Taking Stock

The volume examines the proliferation of "inventorying" models and practices as cultural techniques of knowledge organization and production. Inventories are still broadly treated as "raw" data and unprocessed source materials. The book shows how (1) inventories function as complex media formats during the long 19th century and how (2) they intersect and interfere with a range of other material techniques during this period to produce, store, distribute, organize and process cultural information. How do inventories work against and in dialogue with other media of collection, storage and retrieval such as catalogs, indexes, bibliographies, and archives; what ne media configurations do techniques of inventorying enable and how, in torn, are such techniques shaped by the media channels and formats they employ; what is at stake in the critical effort of "taking stock", whether as commercial, bureaucratic, literary, historiographical, or scientific operations; finally, what du such operations tell us specifically about the production and circulation of knowledge in the German 19th century.