writing the implosion

Dumit, Joseph. "Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time." Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 2 (2014):344-362.

Dumit's article outlines sets of questions to interrogate objects and think with them.  It's a great exercise to introduce the extent of Anthropological study to students. Since discovering this article, I find I turn to these questions when taking on new projects or lines of inquiry. For me, it's a great way to identify threads that I have failed to consider or even realize, and to make new connections between what I have considered. It drives my work forward, enabling me to find new inspiration. I use it as a list to refer back to when I am lost in the research process, I add on to this and answer questions as I continue through the research process.

Below is a sample of my initial (and incomplete) engagement with Dumit's questions (which are italicized) in relation to my PhD project, where I will complete fieldwork on the Trent-Severn Waterway. 

map found on wikipedia commons

1) Labor dimensions: 
How was it produced and who is involved in its production?

-govt of Upper Canada. Loggers timberers, Farmers 
Are there stages in its production? 
Locks/dams / adjoining canals built separately

Where has it traveled to and from?

Waters travel from Georgian Bay (Lake Huron) to Bay of Quinte (Lake Ontario)

What are the histories of its productions?

Who maintains these processes of production?

Parks Canada

Where are they maintained?

How is it used and how is using it seen as labor, or not?

Used as a recreational waterway- to escape labour, to escape capitalism. For rest and relaxation. To explore.

What forms of labor and work incorporate it or make use of it?

Recreational/hospitality industry.

Employees are Government employees – seasonal work.

Is it used up?

If not, how is it passed on, transferred, communicated?

What routes do these processes take?

What kinds of actors (human and nonhuman) are involved, and what kinds are excluded?

Humans. Water.

2) Professional/Epistemological dimensions:

How is knowledge of the process and its production demarcated and professionalized?

Aquatic management

Rec management

Waterway management

engineering

What kinds of knowledge count in talking about it?

-       Parks Canada  - Recreational use

-       Historical - National historic Site – limited to European use of waterway

-       Engineering

-       Scientific – what is in water (species, chemicals,)

What kind of professionals are involved in making expert decisions regarding its development, production, and dissemination?

-       engineers

-       scientists

-       experts on Canalways – Symposium on Canals

How are each of these stages funded?

-       Parks Canada

-       Federal Government of Canada

In projecting its future use?

What kinds of controversies of this knowledge are happening?

-       Wild rice harvesting site / traditional territory of Anishinaabe people VS. land owners allowed to rid water front of intrusive species in way of their boat motors/ maneuverability of their water frontage.

Who is involved?

In what kinds of institutions do they work?

How is it articulated by medical, legal, governmental, religious, psychological, engineering, military, economic, academic, new age, and educational professionals?

What are the political-economic histories of this?
- use of FN peoples for thousands of years. Political project for building infrastructure in the New world – Upper Canada. Never used. Political project of expropriating land from First Nations. Gain control of important waterway.

Hold control of corridor. Stations at each lock.

3) Material dimensions:

What materials are involved in its production and maintenance?

Water. Earth. Metal. Steel, concrete, generators, oil, wood, irrigation.

Where have these materials come from?

How are they disposed of?  

Water- into watershed.

What hazards are considered among these materials?

What are the labor dimensions of these material productions?

What are the global, economic, and political dimensions of their use?

What are the histories, sciences, and political dimensions of these materials?

How do these help constitute it?

4) Technological dimensions:

What kinds of technologies and machines enable it to be produced and maintained?

Boats, motors. Gears. Locks. hydraulics

Locks and Dams, canals

What technologies are joined with it?

Boats, cars, trains, engines

Who has access to these machines and technologies?

People with money

What are their histories?

Entangled with colonial history

What sorts of information technologies are involved?

What are the political, economic, bodily, labor, and historical dimensions of these technologies?

How do they help constitute it?

5) Context and situatedness:

Where does it appear in the world?

 Appear as infrastructure projects of ‘modern’ countries. Enable ease of shipping. Enable ability to move through regions/areas.

How does it appear and next to what or in what?

Access to resources. Access to people. Access to land.

What activities or ways of life enable one to come across it?

Today – this is a site of recreation. People on these waters easily access it in their boats. But it is a site primarily used by privileged people who have the ability to afford the boats, engines, fuel, fees required to access locks, mooring etc. required to utilize the waterway. Parks Canada oversees the management of this recreational infrastructure. And priviligese property ownership and the ease through which boats can maneuver for how the waterway is to be used and maintained.

What kinds of audiences is it addressed to?

Outdoorsman – people seeking mythological Canada.

Who is excluded in these addresses?

History of Indigenous peoples. Their use of and traditions along and throughout this waterway. History of this area understood and realized as an engineering marveling feat. The history of colonial structures and the building of Canada.

When can it appear?

May through October -- - speaks to its use as a recreational waterway rather than of any particular value for commercial purposes.

What is the rhythm of its appearance?

Summertime.

How does this matter?

6) Political dimensions:

What kinds of local, national, and international bodies claim jurisdiction over it?

National historic site.

Parks Canada

Which is member of Canals international.

Historic societies.

Curve Lake First Nation?

What bodies play a part in approving it (e.g., lobbyists, patents, corporate sponsorship, etc.)?

Federal Government.

Local governments (???)

Engineering practice standards.

Water governance.

What are the histories of regulations concerning it?

How do these regulations help constitute it?

How is it understood in terms of political positions in the world?

How can we articulate the ways it is understood with political discourses?

How is it hegemonic—in what ways can we see it as marshaling our consent to dominant orders?

White privilege – conquest and the erasure of Indigenous cultures.

Domination and control over the environment.

What kinds of legislation affect it?

Water governance.

Boating practices. Infrastructure.

Historical conservation.

How do political considerations make use of it?

Has been continue to be a site of political positioning.

--- historically used as a site for political support.

Currently this continues with restoration of heritage ways.

---- predominantly a site used by wealthy white people vacationing—maintanence of this waterway could be seen as a way to garner votes?

What are the political positions as seen through the lens of this artifact (they often vary by artifact and moment)?

How does this matter?

7) Economic dimensions:

The process as commodity: how is it marketed, purchased, consumed?

Where and by whom?

How is it involved in a world marketplace?

What kinds of capital, debt, credit, and labor relations are involved in producing, marketing, and circulating it?

Who sells it?

How are costs calculated?

How are risks calculated?

By whom and when?

What are the histories and materialities of those relations?

Who is involved at each stage and how are differences in power situated?

How do these help constitute it?

8) Textual dimensions:

What texts are involved in it?

Historical – on the building of it. On Champlains voyage through it.

Recreational – guides to vacationing

-       guides/charts of waters

-       edibility of species

-       archaeological research on sites.

What texts refer to it?

What kinds of texts?

Who produces them and who reads them?

Academics

Natural Resources Canada –

People with interest in history

People vacationing- enjoying time in the waterway

Where and in what organizations and institutions are the texts produced and read?

What are the histories of these texts and how are they funded?

What kinds of textual associations can be made?

How does this matter?

9) Bodily/organic dimensions:

How are bodies related to it?

Using it as a summer time site of recreation.

Family history attachment to place

Traditional ancestral lands.

What forms of attention, affect, emotion, and cognition are involved?

Are there particular ways in which we think of ourselves that also involve or sustain this process?

What kinds of bodies, including nonhumans, and bodily relations are involved in producing it?

River system

What kinds make use of it?

How are these bodies and relations gendered?

Are there racial, gendered, differently abled, or other group identifications that help construct these bodies?

What ways of life are involved?

What are the histories of all these relations?

How do these help constitute it?

10) Historical dimensions:

What concepts refer to it?

Indigenous knowledge. Colonial Studies.

History of Canada. History of

What are the histories of these concepts?

Was it invented, when and by whom?

Place invented – through human interaction and use.

Are there different and competing versions of its histories?

History that involves Indigenous presence, usage, and dispossession from these waters. One that does not.

History of Canada becoming a developed Nation.

History of country making

History of settlement through southern Ontario.

History of the settlement of vacation property.

The history of privilege.

The history of recreation.

Who tells these histories?

Local historical interest groups

Indigenous peoples living along the waterways

Historians

Anthropologists/archaeologists

Parks Canada.

How has it traveled historically?

Repeat the above dimensions for each aspect of its history.

How do these help constitute it?

11) Particle Dimensions:

How can the process be divided up?

What are its parts?

What are its stages?

Treating each part or stage as a process, repeat the above analysis.

12) Educational dimensions:

How does it appear in our socialization?

As something to be experienced for pleasure. A site of recreation. A site of history and beauty.a place to feel nostalgic about the discovery of Canada. A site of Canadian imagination ‘group of Seven’- “bobcaygeon’

When do we learn about it in school?

We don’t

During the rest of life?

People who have leisure time --- recommend exploring this area to others who have recreational time / money to spend.

What kinds of people/ bodies get to learn about it?

People living there, and the privileged who can afford the time and money it costs to spend in it leisurely.

How much do we learn about it?
What aspects of it are avoided?

Indigenous histories. Entanglement with colonization. Ongoing implications within colonial frameworks, ongoing colonialism.

What are the histories of teaching about it?

How does this matter?

13) Mythological dimensions:

What roles does it play in fantasies?

Nostalgic step back in time. Way to connect with Nature.

Escape reality of the working day/ capitalism. Escape stresses of life.

What kinds of national narratives make use of it?

The dream of retirement. The dream of vacation. The dream of untouched unspoiled Canadian wilderness.

How does it appear in entertainment?

What other grand narratives, stories, and strong associations involve it (e.g., progress, risk, joy, fear, science, militarism, success, decline, horror, self-improvement, financial security, nuclear family, motherhood, fatherhood, independence, adolescence, democracy, origin stories, stories of difference, privilege, death, pornography, sports)?

How do these matter?

14) Symbolic dimensions:

What are the many different ways in which it can be taken as a symbol?

Canadian conquest

Colonization.

Natural beauty of Canada.

Natural recreational paradise of Canada.

How does this process serve in symbolic systems?

What sorts of ideas, metaphors, movements, ideologies, and the like are associated with it?

For whom are these relevant, to whom do they matter, and what contests over meaning are they involved in?

What are the histories of these meanings and contests over meaning?

How do they matter?