Y Anthro? #1: Trifle is A delicious Pastry Pudding

First in a series where I talk about some reasons why I like anthropology

In Italy, an Umerell is a person (usually of retirement age) who passes their time watching construction sites, especially roadworks - stereotypically with their hands clasped behind their backs and offering unwarranted advice.

This doesn't seem to be a random thing. It's a real phenomenon. In 2015, a city in Bologna allocated some 11,000 euros to encourage Umarells to oversee worksites and especially prevent thefts. In 2016, an Umarell smartphone app was released that notified users about construction works happening in their vicinity. In 2016, Burger King also hired several Umarells to oversee work in their restaurants (partly as a publicity stunt). In 2017, a company selling Umarell figurines that sold out. The figurines are meant to be parked by your laptop - the sensation of being watched by an Umarell figurine increasing your productivity.

Anthropology is the only discipline I can think of that might take interest in the Umarell. Others might stumble across it, think of it as a funny curiosity and move on. But an anthropologist might linger over a phenomenon like this.

Anthropologists often like to say that what is distinctive about their discipline is the fact that they have to do fieldwork. Psychologists run experiments in labs, historians work their way through archives in a library, anthropologists have to spend time in the field with and among the people that they have chosen to study or write about.

An anthropologist studying Umarells will go with them to these construction sites and observe the Umarells interactions with the workers on constructions sites.

It is in this way that I think anthropology is closest to literature among the social sciences. Novels may not always give us explanations of why someone does or is doing what they do. Providing explanations after all is the chief job of scientists and social scientists (why is the sky blue? or why did the Nazis lose the World War? etc). A novel may just tell us that the sky is blue - it may even describe what particular kind of blue the sky was - robin's egg, swimming pool, ultramarine, navy blue....? But a novel may not care to explain why the sky was robin's egg blue and not navy blue.

Aside from fulfilling the duty of coming up with good explanations, anthropology takes pleasure in providing descriptions. There is an interest in the minutaie and trivialities of everyday life - detailed descriptions can be an end in themselves in anthropology. Like novels, a good ethnography in describing what the Umarell says, sees and does and what the daily life of the Umarell is like can give you some notion of what it is like to be an Umarell - help you put yourself in their shoes as it were.

Good anthropological theory in other words begins from the details of everyday life. Unlike some sciences where you concoct the theory first and then go to the field to experiment with and test out your theory (lots of econ, lots of psych, some sociology) good anthropology is supposed to go to the field first and only then start building up a theory.

Unfortunately, I think anthropology for the most part has privileged explanation over descriptions (this to me is a real shame because barring historians no other discipline can provide detailed descriptions and even historians depend on the quality of their historical sources to furnish descriptions. Anthropologists by virtue of fieldwork can provide reams of descriptions. Every discipline can lay claim to explaining things but anthropology can lay a privileged claim to being the only discipline that can describe stuff as well). But that maybe a topic for discussion some other time. Fortunately anthropology still has the potential to read like a great novel I think.

But anthropology is interested in not just any detail of everyday life - unlike say the still life painter or the portraitist who might try to faithfully depict whatever is put before her.

What most anthropologists end up focussing on is that which sticks out or stands out. Something quirky for lack of a better word. I recently saw an interview with the great American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins. He said that when a physicist begins studying something - say a table, the more he studies it, the stranger it becomes - at the sub-atomic quantum levels and so on. Sahlins says anthropology is often the reverse. The anthropologist begins by studying something quirky and strange and the more he studies and understands this thing, the less strange it becomes - why would you worship cows or why would you marry your own mother for instance?

How does this anthropological alchemy happen wherein what was strange becomes much less strange by the end? The anthropologist is interested in something cut from the cloth of everyday life - something part and parcel of the existence of the people she studies. Thus most often it is something puzzling only to the anthropologist but not to the people she studies. And it is not puzzling to them precisely because it is part of their everyday life - they take it for granted. It is just the way things are done. Because the anthropologist comes from a place where things are not done this way that she finds this quirky. The anthropological alchemy happens when the anthropologist is able to return an object or idea from the cabinet of curiosities to the shelf of everyday life. Her curiosity has been sated. Having spent enough time with a person or a people, she too now begins to take the formerly quirky or unusual thing as more of the usual. This maybe either a function of time or a function of having acquired a satisfactory explanation.

Explanations comes about as the result of asking questions. What sort of questions might an anthropologist studying Umarells ask?

The most obvious question to begin with - why do they do this? Do they enjoy it - would Umarells do this alone/ by themselves or only in the company of other Umarells? Do they do it out of a sense of civic duty rather than enjoyment? Why are only retired men engaging in this activity? Why not retired women? What does it say about the city that it legitimized this activity by actually trying to employ some Umarells - is it an acknowledgement of their failure or deficiencies? Is it a way to cut costs and outsource labour? Is it a way of involving more citizens in fruitful civic engagement and political endeavours? How do the workmen on these construction sites feel about Umarells? Do they feel betrayed or angry at the city for actually hiring Umarells? Or are they amused by Umarells? Are they annoyed? And why Umarells show up only at construction sites - why not other places of work that are also a public good - eg. court cases or gardening in public gardens.

Most importantly for me - why do we laugh or chuckle when we come across this notion of an Umarell? Is it because it seems frivolous? What does it say about our civic sense and our notion of time fruitfully spent if we find the Umarell frivolous? Is there some Universe in which construction work can be engrossing?

Even something as quirky and seemingly peculiar and even seemigly trivial as the Umarell has the potential to clarify a number of aspects of Bolognese life.

Wars, famines, racism, sexism, child malnutrition, poverty, violence, death, slavery, addiction, trauma, abuse, suicide, suicide missions, the Cold War, madness, terror attacks, state formation, decolonization, elections, God and living without God, pogroms, riots.....these are the sort of hefty themes that attract the attention of every discipline. I am happy that in anthropology one can enquire even about something as trifling as Umarells - a question the equivalent of why do some retired Bolognese men seem to enjoy watching the paint peel - one can ask such a question in anthropology without raising any eyebrows or without being told to pursue questions of greater importance or urgency.