Cyborg anthropology
Encyclopedia
Cyborg anthropology is the discipline that studies the interaction between humanity and technology from an anthropological perspective. The discipline is relatively new compared to the broader field of anthropology, but offers novel insights on new technological advances and their effect on culture and society.
's annual meeting in 1993. The sub-group was very closely related to STS
and the Society for the Social Studies of Science. Donna Haraway
’s 1985 Cyborg Manifesto could be considered the founding document of cyborg anthropology by first exploring the philosophical and sociological ramifications of the term. More recently, Amber Case has been responsible for setting up the Cyborg Anthropology Wiki and explicating the concept of Cyborg Anthropology to the general public.
, the term “cyborg” is short for cybernetic organism. A cyborg is traditionally defined as a system with both organic and inorganic parts. In one sense, the use of any tool that functions as an extension of one's abilities qualifies one as a cyborg, but cyborgs are more narrowly understood to have actual, physical technological extensions/prostheses. Thus in the narrowest sense, examples of cyborgs would include people with pacemakers, insulin pumps, and bionic limbs. In the broadest sense, all of our interaction with technology could qualify as a cyborg (since the border of a cyborg system has no inherent limits, the universe could qualify as a cyborg). The narrowest sense of cyborg does not let us grasp the steadily expanding field for the practice of cyborg anthropology or investigate the surprising synergies of the human-non-human splices, while the broadest conception runs the risk of being so broad that the discipline cannot be defined. Thus cyborg anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be humans.
. Cybernetics
, was originally the study of control, communication, and information, but it has mutated into a host of other disciplines that fall under the general label of Informatics
. Informatics include the disciplines of Robotics
, Artificial Intelligence
, bionics
, Nanotechnology
, Genetics
, Artificial Life
, Cognitive Science
, Neuroscience
, and the variety of sub-disciplines within these larger fields. These disciplines' commonalities are 1. their historical link with Cybernetics 2. their implicit metaphor of organism as machine, machine as organism, and everything as information. Cyborg Anthropology is particularly concerned with advances in the informatic disciplines and their implications for culture and humanity.
, from the Greek “anthopos” (human being), is the study of humanity. A host of disciplines and sub-disciplines have arisen to study technology: STS
(acronym shared by both science and technology studies, and science, technology and society), philosophy of science
, history of science
, communications, sociology of technology, etc. This section will compare cyborg anthropology to these disciplines to show where cyborg anthropology departs.
The philosophy of science tends to focus on epistemological questions of the meaning of scientific fact. One is likely to read David Hume
's theories of causation, Thomas Kuhn
, Bruno Latour
, and other thinkers that question the meaning of scientific knowledge.
The history of science
, as the name implies, tends to focus on the development of science/technology and their influence upon history. As a sub-set of history, the history of science concerns itself with the origins of scientific knowledge. So for example, the history of science will explain the origins of modern science in Galileo, the project called Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and other notable moments when science and technology had transformative effects upon society and culture.
STS actively employ systems analysis (with the concepts of homeostasis
, positive and negative feedback loops, information) to understand society. It is directly situated within the paradigm that cyborg anthropology studies, and seeks to use this paradigm to study society as a cybernetic system. In this sense it is closer to sociology than anthropology. This being said, STS is perhaps the closest analogue to cyborg anthropology.
Anthropology generally differs from sociology in three (very) broad ways:
These simplifications are useful ways to distinguish fields that are increasingly converging and becoming harder to distinguish.
and nanotechnology
, which are not strictly "digital". Cybernetics/informatics covers the range of cyborg advances better than the label "digital".
(a cybernetic, feedback-looping, adaptive, descentralized network) is the metaphor that replaces static structure. Insofar as cyborg anthropology is studying phenomena that have very little cultural precedence, it seems to be inextricably tied to diachronic analysis and theories of interface r/evolution.
. Kicked out of most philosophy departments in the United States, Continental Philosophy draws from such figures as Immanuel Kant
, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida (as opposed to the logical positivists that generally make up analytic philosophy). Continental Philosophy is of particular use to cyborg anthropology in several respects:
this section should also help clarify the difference between anthropology and sociology, since sociology relies much less on continental philosophy.
), government sanctions (net-neutrality), specific innovative humans (Steve Jobs
), or some type of combination of these elements? Actor-network theory
(ANT), as proposed by Bruno Latour
, is a popular theory that underlays accounts of how these different elements work together to produce techno-cultural phenomenon. Latour situates actors/subjects as actor nodes that function within larger distributed networks of mutual interaction and feedback loops. Through this approach, Latour avoids the two extremes of a purely materialist system in which humans have no agency (exemplified in Mintz' "Sweetness and Power') and a radically anthropocentric approach that mitigates any agency of supra-human elements (humans are the only agents). Cyborg anthropology needs to be able to analyze the fluid exchange between technological actors and human actors, especially since the technologies being studied actively dismantle our ontological pre-suppositions as to what constitutes a "human" or "technology".
's 1985 Cyborg Manifesto could be considered the founding text of cyborg anthropology. Haraway celebrates the cyborg as the ultimate postmodern boundary-defying chimaera. She specifically uses the example of sex and gender to show how the cyborg can be utilized to break down our conceptions of gender/sex as physically determined and instead offers a wonderfully grotesque utopia whose technologies (virtual avatars, artificial insemination
, sex changes, AI, etc.) break down the notion of gender to the point of irrelevance. Haraway's uses gender as her central example, but also writes extensively on the many other dichotomies that will collapse in our postmodern cyborg condition.
Insofar as gender is concerned with identity, body-politics, collapsing gender/sex distinctions, post-feminist theory seems to find a natural compliment in cyborg anthropology. This has also been a historical trend in the discipline, with Donna Haraway
and Katherine Hayles, two of the best scholars in the field, using gender as an example to ground their analysis. However, cyborg anthropology is primarily concerned the cyborg, which collapses all distinctions it encounters (life/death, artificial/natural, virtual/real, male/female, space/place, human/animal/computer, etc.). This includes distinctions that are very relevant for gender studies as well, but the discipline extends well beyond these particular approaches.
History
Cyborg anthropology originated as a sub-focus group within the American Anthropological AssociationAmerican Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association is a professional organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 11,000 members, the Arlington, Virginia based association includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguistic...
's annual meeting in 1993. The sub-group was very closely related to STS
Science and technology studies
Science, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
and the Society for the Social Studies of Science. Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
’s 1985 Cyborg Manifesto could be considered the founding document of cyborg anthropology by first exploring the philosophical and sociological ramifications of the term. More recently, Amber Case has been responsible for setting up the Cyborg Anthropology Wiki and explicating the concept of Cyborg Anthropology to the general public.
The cyborg
The object of study for cyborg anthropology is the cyborg. Originally coined in a paper about space explorationSpace exploration
Space exploration is the use of space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft....
, the term “cyborg” is short for cybernetic organism. A cyborg is traditionally defined as a system with both organic and inorganic parts. In one sense, the use of any tool that functions as an extension of one's abilities qualifies one as a cyborg, but cyborgs are more narrowly understood to have actual, physical technological extensions/prostheses. Thus in the narrowest sense, examples of cyborgs would include people with pacemakers, insulin pumps, and bionic limbs. In the broadest sense, all of our interaction with technology could qualify as a cyborg (since the border of a cyborg system has no inherent limits, the universe could qualify as a cyborg). The narrowest sense of cyborg does not let us grasp the steadily expanding field for the practice of cyborg anthropology or investigate the surprising synergies of the human-non-human splices, while the broadest conception runs the risk of being so broad that the discipline cannot be defined. Thus cyborg anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be humans.
Cybernetics
Another way to think about the object of study of Cyborg Anthropology is through the discipline of CyberneticsCybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
. Cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
, was originally the study of control, communication, and information, but it has mutated into a host of other disciplines that fall under the general label of Informatics
Informatics (academic field)
Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information...
. Informatics include the disciplines of Robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
, Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, bionics
Bionics
Bionics is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.The word bionic was coined by Jack E...
, Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
, Genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, Artificial Life
Artificial life
Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...
, Cognitive Science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, Neuroscience
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
, and the variety of sub-disciplines within these larger fields. These disciplines' commonalities are 1. their historical link with Cybernetics 2. their implicit metaphor of organism as machine, machine as organism, and everything as information. Cyborg Anthropology is particularly concerned with advances in the informatic disciplines and their implications for culture and humanity.
Methodology
AnthropologyAnthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, from the Greek “anthopos” (human being), is the study of humanity. A host of disciplines and sub-disciplines have arisen to study technology: STS
STS
-Science, medicine, meteorology and technology:*Science and technology studies*Superior temporal sulcus*Socio-technical systems*Severe tropical storm*Scanning tunneling spectroscopy, a spectroscopy technique based on Scanning Tunneling Microscopy...
(acronym shared by both science and technology studies, and science, technology and society), philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
, history of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
, communications, sociology of technology, etc. This section will compare cyborg anthropology to these disciplines to show where cyborg anthropology departs.
The philosophy of science tends to focus on epistemological questions of the meaning of scientific fact. One is likely to read David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's theories of causation, Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
, Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
, and other thinkers that question the meaning of scientific knowledge.
The history of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
, as the name implies, tends to focus on the development of science/technology and their influence upon history. As a sub-set of history, the history of science concerns itself with the origins of scientific knowledge. So for example, the history of science will explain the origins of modern science in Galileo, the project called Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and other notable moments when science and technology had transformative effects upon society and culture.
STS actively employ systems analysis (with the concepts of homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
, positive and negative feedback loops, information) to understand society. It is directly situated within the paradigm that cyborg anthropology studies, and seeks to use this paradigm to study society as a cybernetic system. In this sense it is closer to sociology than anthropology. This being said, STS is perhaps the closest analogue to cyborg anthropology.
Anthropology generally differs from sociology in three (very) broad ways:
- Anthropologists are more prone to comparative study of other cultures, while sociologists generally study their own society
- Sociologists generally rely more on quantitative data/statistical data, while anthropologists more often use qualitative data/observation/participation to understand cultures.
- Sociologists more often have an explicit normative program built into their research (partially stemming from point 1), while anthropologists generally try to regulate their analysis to ethnographical description and comparison.
These simplifications are useful ways to distinguish fields that are increasingly converging and becoming harder to distinguish.
Differences between digital anthropology and cyborg anthropology
Digital anthropology is more concerned with how digital advances are changing how people live their lives and consequent changes to how anthropologists do ethnography and to a lessor extent how digital technology can be used to represent and undertake research. Also, cyborg anthropology looks at disciplines like geneticsGenetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
and nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
, which are not strictly "digital". Cybernetics/informatics covers the range of cyborg advances better than the label "digital".
Diachronic analysis
Technology has always been implicated in the question of what it means to be human, but since WWII and the proliferation of informatic disciplines this question has gained whole new dimensions and horizons. Technology is radically changing the way we interact—faster than any other point in history. Traditionally, the central unit of analysis in social and cultural anthropology is the ethnography, a synchronic snapshot of how a culture functions as a whole (often with some recourse to the notion of the "structure" of a culture, a metaphor that is steeped in connotations of unchanging stability). In this sense anthropology often leaves the diachronic analysis to historians, and instead tries to understand how the culture functions as a whole. Cyborg anthropology seems different in this respect. Because technology and interface are changing so fast, cyborg anthropology is much more likely to note the changes over time in culture and use this diachronic analysis to understand the ramifications of our cybernetic condition. The rhizomeRhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...
(a cybernetic, feedback-looping, adaptive, descentralized network) is the metaphor that replaces static structure. Insofar as cyborg anthropology is studying phenomena that have very little cultural precedence, it seems to be inextricably tied to diachronic analysis and theories of interface r/evolution.
Continental philosophy
Since Levi-Strauss' structuralist revolution, social and cultural anthropology have been the social science home of continental philosophyContinental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
. Kicked out of most philosophy departments in the United States, Continental Philosophy draws from such figures as Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida (as opposed to the logical positivists that generally make up analytic philosophy). Continental Philosophy is of particular use to cyborg anthropology in several respects:
- Continental philosophy questions/engages the social conditions that facilitate techno-science and is hyper-aware of the dangers of solely relying on these paradigms for understanding the human condition.
- Continental philosophy recognizes that all thought/praxis is socially/historically/materially conditioned, a necessary pre-requisite for understanding our techno-human-cyborg condition. Thought does not happen in a void, and the more resources we have for undermining this notion the better.
- Continental philosophy emerges from the German philosophy of reflection (Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche) that is centered upon a rich complication of the self-other relation. Since this is the central binary put in question by the concept of the cyborg, it makes sense to use this wealth of scholarship to analyze the self-other dyad. They also scrutinize the role of the observer in analysis, a hallmark of both second-wave cybernetics and Cyborg Anthropology (since we are all cyborgs we need to question our own assumptions).
- Last but not least, almost all the central thinkers of cyborg anthropology situate themselves in the literary theory/continental nexus.
this section should also help clarify the difference between anthropology and sociology, since sociology relies much less on continental philosophy.
Actor–network theory
Questions of subjectivity, agency, actors, and structures have been of perennial interest in social and cultural anthropology. In cyborg anthropology the question of what type of cybernetic system constitutes an actor/subject becomes all the more important. Is it the actual technology that acts on humanity (the Internet), the general techno-culture (silicon valleySilicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
), government sanctions (net-neutrality), specific innovative humans (Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
), or some type of combination of these elements? Actor-network theory
Actor-network theory
Actor–network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies...
(ANT), as proposed by Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
, is a popular theory that underlays accounts of how these different elements work together to produce techno-cultural phenomenon. Latour situates actors/subjects as actor nodes that function within larger distributed networks of mutual interaction and feedback loops. Through this approach, Latour avoids the two extremes of a purely materialist system in which humans have no agency (exemplified in Mintz' "Sweetness and Power') and a radically anthropocentric approach that mitigates any agency of supra-human elements (humans are the only agents). Cyborg anthropology needs to be able to analyze the fluid exchange between technological actors and human actors, especially since the technologies being studied actively dismantle our ontological pre-suppositions as to what constitutes a "human" or "technology".
Cyborgs and gender
Donna HarawayDonna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
's 1985 Cyborg Manifesto could be considered the founding text of cyborg anthropology. Haraway celebrates the cyborg as the ultimate postmodern boundary-defying chimaera. She specifically uses the example of sex and gender to show how the cyborg can be utilized to break down our conceptions of gender/sex as physically determined and instead offers a wonderfully grotesque utopia whose technologies (virtual avatars, artificial insemination
Artificial insemination
Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination...
, sex changes, AI, etc.) break down the notion of gender to the point of irrelevance. Haraway's uses gender as her central example, but also writes extensively on the many other dichotomies that will collapse in our postmodern cyborg condition.
Insofar as gender is concerned with identity, body-politics, collapsing gender/sex distinctions, post-feminist theory seems to find a natural compliment in cyborg anthropology. This has also been a historical trend in the discipline, with Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
and Katherine Hayles, two of the best scholars in the field, using gender as an example to ground their analysis. However, cyborg anthropology is primarily concerned the cyborg, which collapses all distinctions it encounters (life/death, artificial/natural, virtual/real, male/female, space/place, human/animal/computer, etc.). This includes distinctions that are very relevant for gender studies as well, but the discipline extends well beyond these particular approaches.