public health, as well as those interested in methodology. It is also appropriate for an advanced methods course in cross-cultural analysis.

The Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, now in its second edition, maintains a strong benchmark for understanding the scope of contemporary anthropological field methods. Avoiding divisive debates over science and humanism, the contributors draw upon both traditions to explore fieldwork in practice. The second edition also reflects major developments of the past decade, including: the rising prominence of mixed methods, the emergence of new technologies, and evolving views on ethnographic writing. Spanning the chain of research, from designing a project through methods of data collection and interpretive analysis, the Handbook features new chapters on ethnography of online communities, social survey research, and network and geospatial analysis. Considered discussion of ethics, epistemology, and the presentation of research results to diverse audiences round out the volume. The result is an essential guide for all scholars, professionals, and advanced students who employ fieldwork.

Our day-to-day musical enjoyment seems so simple, so easy, so automatic. Songs instantly emanate from our computers and phones, at any time of day. The tools for playing and making music, such as records and guitars, wait for us in stores, ready for purchase and use. And when we no longer need them, we can leave them at the curb, where they disappear effortlessly and without a trace. These casual engagements often conceal the complex infrastructures that make our musical cultures possible. Audible Infrastructures takes readers to the sawmills, mineshafts, power grids, telecoms networks, transport systems, and junk piles that seem peripheral to musical culture and shows that they are actually pivotal to what music is, how it works, and why it matters. Organized into three parts dedicated to the main phases in the social life and death of musical commodities resources and production, circulation and transmission, failure and waste this book provides a concerted archaeology of music's media infrastructures. As contributors reveal the material-environmental realities and political-economic conditions of music and listening, they open our eyes to the hidden dimensions of how music is made, delivered, and disposed of. In rethinking our responsibilities as musicians and listeners, this book calls for nothing less than a reconsideration of how music comes to sound.