Статті в журналах з теми "Paddle Steamer"

On 19 June 1900, during the heyday of the British seaside resort, a new gentleman's lavatory opened on one of the Firth of Clyde's most famous piers. The Isle of Bute was a popular destination for Scottish Victorians, who would make the short journey from Glasgow by paddle steamer for a day of shopping or a weekend holiday. Despite its small size and close proximity to major cities, Rothesay, the island's only town, supported a large number of shops year round and hosted regular fairs during the summer. Travelers were also lured to the island by its diverse topography and by Rothesay Castle, which dates from 1230 and eventually devolved to the Stuarts. The island's moderate west-coast climate attracted a considerable number of visitors throughout the year (Figure 1).

This study explores the applicability and effectiveness of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) as a tool for the high-resolution mapping of submerged and buried shipwrecks in 3D. This approach was trialled through modelling and field studies of Crowie, a paddle steamer barge which sunk at anchor in the Murray River at Morgan, South Australia, in the late 1950s. The mainly metallic structure of the ship is easily recognisable in the ERT data and was mapped in 3D both subaqueously and beneath the sediment-water interface. The innovative and successful use of ERT in this case study demonstrates that 3D ERT can be used for the detailed mapping of submerged cultural material. It will be particularly useful where other geophysical and diver based mapping techniques may be inappropriate due to shallow water depths, poor visibility, or other constraints.

The article ‘Reflections on the Woolwich Ferry’ [1] brought back some childhood memories. I remember being whisked away with my siblings from the verdant pastures of north-west Kent by bus and tram to Woolwich for a ride on one of the ‘Free Ferry’ paddle steamers; there were four of them and their passing in the mid 1960s was not universally welcomed. It was indeed a real treat that consumed just a little more than a full working day. The depths of a winter school holiday could find us huddled, privileged below the ferry decks on a gantry near the fire hole to receive the welcoming hot blast as its doors opened to accommodate the hand-stoked coke. It was hand-stoked to reduce smoke output, and each steamer could make about eight knots. Presumably health and safety considerations now would not allow for such a luxury of positioning.However, it was not always wine and roses. To borrow a phrase from one of Kipling's poems, it was sometimes a case of ‘not with this wind blowing, and this tide’, for there were rare occasions when journeys were temporarily delayed by exceptionally windy weather. The elements below (river velocity effect) conspired with the elements above (wind velocity effect) to delay ferry movements. The earlier article proposed a velocity model to deal with effects due only to the river flow and it is the purpose of this note to extend that argument by considering also a velocity effect due to the wind, because the superstructure on a ferry can be as susceptible to the wind as is the keel to the tide.

The diffusion of steam into the transatlantic migration system of the nineteenth century, one of the most important developments in the history of human demography, is often explained by the technical progress of ships, which made the carrying of migrants under steam profitable. Existing historiography posits that early, basic paddle steamers were sustainable only with government mail contracts, whilst iron screw steamers later facilitated the emergence of a mass migrant trade. Data on steam company formation, durability and accounting for the mid-nineteenth century show that technical thresholds are not sufficient to explain the transfer to steam shipping of migrants. Determining factors were inter-regional relationships connecting engineering and demographic change, and, critically, the abandonment of capitalising novel steam lines. This article demonstrates that steam became usable because of endogenous transfer within well-established sailing services, a pivotal strategy adopted by those connected to centres of both innovation and migration.

An improved continuous dyeing process for coloration of heavy-weight (60–70 oz/yd2), residential nylon 6,6 carpet is reported. By inserting a slot steam applicator after the dye pad and before the box steamer to preheat the carpet to around 180°F (greater than the nylon wet glass transition temperature of ~150°F), the required dwell time of the padded carpet in the atmospheric steamer is greatly reduced (0.3–0.5 of normal). The improved continuous coloration process provides a route to beck-quality, level-dyed, heavy-weight nylon 6,6 carpets at production speeds 2–3X those of conventional lines.

Kualitas fisik pakan (pelet) untuk hewan akuakultur sangat penting, karena akan dimasukkan ke dalam air dan diharapkan tidak banyak mencemari lingkungan. Salah satu faktor yang berpengaruh dalam menjaga kualitas fisik pakan adalah penambahan dan pengaturan steam pada saat proses pembuatan pelet. Steam adalah aliran gas yang dihasilkan oleh air pada saat mendidih. Steam dibagi menjadi 3 jenis yaitu steam basah, saturated steam, dan superheated steam. Steam yang digunakan dalam proses pembuatan pelet adalah saturated steam. Pengaruh penambahan steam pada kualitas pelet bisa mencapai 20%. Penambahan steam dengan jumlah dan kualitas yang tepat akan menghasilkan pelet berkualitas. Sedangkan jika pengaturan dan penambahannya tidak tepat, maka kualitas fisik pelet akan rendah dan kemungkinan bisa merusak kandungan nutrisi seperti vitamin dan protein. Penambahan steam yang benar bisa dilakukan di dalam kondisioner dengan mengatur retention time, sudut kemiringan paddle conditioner, kecepatan putaran bearing dan menjaga kualitas steam dari mesin boiler sampai dengan kondisioner.

A non-woven viscose material was modified with self-made cationic gelatin protein auxiliary by the padding process. The material prepared was then used as an environmentally friendly colour absorbent for the decolourisation of dye wastewater. The effects of the sodium hydroxide swelling pretreatment process and cationic padding modification process on the colour absorption and decolourisation rate were discussed. Moreover an optimal preparation process for the colour-absorbing material was determined. This was as follows: In order to make the non-woven viscose material swell and improve the subsequent modification effect, first the non-woven viscose material was pretreated with an aqueous solution containing 50 g/l of sodium hydroxide, at room temperature, for 5 min. Then the material was padded in a mixed aqueous solution containing 80 g/l of cationic gelatin and 18 g/l of sodium hydroxide by means of a laboratory padder with two dips and two nips. After treatment, the material was dried and steamed for 4 min. Lastly the material was washed with water and dried. The results show that the colour-absorbing material prepared by this process has the advantages of a high colour absorption rate and high decolourisation percentage. And it could be applied to the decolourisation of printing and dyeing wastewater, or to prevent washed off dyestuff staining on light colour clothes in the process of laundry.

The objective of this study was to determine the influence of water type and the length of steam on sensory quality and shelf life of steamed tuna, so it is expected that the resulting output can be useful for the processing of coastal fish with limited fresh water. This research uses Randomized Block Design with 2 (two) factors ie water type (freshwater and seawater of Tanjung Luar) and steam duration (15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 minutes). Each treatment was replicated 3 times to obtain 30 experimental units. The parameters observed were sensory quality which included hedonic and scoring test with consisted of color, flavor, texture and aroma as well as shelf life of steamed tuna. The results of sensory observation were analyzed by diversity analysis at 5% real level by using Friedman Two Anova and the real difference was tested further with Wilcoxon Match Pairs Test. The steamed tuna sustainability was observed visually by looking at the growth of the fungus. The results showed that the use of water type (seawater and fresh water) and the duration of steaming influence the sensory quality and shelf life of steamed tuna. The use of seawater with steaming for 45 minutes produces steamed tuna with the best sensory reception with favored color characteristics (brownish white), favored scent (a rather strong pindang aroma) with a preferred flavor (a slightly stronger and slightly salty flavored pindang) It has a preferred texture (padded) with 72 hours of storage at room temperature. Key words: sensory, shelf life, steaming, tuna, water ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh jenis air dan lama pengukusan terhadap mutu organoleptik dan daya simpan pindang ikan tongkol, sehingga diharapkan keluaran yang dihasilkan dapat bermanfaat bagi pengolahan ikan daerah pesisir dengan keterbatasan air tawar. Penelitian ini menggunakan Rancangan Acak Kelompok dengan 2 (dua) faktor yaitu jenis air (air tawar dan air laut Tanjung Luar) dan lama pengukusan (15, 30, 45, 60 dan 75 menit). Masing-masing perlakuan diulang 3 kali sehingga diperoleh 30 unit percobaan. Parameter yang diamati adalah mutu organoleptik yang meliputi uji hedonik dan uji skoring warna, rasa, tekstur dan aroma serta daya simpan pindang tongkol. Data hasil pengamatan organoleptik dianalisa dengan analisis keragaman pada taraf nyata 5% dengan menggunakan Friedman Two Anova dan perbedaan nyata diuji lanjut dengan Wilcoxon Match Pairs Test. Daya simpan tongkol diamati secara visual dengan melihat pertumbuhan jamur. Hasil penelitian memperlihatkan bahwa penggunaan jenis air (air laut dan air tawar) dan lama pengukusan berpengaruh terhadap mutu organoleptik dan daya simpan pindang ikan tongkol. Penggunaan air laut dari Tanjung Luar dengan pengukusan selama 45 menit menghasilkan tongkol dengan penerimaan organoleptik terbaik dengan karakteristik warna disukai (putih kecoklatan), aroma disukai (aroma pindang agak kuat) dengan rasa disukai (rasa khas pindang agak kuat dan terasa agak asin), selain itu memiliki tektur yang disukai (empuk) dengan lama penyimpanan 72 jam pada suhu ruang. Kata kunci: air, daya simpan, organoleptik pengukusan, tongkol

Rice is a major cash crop used all over world. The hygroscopic nature of rice kernel with warm and fumic conditions is favorable to enhance the growth and development of toxigenic fungi which produce mycotoxins. This study estimates the prevalence of aflatoxin B1 in different rice paddies collected from twelve regions of the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. All the samples were analyzed for their phenotypic characteristics (appearance, odor, and grain length). Competitive Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ELISA) was used to evaluate AFB1, both before and after applying the steam decontamination procedure to detoxify aflatoxin contamination. Cultural assay was used to find the source of aflatoxin. PDA and SDA agar were used to detect aflatoxin producing fungal species. Lactophenol Cotton Blue (LCB) staining was used for microscopic identification of fungal contaminants. Paddies from most regions appeared yellowish in color and odorless with the exception of Hafizabad, Jhang, Sheikhupura, and Gujarat (in Punjab), where they appeared blackish yellow in color and with a pungent smell. According to the results, 43 (61.42%) samples were detected with aflatoxin B1 out of 70 samples, with an average of 15.86±1.7 ug/kg, before treating with seam. After treatment with steam, 7 (10%) samples were detected with aflatoxin B1, with an average of 2.55±1.51 ug/kg. Most regions showed the presence of P. chrysogenum with the exception of R.Y. Khan, which showed the presence of A. niger. Steam, on average, reduced aflatoxin to 51.42%. The current study indicates that steam is an effective treatment to eradicate aflatoxin at industrial level. New approaches may be explored to target the contaminants in order to ensure food safety.

A plantain pseudostem was harvested and processed on the same day. The process began with manually separating the sheaths (80.85%) and the core (19.14%). The sheaths were subjected to a mechanical shredding process using paddles, extracting 2.20% of lignocellulosic fibers and 2.12% of sap, compared to the fresh weight of the sheaths. The fibers were washed, dried, combed, and spun in their native state and subjected to a steam explosion treatment, while the sap was subjected to filtration and evaporation. In the case of the core, it was subjected to manual cutting, drying, grinding, and sieving to separate 12.81% of the starch and 6.39% of the short lignocellulosic fibers, compared to the fresh weight of the core. The surface modification method using steam explosion succeeded in removing a low proportion of hemicellulose and lignin in the fibers coming from the shims, according to what was shown by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), achieving increased σmax and ε from the tensile test and greater thermal stability compared to its native state. The sap presented hygroscopic behavior by FT-IR and the highest thermal stability from TGA, while the starch from the core presented the lowest hygroscopic character and thermal stability. Although the pseudostem supplied two types of fibers, lower lignin content was identified in those from the core. Finally, the yarns were elaborated by using the fibers of the sheaths in their native and steam-exploded states, identifying differences in the processing and their respective physical and mechanical properties.

Due to aggressive gases produced during combustion process of biomass, some elements of the power boiler should be covered with a material that possesses very high corrosion resistance (e.g. Inconel 625). This paper presents results of microstructural studies of Inconel 625 padding weld on waterwall elements (made of 13CrMo4-5 steel) for steam boiler designed for biomass combustion. The microstructural studies were carried out using Scanning- as well as Transmission Electron Microscopy methods. The padded weld layer exhibited dendritic structure. In the weld layer γ phase with an increased dislocation density and stacking faults was observed. In the base material (13CrMo4-5 steel) titanium nitrides, complex carbides and Laves phase enriched in niobium were observed.

In the present study, the blue-green alga Spirulina platensis (NRC) was used for mass production under outdoor cultivation in three open ponds with a final capacity of 75 m3 net cultivation volume. Subculturing was performed within sequences and gradual volumes till 1,200 L open plate photobioreactor. The first and second ponds (30 cm depth) were used for the actual continuous production, while the third pond (80 cm depth) was used as a continuous inoculum supplier. In spite of low turbulence of the third pond due to high depth, all ponds had the same mechanical specification concerning paddle wheel structure and turbulence rate (16 rpm). A final nutrient concentration was employed based on Zarrouk medium by commercial grade compounds with some modifications. The nutrition was performed for the third pond by extra supplementation of extra doses of macro and micro-nutrients during the production period and dilution took place when culture was transferred to production ponds (first and second). Each production pond was harvested every 48 hours and the remainder water was return again into the third pond. The harvested pond yielded about 40 kg per day of fresh algal weight containing about 85% moisture on a dry weight basis. The results proved that using urea as nitrogen and carbon source with corn steam liquor instead of sodium nitrate and low bicarbonate, reduces production cost and supports growth medium by an adequate amount of carbon dioxide on the expense of the luxury use of sodium bicarbonate (16.8 g.l-1). Chemical analysis of the produced biomass showed 58-62% crude protein, 6-8% of ether extract and 8-11% of total carbohydrates. S. platensis contained total essential amino acids (131.3 mg/g), with a predominance of arginine followed by glutamic acid, leucine and phenylalanine.

Almost all water treatment plants for either surface raw water or water from reservoirs needs to have some kind of a system to eliminate time required for particles to settle down in the settling tanks (This occurs by increase turbidity particle size). A coagulant to be added and a flocculation’s system to inshore a good and homogenous distribution of chemicals to form up the correct size of particles to settled within the settling tanks. In water treatment plants many types of clary- flocculates are used either the mechanicals paddle or hydraulic jumps of steam water or using the spiral tubes (As on this study). In addition, a Jar Test should be used to assess the suitability of flocculation treatment for a given raw water. Unfortunately, even Jar Test suffers from a number of disadvantages. a number of study for Spiral Flocculate, has been shown I claimed to be a better method for continuous assessment of flocculation. Within multimedia sands and a spiral flocculate’s. Constant flow (generated from a tank with spill way to ensure a constant head all through the test cycles, results are recorded, and a number of remarks and suggestions are produced. This study will make use of a number of laboratory tests on a small model of treatment plants made for this purpose consist mainly of a gravity filter compares the performance of Spiral Flocculate The experiments conducted reveal that the Spiral Flocculate has a better effective energy. Even that this method need more future study and theoretical equations for the developing of chain flocs are needed. However, the size of flocs in Spiral Flocculate seems to be overestimated relative to the real flocculate and coagulations. Purpose: A continuous need for improving water treatment techniques allows for new technologies for obtaining adequate water, both in terms of quality and quantity. In order to obtain an efficient, rapid and low-cost clarification system, this study proposes the use of spired coiled tubes as a coagulation-flocculation reactor to evaluate the proposed clarification system, a number of experimental test where generated and a pumped kaolin with controlled quantities are pumped to city water and used in this study. Water with controlled head is used all the time and records are generated for the evaluation.

Abstract The saponification reactor, otherwise called the crutcher is a dual purpose unit operational vessel that serves for reactor and mixer in the production of soapy detergent. Little or no efforts have been made by available literatures to work on the crutcher agitation concepts and geometry which determines the rate of reaction and degree of homogeneity of reactor mixture in the crutcher as used in the currently most widely applied semi-boiled process. This paper presents for the first time the standard optimum agitation conditions for effective performance of a crutcher for semi-boiled laundry soap production. A standard reactor volume to diameter of 0.17 m3/m and height to diameter ratio of 1.2 ratios on 7 % over design, agitator speeds of 0.75 rps (paddle), motor power of 10.5 W and torque of 2.24 Nm with impeller to reactor diameter of 1/3 and teflon shaft centralizer have been developed. The introduction of “bottom scrapper” component to the agitation unit in a cone bottomed cylindrical batch reactor would enhance mixing and heat transfer, eliminate recycling unit and the application of under steam bubbling for effective cone content mixing. Also, the introduction of 4 baffles on 0.5 × 10–2 m clearance from impeller blades would promote efficient mixing and heat transfer. The overall conditions developed ensured effective mixing, heat transfer and high rate of reaction.

The article presents the results of a study of the use of ultrasonic technologies to increase the strength of cement mortar in the production of building and concrete structures, as well as to improve the rheological parameters of grouting mortar during the construction (drilling) of wells. During the experiment, the concrete mortar was treated for 3 minutes with an ultrasonic multi-frequency acoustic field (frequency 20.0 - 40.0 kHz, signal power - 200-400 W/dm3) in devices of various geometric shape. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) of class G-100 was used in the composition of the solution without plasticizer additives in order to exclude their influence. The ratio of water and cement in the solution was 0.44, the density - 1.90 g/cm3. Typical elements of flow channels were used as volumes where ultrasonic exposure is carried out. The hydrodynamic regime of the processes in the water-cement suspension was modeled at the beginning of the experiments by slow mixing with a paddle agitator (200 rev./min), and on closing stage, in order to prevent the effect of hydrodynamic cavitation failure, at a speed of 1000 rev./min. The maximum compression and bending stresses are measured after the mixture solidified in a steam bath (T =60°C, 24 h.) on a hydraulic stand. Conducted experiments have confirmed that ultrasonic exposure using resonant accumulators and flow hoses: has a positive effect on the hydration reaction and the structure of cement stone in the concrete sealing phase; accelerates the intensity of compressive strength. (from 24.3 MPa to 41.5 MPa); uniformity of structure; reduces the influence of temperature on strength gain (reduces energy consumption); increases the reliability of building structures, and in the case of well construction - provides a strong adhesion of the production column with rock. In general, the results of the study allowed: to formulate a technology for the production of heavy-duty concrete mixtures; to develop a set of equipment for the preparation of concrete (grouting mortar) with specified characteristics at production objects.

IntroductionThis article explores the work of lists in mediating the materiality and complexity of everyday life. In contemporary cultural contexts the endless proliferation of listing forms and practices takes on a “self-reflexivity” that signals their functional and productive role in negotiating the everyday. Grocery lists, to do lists, and other fragmentary notes work as personal tools for ordering and managing daily needs and activities. But what do these fragments tell us about the work of lists? Do they “merely” describe or provide analytical insight into the everyday? To address these questions we explore the issues and anxieties raised by everyday consumption drawing on theories of everyday life. These concerns, which are examined in detail in the second part of the paper, lie at the heart of French writer Georges Perec’s interest in the “infra-ordinary”—that which resides within the everyday. In the parts of his writing that he designated in retrospect as “sociological,” Perec takes the form and function of lists as a starting point for a range of literary experiments that work as tools of discovery and invention capable in their seeming banality of both mapping and disrupting everyday life. Les Choses (Things) and Je Me Souviens (I Remember), for example, take the form of endless and repetitious lists of things, places, people, and memories, collections of fragments that aim to achieve a new kind of sociology of everyday life. While this project may be contentious in terms of its “representativeness,” as a discursive method or mode of ethnographic practice (Becker) it points to the generative power of lists as both of the everyday and as an analytical tool of discovery for understanding the everyday. Perec’s sociology of the everyday is not, we argue, articulated as a form of a cohesive or generalizable characterisation of social institutions, but rather emerges as an “invent-ory” of the rich texture and disjunctures that populated his everyday spaces, personal encounters, and memories. Lists and the EverydayTo see lists as tools of common use, to paraphrase Spufford (2), is to place the list squarely within the realm of the everyday. A particular feature of the everyday—its “special quality,” as Highmore puts it—is that it is characterised by “the unnoticed, the inconspicuous, the unobtrusive” (Highmore 1). The everyday is enigmatic, elusive, difficult to grasp, and important because of this. In Maurice Blanchot’s famous formulation, “whatever its other aspects, the everyday has this essential trait: it allows no hold. It escapes” (14). Its pervasiveness renders it as platitude, but, as Blanchot adds, “this banality is also what is most important, if it brings us back to existence in its very spontaneity and as it is lived” (13). This tension poses special challenges for critics of the everyday who must register it as a part of, as inhering in, “manifold lived experience” without it “dissolving” into “statistics, properties, data” when it is “made the object of study” (Sheringham 360). In short, as Fran Martin (2) points out, “even though it surrounds us completely and takes up the vast majority of our time, the everyday is extremely difficult to pin down.” It is a predicament that is made all the more difficult in light of the complicated entanglement of the everyday and consumer capitalism (Jagose; Lury; Schor and Holt). This close relationship between consumer objects—things—and everyday life (along with other historical factors), has profoundly shifted critical understanding of the processes of subject formation and identity performance. One influential formulation of these transformations, associated most strongly with the work of Giddens and Beck, is captured in the notion of “reflexive modernity.” This refers to the understanding that, increasingly, at a broader societal level, “the very idea of controllability, certainty or security” is being challenged (Beck, World Risk Society 2)—developments that impact directly on how self-identity is formed (Giddens), reformed and performed (Hall). Faced with such upheavals, it is suggested that the individual increasingly “must produce, stage and cobble together their biographies themselves” (Beck, “Reinvention” 13), they must self-reflexively “invent” themselves. As Slater puts it, individuals, by force of circumstance, are required to “choose, construct, interpret, negotiate, display who they are to be seen as” (84) using a wide array of resources, both material and symbolic. Consumerism, it is widely argued, proffers its goods as solutions to these problems of identity (Slater 85). For instance, Adam Arvidsson notes how goods are used in the construction of “social relations, shared emotions, personal identity or forms of community” (18). This is particularly the case in relation to lifestyle consumption, which for Chaney (11) functions as a response to the loss of meaning in modern life following the sorts of larger societal upheavals described by Giddens and Beck and others. The general implication of lifestyle consumption across its various forms is that “‘every choice’ […] all acts of purchase or consumption, […] ‘are decisions not only about how to act but who to be’” (Warde in Slater 85). It is here that we can place the contemporary work of lists and the proliferation of list forms and practices. Lists figure in vital ways within this context of consumer-based everyday life. At a general level, lists assist us in making sense of the activities, objects, and experiences that feed and constitute daily life. In this sense, the list is a crucial mediating device, a means of organising things and bringing the mundanities and the exigencies of the everyday under control:The list categorises the ongoing chores of everyday life: organising and managing shopping, work, laundry, meetings, parking fines, and body management. (Crewe 33)In relation to lifestyle consumption, lists and inventories constitute one key way in which “we attempt to organise and order consumption” (Crewe 29). In this sense, lists are, for Louise Crewe, important “scripting devices that help us to manage the mundanity and weighty materiality of consumption” (Crewe 29). The use of the phrase “scripting device” is important here insofar as it suggests a double-movement in which lists simultaneously serve as “devices for regulating and disciplining the consuming body” (that is, lists as “prompts” that encourage us to follow the “script” of consumer culture) and work productively to “narrate practice and desire” (part of the “scripting” of self-identity and performance) (Crewe 30).In developing and illustrating these ideas, Crewe draws on Bill Keaggy’s found shopping lists project. Originally a blog, and subsequently a book entitled Milk Eggs Vodka, Keaggy gathers (and offers humorous commentary on) a wide array of discarded shopping lists that range from the mundane, to the bizarre, to the profound, each, in their own way, surprisingly rich and revealing of the scribes who penned them. Individually, the lists relay, through object names, places, actions, and prompts, the mundane landscape of everyday consumption. For example: Zip lockIceBeerFruit (Keaggy 42) SunglassesShoesBeer$Food (Keaggy 205)Keaggy’s collection comes to life, however, through his own careful organisation of these personal fragments into meaningful categories delineated by various playful and humorous characteristics. This listing of lists performs a certain transformation that works only in accumulation, in the book’s organisation, and through Keaggy’s humorous annotations. That is, Keaggy’s deliberate organisation of the lists into categories that highlight certain features over others, and his own annotations, introduces an element of invention and play, and delivers up many unexpected insights into their anonymous compilers’ lives. This dual process of utilising the list form as a creative and a critical tool for understanding the everyday also lies at the heart of Georges Perec’s literary and sociological project. Georges Perec: Towards an Invent-ory of Everyday LifeThe work of the French experimental writer Georges Perec is particularly instructive in understanding the generative potential of the act of listing. Perec was especially attuned to the effectiveness and significance of lists in revealing what is important in the mundane and quotidian—what he calls the “infra-ordinary” or “endotic” (as opposed to the “extraordinary” and “exotic”). As shall be detailed below, Perec’s creative recuperation of the list form as a textual device and critical tool leads us to a fuller appreciation of how, in Crewe’s words, “the most mundane, ordinary, invisible, and seemingly uninteresting things can be as significant and revealing as the most dramatic” (44).Across Perec’s diverse literary output, lists figure repeatedly in ways that speak directly to their ability to shed light on the inner workings of the everyday—their ability to make the familiar strange (Highmore 12)—and to reveal the entangled interactions between everyday consumption and personal identity. It is in this second sense that lists operate in his novel Things: A Story of the Sixties (Les Choses, 1965), a book that the French philosopher Alain Badiou (20, note 1) describes as a “rigorous literary version of the Marxist theme of alienation—especially the prevalence of things over existence.” Things tells of the endeavours of Sylvie and Jérôme, a young Parisian couple who, in Bourdieu’s terms, attempt to improve their social position in part through the cultural capital resources they see as invested in consumer objects, in the “things” that they acquire and desire. Perec’s telling of this narrative is heavily populated with lists of these semiotically loaded objects of consumer desire, taste, and distinction. The book opens, for example, with a descriptive listing of the kinds of decorative elements that visitors would encounter in the entrance hall of an idealised, imagined Paris apartment the couple longed for:Your eye, first of all, would glide over the grey fitted carpet in the narrow, long and high-ceilinged corridor. Its walls would be cupboards, in light-coloured wood, with fittings of gleaming brass. Three prints, depicting, respectively, the Derby winner Thunderbird, a paddle-steamer named Ville-de-Montereau, and a Stephenson locomotive, would lead to a leather curtain hanging on thick, black, grainy wooden rings which would slide back at the merest touch. (Perec, Things 21) This (and other detailed) listing of idealised objects—which, as the book progresses, are set in stark opposition to their present lived reality—tells the reader a great deal about the two protagonists’ wants and desires (“they both possessed, alas, but a single passion, the passion for a higher standard of living, and it exhausted them”—Perec, Things 35), and wider collective identification with these desires. Indeed, such identifications clearly had wide social resonance in France (and elsewhere) with Things collecting the Prix Renaudot. The ability of lists to speak to collective social (not just individual) experience was also explored by Perec in Je me souviens (1978), a book modelled on a project by Joe Brainard and which comprised a series of personal recollections of largely unremarkable events, which, nevertheless, at the time, had gained some form of purchase within the collective psyche of the French people—in Perec’s words, a random list of “little fragments of the everyday, things which, in such and such a year, everyone more or less the same age has seen, or lived, or share, and which have subsequently disappeared or been forgotten” (cited in Adair 178). For example:(item 57) I remember that Christian Jacque divorced Renée Faure in order to marry Martine Carol.(item 247) I remember that De Gaulle had a brother named Paul who was director of the Foire de Paris. (cited in Adair 179)Both these texts are component parts in a larger project of Perec’s to develop “an anthropology of everyday life” (Perec, “Notes” 142 note §). Howard Becker has offered a challenging, though also somewhat ambivalent, critique of Perec’s “sociological” method in these and other texts, contrasting Perec’s descriptive ethnography with the work that social scientists do. Becker takes aim at the way Perec’s detailed listing of objects, people, events, and memories eschews narrative and sociological design, referring to Perec’s method as “proto-ethnography,” or “detailed ‘raw description’” (73). Yet Becker is also drawn in by the end products of that method: “As you read Perec’s descriptions, you increasingly succumb to the feeling (at least I do, and I think others do as well) that this is important, though you can’t say how” (71). Ultimately, his criticism decries Perec’s failure to impose an explicit order on his lists and fragments, perhaps missing the significance of the way they are always bounded and underpinned by a conceptual principle: “It does not seem to have the kind of cohesion, at least not obviously, that social scientists like to ascribe to a culture, a similarity or interlocking or affinity of the parts to one another…” (74). That is, Perec’s lists stand as fragments, but fragments that do add up to something, as Becker admits: “The whole is more than the parts” (69). This ambivalence points to the analytical potential Perec found within those fragments, the “raw description,” that can only be understood through the end product. It could be argued that his lists defy the very possibility of presenting the everyday as a cohesive whole, and promote instead the everyday in its rich texture, as repetition and disjuncture. This project presents itself, in short, as a sociology of the everyday, whilst subverting the functionalist traditions of sociological observation and classification (Boyne). As Perec asks of the habitual, “How are we to speak of [...] ‘common things,’ how to track them down rather, flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue [...]?” (Perec, “Approaches” 210). Lists (alongside other forms of description) play a vital role in this project and provide a partial answer to the above questions, and this is why Perec’s lists actively seek out the banal or quotidian. In addition to the examples cited above, fascination with enumeration of this kind is most strikingly realised in his essay, “Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four” (Реrес, “Attempt” 244-249), and his later radio broadcast, “An Attempt at а Description of Things Seen at Mabillon Junction on 19 Мау 1978” (Bellos 640). At very least, Perec’s experiments serve as testimony to his ability to transform the trivial into the poetic—list-making as “invent-ory”. Importantly, however, Perec makes the shift from the inventory as a pragmatic listing form, “presenting a simple series of units,” “collected by a conceptual principle” (Belknap 2, 3), to a more transformative or analytical discursive practice. In all the above cases, Perec’s “accumulation is used in conjunction with other forms, devices, and intentions” (Bellos 670), such as, for instance, in the deployment of the list (the “invent-ory”) as an effective lever with which to pry open for inspection the seemingly inscrutable inner workings of everyday spaces, things, memories, in order that they might “speak of what is [and] of what we are” (Perec, “Approaches” 210).In this way, Perec’s use of lists (and various forms of categorisation) can be understood as a critique of the very possibility of stable method applied to classificatory ordering systems. In its place he promotes a set of practices that are oriented towards, and appropriate to, investigations of the everyday, rather than establishing scientific universals. At points in his work Perec expresses discomfort or even anxiety in taking the act of classification as a “method.” He begins his essay “Think/Classify,” for instance, by lamenting the “discursive deficiency” of his own use of classification in grasping the everyday, which at the same time calls “the thinkable and the classifiable into question” (189). And, yet, the act of listing, situated as it is for Perec firmly within the material contexts of particular activities and spaces, ultimately offers a productive means by which to understand, and negotiate, the everyday.ConclusionIn this paper we have examined the everyday work of lists and the functions that they serve in mediating the materiality and complexity of everyday life. In the first section of the paper, following Crewe, we explored the dual function of lists as scripting devices in simultaneously “disciplining” us as consumers as well and as a means of controlling the everyday in ways that also feed our sense of self-identity. In this sense lists are complex devices. Perec was especially attuned to the layers of complexity that attend our engagement with lists. In particular, as we explored in the second part of the paper, Perec saw lists as a critical and productive tool (an invent-ory) and used them to scrutinise common things in the hope that they might “speak of what is [and] of what we are” (Perec, “Approaches” 210). Lists remain, in this sense, an accessible discursive technology often surprising for their subtle revelations about the everyday even while they maintain adherence to an inherently recognisable form.In setting out the importance of his own “project,” and the need to question the habitual, Perec provides a set of instructions (his “pedagogic strategy”—Adair 177), presented as an approach (if not a method), and which signals his desire to critique the traditions of social science as a method of material and social ordering and analysis. Perec’s appropriation of this approach, this discursive technology, also works as a provocation, as a “project” that others might adopt. He prompts his readers to “make an inventory of your pockets, your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out” (Perec, “Approaches” 210). This is a challenge that was built upon in different ways by a number of writers inspired by the esprit of Perec’s approach to the everyday, associated also with “a wider cultural shift from systems and structures to practices and performances” (Sherringham 292). Sherringham, for instance, traces the “redirection of ethnographic scrutiny from the far to the near” in the work of Augé, Ernaux, Maspero and Réda amongst others (292-359). Perec’s lists thus serve as a series of provocations which still hold critical purchase, and the full implications of which are still to be realised.ReferencesAdair, Gilbert. “The Eleventh Day: Perec and the Infra-ordinary.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction XXIX.1 (2009): 176-88.Arvidsson, Adam. Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture. London: Routledge, 2006.Badiou, Alain. The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings. Trans. Gregory Elliott. 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