{"id":446,"date":"2018-07-16T19:10:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T19:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maq.dreamhosters.com\/second-spear\/?p=446"},"modified":"2020-11-04T00:29:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T00:29:46","slug":"the-anthropology-of-boring-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/2018\/07\/the-anthropology-of-boring-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anthropology of \u201cBoring\u201d Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Stacks of unbillable patient visits. Insurance cards. Medical codes. Telephones. Frequently Asked Questions databases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These objects do not often spike people\u2019s imagination and are easily reduced to being merely \u201cboring.\u201d Often times such \u201cboring\u201d objects like paperwork, tax returns, standards, plugs, and labels are integral to large bureaucratic systems or work routines. Yet the thing that is dull, tedious or uninteresting for one person can be an utter joy for another. What a \u201cboring\u201d object is, and how it functions, is not self-evident. A prepaid water meter, for instance, looks from afar like an inconspicuous thing. Closer inspection, however, reveals its crucial link as a pedagogical tool in a state\u2019s efforts to produce \u201ccalculative citizens\u201d who are to behave according to the values the state holds dear (Von Schnitzler 2008). In the early twentieth century, Malinowski, in his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific<\/em>, taught anthropologists to closely observe the imponderabilia of actual life<\/em>, such as people\u2019s eating habits, casual conversations, hygiene practices, and food preparations, against the background of \u201cmore crystallized bonds of social groupings\u201d such as rituals, economic and legal duties, and ceremonial gifts. He separated the actuality of life from the periphery in which it takes place. Calling attention to \u201cboring\u201d things challenges analytic separations of formal and informal, structure and agency, technical and emotional and instead brings periphery and actuality together, one emerging with the other (Larkin 2013). In this special series, authors do not take the boring as a given but study its emergence and financial, cultural, or political significance in tandem with the periphery of which it is part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a long time, anthropologists have not examined \u201cboring\u201d objects like paperwork, water meters, or plugs. Perhaps this lack of ethnographic attention is: because objects can hide in plain sight (Lampland and Star 2009), although that is true for some but not for all objects (Larkin 2013); because anthropologists use such objects themselves, they have failed to see their significance; or because the field considers itself as being concerned with human interaction and experience. The lack of ethnographic attention to \u201cboring\u201d objects is unfortunate, however, because anthropology is well suited to reveal the intricate ways boring objects are enmeshed in, part of, or otherwise linked to larger infrastructures. In health care, faceless information systems act as productive forces to deny health services or financial compensation for sustained suffering. Static billable codes stand in for power-laden clinical encounters. Insurance cards communicate authoritative cultural perceptions of personhood. Boredom inducing work with phone trees or unbillable patient encounters are essential to mitigate a fragmented health care system. The authors in this series on The Anthropology of \u201cBoring\u201d Things, inspired by Star\u2019s call (1993) to study boring things, do not relegate \u201cboring\u201d things to the periphery as a sort of second-order anthropological strangeness but bring them to center stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studying infrastructures and their \u201cboring\u201d objects can be tricky, however. Which object is an anthropologist to focus on, for instance, when many seemingly ordinary objects in people\u2019s work are enmeshed in large, ostensibly abstract infrastructures? What is an anthropologist to do when they feel awkward studying work practices that the people they observe classify as moments where \u201cnothing happens\u201d and a waste of the anthropologist\u2019s time? What if the work that people do induces heavy boredom on the part of the anthropologist? Is it an anthropological, professional sin to find fieldwork utterly boring? In this collection, authors tackle questions of \u201cboring\u201d objects and their relationships with health systems, the master narratives they employ, and praxis of fieldwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this collection, Michael Esveldt draws attention to the convergence of heavy boredom with electronic health record systems, ethnographic method, and ethics of work. Daniela Heil focuses on Medicare cards that push for the inclusion of non-Aboriginal influences into Australian Aboriginal lives and practices. Marieke van Eijk analyses the financial stories that medical codes are to tell. Shannon Satterwhite argues that anthropologists\u2019 discomfort of observing \u201cboring\u201d procedures reduces the ability to understand work practices where supposedly \u201cnothing happens\u201d as essential moments of care provision. Finally, Robert Frey focuses on faceless, rather than face-to-face, social relations that render a Frequently Asked Question section as a culturally significant rather than as a boring document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together, this collection of essays invites anthropologists to extend their ethnographic gazes and spend many inspiring moments analyzing the intricate and at times capricious workings of \u201cboring\u201d things and their linkages to faceless social relations, ethnographic praxis, inner resources, and, at times, heavy boredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lampland, Martha, and Susan Leigh Star. 2009. Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life<\/em>. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larkin, Brian. 2013. The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology<\/em> 42(1):327-343<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Quinea<\/em>. London: Routledge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Star, Susan Leigh. 1993. The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist<\/em> 43(3):377-391<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Von Schnitzler, Antina. 2008. Citizenship Prepaid: Water, Calculability, and Techno-Politics in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies<\/em> 34(4):899-917<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stacks of unbillable patient visits. Insurance cards. Medical codes. Telephones. Frequently Asked Questions databases. These objects do not often spike people\u2019s imagination and are easily reduced to being merely \u201cboring.\u201d Often times such \u201cboring\u201d objects like paperwork, tax returns, standards, plugs, and labels are integral to large bureaucratic systems or work routines. Yet the thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"citeas":"van Eijk, Marieke. (2018) \"The Anthropology of \u201cBoring\u201d Things.\" Medical Anthropology Quarterly Second Spear Blog Series, Accessed <>. https:\/\/modil.io\/?p=446.","footnotes":""},"area":[],"topic":[],"ss_category":[627],"ss_tag":[],"creator":[626],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","ss_category-the-anthropology-of-boring-things","creator-marieke-van-eijk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/area?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"ss_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ss_category?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"ss_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ss_tag?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"creator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modil.io\/second-spear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/creator?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}