ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the relations between making and growing beyond the domains of science and technology, by turning not only to the work of biomedical engineers and medical educators but also to everyday working practices such as sewing, carving, gardening and glass-forming. Contributors explore these varied and changing relations from perspectives in anthropology, archaeology, cultural geography and history. Growth, is a process of self-making or autopoiesis. Organism: a whole with interdependent parts, compared to a living being; an animal, plant or single-celled life form. Artefact: an object made or modified by human workmanship, as opposed to one formed by natural processes. In 2010, The Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG), the UK-based international collective, organized their annual conference around the theme of 'making things', which provided a platform for discussions of artists' interventions, film, the sacred and community-making in relation to museum work and research.
