Dina’s Bag

Bags as boundary objects

Dina’s generous interest in this project is multisided, and we started our conversation with her suggestion to think about bags as ‘boundary objects’. We returned to this issue at the end of our conversation. For Dina, this association between a concept that is very important for her dissertation and our request to participate in our bags project was a very stimulating one. In a small, concrete way, it gave a new dimension to her connection to work going on at the Studio. Reflecting on ‘bags as boundary objects’, Dina suggests that this might be a useful way to think about the work that bags do, as helping to move between social worlds. But, she also wonders, is the concept of boundary object useful when the boundaries are being crossed by a single person? Is the concept most useful when the work to be done involves multiple actors?

Dina’s Big Bag

The first thing that one notices about Dina’s bag is that it’s big and bright. We tried to make a photo that would capture the full volume of the bag and its huge potential for expansion.

It’s a bag that gets used for carrying work attributes, like papers and books, and a laptop (when it’s working) but also serves to carry water bottles or purchases, or to transport groceries bought on the way home. For Dina, this is THE bag—it accommodates all bag needs. Anything fits in there, and she therefore doesn’t have to bother thinking through which bag to use. This is it!

She bought her bag (like Ernst) in the US, during a stay of a few months there in 2005. This may explain why the bag seems to be a bit of a hybrid between a work bag and a piece of luggage. This bag was something of an ‘investment’ and the quality of this bag is much higher than the succession of cheaper bags she had before. She enjoys that it is a backpack, rather than a sling/shoulder bag. If the bag is especially heavy, she may strap it on to her bicycle, but otherwise she carries it on her back. It doesn’t bother her that she has to take the bag off her back to access its contents (for example to grab a bus ticket).

Dina is working at the Studio for a few months, writing her Masters dissertation. This also affects how the bag is used. In Denmark where she was a student, she didn’t have an office and therefore didn’t carry things to an office, but only to classes. Sometimes things remain in the bag and make ‘extra’ trips before they get unpacked at the appropriate location.

Update on the Bags Project

The next postings will be derived from a second set of conversations Sally and I have been having with colleagues about their bags. Although it is still early in this project, we have already had some very interesting experiences about the relation between ‘raw fieldnotes’ and these posts, about ‘voice’, and about how to articulate authorship. We are also still learning how to address the materiality of these bags-descriptions shift to function and seem to depart from materiality very quickly in conversation. On the other hand, making photos, and the discussion about how to do this, seem to help focus on the attributes of the bag. And of course we still need to think further about what we mean by materiality.

Ernst’s bag 3

Follow-up Conversation with Ernst

What is the bag for?

In our earlier exchanges, we discussed the bag, but didn’t really get to the point of why Ernst needed a bag at all. So I put that and other questions to him. His answers are paraphrased.

Bag as shuttle, as tunnel to work

The bag makes it possible to work at home. And when there are deadlines, it is easier to meet them if work hours include some evening hours at home. Home is also more conducive to tasks that involve quiet reflection and writing, and it feels less appropriate to read for a longer period while at work. But since the books might be needed at work as reference they end up in the bag. In summary, for Ernst the concentration needed for some academic work is not easily achieved in a work environment.

So the bag has a function of carrying books and the laptop between home and work. Ernst doesn’t want to have to shut things up and put them away. That includes an antipathy to using an online collaborative file-server where that means having to re-download and re-upload files every time they are altered. By simply bringing his laptop along, he can work on documents without worrying about multiple document versions on different drives. The laptop and books therefore provide a kind of continuity (or seamlessness?) across reading, writing and thinking. Bringing his stuff home enables Ernst to maintain his environment, very much along the lines of the desktop metaphor of the computer.

And in between work and home?

I had been struck by the way the bag was not set up to be used ‘underway’ in Ernst’s daily routine, and asked about that possible use.

The bag is for work, answers Ernst. Perhaps, if he were travelling to a conference, there might be stuff for underway, like clothes and more music on his ipod.

And does the bag require work? Does its materiality matter?

No, it is a part of work, part of his intellectual environment, even, of his identity as a scholar. We talked about what would need to change in his work to make a different to the bag. This is hard to imagine. The job would have to be extremely different, and would have NOT to involve a computer.

Ernst also took up the comment I had posted, about the contents of his bag being hard and shiny. For Ernst these are not qualities that matter. I explained that my comment was an attempt at considering the materiality of things carried in scholars’ bags. Ernst insists that the material quality or affect of things does not matter as a criterion for deciding what is or is not in the bag. We talked some more about this, and Ernst noted that for him the one material quality that matters is the padded part of the bag itself, since it was a criterion used in its purchase. It is meant to house the laptop, but he now prefers instead to put the laptop in another part that is quicker to access. And finally there is also a connection between commuting mostly by car and the considerable weight of the things carried. While he commuted by bicycle – - before moving house — he carried his stuff in a large rainproof cycle-panier (a fancy black Ortlieb one that now lives somewhere in the attic).

Finally, we exchanged on the affect of the bag itself. Ernst noted that while he has used the bag for well over a decade, he is not in any way attached to it. The bag is fit for purpose at this time, so it is used at this time.