An argument of images through a symbolist lens : experiences of craft in North-East Scotland

• Main Author: Lichti Harriman, Kathryn A.
• Published: University of Aberdeen 2010
• Subjects: 306; Handicraft : Visual anthropology : Symbolism : Material culture : Grampian (Scotland)
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.540332

Throughout the thesis I take symbolic communication and visual metaphors as starting points for developing a contemporary picture of diverse Craft practices in a small corner of Scotland.  This thesis is both an ethnography of Craft and a craft object, explicitly made to be a theory-laden object of material culture. This thesis aims to question a variety of epistemological regimes found not only in anthropology but also in the North-East of Scotland.  The main argument of this thesis is that in order to understand something about Craft and the experiences of its makers it is important to have an understanding of the ways in which they create that world as meaningful: that is, an understanding of the thirdness (or symbolism) that is an active, generative force in that world.  In the following chapters I argue two interwoven points: one, that a stash (collection) is a collection of stash (craft materials) and is also a site of thirdness in which symbolic thought and action are vital.  And two: that, as such, stash and the craft world in which it is embedded are well served by an approach to visual anthropology and that takes seriously a study of semiotics in which poetics become more than a subject of analysis; poetics are also allowed to develop into a method(ology) of engaging both informants and audience in a meaningful dialogue of knowledge production. By using images to contextualize ethnographic evidence and by making these previous points not only with words, but also through imagery, I aim to convince the reader of the integrity of my ethnographic analyses as well as that theories of visual anthropology are as useful for analysing anthropological subjects as for communicating ourselves.