P. 4 "Thus, my intention is not so much to consider actions such as crafting, making, or doing as categories that would encompass a set of dissimilar practices (for example, synthetic biology and crocheting with coral and wool yarn (Roosth 2013)). To the contrary, it seems richer to start from the principle that making refers to a plurality of activities, each one having its own specific traits and shedding light on different aspects of life. The goal of this article is to offer a first look at this diversity by recalling that the notion of technique, which is quite vast, refers to a set of practices that are highly diverse and sometimes complementary but never reducible to one another. Techniques of the body, cognitive techniques, craftwork, construction, manufacturing, production, engineering, technology, artistic techniques, and bricolage are all activities that allow humans to intervene in the world, sometimes in order to modify their relations to other living beings using specific modalities."
P. 8 " My goal, rather, is to examine how conceptions of life orient concrete practices. The technicist metaphor does not only provide plausible scenarios to explain the apparition of phenomena linked to life: it is also very actively applied to act on living beings. Thus, the connection between conceptions of life and technical activities works in both ways. If vital processes can be treated as analogous to technical processes, in return, technical processes are mobilized in order to act on living beings."
P. 31 "My goal in this article has been to begin to explore the diversity of techniques that humans have developed to act on the living, as well as to understand the specific characteristics of the vital processes associated with this diversity. The domains of crafting, modes of (re)production, selective breeding, technology, engineering, tinkering, and art all represent agentive configurations that involve specific relations to the living. In truth, this is above all a heuristic and methodological distinction. In fact, it seems that these domains themselves refer to very heterogeneous techniques, while similar techniques are sometimes used in very different projects. In any case, certain techniques—cognitive techniques, techniques of the body—seem to be present in all these domains. "
