Abstract
This chapter presents the chaîne opératoire (‘operational sequence’), an ethnographic method which aims at revealing the fundamental relationality of artefacts, practices, and networks, often black-boxed within the concept of ‘technology’, by making visible the fundamental material, social and cultural heterogeneity, of technical activities, their relational intricacy, the interweaving of human and non-human actors, causalities, choices, and contingencies. It gives empirical grounding to contemporary analytical concepts such as ‘agency’, ‘network’, and ‘materiality’, as well as revealing how and when technical processes are interlaced with questions of knowledge, kinship, economics, religion, or politics. After presenting the chaîne opératoire method, I examine the analytical purchase of the term ‘technical’, which not only emphasises the performative dimensions of practices but is also less loaded with contemporary associations with, and assumptions of, linear progress and determinism than ‘technology’. I then situate the study of technical activities within material culture studies, before clearing up some misconceptions about the method’s potentials and its limits. I end the chapter with an illustration of the analytical potential of the chaîne opératoire in two different ethnographic case settings: the first, laptop computer use in France; the second, yam cultivation in Papua New Guinea.
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Notes
- 1.
A very broad range of authors have addressed these phenomena, which have been and are still at the heart of many debates. Along with others quoted in this chapter, the most frequently recurring references include Kopytoff (1986), Gell (1998), Knappett (2004), Ingold (2010, 2013), Marchand (2010), Larkin (2013), Malafouris (2013). See also Tilley et al. (2006) and Warnier (2007).
- 2.
The English translation unfortunately uses the term ‘concatenation’; for obvious reasons, I personally prefer to keep the less mechanistic and more relational term of ‘chain’.
- 3.
‘La technique est à la fois geste et outil, organisés en chaîne par une véritable syntaxe qui donne aux séries opératoires à la fois leur fixité et leur souplesse.’
- 4.
Beyond Leroi-Gourhan’s initial formulation, definitions of the chaîne opératoire vary according to the theoretical and methodological premises of the author. Robert Cresswell defined it as ‘a series of operations which transforms a raw material into a product, be it an object for consumption or a tool’ (Cresswell 2011 [1976], p. 26, my translation), while Lemonnier simplifies it as ‘the series of operations involved in any transformation of matter (including our own body) by human beings’ (1992, p. 26).
- 5.
Interestingly, archaeologist Michael B. Schiffer developed a methodological concept independently of the chaîne opératoire in his text on ‘behavioral chain analysis’ (1975).
- 6.
For examples on recycling, see Fanchette (2016). Other graphs made by students are available online: http://www.materialworldblog.com/2015/07/unleashing-the-chaine-operatoire-students-experimentation-with-an-old-methodology/. In addition, whilst I have no space to expand further on this relation, there are methodological similarities with methods used in digital design, in particular UX mapping and customer experience journey maps. But arguably the analytical aims differ.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter owes much to students enrolled in the course, Anthropology of Techniques and Technology, or who followed sessions on the ‘ChOp’, for their contributions and critiques, and crucially for their experiments with the method in too many different contexts to list here. Thanks to the people of Nyamikum village in Papua New Guinea for their trust and patience, as well as to Rosalie Allain for her critical reading of various drafts, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Thanks to Alexandra Fanghanel, Philippe Minvielle, and Stephanie Lécuyer for their constant support. Finally, thanks to the editors for their help with the whole text.
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Coupaye, L. (2022). Making ‘Technology’ Visible: Technical Activities and the Chaîne Opératoire. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_2
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