Complexity and Change Flashcards
Anthropology’s conservatism
Anthropologists strive to make sense of ways of thinking & acting from within research participants’ cultural framework (emic approach). This creates a tendency to gloss over variation and change. In each group of people: difference, variation, dissent, opposing subgroups. Possible bias favoring dominating group’s perspective
Native’s reactions to change
Anthropologists feared that outside influences may destroy a society. At the same time, this undermines the agency within cultures. People always respond locally to what is affecting them globally. Eg the case of Trobrianders
The directions of change
Change is not unilinear. Regression may take the place of progression. Examples: Climate change, increased militarism, migration. The “development” narrative, (present in theories like Rostow’s five stages of growth and modernization theory), is ruled out by ex-colonial, wealthy countries and imposed on the global south.
Melanie Mitchell and Complexity
Suggests that complex systems are/have
Large systems with no central control
Simple rules of operation creating complex collective behaviour
Information processing
Adaption via learning and evolution
We cannot foresee what our actions might set in motion within a complex system
Transactionalism
A complex system commonly functions within the framework of transactionalism.
Transactionalism: Every person has agency that is used to achieve goals.
Individuals negotiate about everything: power, honor, status, material resources and strategically enter into transactions (negotiations) with other individual
Society is the result, the sum total of all these transactions and negotiations.
Agency is still limited by structural forces (class, caste, descent, etc.).
Suzanne Simmard on trees
Claims that there exists an interconnected life force between funghi and trees.
Language trap
We picture processes in a pre-constructed way as a result of our languages.
Cultural materialism and adaption
Founder: Marvin Harris. Combines “mode of production” and “mode of reproduction” to be an “infrastructure”. Infrastructure refers to technologies and practices that a system adapts to its environment. The infrastructure regulates the amount and type of resources needed to maintain the system. As environments change, either through natural processes or human action, infrastructures must adapt.
Cultural materialism - critique on adaption
Many cultural practices and ideas are non -or even counter -adaptive, and they seem quite resistant to change despite changing material/environmental conditions. In complex societies, we do many counter-adaptive things, e.g. finding more oil!
Anna Tsing on relationship between humans and nature
Suggests that humans are part of a larger world interacting with nature creating an unintentional design. Strives to decenter humans
‘Measuring’ degree of societies’ complexity
- Scale: to what degree the local is connected to the regional, national, global
- Size: the correlation between size of a society and the internal differentiation in terms of class, caste, specialization
- Distance between producer and consumer
- Distance between rulers and those who are rules/governed - problem of contemporary democracies
Technological development as adaptive to what?
Driven by
1. military projects
2. counterculture of 1960s-1970s
3. capitalist concerns
- Profit making.
- Lowering production costs > Maximizing efficiency >Outsourcing of production and services to low-wage countries.
- Maximizing consumption through datafication of customer behavior
4. surveillance state
The freedom of technology
Technology can take on dynamism of its own, outside direct human control. OpenAI is free (unless you have Chatty +) for personal use but demands profit when working together with Uni’s - working together with humans becomes hard
ICT - Information and communication technology
- Pervasive and ubiquitous (elders forced to use it)
- Requires life-long learning of new digital literacy skills
- Impact on presentation and formation of self
4- New desires stemming from technological advances
ICT and social inequality
Tech innovation moves at a rapid pace: can we keep up with it?
Digital illiteracy:
- Digital divide (class/gender/age-related)
- Will the digital natives of the 2000s be the illiterates of the future?
- Unequal access to technology across the world.
