seminar in graduate social anthropology paper iv- hafeez jamali-updated

8/8/2019 Seminar in Graduate Social Anthropology Paper IV- Hafeez Jamali-Updated

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Seminar in Graduate Social Anthropology Paper IV

In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim grapples with the challenge of making

the social or society appear as both real and intelligible. In many ways, this works

against our socialization to view the world as composed primarily of individuals. First,trace the key steps Durkheim follows in carving out a particular realm for analysis- the

social- and explain the crucial claims or assertions he makes in developing this

perspective. Then consider whether or how you could use this perspective to characterize

cyborgs as a social fact? What aspects of his theoretical stance would impede or facilitatethis characterization? In responding briefly consider the articles by Talbot and Haraway.

Student : Hafeez Ahmed Jamali

Instructors : John Hartigan and James Brow


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actions or collective consciousness (Durkheim 1938). In other words, a phenomenon

does not become social because it is universally present in individual cases rather it is

the collective aspect of social action that privileges it over biological and psychological

phenomena. This privilege consists in the social act finding expression in a formula that

is repeated from mouth to mouth, transmitted by education, and fixed even in writing

(Durkheim 1938: 7). Thus biological and social phenomena may be universal but they

do not substitute or become social phenomena and, as a result, biology and psychology

cannot take the place of sociology which alone concerns itself with the explanation of

the social.

Donna Haraways articulation of cyborg1 can be seen as a social fact to the

extent that it describes a particular aspect of the contemporary situation facing

individual human beings. It is a social fact in the sense that the individual either

confronts it as an objective condition that moulds him or her from outside or s/he

internalizes it as a pre-condition of his or her existence in the post-industrial society.

The notions of externality and coerciveness in Durheim allow us to characterize

cyborgs as such.

Haraway describes three aspects of the contemporary individual or human

subject that characterize him as a cyborg: the transgression of human-animal or nature-

culture boundary, the dissolution of human-machine boundary and the blurring of

physical and non-physical entities (Haraway 1991)2. Contemporary research in

biological anthropology has challenged the usual markers such as language, social

behavior, the use of tools and the ability to form meta-representations that were

1 A cyborg is human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or

electronic devices. Etymologically it is a hybrid of cyb(ernetic)-org(anism). (American Heritage

Dictionary 2000)2 The title of the article appears to be a pun on Marxs Communist Manifesto.


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supposed to distinguish and privilege human beings over apes. This implies that

normal human beings are, technically, as bestial as any other animal or a cyborg can

be. Similarly, the emergent bio-technologies of late twentieth-century capitalism have

re-defined a human being as an ensemble of biotic components rather than an organic

whole and made reproduction increasingly look less natural. Together with the

advances in robotics that have made machines more human-like and the emergent

technologies of cybernetics that plug human labor into information circuits, this implies

that human beings have increasingly become more cyborg-like. Lastly, the micro-chip

revolution in electronics has blurred the distinction between the physical and the non-

physical and enabled human beings to don an increasing number of tools and gadgets

such as cell phones, hand-held cameras and wrist-band TV sets as if these were parts of

their bodies (Haraway 1991)3. In sum, human beings have become integrated into

larger, self-organizing and dispersed networks of information and control which is the

essence of the process ofcyborgization. Accordingly, in Haraways opinion, cyborgs

are good to think with in talking about contemporary social relations.

Therefore, using a Durkheimian typology, cyborgs can be characterized as a

social fact because the phenomenon of cyborgization i.e. the transition of human

beings into biotic-mechanical ensembles with an assembled being and fractured identity

not only exists outside of the individuals, it also exerts a coercive power on them to

conform to its imperatives. (Post)-modern states, multinational corporations, labor-

control systems, electronic media, etc. that propel the process of cyborgization stand

outside of the individual and have a reality of their own independent of the wishes or

the citizen or the subject although individuals may feel- especially in democratic

3 Not to mention all kinds of artificial organs like pace-makers, mechanical limbs, insulin pumps, etc.


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societies that- they are actually directing or willing their actions. For instance,

emergent forms of bio-capitalism give rise to the notion of surplus health which

everyone can buy for a price (Fischer 2005). These are then advertised seductively in

the media so that acquiring surplus health becomes a desirable thing to do. Individuals

may feel that they are satisfying a need internal to them when they are merely

responding to a reality that exists outside of them4. This converts human beings into

patients-in-waiting and thereby into cyborgs in the making5.

On the other hand, the process of cyborgization entails the coercion or

subordination of the individual through control of information. It takes place through:

the translation of the world into a problem of coding, a search for a commonlanguage in which all resistance to instrumental control disappears and all

heterogeneity can be submitted to dissemble, reassembly, investment and exchange.

[Haraway 1991: 164].

For instance, in the new feminized workplace, the world system of

production/reproduction and communication and patriarchal pressures of assisting the

family (due to abdication of the responsibility for welfare-provision by the state) act

like an informatics of domination that coerces women to integrate their bodies and

selves with the global circuits of production (Haraway 1991: 163, parentheses added)6.

4 The electronic media appears to have overtaken the formal education system as the chief means of

discipline in the modern world. They perform the function of molding individual behavior much like the

education system did in Durkheims time.5 The emphasis here is on the making of the healthy body and the connotation of purchasable surplus

health, longevity, etc. that enhance the body-mind. These have the same effect as the addition of a morepower or a new tool to the body-mind of a cyborg.6 Female peasant workers leave Chinas villages in their thousands to become temporary workers or hiredhands (dagongmae) in the factories located in the urban Free Trade Zones. They attach their bodies to the

process of production for a few years only to be de-coupled when they are over 30 years of age. The

process of domination and coercion is so complete that the dagongmae do not even engage in any protest in

the workplace save in the form of nightmares, screams and the occasional resistance of the female body to

the clock-work of the factory-floor (Pun 2005). The factories of the Free Trade Zone and the informatics of

domination that they embody exist independent from and outside of the dagongmae, yet they feel its

seductive lore in their villages and its excruciating discipline inside the factory.


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In conclusion, Durkheims stress on the externality, coerciveness and collective

nature of social phenomena help delineate and make intelligible the domain of the

social. We can understand the cyborg, as defined by Haraway, as a social fact since it

exhibits the characteristics Durkheim attributed to social facts and thereby gives us an

insight into the changing nature of human-technology-capital interface and forms of

identity it spawns in the post-industrial society.

References

1. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition)[Electronic Resource]. (2000). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved September, 25,

2006 from http://www.bartleby.com/61/.

2. Durkheim, Emile (1938) The Rules of Sociological Method. Illinois: The Free Press.

3. Fischer, Michael J. (2005) Techno-scientific Infrastructure and the Emergent Forms

of Life: A Commentary.American Anthropologist107(1): 55-61.

4. Haraway, Donna (19991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and

Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In Simians, Cyborgs and

Women: The Reinvention of Nature. pp.149-181. New York: Routledge.

5. Pun, Ngai (2005) Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace .Durham: Duke University Press.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/http://www.bartleby.com/61/

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