The Magic of Mundane Objects: Culture, Identity and Power in a Country Vets' Practice

Abstract

This article explores and extends the idea that material objects lie at the heart of many of our social, and specifically workplace, interactions. The site of exploration is an ethnography of a British farm animal veterinary surgery. Drawing upon traditional cultural studies approaches alongside contemporary sociological understandings about the place of materials in social life, the article analyses how objects function to track and structure the ways that people of different professional status experience work at a veterinary surgery. It is argued that the power of the veterinary elite in this setting is best understood by paying close attention to ‘mundane' artefacts. The article argues that such objects, having almost no meaning on their own, can become potent cultural symbols if actors have the necessary social capital to ‘transform’ them. Here, Latimer's concept of ‘strong moves’ (2004) is extended to consider how the reinterpretation of objects might constitute a form of ‘cultural magic’. This article seeks to uncover some of the practical scenarios in which such ‘magical’ transformations play out and describes, through a series of tales from the field ( Van Maanen, 1985 ), the ways in which vets control and regulate their interactions with those outside the professional elite.