Architects

Thomas Yarrow is a social anthropologist whose work focuses on the social life of expertise. He is particularly interested in everyday interactions through which professional knowledge is produced, the personal and ideological commitments that propel this work, and the routine ethical dilemmas that arise. For Architects, Yarrow turned his attention to the lives and work of ten architects who comprise the Millar Howard Workshop, an architectural firm in the Cotswolds, UK. Yarrow is also the author of Development Beyond Politics, and the co-author of Detachment, Differentiating Development, and Archaeology and Anthropology.

There is a good deal that we can recognise—and take comfort from—in Yarrow's portrait. Much of this is in the charmingly ramshackle way we conduct ourselves. Yarrow reminds us why [architects] persist with this badly paid, insecure struggle of practice... as a way of being in the world and to help us understand our place in it. This is an unusually human book.- Piers Taylor (Architecture Today) So rather than unlocking any finished design for us to copy, this book opens the potential for anthropologists and ethnographers to find meaning in the mundane, the high-value things that move us beyond imagination. That is where the magic resides.(Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)