Crafting History

Albena Yaneva is Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Manchester and Lise Meitner Visiting Chair at Lund. She is author of several books, including, most recently, Five Ways to Make Architecture Political.

It is a book you want to hold in your hands and keep in your collection after reading.(Arkitekturkultur) Overall, this is a rich and detailed study which is clearly of value to students of architecture, architectural history, anthropology and archival science. There is also something here for the museum scholar: the book points to the epistemic nature of collecting and, through its granular study of the processes that act upon and form these collections, reveals the interventions and mediations of individuals in the shaping of knowledge. For those working in and researching all types of collecting and memory institutions there is much here that can inform and provide new insights into how such work forms the basis of learning, scholarship and research.(Museum and Society) Crafting History is a meticulous and captivating study that makes a substantial methodological contribution and will resonate with students and scholars of architectural history and theory, institutions, the anthropology of knowledge, museum studies and related fields. Few scholars have studied with such proximity the tacit, practical systems of "minor" actors in architectural institutions.(Architectural Theory Review)

• Introduction: The Secret Life of Architectural Objects1. Archive Fevers2. Architecture and the "Fever" of Archiving3. A Morning in the Vaults4. Opening the Crates5. Politics of Care6. The Plot of Archiving7. The Life of an Old Floppy DiskConclusion: Collections as Sites of Epistemological Reshuffle