Expertise and Inability

Cultured Materials and the Reason for Some Retreating Lawns in London

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2390886
AutoresRussell Hitchings (0000-0002-1171-8064, University of Hull, autor correspondente)
Ano2006
Volume11
Fascículo3
Páginas364-381
Data de publicação2006-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183506068810
OpenAlexW2169687625
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas24
Referências citadas39

Material culture, as a concept, is suggestive of control. Yet, when we acknowledge it, it becomes clear that all the physical things we handle have a degree of independence. Indeed, by exploring the ways in which this independence is intimately accommodated, a richer understanding of certain kinds of experience could follow. With this argument in mind, this article travels to some domestic gardens in north London to reconsider the human activities associated with the plants that are found there. In these sites it seems that amicable arrangements of entity only ever become possible through fully embracing the fact that those people involved own only one, amongst many, of the agencies in evidence there. In fact, whilst an idea of a successful gardener can connote an efficient exercise of power, I want to argue that the opposite is actually the case. My contention, therefore, is that, to fully find pleasure from plants, people must become enjoyably expert in understanding that any complete control is always unlikely, and this is a contention with some potentially important implications for current patterns of practice

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Control (management · Economics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Independence (probability theory · Management · Pleasure · Power (physics · Sociology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Psychology