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The notion of social life as inherently creative and innovative guides many different strands in our research. Anthropologists at Aberdeen are known worldwide for their unique contributions to the study of environmental perception, and to the understanding of landscape and place in a phenomenologically guided theoretical framework. Building on this platform, Aberdeen anthropology has developed a unique approach to examining the constitution of things in the process of their becoming. These interests take staff research into multiple arenas and contexts, ranging from the writing of computer software and the generation of communities around this production (Leach), through museum collections and their potential for education and building relationships with source communities (Curtis, Brown, Wachowich), to art, sculpture, enskilment, performance and improvisation (Argounova-Low, Ingold, Vergunst), and the value of cultural production, intellectual property, inscription, and technological change (Bolton, Leach, King).
A number of specific research projects are related to this theme (see current research projects for more details):
Oral and Material (Argounova-Low)
Material Histories (Brown, Wachowich, Ingold)
Choreographic Objects (Leach)
Reite Plants (Leach)
Koryak and Eskimo Dance (King)
Koryak Ethnopoetics (King)
Art and the environment in Greenland (Vergunst)
Our Ancestors have come to visit: Reconnections with historic Blackfoot shirts (Brown)
The creativity of people as participants in the constitution of human life-worlds lies at the heart of almost all teaching in the subject at Aberdeen. Likewise, questions about what people know in different environments, what constitutes knowledge, how access to knowledge figures in structuring human institutions or relations, what animals know, and so on, are central to our investigations.
We run several courses relevant to these themes, in environmental perception (Society and Nature; The Four A’s: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, Architecture; Introduction to Anthropology; Anthropology of The North; Anthropology of Landscape), in creativity and knowledge production (Knowledge: Critical Studies of Innovation and Claims over creativity), in narrative, media and knowledge (Indigenous Media. Culture making and Anthropological Knowledge; Oral Traditions, Voice and Power) and in material culture, museums, technology and design. (Material Culture and Museums; Materials, Technology and Power in the Andean Region; Design Anthropology MSc.)
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Sacred Gates. Designed and built by Ernest Aekseev, Sakha (Yakutiia), Russia. Photo by Tanya Argounova-Low |
Tanya Argounova-Low, Maggie Bolton, Alison Brown, Neil Curtis, Tim Ingold, Alexander King, James Leach, Jo Vergunst
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