La tempérance du forgeron : composer avec le milieu métallurgique

Abstract

This text focuses on the nature of the relationship between Si Mohammed, a blacksmith in southern Morocco, and the diverse life-forms that inhabit the forge-in-activity during the making of a steel beater. The notion of milieu enables us to examine the co-construction of milieus and subjects, themselves considered fluid. Through a material and sensory-affective-motor approach to the reciprocal production of objects and subjects, coupled with the notion of affordance, we explore two dimension of the blacksmith’s skilled practice: temperance and the exercise of authority, but also mathematical and scientific knowledge.

Keywords

• metallurgy
• affordance
• milieu
• economics
• cognition