Boundary Objects Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of World Making in Avant-Garde Fashion Design and Animal Husbandry

Abstract

Drawing on Susan Leigh Star’s conceptualization of boundary objects as a corpus of actions through which an imaginary context for doing social work emerges, this article examines how two seemingly disparate sites of cultural production can be comparatively brought into conversation with one another. These sites include specific expert communities where actors within the fields of fashion design and livestock husbandry both evaluate and theorize new social possibilities. By attending to how these practices unfold through an experimental rendering of expertise this article employs the notion of a boundary object to comparatively analyzing the speculative practices of these two sites.

Notes

¹ Star uses the phrase “interpretive flexibility,” which I have rephrased here for stylistic purposes (2010, p. 602).

² This story’s reflections about the world making practices of fashion designers are based on my own personal experiences conducting 15 months of ethnographic research among student fashion designers and design teachers in Antwerp, Belgium. Prior to conducting this research I studied animal science as an undergraduate for three semesters in the United States, and I competed on a collegiate livestock judging team. Consequently, these experiences have informed the descriptions of the speculative practices I reflect on in this article. However, I have taken creative liberty at certain junctures in order to maintain the stories rhythm and flow, as well as to foreground certain ideas and highlight others. This includes my interactions with Mrs. Audrey, Henry, and Isabella that actually took place over several encounters, and in some cases involved multiple actors. I also draw on the concept of apprenticeship to describe the mode of learning being emphasized in these two settings (cf. Chaiklin & Lave, 1993).

³ All characters are identified using pseudonyms.

⁴ See Sianne Ngai’s (2008) analysis of how the apparently innocent term “interesting” figures into the work of artists and writers.

⁵ Both Richard Sennett (2008) and Tim Ingold (2013) have drawn on their personal experiences playing music to explore the expert practices of makers. Moreover, Jaan Valsiner (in press) has argued that Lev Vygotsky drew on the affective experiences that he encountered in his daily life (home sickness, theater, literature), which he would later use to develop many of his well-known theories. As Valsiner (in press) wrote, “The notion of affective explosion … is central in Vygotsky’s theoretical efforts to explain dialectical synthesis within the psyche, the empirical basis for which he took from Bunin’s short story, as well as fables” (pp. 4–5).

⁶ My use of this term and its intended meaning is drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Antwerp among student fashion designers and teachers, who referred to the research and inspiration they collected and created in order to develop their design collections as a world or imaginary world (the terms dream world, dream world, and atmosphere were also employed). An example of this process is illustrated in Jack’s attempts to identify sources of inspiration and Isabella’s reflections about the inspiration for her collection. That said, Kathleen Stewart’s work and use of the term “worlding” helped me recognize how notions of world making in fashion design could be applied and used to describe the speculative activities of livestock experts (2012; 2014; see also, 2007). What I also like about Stewart’s use of “worlding’ is how the concept pushes one to pause and reflect on the emergent nature or sense of wonder of making (cf. Stengers, 2011, also referenced in Stewart, 2014).

⁷ See Hallam and Ingold’s (2014) edited volume for further examples of how scholars are exploring notions of making and growing across varying socio-cultural contexts.

⁸ Among the design students and teachers I have worked with, the terms “atmosphere” and “design world” are also prevalently used.

⁹ Another important point to consider is how multiple temporalities are being performed through the corpus of actions that constitute boundary objects. What I want to emphasize here is how materializing apparatuses, like imaginary worlds and expert discourses, become sites where multiple temporalities gather and our experienced (sometimes all at once). Thus, these practices provide makers with imaginary aids for tacking back and forth between varying lived experiences (e.g., future, present, distant future, past, as well as a combination of any of these; see Barad, 2003, for a feminist/queer reading of temporality, as well as Guyer, 2007, on the distant future and Guyer, 2013, on “quickening”). It is through these modeling practices that alternative/hybrid/distorted/ fuzzy versions of what could or what might be possible comes into being (Biehl panel presentation at the 2014 American Anthropological Association meetings partly inspired my thinking here).

¹⁰ This interview was part of the fieldwork I conducted in Antwerp, Belgium, which was supported by research grants from the Fulbright Program and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Grant # 7638). Isabella’s interview took place in the spring of 2007. I met her and began observing her initial development of her collection in the fall of 2006. It also should be noted that she had decided to do a men’s collection early on and so her research and reflections often evoke male characters.

¹¹ These values or market ideals informing my evaluation of this pig reflect industry trends between 1993 and 1995. These ideals or evaluative criteria have historically changed over time, an issue that I am beginning to explore and hope to write about in the future.

¹² In the United States agricultural education programs for youth include 4-H and Future Farmers of America. On the collegiate level, livestock judging teams are critical sites where this type of training continues to take place.

¹³ For instance, at these competitions, classes are organized by advanced experts based on varying industry scenarios. These classes are then evaluated by novices who rank the animals in each of these classes from best to the worst. These rankings are then compared and graded against the ranking of the advanced experts who organized the classes, and scores are awarded to contestants.

¹⁴ Examples of ethnographic research on livestock aesthetics include Grasseni’s (2009) examination of the role of beauty among dairy farmers in the Italian Swiss Alps, Weiss’s (2011) research on heritage swine farms in the United States, and Procoli’s (2007) work on the relationship between animal aesthetics and genetics among dairy breeders in France.

¹⁵ For instance, cattle are produced in varying environmental locales, which impact their ability to reproduce, care for their young, and stay fit and healthy. In certain settings a calf with a high birth rate could jeopardize the health of his mother or their ability to be born. At another point in this calf’s life, their ability to maintain an acceptable growth rate may become an important consideration for livestock evaluators.

¹⁶ Kraeftner is particularly interested in the fable. See also Kraeftner et al (2010), which is concerned with how sensations, like humor, can disrupt medical models that define comatose patients as noncognizant.