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Such Building Only Takes Care: A Study of Dwelling in the Work of Heidegger, Ingold, Malinowski, and Thoreau

O'Malley, Matthew L
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405955994

Abstract Details

2014, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Comparative Studies.
The guiding questions of this essay are: What is meant by dwelling? And, how is it that people dwell? In the process of approaching these questions, several key terms are employed. These terms are: dwelling; making; technique; modern technology; and the Gestell of modern technology. Gestell, a term borrowed from the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger, describes an orientation to the physical world unique to the apparatus of modern technology and anathema to dwelling. Dwelling is understood through notions of gathering and relationality: how practices of dwelling weave together a multiplicity of things and experiences. Making, here, refers to that aspect of dwelling which constructs regions and transforms space into made place. Yet, the essay is also attuned to how dwelling takes care, that is, how it makes meaning and thus makes sense. Modern technology represents the process whereby the centrality of technique is made peripheral to production, externalized. It suggests the erosion of meaningful technique in modernity and how this erosion effects the characteristically modern experience of alienation. Four textual sites frame the investigation: First, are selections from the later writings of Heidegger on technology and the plight of dwelling. Second, is an engagement with the writing of anthropologist Tim Ingold. In Ingold, both the dwelling perspective and technique are given a more complex ethnological and environmental elaboration. The other two sites provide the actual sociographic settings in which these terms are enacted and tested: Bronislaw Malinowski’s classic, early twentieth-century ethnographic account of Melanesian garden making, Coral Gardens and Their Magic: Soil-tilling and Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands; with particular attention to the process of new garden construction. And Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, an experiment in construction and cultivation made in explicit tension with, if not resistance to, the categories and expectations of industrial capitalist political economy.
Leo Coleman (Advisor)
Philip Armstrong (Committee Member)
Bernhard Malkmus (Committee Member)
111 p.
Agriculture; Comparative Literature; Cultural Anthropology; Environmental Studies; Landscaping; Literature; Philosophy
dwelling; technique; technology; practice; modernity; magic; trope; Gestell; environment; place; seasonality; anthropology; literary and philosophical anthropology; Cavell, Stanley; Heidegger, Martin; Ingold, Tim; Malinowski, Bronislaw; Thoreau, Henry

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Citations

  • O'Malley, M. L. (2014). Such Building Only Takes Care: A Study of Dwelling in the Work of Heidegger, Ingold, Malinowski, and Thoreau [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405955994

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • O'Malley, Matthew. Such Building Only Takes Care: A Study of Dwelling in the Work of Heidegger, Ingold, Malinowski, and Thoreau. 2014. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405955994.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • O'Malley, Matthew. "Such Building Only Takes Care: A Study of Dwelling in the Work of Heidegger, Ingold, Malinowski, and Thoreau." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405955994

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1405955994
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© 2014, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Such Building Only Takes Care: A Study of Dwelling in the Work of Heidegger, Ingold, Malinowski, and Thoreau by Matthew L O'Malley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.