A letter with Union of South
Africa SG No. 2, Orange River Colony SG No. 48 from 1913No missing h. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s ‘Reassembling the Social’, I approach stamps like ants, as a species that suddenly populated society, multiplied and differentiated. Obviously, they connected senders and recipients of letters. Less obviously, they funneled the small fees paid for them into a postal system that used the money to enlarge and grow, to increase the numbers of stamps and letters and communication. Soon, collectors got interested in studying the different kinds of stamps, and others in trading with collectors, and so on, and so forth.
Until today, the predominance of wealthy elderly white men with a vivid sense for tradition and traditionalism among philatelists is evident. You rearly see younger people (not brought along as (grand)children of the elerly men), women, non-pink people among stamp collectors. There is no single reason for it but the strong connection of stamps with the state. Stamps were among the first technologies to establish industrial states: generating revenues, connecting people and businesses, inscripting the communication of a country with symbols and tokens. And states were the realm of elderly white men; ranchers enjoy riding horses, and state officials enjoy collecting stamps.
In more than one way, the networks established around stamps aka postal systems were engines of the expansion of industrial societies - expanding into the lives of citizens, into the rural areas around cities and across the globe, until there was no white spot left. (At least we thought so.)
Yet, stamps in colonial societies are a fantastic tool for explaining the moderns, colonialism and imperialism, and especially the failure to overcome this legacy. And, by the way, why the interest in the study of stamps is still limited to elderly white men (who often talk about former colonies as if their mindset would still be legitimate).
A letter with Union of South
Africa SG No. 2, Orange River Colony SG No. 48 from 1913
This hobbyists’ page is located at sdf.org, a great place for learning and fun. The author is sociologist and statician, promoting free software and democracy and philately, which are quite intimately linked to each other, because they are all about the option of freely communicating for the purpose of finding a common way ahead.
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