geoffreg

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I am an anthropologist, currently involved in research with the Paiwan indigenous people of southern Taiwan. I am particularly interested in the revitalization of forms of craft and related issues of indigenous identity formation, cultural transmission and indigenous activism.

I have research and teaching interests in the anthropology of craft, materiality, work, and apprenticeship, with a regional focus on China and Taiwan. I obtained my PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2007. My current project aims to generate a new understanding of the ways in which the material culture of Indigenous Peoples mediate political relations as they move between symbolic, economic and political contexts. My empirical focus is on the Paiwan indigenous group of Taiwan, one of the 16 officially recognised Indigenous People of Taiwan.

In my past research, I have addressed issues of craft production - including materiality, apprenticeship, the social roles of artisans, and notions of authenticity - in China and Taiwan. My book Reinventing Craft in China reflects on the consequences of China's modernisation projects – collectivisation and industrialisation in the 1950s, and privatisation as of the 1980s – on the nation's crafts, and on modes of apprenticeship and transmission of craft-related knowledge. I have also conducted fieldwork in Taiwan's main centre of ceramics production to understand new concerns with crafts and industrial heritage in the country.

Publications

2017. Reinventing craft in China: the contemporary politics of Yixing zisha ceramics. Sean Kingston Publishing.

2016 Materials, the nation and the self: division of labor in a Taiwanese craft . In Wilkinson-Weber (ed.) Critical Craft: technology, globalization and capitalism. Bloomsbury.

2016 Thinking through materials: ways of problem-solving in Taiwanese ceramics. In T. Marchand (ed.) Craftwork as Problem Solving. Ashgate (‘Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception’ series)

2015 (ed.) ‘Imaging/imagining Craftwork’. Special issue of Visual Anthropology vol. 28 n.4.

2012 Learning Craft Skills in China: Apprenticeship and Social Capital in an Artisan Community of Practice. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 43(4).

2009 Learning to See Value: Exchange and the Politics of Vision in a Chinese Craft. Ethnos 74(2).

2009 Style, Skill and Modernity in the Zisha Pottery of China. Journal of Modern Craft. 2(2)

  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2020). The materials of indigeneity: slate and cement in a Taiwanese indigenous (Paiwan) mountain settlement. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. ISSN 1359-0987. 26(1), p. 126–145. doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.13182.
  • Pierroux, Palmyre; Bäckström, Mattias; Brenna, Brita ; Gowlland, Geoffrey & Ween, Gro Birgit (2020). Museums as Sites of Participatory Democracy and Design. In Hetland, Per; Pierroux, Palmyre & Esborg, Line (Ed.), A History of Participation in Museums and Archives. Traversing Citizen Science and Citizen Humanities. Routledge. ISSN 9780367186715. p. 27–45.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey & Ween, Gro Birgit (2018). Nuts and bolts of Digital Heritage. Bringing the past into the virtual present. Nordisk Museologi. ISSN 1103-8152. p. 3–14. doi: 10.5617/nm.6649. Full text in Research Archive
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2018). The sociality of enskilment. Ethnos. ISSN 0014-1844. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2018.1455726. Full text in Research Archive
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2016). The Skilled Viking: displaying crafts and not displaying killing in an exhibition on the Viking age. Primitive tider. ISSN 1501-0430. Spesialutgave, p. 91–101.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2016). Materials, the nation and the self: division of labor in a Taiwanese craft. In Wilkinson-Weber, Clare & Ory de Nicola, Alicia (Ed.), Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 978-1472594853. p. 199–216. doi: 10.4324/9781003085119-15.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2016). Thinking through Materials: Embodied Problem Solving and the Values of Work in Taiwanese Ceramics. In Marchand, Trevor H J (Eds.), Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making. Ashgate. ISSN 9781472442925. p. 183–196. doi: 10.4324/9781315562803-11.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2015). Discussion: Francophone Approaches to Learning Through Practice. Professional and Practice-based Learning. ISSN 2210-5549. 12, p. 189–198. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-18669-6_9.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2015). Unpacking Craft Skills: What Can Images Reveal about the Embodied Experience of Craft? Visual Anthropology. ISSN 0894-9468. 28(4), p. 286–297. doi: 10.1080/08949468.2015.1052324.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2015). Imaging/Imagining Craftwork. Visual Anthropology. ISSN 0894-9468. 28(4), p. 267–276. doi: 10.1080/08949468.2015.1052305.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2014). Apprenticeship as a model for learning in and through professional practice. In Billett, Stephen; Harteis, Christian & Gruber, Hans (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Professional and Practice-based Learning. Springer. ISSN 978-94-017-8902-8. p. 759–779. doi: 10.1007/978-94-017-8902-8_28.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2012). Learning Craft Skills in China: Apprenticeship and Social Capital in an Artisan Community of Practice. Anthropology & Education Quarterly. ISSN 0161-7761. 43(4), p. 358–371. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1492.2012.01190.x.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2011). The ‘Matière à Penser’ approach to material culture: objects, subjects and the materiality of the self. Journal of material culture. ISSN 1359-1835. 16(3). doi: 10.1177/1359183511413822.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2009). Style, Skill and Modernity in the Zisha Pottery of China. Journal of Modern Craft. ISSN 1749-6772. 2(2), p. 129–142.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2009). Learning to See Value: Exchange and the Politics of Vision in a Chinese Craft. Ethnos. ISSN 0014-1844. 74(2), p. 229–250. doi: 10.1080/00141840902940484.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2004). The uses of modernity in a Chinese craft tradition. Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques. ISSN 0004-4717. 58(4), p. 849–877.

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  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2017). Reinventing craft in China: The contemporary politics of Yixing zisha ceramics. Sean Kingston Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907774-98-0. 188 p.

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  • Bjerregaard, Peter & Gowlland, Geoffrey (2018). Thoughts on "Trapped". In Treimo, Henrik & Huseby, Hege B. (Ed.), Tingenes metode: Museene som tingsteder. Norsk Teknisk Museum. ISSN 978-82-90115-53-6. p. 147–158.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2016). [Book review] Drazin, Adam & Susanne Küchler (eds). The social life of materials: studies in material and society. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. ISSN 1359-0987. 22(4), p. 998–998.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2016). Making Yixing (Zisha) Teapots in 21st Century China: How Artisans Reinvented an Age-Old Craft After Socialism.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2016). Chinese concrete, indigenous slate: ethnicities of building materials in Taiwan.
  • Gowlland, Geoffrey (2015). Learning by hand: anthropologies of craft apprenticeship.

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Published Oct. 12, 2018 9:52 AM - Last modified Feb. 3, 2021 2:04 PM