Eidetic Illuminations

Open Access Anthropology

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:27:00 +0000

There's been a lot of discussion lately about open access in academic anthropology publishing. See Savage Minds (here, here, and here), Neuroanthropology and Ethnografix for more details (sorry if I've missed any - feel free to leave links in the comments section). I wholeheartedly advocate for open access publishing - especially for anthropology. We are the one discipline that truly works with people (borrowing from Ingold). How can we honestly continue that tradition if our publications are hidden from view and locked behind university library system? I see no reason why open access journals can't be as high quality as their for-profit counterparts - in fact, it's certainly possible for them to be even higher quality if people are willing to put in the time and effort to make them so. I know that's the trouble, but it is possible, and if we value it, then we ought to do it.

As an up and coming academic, I'm willing to put my career on the line and promise to only publish in open access journals. Putting my career on the line is a very real threat, since many departments look for publications in key (generally not open access) journals such as American Anthropologist when hiring. However, I'm confident that the people who will be evaluating me will overlook those issues if they understand why I made this choice, and will evaluate my work on its own merits and not on the journal that publishes it. That said, I don't really know much about the OA landscape in anthropology journals. Right now, I have one article pending publication in Imponderabilia (which is OA), one in the works for O-Zone (which will be OA, but is not anthropology focused), and one on cultural resource management that I was considering submitting to Human Organization or Heritage and Society (neither of which are really open access), but if anyone knows of an OA journal I could submit to I'd be happy to reconsider.

Multiple Realisms

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:32:00 +0000

I've just finished up my preliminary exam and have reemerged to the light. I've spent a little time getting up to date with my blogs, and in particular the discussion between Michael (here, here, and here) and Adam Robbert (here, here, and here). I've found it very intriguing as it's brought up a number of nuances between different realist theories that I had not been aware of before. Not being one to plunge headlong into a debate, here I would just like to offer some thoughts - posed more as a question for further attention than as an argument for one side or the other.

Adam has drawn two distinctions - the first between absolute and contingent withdrawal and the second between realism and materialism. Materialism, he argues, doesn't go far enough to account for the relationships between different entities (objects in the OOO language, but I prefer this term). He does this by arguing on the basis of epistemology - how one object can or cannot know another. I posed the question on one of Michael's posts if the problem of the gap between the object and knowledge of the object is not due to the fact that the object and the knowledge are ontologically distinct entities. This would mean that the two can never truly coincide with one another except, perhaps, by some process of intimacy. Adam calls this position materialism. He offers a different way of looking at it, which I had not thought of and which I now find myself grappling with. That is, that knowledge is not an entity unto itself, but rather a quality of objects attempting to relate to one another.

If the ontological character of relations is fundamentally about prehension — each entity’s unique enactment of an onto-specific world — then we do not have a split between “cognitive powers” and “powers of the flesh.” Rather we (humans) have something like enfleshed cognitive powers; a result of our embodied particularity’s engagement with the cosmos. In a sense then, epistemology is the onto-specific mode of translation each entity engages to enact its universe. Snails and bonobos have fleshy epistemologies just likes humans. Even stars might have some kind of episteme in this sense.

At first I was tempted to turn the table on Adam and suggest that his is actually the materialist perspective and that Michael and I are the realists. For Michael and I, material objects and semiotic objects are equally real. They both have an ontological status of their own, and that the world is in fact heterogeneously composed of both material and semiotic entities.

On the other hand, Adam's position seems at first glance to reduce epistemology to a quality of objects - what then is left for the object to be? In a crude leap of logic what would be left is material, and so this would be a fundamentally materialist philosophy. But that's not what Adam is suggesting. Instead, the material and semiotic are both qualities of real objects, neither of which is foundational.

I'm inclined to suggest that both positions are realist and not materialist since neither posits matter as the ultimate ground of being even in the sense, as Levi Bryant has recently suggested, that "... all entities are materially embodied..."

I still prefer the approach that Michael outlines, and I look forward to reading his response to Adam's most recent posts as well as this one. However, I'm interested in what Adam is suggesting as it offers an alternative view that I hadn't considered - what would it mean for me? I'm not entirely sure yet, but I'm thinking about it.

Going Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:47:00 +0000

Today I start my preliminary exam. Three questions, ten pages each, five days to write them in. It's certainly doable, but more than a little nerve wracking. In any case, I'm going dark as soon as I get the questions - no blogging, no emails (except emergencies), no blog reading, no twitter, no Google+, etc. So if you're wondering where I am or why I haven't responded to you, that's why. Saturday I'll be free, and I'll reemerge into the daylight then.

Vermont

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:45:00 +0000

Yesterday, I came back from a short trip to Vermont. It was an opportunity to get away from the hubbub of College Park/DC, experience some peace and quiet before my preliminary exams next week, and see the beautiful Northeast. All in all it was a very restful few days, with some very beautiful snowy mountain scenery. My goal this year is to take more time like that to just relax and enjoy the view while also pushing to get a few things done (papers, and such). As Rex recently pointed out on Savage Minds, it's important to take time to think, and I've been guilty recently of allowing myself to be distracted.

While I was up there, though, I got to meet and talk to Adrian Ivakhiv. We met at a pub in downtown Burlington and had a nice chat about life, philosophy, film, and work. He's been very busy this past semester, and I've missed reading his always enlightening posts - I look forward to seeing more this coming semester. He was very nice, and it was great to talk with someone who I can simply take for granted that they know who/what I'm talking about. I don't mean that in an elitist way - it's just that he and I share some fairly obscure theoretical interests, which are, fortunately for both of us, becoming less and less obscure.

So, expect to see a bit more of me on here over the next semester (I'm TAing for a theory class, too, so that will give me an excuse to be engaged!).

The Purpose of Anthropology

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:08:00 +0000

"The purpose of anthropology is to understand...."

The second those words leave your lips or your pen, you have misspoken. It doesn't matter what comes after, you are wrong. Because "understanding" is always a means and never a goal. Only the most naive of positivists would suggest that we seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge. And so only they would not append a "so that" onto the end of the statement: "The purpose of anthropology is to understand X so that Y." It doesn't matter what X and Y are, the real purpose is always Y and X - "understanding" - is merely a means. But if the purpose is Y, why limit your repertoire of means to X? Why not say "the purpose of anthropology is Y, by whatever means available"? But let's step back from that and think about what the purpose of anthropology actually is, and how we can define ourselves.

The purpose of anthropology is to create a better world. I say that completely without irony or sarcasm, and it is only apparently normative. I am not saying "the purpose of anthropology should be to create a better world." I am saying that it is to create a better world. How can I say that? How can I impose my purpose upon the vast field of anthropology with all of its different practitioners, each with their own vision of a "better" world and each with a different set of values and goals?

First of all,the world does not simply exist as it is - there are no givens, and nothing just is the way it is. Rather the world is created anew in every moment by the many different entities that compose (in both senses of the term) it. Through our practices - no matter what they are - we compose the world as a massive, collaborative, and temporally and spatially continuous artscape. Even our representations of the world - paintings, photos, writings, etc. - in a very fundamental sense are the world. It's time we pay attention to that.

So if our actions compose the world (but, and this is key, not our actions alone - this is a collaborative effort), then anthropologists already are creating a world. It simply can't be helped. Thus the statement "the purpose of anthropology is to create a world" is simply obvious. But where does the "better" come in? Isn't that a normative claim? I would argue that it isn't, but I would say it's based on an assumption which I suspect is valid but can't be certain of. The assumption is that everyone is trying to make the world better by whatever vision they are guided. Of course, we all don't agree on that vision, and so what one person sees as making the world better may look like making the world worse to another. The statement only becomes normative if I define for you what "better" means. Of course I have a vision of what a better world would look like, but I can no more impose that vision on you than you would impose it on me because, as I said before, this is a collaborative effort. However, I can work with you to create a world that fits both our needs and visions as much as possible. That means that we both allow ourselves to be altered by one another equally - giving where the other gives, and pushing back where the other pushes back.

But speaking of the purpose of anthropology as creating a world is too vague to be useful. It's important to bear in mind, but not enough for us to identify with. So what can we do? I think we identify by our means - our method if you will. But the means I'm talking about is not "understanding." Certainly a lot of what we do is create knowledge, and that's important, but that's not all we do and not all we can do. Instead, I think "working with" is what defines anthropology. As Tim Ingold so eloquently explains in the epilogue of his book Being Alive, "working with" is what has defined anthropology from the very beginning (although that chapter begins with the phrase "The purpose of anthropology is to understand..." and is what sparked this post...). We work with people rather than study them or understand them. And it's this "working with" that creating a better world is all about. It's when we stop "working with" that we end up degenerating and making the world worse than it ever was before. The world needs more working with from anthropologists and everyone.

A New Methodology

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:12:00 +0000

What are methods? What is it that they do? What is the relationship between theory and method? These are all concerns of mine in my anthropological practice.

As anthropologists, we pride ourselves on having a unique set of methods - participant observation and ethnography. We cross the boundary between quantitative and qualitative. We place ourselves in the subject position while at the same time attempting to remain objective. We get into the dirty details of an issue, but also try to extrapolate the generalities. Most recently we have even lead the way in opening our methods up to those we study - using participatory and collaborative methods to allow them to represent themselves. We think about our methods perhaps more than any other discipline in order to make sure that we act ethically, and effectively with regard to the people we study.

But I believe we are caught in a trap with methodology. We have constrained ourselves so that even our best methods when best applied have little effect on the world. I'm being overly harsh - many people do wonderful work, but I'm emphasizing the limitations we have placed upon ourselves and calling for a rethinking of methods, a new methodology for a changing and unpredictable world.

The thing we have to confront is the fact that we have constrained ourselves to the realm of representation. Methods, for most, are techniques for generating knowledge however you imagine that to occur. For a positivist, methods soak up knowledge like a sponge from the world around us. Quantity is quality, since the more we know the better we know. For constructivists, methods are the tools of the author to compose a representation. Knowledge is contingent, quantity is irrelevant and quality depends on the context. There are many positions in between and many positions which mix the two, but on this spectrum the possibility of methods lie only in the range of representation whether it's representation of reality or representation of an authorial perspective. Thus there is a separation of method and theory - theory is what tells us what methods to use, what methods ought to do, and what kinds of representations our methods can make. But methods are merely a means to an end - that being a representation.

I want to shift the focus back to methods, to see them not as a mere means, but as a thing unto themselves. So what are methods? First and foremost, they are ways of acting in the world, and every action is an act of creation. Methods create. They create representations, for sure, and we must not forget that! But they also create other things, and they can be used to create much more than representations. Focusing only on the representation has kept us from seeing the full potential of methods to create change in themselves. As a result, we have constrained our view of what methods are available to us.

Methods make a difference - they cannot help but do so. The question is what kind of difference. It's not how we represent the world that matters, but how we create it. Thus theory is method, for theory is acting in the world as well. And when methods become about creation, then a world of new methods open up to us. There is the method of art, the method of science, the method of work. There are methods of mediation and building relationships, and there are methods of tearing down.

I call for this change in methodology. To look at the effects of our methods on the world, to think of methods as creative, and constructive. What kind of world do you want to create? What methods can you use to create it? It is a call to consciousness - to be aware of what we're doing in the world, what kind of world we are creating, and what kind of world we could be creating. It's not enough to wonder if we're representing properly, we have to wonder if we're making the world more just, more sustainable, more loving, kind, happy. We can do these things - bit by bit, method by method - we can build a better world!

Making Anthropology Visible

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:22:00 +0000

A new project by Jason Antrosio is attempting to make Anthropology more visible - to search engines, at least. According to the Purpose Statement:

Every month over one million people search for anthropology and consult Google to ask “What is Anthropology?” And every month, anthropologists produce great anthropology blog entries, publish wonderful anthropology journal articles, and write editorials. Anthropologists appear in the news, teach great classes, and make a difference. Anthropology Report connects people searching for anthropology to real anthropology and real anthropologists.

There is currently an unfortunate disconnect between the top 10 search results for anthropology and What is anthropology? and the best material by real anthropologists. Too many of the top results are irrelevant or do not lead directly to the great material.

Anthropology Report aims to make that connection. It highlights the best and most recent updates from anthropology blogs, journals, books, and fresh news from real anthropologists. Google is now prioritizing freshness and frequent updates. Although anthropology bloggers and researchers typically work on a more thoughtful and slower time-cycle, a collective but edited selection can make a difference.

To learn more click below.

Another Double Meaning

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:37:00 +0000

Here's another word that I've just realized has an interesting double meaning - "compose." So something can be "composed of" something - like my bookshelf is composed of wood. Also, something can be "composed by" something - like the painting on the postcard attached to my bookcase was composed by Cezanne. The first has a passive connotation - the wood doesn't have to do anything to compose the bookcase - whereas the second has an active connotation - Cezanne had to actively compose the painting.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we took the word "compose" to always have the active connotation? In that sense, the wood could be said to actively compose the bookcase - to arrange it moment-by-moment in a particular way simply by being wood and by not giving in to the force of gravity. Should the wood stop composing the bookcase, my books would fall to the ground in a mess and I'd be very unhappy.

It becomes even more relevant when talking about living organisms. For example, I am "composed of" cells. But that's not quite right. My cells are most certainly active, and they work together to create me. Thus, I am also "composed by" my cells. I think this way of talking highlights the active vitality of the world around us. So from now on, when I say "compose" - even when I say "composed of" - you can assume I mean it in the active sense of "composed by."

Another Elinor Ostrom Video

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:58:00 +0000

This one goes into much greater detail on common pool resources, different regimes of management, and what can be done to address overuse.

The Concept of Culture ... It Keeps Coming Back...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:46:00 +0000

Culture is not a container. We treat it as such when we speak of the culture(s) in which we live, or of moving about within a culture. We treat it as such when we talk about culture as a holistic system, of which we are all parts.

Culture as container suggests a (more or less) totalizing, (more or less) homogeneous, and (more or less) unchanging system. This view does disservice to the many subjects who are said to live within them. In spite of varying levels of independence and agency ascribed to subjects, culture as container ultimately limits their ability to affect and alter the system. They may be granted the ability to move about freely within the system, but they are not allowed to create something new.

In place of the container model, we can look at culture as a set of relations between many different kinds of entities. Not something we live within, but many things (material and semiotic, human and non-human) that we live amongst. In this sense, culture can be seen as a heterogeneous assemblage of assemblages - a heterogeneous, and historically contingent set of relations of sets of relations. Rituals, politics, modes of thought and behavior - these are heterogeneous assemblages which we as subjects (also heterogeneous assemblages) find ourselves amongst. We live with them, interact with them in complex ways, and they affect and alter us just as we affect and alter them.

If we are to make a difference with anthropology, then we need a concept of culture that leaves open that possibility: a complex concept of culture that does not reduce our agency to the mere ability to move, and that does not reduce culture to a container.

Elinor Ostrom on Sustainable Development and the Tragedy of the Commons

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:22:00 +0000

Elinor Ostrom is a 2009 Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences. She has published extensively on common property regimes and the ways people have found to manage common resources without succumbing to the "tragedy of the commons." In this video she provides a broad overview of her work and its relevance to sustainable development.

Media, Affect, and the Object

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Tomorrow is the 5th of November - Guy Fawkes Day in the UK - and some protesters in the Occupy and Anonymous movements are planning to recreate the climax scene of V for Vendetta in which thousands of individuals wearing Guy Fawkes masks show up at Parliament to protest their fascist government. It's fascinating to me how the Guy Fawkes mask has become a symbol of resistance - the trajectory of events that has lead to its being identified with those movements and anti-fascism in general.

Historically, Guy Fawkes day was not a celebration of anti-fascism or even of Guy Fawkes himself (except, perhaps, among radical Protestant groups). Indeed, Fawkes was a national enemy as a result of having attempted to kill King James I. The gunpowder plot was not, however, a political statement against monarchy or the aristocratic society of Briton at the time; it was a religious rebellion against Catholicism. The call to "remember remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot" was not a call to remember the brave resistance of a lone fighter against a tyrannous regime, but a call to remember the treasonous act of a lone terrorist - much as we in the US remember 9/11 every year, and our sentiments towards Osama Bin Laden.

Effigies of Guy Fawkes were traditionally burned on Guy Fawkes Night in order to celebrate the fact that the King had survived the plot. These celebrations were, until the late 19th century, often violent affairs with rowdy drunken crowds, bonfires, fireworks, Protestants ranting against the pope, and Catholics celebrating their religion. The toned down and de-religiousized celebrations of the 20th century were often in danger of being abandoned by an uninterested populace. Certainly the sentiment towards Fawkes was always complex, reflecting the heterogeneity of British national identity, but on the whole he was not seen as a hero, but rather as a traitor.

So why has all of this changed? Why has Guy Fawkes become a symbol of resistance, and why is Guy Fawkes Night now the night for protest and uprising? I'm sure you all know the answer - V for Vendetta. This is a brilliant film (based on a graphic novel by the same name) about a man whose life was shattered by government experiments and a fascist regime. He has taken it upon himself to upset that regime, and awaken the populace from their complacent tolerance of it - all while protecting his identity behind a Guy Fawkes mask. That mask used in the film is the one hackers and protesters have latched on to as their symbol of resistance, and as a result it has become a top seller on Amazon.com (and Time Warner, which owns the rights to the mask is paid a fee for every sale).

So, does the inconsistency between the use of the mask now and the tradition of Guy Fawkes matter? I don't think so. The mask and the image has been appropriated. This object, which had a certain symbolic association attached to it carried one affective resonance prior to the film V for Vendetta, and now that another symbolic association has been attached it carries a completely different affective resonance. The meaning of the mask has been shaped by tradition, and now by the film, but also by the complex interests of the protesters and hackers who wear it, and, I would argue, it carries its own meaning apart from what anyone would impose upon it (not to mention the material and symbolic flows that go into it's production and distribution). It's a perfect example of how an object can be transferred from one assemblage to another, thus altering the shape of the assemblage as well as its own shape and meaning. A thorough study of the Guy Fawkes mask would be a fascinating case for an Object-Oriented Ontology research project.

Models of Agency

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Levi Bryant recently posted a wonderful explanation of attractors, and, in the comments, a nice explanation of how the idea relates to his "regimes of attraction." As I think about the example he uses - a marble dropped into a bowl from one edge - I enjoy it more and more as a metaphor for structure and agency. By modifying the metaphor gradually, we can see a variety of different social theories playing out.

In the most basic example, one positions a marble at the edge of a bowl and allows it to drop. The marble will fall towards the center of the bowl, bypass it, roll up the other side, and then back down. This will repeat several times until the marble eventually comes to rest at the bottom of the bowl (referred to as the attractor). This is a good description of a fully deterministic system - the marble has no choice, no agency, no ability to alter its own course. It's path is entirely determined by the shape of the bowl and the force of gravity acting upon it. There is no escaping the attractor. Now, the shape of the bowl may be different or the force of gravity may be altered by placing it on a different planet, and these will result in different outcomes, but the system is no less deterministic. This reminds me of Althusser, Adorno and other highly structuralist theorists for whom the system overdetermines our day-to-day lives.

In another example - slightly more complex - the marble is dropped, but this time it has some degree of ability to move about within the bowl. It will still be drawn towards the attractor, but now it may move on it's own to some extent. Thus instead of falling straight towards the attractor, it moves around it, passes through it, or dodges it - nevertheless, the attractor is always fixed and always exerts some force upon the marble. This corresponds to a deterministic system in which some small degree of choice is accepted. Individuals within a system are thought to move about within it, but are always drawn to a particular outcome determined still by structure of the system. This brings to mind Foucault, Bourdieu, and de Certeau for whom there is a degree of choice when moving about in the system, but our lives are still partly overdetermined by the system.

In a third example, the marble is dropped, but as it moves through the bowl, it alters the shape of the bowl very slightly. So, at every move, the attractor is slightly altered causing the marble to move more freely and not to be drawn deterministically to a single point. This is the beginning of real agency, in my opinion (as opposed to the false agency granted in the previous example) - the ability of an entity to alter and affect the world around it. This is reminiscent of Giddens' theory of structuration where agents within a system play an active role in its composition. Imagine many marbles placed within the bowl, all altering it with their own aims and ends, creating a complex movement within the system.

A final approach is even more revolutionary, and, I think, is what Bryant, Latour, Harman, Ivakhiv, Michael, and many others (including myself) are striving for. In this system, the bowl is not seen as a field upon which the marbles move, and which determines their actions to some degree - whether they are able to shape it or not. Rather the bowl is simply a part of the assemblage with an ability to act upon the marbles, and the marbles are a part of the system able to act upon one another as well as the bowl. In this case, the marbles are dropped into the bowl - they alter the bowl, they alter one another, and the bowl alters each of them in different ways. Thus there is no field, no structure, no single object which all others can be reduced to. There is only an assemblage - an ecosystem one could say - of different actors (human and non, material and semiotic, etc.) altering and affecting one another, composing a complex system together in every moment. This, to me, is the most brilliant innovation in social theory in ages!

Anarchism, The State, and Corporate Power

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:14:00 +0000

I am an anarchist. Meaning "without rulers" (from the Greek, an = Without, archos = ruler, leader), not "without rules" as most people seem to think. What that means in the most basic sense is that I want power to be as limited and dispersed as possible. There will never be a society without power; the important thing is the relative equilibrium of power in a society.

Does that mean that I am anti-State? In the broadest sense, it does. To the extent that the State is a center of power, I am opposed to the presence of a strong state. However, there are many other possible centers of power - now, most perniciously, the center of power has shifted to the economic sector and corporations in particular. The major fallacy of economic libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism, and just the general right-wing philosophy is that it sees the economy as a space of freedom where individuals compete freely. However, this view is clearly false - the creation of corporations, and the possibility of hoarding wealth means that power can easily be concentrated in a few hands. Ultimately, these approaches will default to plutocracy, which is merely a dictatorship of the wealthy, and never to true democracy.

The founding fathers saw that the best way to limit power in a complex society is to set different powers competing with one another. This is why we have the separation of powers in the US, and the separation of Church and State. That was effective to a point, but with the emergence of massive corporations, massive wealth disparities, and the global economy, economic powers have dominated and subsumed both the State power and the power of the Church (the Christian Right, at least, the Church on the whole has declined in power with the prevalence of secularism).

How can this be remedied? From a truly anarchist perspective, the solution is not to abandon the State, but rather to bolster it and set it in direct opposition to economic power. That requires us to be constantly on our guard to prevent corporate powers from taking over State power. This is what Occupy Wall Street is about.

Ultimately and ideally, the State would not be necessary, and economic power would be more difficult to amass. However, I see no contradiction from an anarchist point of view, between supporting state regulation of business and desiring an ultimate end to the State and the equal distribution of all forms of power. The latter is an idealistic end towards which we can aim, the former a pragmatic approach to dealing with contemporary reality.

Aldous Huxley on the Contradiction of Structure and Agency

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:36:00 +0000

I recently remembered this quote from Aldous Huxley's Island (specifically, the Old Raja's Notes on What's What), and it seems to speak to some of the issues I've discussed with regard to structure and agency, as well as the concept of freedom.

The dancer's grace and, forty years on, her arthritis---both are functions of the skeleton. It is thanks to an inflexible framework of bones that the girl is able to do her pirouettes, thanks to the same bones, grown a little rusty, that the grandmother is condemned to a wheelchair. Analogously, the firm support of a culture is the prime-condition of all individual originality and creativeness; it is also their principal enemy. The thing in whose absence we cannot possibly grow into a complete human being is, all too often, the thing that prevents us from growing.

It's further evidence that almost everything I ever needed to know is in this little portion of this short novel. Actually, with Bateson and Huxley, I think I could be set for life - maybe with a little Latour thrown in.

The Site(s) of Production

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:28:00 +0000

The traditional Capitalist distinction between the job as the site of production and the home as the site of consumption must be abandoned. Even some forms of Marxism maintain the distinction, though feminists have fought against it for years. From the feminist perspective, the distinction marginalizes women whose work is traditionally performed at home. This work is then not considered "production" even though it is an essential part of our economic system (i.e. child care, food production, cleaning, etc.).

From an ecological perspective, however, the critique goes much further. The problem is that, under the Capitalist dichotomy, the act of consumption and the role of consumer are naturalized so that everyone expects to be a consumer of products that are produced elsewhere. In that sense, consumption cannot be avoided. However, if we were to view all acts as acts of production, then it becomes easier to see how different ways of behaving can be better or worse for the environment.

What we traditionally think of as "consumption" is actually a means of production - we take what was made in one place and transform it into something else (often garbage). Recycling is an alternative act of production to that of discarding, which extends the life of the materials further. Composting can be thought of the same way. Certainly, we always lose something in every act of production (that's thermodynamics for ya), and so, every act of production can also be viewed as an act of consumption. But if we think of ourselves primarily as producers, we may try harder to make our production as beneficial as possible. Rather than merely discarding something (and thus producing garbage), we can think about transforming it into something useful or at least less harmful.

Theory and Meta-Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:57:00 +0000

Recently thinking about the role of theory, I realized that, while a great deal of time in anthropology is spent either collecting and analyzing data or discussing theory, there is relatively little time spent thinking about what theory is and how it should be used and applied. Either that or thinking about theory is lumped in with the theory itself so that the two become confused. I think we need something like a meta-theory or a theory about theory - one that steps back from the debates about structuralism, post-structuralism, positivism, materialism, etc., and talks more generally about what it means to theorize, the relationship between theory and data, and how theory ought to be applied. Not that these would be universal rules, independent of

Like I said, I think some people already do this, it's just often confused with the act of theorizing itself. For example, I think that Bruno Latour's principle of irreduction (that nothing can be reduced to anything else) is meta-theory, because it doesn't necessarily tell us how to interpret data directly, but it tells us what interpretation ought to look like. Other times, meta-theory is assumed and unquestioned. For example, when we say that theory should have a recursive relationship to data such that theory is amended with new data, and new data is interpreted according to existing theory - this is a meta-theoretical statement that, more or less, goes unquestioned (at least in Modern societies).

I think the purpose of ethics is, in part and partially, to describe a meta-theory. Ethics has other roles including a kind of meta-methodological role that ensures that data is collected in an appropriate manner. Also, meta-theory is not only ethical (i.e. the example above of the relationship between theory and data), but ethics, in some sense, tells us how theory should be applied, and how we decide what theories to utilize in a given research project.

I think this area has been relatively underexplored, but is full of potential to generate new insights into the process of research, and the role of theory.

Latour Reviews Haraway

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:03:00 +0000

Just doing some browsing on AnthroSource today, I came across this review written by Bruno Latour for American Anthropologist about Donna Haraway's book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. It's interesting - he's mildly critical but sympathetic, saying that she is torn between a modernist tendency to fight power, a post-modernist tendency to prevent any kind of grand unification, and what he calls a nonmodernist desire for an "anthropology of science" or "anthropology of the Western world." This confusion along with her complex prose and her unfocused "field of study," Latour argues, make the book difficult to decipher.

Just thought I'd share, since these are two of my favorite theorists, and I love to see how their paths overlap now and then.

The Concept of Culture Revisited.... Again...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:55:00 +0000

Recently I was thinking about the concept of culture again, and I think I had an insight into why it's been so troubling for anthropologists. I think there is a confusion between two very different ways of thinking about culture - the holistic and the particular. We want to be a holistic discipline, and some definitions of culture reinforce that - think of Morgan's definition as "that complex whole which includes...." or Leslie White's definition as "man's extrasomatic means of adaptation." These are all fine, but then there are other definitons which indicated that culture is just one part of a system among many other parts - politics, economics, society, etc. This is the case whenever we talk about cultural factors influencing outcomes, as these cultural factors conflict with various policies. It is also the case with cognitive theories of culture, and many other approaches to measuring culture.

The problem, I think, is that these two approaches to culture get used interchangeably and are often confused with one another. When you say that something is cultural, to I take you to mean that it is reflective of a whole system or do I take you to mean that it is one factor among many in a larger complex system? There's often no way to tell unless you spell it out explicitly. But it cannot be both. If culture is a complex whole, then it subsumes economics and politics. If it's a part, then politics and economics are external to it. (I suppose Levi Bryant's strange mereology could explain this, but I'm not sure I buy into that yet).

I suspect that these two concepts may map onto colonial discourse. When we talk about culture as a whole, what comes to mind are "primitive" groups whose lives are depicted as being subsumed by traditional (and irrational) beliefs and values. When we talk about ourselves, on the other hand, we tend to think of our political and economic institutions as having risen out of the culturl mire to a more rational form. Thus, culture in Western societies is one part among many.

Basically, I think we have to pick one or the other, stick with it no matter what group we're talking about, and be explicit about which definition we're using. I'm starting to think that the particular approach is the way to go. It's more practical, since it's very difficult, if not impossible, to know a whole system, and, as I've argued recently, there's not much you can do with a whole system even if you do know it. Instead, I'm thinking of culture as that which politics, society, and economics leaves out: a kind of foundational set of influences which interact with economics, politics, and society in complex ways - the reason none of them or even all of them taken together can ever be compete. Culture is why things don't go as expected when people enact legislation or change the economy - it is the confounding remainder.

Apropos of my last post....

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:12:00 +0000

... a friend of mine just sent me this link with the following video.

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution from ivarad on Vimeo.

On Making a Difference

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:59:00 +0000

As I've mentioned before, I recently wrote a post for Ryan Anderson's blog Anthropologies. In it I argued that the purpose of anthropology is to "make a difference," and that the idea of "engaging wider audiences" ought to be secondary - a means to make a difference rather than an end in itself. This idea of "making a difference" has been with me for a while, but I've written little about it so far. So here I'd like to give some thoughts on what it means to make a difference and how I think it can be done.

First of all, there are some underlying assumptions that need to be cleared up. One of these is that there is a world apart from our perception and/or representation of it (rejecting solipsism and extreme constructivism), and that, while we may never be able to completely know that world (because we are situated within it) we can contact it - we can alter and affect it, just as it can alter and affect us.

Another assumption is that the world is perpetually becoming. This is what the second law of thermodynamics teaches us. Time has an arrow, and entropy cannot be reversed, therefore, every moment is new. As a result, we can only make a difference. The question is, is it a difference which is the same or is it a difference that is different. That is, is the difference we make one which recreates in the new moment the relations which persisted before, or is it one which creates new relations? Every system will succumb to entropy, but a system can be reinforced or maintained by continually adding energy to it - in other words, by working to keep it around. Think of a house or a car; if you repair it often, it will last longer. As soon as you stop repairing it, it starts to decay. It will likely decay either way, but faster if you don't do anything to fix it (that is, if you don't put energy into the system). The same is true for any system - social, organic, mechanical, etc.

Recently, I sat in a class and listened to a woman from USAID talk about some biodiversity conservation projects she had been involved in. One involved growing chili peppers around farms to keep elephants out of farms (thus, hopefully, enlisting the farmers' help in preventing elephant poaching), and another involved helping people in Africa start farms so that they would stop some destructive fishing practices. As I listened to her, I felt torn. I'm generally skeptical of USAID anyway, thanks to an old professor who had worked with them in the past, but now I felt torn between wanting to be optimistic about these projects and this underlying cynicism I have towards the agency. But what bothered me was that every story she told somehow involved bringing these people into the market system - creating a market for chili peppers, teaching people to farm so that they can sell their goods on the market and earn money to live. What I realized is that, while USAID may be helping these people survive within the market a bit better, they do nothing to address the fact that it is the market system, which dominates the world today, that is causing a good deal of their problems in the first place.

In essence, by using market forces to solve these peoples' problems, USAID is reinforcing and maintaining (fighting entropy) the very system that is causing a great deal of those problems. For people who recognize this problem, the typical response is a reification of the system. In other words, it is the system that is the problem and any small-scale changes are simply band-aids. Ultimately the solution that presents itself logically is revolutionary action to overthrow the system. But this path is so fraught with problems that it's opponents have little trouble in branding revolutionaries as naive, idealistic, young folks who don't know how the "real world" works. This is the classic conflict between making small changes that help a few people at a time versus changing the system - a prospect that is difficult to imagine, let alone implement.

What the revolutionaries don't see (they may, but it's often discounted) is that the system is composed of small relations, and that the system as a whole - where such a thing exists - is not something we can manipulate. You have your revolution, you and your vanguard take control, you seize the means of production, the means of ideological production, and the political structure, you make your changes, but still you get feedback - still there are people who don't agree with the changes you're making, still there are people who resist, or people who simply don't fit into your nice neat system. What do you do with them? Past revolutions have treated them as "counter-revolutionary" and thrown them in prison or worse. Is that what a just world looks like?

But there is hope. Small changes to the small relations that compose a system can and do make a difference to the system. The problem with band-aid solutions such as those that USAID supports is not that they are small in scale, but that they replicate the existing set of relations. A successful solution will create not only new relations, but new kinds of relations - new possible ways of interacting. These new kinds of relations may or may not directly undermine the existing set of relations, or the system as it is, but their very existence undermines the system by taking away some of the energy that goes into replicating it (thus causing it to succumb to entropy). The more different kinds of relations exist, the more likely the system will transform or collapse, but also, the more opportunities people have for surviving or coping with such a collapse.

An example of this is the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham. Rather than inciting revolution or giving in to market forces, they've chosen to solve small-scale, real world problems in ways that ultimately undermine the capitalist system. By deconstructing representations of capitalism, and encouraging people to find non-capitalist resources within their communities, they have created new kinds of relations both within these communities and between communities. In other words, they have helped to foster a "globalization otherwise" (in the words of the World Social Forum "Another World is Possible").

Now there's a values judgment that needs to be considered. We can create new kinds of relations, but novelty is not the value that ought to reign. New forms of oppression are still novel. The goal, in my opinion, is to create new kinds of relations that are also more just and more sustainable than those that exist. At the same time, there are just and sustainable relations that already exist, and where those cannot be improved upon, they ought to be maintained - why fix it if it's not broken?

The key ideas to take away from this are: 1) Making a difference takes work (energy), but if you're working you can't help but make a difference, 2) the question, then, is what kind of difference are you making? 3) the difference you ought to make is one which creates new relations or maintains existing relations that are just and sustainable rather than creating or maintaining relations that are oppressive and destructive. So ask yourself whenever you undertake any project - no matter how big or small - what kinds of relations am I creating or maintaining through this practice, and are those the kinds of relations I want? We* create the world anew in every moment - what kind of world are you creating, and what kind of world do you want to create?

*By "we" I don't mean just humans - I mean all living entities, and, to some extent, non-living entities as well.

PS - Another critique of small changes is that they often tend to be "personal choice" changes, and often "consumer choice" changes. This critique holds here too. Personal choice changes - changing a light bulb, buying food at a farmer's market, etc. - do not create new kinds of relations. In fact, to the extent that they are consumer choice changes, they will replicate the existing consumer capitalist system. That's not to say that changing light bulbs and buying from farmer's markets is bad, but it's important to realize that these are differences which don't necessarily make a difference.

Anthropologies Issue 7: Anthropology with Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:32:00 +0000

The new issue of Ryan Anderson's excellent blog Anthropologies is now available with a post written by yours truly. But there are many other (and better) posts, so browse around and enjoy!

Viva Self-Organization!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:06:00 +0000

Here's an amazing video the instructor of the Biological Anthropology course I'm TAing for showed the class a couple weeks back. It's an animation showing how a white blood cell can sense its environment, and respond to external stimuli. It's a beautiful, and compelling demonstration of self organization - just blew my mind when I saw it! Enjoy!

OOOIII, Freedom, and Potential

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:59:00 +0000

I've been meaning to write up some thoughts on the events in NYC last week, but it's been such a hectic few days that I haven't gotten around to it. But I'm determined to do it now, even if there are other things that I probably ought to be doing.

The events I attended were the OOOIII symposium with Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, Tim Morton and others (you can see videos of the day's panels here), and the panel discussion with Levi Bryant, Jane Bennett, and Graham Harman. I have to say that, although the OOOIII symposium was the "main event," the panel with Jane Bennett actually turned out to be the most interesting session for me. I think this is because the discussion was more political and practical on Thursday night, whereas the OOOIII symposium was more outright philosophical, and somewhat abstract. Jane, Levi, and Graham clearly disagree on many aspects of their realism, and I found myself disagreeing and agreeing with each of them at different points in the discussion. However, there is certainly a great deal of political potential in the OOO position.

Freedom
Two issues came up during various talks that I'd like to address briefly. The first is the issue of freedom. During the Q&A session on Wednesday night, Levi said that we desire freedom. Graham disagreed, and cited his experience with writing as an example: he can't begin writing just from a blank slate - he needs certain constraints in place first. In other words, in his writing he desires constraints and not freedom. Ultimately the two agreed that we desire both freedom and constraint. This brought to mind a distinction I've been wrestling with for a while now between two different kinds of freedom - "Freedom from" and "Freedom to." "Freedom from" means to be without constraint - to be unimpeded - whereas "Freedom to" means an ability to achieve something. To be completely "Free from" means to have no constraints or limitations imposed from outside. I would argue that such a pure state never truly exists, but even if it did, I don't think it would be desirable at all. It would require being so isolated from the social world that you would be unable to do anything productive. It's questionable in my mind if someone with pure "Freedom from" would be able to survive.

"Freedom to" requires a degree of "Freedom from," but is more like the concept of agency suggested by Latour. For Latour, a being has agency only in relation to other beings. Various beings (actants in his parlance) must form an association or alliance for agency to be possible. "Freedom to" means that a person has the ability to do something - to educate themselves, to choose the life they want, and so on. But "Freedom to" requires us to enter into relationships with others, and these relationships imply constraints, but it's through these constraints and "Freedom to" that we are able to fully express our agency. For example, a person who has spent their life in poverty lacks a certain "Freedom to" because she cannot afford the means to be able to do those things. She cannot send her children to the best schools, she cannot buy healthy food, she cannot choose where she wants to live, and so on. This is where social welfare programs come in - they provide people with a certain degree of "Freedom to." Many conservatives are obsessed with the idea of "Freedom from," and see social welfare as a problem - as an unreasonable constraint or impediment. Liberals, on the other hand, believe more in "Freedom to," and therefore encourage social welfare programs.

Going back to the discussion with Levi and Graham, I believe what we desire is "Freedom to," and that's what Graham gets from the constraints he seeks when writing. It's only through "Freedom to" that we are able to fully express our agency, but it's a delicate balance. However, I believe that this is an important distinction, and if we were to make it more often it may help to clear up some of the political confusion in which we find ourselves.

Potential
The second issue I wanted to bring up was that of potential. During the first day, Harman was asked to explain his position on the idea of potential. Following Latour, he dismissed the idea saying that we should pay attention to things as they are and not things as they could be. An acorn is not a tree, and we should not try to reduce the existence of an acorn to the potential to become a tree. I agree that we should not reduce one thing to another, but I think there is an important dimension of the idea of potential that is lost if we discard it completely. That is, the potential of an object indicates the difficulty involved in transforming one thing into another. An acorn is not a tree, but it can, with only a little intervention, become an oak tree. It cannot, without a great deal of intervention, become a unicorn. What's more, it cannot, without intervention, become a maple tree. An acorn can easily become only a very specific oak tree, within a very specific variety of oaks (white, pin, etc.). This is the acorn's potential.

In other words, it indicates a starting point, and the materials we have to work with. An acorn contains the materials to become an oak - it does not contain the materials to become a unicorn. In social terms, while we may not be able to say that Capitalism is potential Socialism, we can say that it contains a certain potential to become Socialism. That is, there is a certain distance between Capitalism and Socialism, and that distance may be greater or lesser than other social forms. Feudal Japanese society also contained a certain potential to become Socialism, but I suspect that the distance and the amount of work that would need to be done to cross that distance is greater. This concept of the distance between two forms, and the work that needs to be done is what I think is lost when we abandon the idea of potential.

In NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Trombley) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:43:00 +0000

As the title suggests, I'm currently in NYC. Yesterday I attended OOOIII, and today I'm going to a panel discussion between Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, and Jane Bennett at the CUNY Grad Center. So far it's been a really interesting time, and I've met a lot of good people - including Levi and Tim Morton. I'll talk more about that later, but for now I want to say something about this city.

What astonishes me about NYC is how different it is from DC. It's so much more chaotic, dirty, unique and crazy compared to DC. DC gives the feeling of being planned from above like De Certeau's city. This city has more of a felling of being built from below - as if the subway rats emerge every night and put it all together when we're asleep. There's a lot more mixing going on here - different lifestyles, different classes, different types of businesses and buildings. It's truly a heterogeneous landscape, whereas DC feels much less so. What that means is that for visitors, DC is accessible, and easy to digest. Whereas NYC seems confusing and scary. But I think it also means that there's a kind of vibrant and creative quality to NYC, where DC is much more conservative, and, frankly, dull. None of this is to say that I would ever live in NYC - I still prefer the countryside or a small town, but as cities go, NYC is probably the coolest I've ever been to.