"Our" Anthropology of Technoscience?

The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits among Computer Engineers by Gary Downey; Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots by Robbie Davis-Floyd; Joseph Dumit; Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse. Feminism and Technoscience by Donna Haraway; Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World by Stefan Helmreich Review by: David Hakken American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 535-539 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/683489 . Accessed: 26/12/2012 08:43
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REVIEw ESSAYS BOOK

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more than that, he shows us how everyday practiceinvolves and entails the distantforces thatalterthe realities in termsof which people live, the realitiesthatMills illusof tratesin her book, which is more a description the impact of the global on the local ratherthan an analysisof globalprocesses. reference books thatjournalto Hannerzmakesfrequent ists and others such as officials of the World Bank have defenses written.A favoritequestionfor Ph.D.dissertation fromwhata jour"Whathave you done thatis different is, nalist might have done?"The value of differentanswers dependson the committee.Hannerzdiscusses thatdifference in his notion of longer-termrelationshipsamong of more distantfactorsas versusevents as crystallizations those forces at particular times and places. The first, he tells us, anthropologists the second is the purviewof do; Mills's workfits this notion,as does Hannerz's journalists. in a differentway. The writingin all of the workssuffersfrom theirbeing collections ratherthan coherentlyarguedbooks. Each is Hannerz's overlyrepetitious. writingis sometimesponder-

has ous if usuallyclear.Appadurai an unfortunate predilection for neologisms-"neologicality"as he mightcall itandhyperinflated prose.Mills startswith a clearnarrative, becomerepetitive. butall too soon the chapters References Cited E. Durrenberger,Paul in and 1997 That'll TeachYou:Cognition Practice a Union Human Local. 56(4):388-392. Organization in Inpress Explorations Class Consciousness theU.S. of and Research. Journal Anthropological of E. Erem Durrenberger,Paul,andSuzan the the and 1999a TheAbstract, Concrete, Political, theAcaa Union theUnited in States. demic: and Labor Anthropology Human 58(3):305-312. Organization What A Suffer 1999b TheWeak ExperiTheyMust: Natural and American mentin Thought Structure. Anthropologist
101(4):783-793.

Jean Lave, in Univer1988 Cognition Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge sityPress.

"Our" Anthropology of Technoscience?

DAVIDHAKKEN Instituteof Technology,State Universityof New York The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits among Computer Engineers. GaryDowney. New York:Routledge, 1998. 288 pp. Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit, eds. New York: Routledge, 1998. 358 pp. Modest_Witness@SecondMillennium. FemaleMan?_ MeetsOncoMouseTM. Feminism and Technoscience. Donna Haraway. New York:Routledge, 1996. 361 pp. Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World. Stefan Helmreich.Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1998. 314 pp. "We areall anthropologists now,"says the headlineof a summerGuardian reviewof the new CliffordGeertzbook. and Indeed,an impressiverangeof intellectuals academics or do engagein activities theycall anthropology ethnogthat "internal" Yet concrete performances, raphy. ourdiscipline's ouractualtextualandgraphic media,drawmuchless attenone tion thanthis abstract told anthropology; publisher me thatevenwe do notreadourbooks! bitterly Anthropologiesof technoscience are among the few attenformsof "actual" that anthropology do drawbroader tion. However,it is not particularly remarkable texts that an abstract anthropologyof technoscience performing and largelypreceded have been influential longerthanethin anthropologyor nographicstudies by those trained whose workis informed deep dialoguewiththosein our by profession.'The works underreview show that the latter two groupsdo indeednow exist;2in fact,they area sample of a muchlargergroup.3 to (In line with these works,I use technoscience referto a contemporary that practice is quiteglobalandof substantial importance generalsocial formationreproduction.4 to Its distinctivefeatureis a specialkind of knowledgenetof working,a seamless dialecticbetweenproduction certainprivilegedsymbolicrepresentations the character of of various"realities" andthe construction special of [science] artifacts[technology]used in related practices/performances.Indeed,one of the chief attributes the worksunof der reviewis thatthey makethe "seamlessdialectic" point how the artifacts [technolovividly;thatis, they document [sciences]as muchas vice gies] enablethe representations versa-hence the focus on "technoscience." "Ethnography of science,"repeatsthe Greekmistakeof privilegingscience over technology,while "ethnography science and of the dialectic'sdensity.) technology" underplays What does the existence of this work suggest for the futureof our discipline?Since much of the debateon our

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futureturnson the issue of the role of science in the study of culture, does this "actual"anthropologyof technosto cience have somethingspecialto contribute ourinternal as well as the broader debateoverinterdisciplinarity? What anthrodo these workssuggestaboutwhetherprofessional to pology has a specialcontribution maketo technoscience studies,or is a disciplineof anthropology largelyirrelevant to an anthropology technoscience? of Afterdiscussingthe I texts and the technoscienceculturethatthey portray, focus specifically on how these authorsnegotiatethe contractionbetweenthe particularly strongform of "studying on the one hand,andthe necessarily more up"dependence, of on the active ethicalposture technoscience ethnography, of other,characteristic the field. of Silicon SecondNatureis an ethnography the technoscientificpracticesassociatedwith artificiallife or "Alife." as While "Alife"can be constructed narrowly the idea that simulationsof biological processes may procomputer of foundly influence our understanding life, the technoscientistswho areHelmreich's"natives" generallymakea claim: computingcan create entirely new life stronger forms. Stefan Helmreich startedfieldwork in the midthe 1990s at the SantaFe Institute, acknowledgedinstitutionalleaderin Alife, buthis site broadens Serially,he out. locatedpracticeat the addressesAlife as a geographically Institute,in the broadertechnosciencepracticesof comsocial relationsof active puterscience andin the particular Alife researchers, at includingperformances international Alife conferences.He examines as well the considerable of spiritualdimensionsof Alife andthe implications Alife as a late-twentieth-century intellectual practice. TheMachinein Me is similarto Silicon SecondNature in that it involves participant observationstudy of a specific technosciencepractice:The graduateeducationof softwareengineersin the use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems. Also like Helmreich, Gary Downey's involves illuminatingspecific practices analyticapproach themin broader cultural context.His centralfoby placing cus is to specify the ways in which a nationalist discourse on CAD (e.g., as the way to save the competitivestanding of the UnitedStates)providesan implicitterrain which on of what CAD is for studentsconstructan understanding andhow it relatesto them(andvice versa).Specifically,as in the title implies, he is interested the way that student's
bodies become inscribed in the machines and the machines in the students' (and others') bodies. Cyborg Babies is a collection of diverse pieces, each of which says something about the characterof human reproduction in the era of technoscience. Many of them are written by anthropologists and are based on ethnography or at least a rich appropriation of the ethnographic gaze. In a short review, there is not space to address each of the essays. In keeping with the postmodem analysis/aesthetic to which they are committed, Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit have not imposed commonality of analytic style or

to a Still, they attempt stimulate commonprobapproach. of lematicby specifyingfour differentappropriations the and most of the papersuse the cyborg as cyborgconcept, an analyticfigure. is Modest_Witness@Second_Millenniumperhaps best seen as a piece of "performance as anthropology," argument by example for the situatingof knowledge that Donna Harawayadvocates.Even thoughtrainedin biology and has choice to hangout history,Haraway madea deliberate with us, both physicallyand intellectually; book takes the of the structure a textin generallinguistics,for example. and Haraway's tripletitle,like thepaintings othergraphin ics contained herbook,indexesthe complexityof the argument she wishes to make. Thus her "modestwitness" drawsits namefromthe scientistictropeof RobertBoyle, a transcendent, "denatured intellect"takento be the ideal "Dr.Watson" scientificexperimentation. for UnlikeBoyle, her witness:in time, at the end of Harawayhyperlocates the second millennium,and in (cyber)space, an e-mail as address.Her witnessing is also embodied, framed by a conceptualmeeting between a FemaleMandrawn from science fiction and copywrited,and OncoMouse,a trademarked geneticallyengineered laboratory species.Perhaps most importantly, Harawaylocates her projectwithinthe of intersection feminismandtechnoscience. As often via cascadinghumanistic figuresas by "objective" discourse,these authorsgenerallyargueby employing recursivesketchesof correspondences among,for example, Alife forms manifeston the computerscreen, the linguisticand social practicesof theircreators,the preocof cupationsandtropicpracticescharacteristic people like them,andthe rootsof thesetropesin the collectiveheritage of Western, Judeo-Christian culture. This narrativeapfor example,to the languageof hyproach-as opposed, pothesis testing-is just one of the ways in which these writers manifest increasinglygeneral preoccupationsof Another contemporary ethnography. exampleis the author's reflexivepresencein theirnarratives, in the DavisFloyd/ as Dumit volume, whose writers intensely root their own in situknowledge,and thatof theirinformants, particular ations. Like the other authorsunderreview, Helmreichis as with the rhetorical well as researchconvenconversant as
tions of contemporary ethnography. His title uses double meanings to characterizekey Alife characteristics. "Silicon second nature"evokes ShernyTurkle's computing ethnography, The Second Self (1984). This evocation highlights Alife's creators' construction of Alife as an alternate form of nature in the substrate of the silicon chip. Alife is also "second nature" in a more standard sense-that is, that it reflects very culturally specific presumptions that to its creators are "second nature." With most other U.S. technoscientists, Alifers share a "pre-conscience collective," as it were, which follows largely from being privileged, white, male, and heterosexual. Helmreich's description of

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BOOK ESSAYS 537 REVIEW "CulturingArtificial Life" communicates the multiple senses of just how highlyculturedAlife's formsare:They are both quite like somethinggrown in a biology lab and are more generally "culturally as constructed," Science, and Society (STS) scholarsgenerallyexpect Technology, technoscience to practices be. It is from a more analytic,less descriptiveperspective her thatHarawayaddresses set of issues in technoscience: the and reconstituting witness,democracy agencyin scientific research,the HumanGenome Project,contemporary reproductivetechnology, race, (once again) the cyborg, and reflexivity.In each of these areas, she demonstrates criticalpyrotechnics, appreciation existingSTS, litan for historical, and ethnographicwork, erary, philosophical, and an awesome ability at synthesis.Her work is clearly the single strongestinfluenceon technoscienceanthropology. Perhaps this is because, as a "convert,"she ap"theethproachesthe theorizingthatused to characterize in moment" anthropology withless trepidation. nological Like all ethnographers, those studying technoscience must gain access to the field. A distinctivecast to technoscience anthropologists' entreeproblemsfollows fromour often havingless powerthanour informants. Makingless money and having less prestige than them, and having fewer levers with which to influence whateverorganizations, institutions,and networkswe share,technoscience ethnographers generally"study to theirinformants. up" In addressinga standard "studying up" problem-how to convince busy, "important" informants give you the to time of day-most technoscienceanthropologists find it a necessaryto demonstrate degreeof masteryof the technoscientific practicesin which they wish to participate. the is Downey's approach to demonstrate valueof a socioculturalawarenessto the educationof buddingengineers. During at least one moment while "sittingamong comhe the puterengineers," experienced "goingnative"seductive appealof demonstrating mastery.He sits with themin a strong,andI wouldimagineappealing(to them),way. Helmreichnavigatesthe paradox demonstrating of technoscience masteryby maintaining somewhatgreaterethdistance.On the one hand,he presentsclearexnographic of the problems the heartof Alife research at and plications the techniques whichthey areapproached. the On through constructions these probof other,he presentsalternative lems drawnfrom withinthe Alife community'sown disof courses.His ethnographic portrait how Alife is lived in the labprovidesthe dimensionality whichthebestpracfor titionersof constructivist scienceeducationstrive. In his contribution CyborgBabies, Joe Dumitlocates to himself in his own family's reproductive experience;he a also demonstrates rich understanding the internalisof sues raisedby unforeseendrugconsequences.In contrast, Robbie Davis-Floydidentifiesstronglywith the "natural" rhetoricsof the midwives with whom she collaborates, in opposition to the cyborgic rhetorics of technoscience medicine.This practiceeffectively forces her to a dystopian use of the cyborg image. Haraway'sinsistence that she is not a relativist restsuponanintellectual commitment to the problemsof technoscience, insistencethatshe be an locatedwithinscience,not outsideit. The readeris to take the analyticsshe performs as a metacritique science not of but as a necessarycomponentof a reconstructed technoscientificpractice. NaturalscientistPaul Grossarguesthat attemptsto account culturallyfor the construction science have met of with mixed success and have questionablevalue. Pace a case for taking Gross,thesebooksprovide good,thorough culturalresearchon technosciencewith some intellecup tual urgency.Despite theirwide arrayof positionings,all the works underreview demonstrate understanding an of whatis at staketo thenatives. Rather merelycelebrating than the wonderof scientificdiscovery, theseauthors offerssubstantive withtheactualworkof technoscience. engagement Moreover, a mature anthropologyof technoscience would help contemporaryhumans/cyborgsunderstand more fully how technosciencepracticesare implicatedin socialchange.Thisanthropology's contemporary opportuderivesfromthe popular nity to be perceivedas significant belief that technoscientific developmentis driving social formation towardsome new dynamic,for exreproduction Thus, technoscienceanthropology ample, "cyberspace." offersourdisciplinemeansto have a substantial impacton social formationreproduction. because potentialnew Yet social formationdynamicat most exists only in embryo, studyingit inherentlyimplicatesone in its creation.This of imposesa specialethicaldutyon the ethnographer techher noscience,to supplement explicationof practiceswith her best understanding what these practicesshouldbe of like (Hakken 2000). These worksshow how one can groundan ethicalsensiHelmreich bilityin thereallyexistingworkof technoscience. deconstructsnarrativesthat distance Alifestubbornly science fromthe broader social practicesin which its pursuit is embedded,showinghow heterosexism political and are presences in each simulation.In the final economy he in to chapter, surveystheplaceof Alife research relation broaderissues of contemporary culturalconcern,such as and He modernity, postmodernity, amodernity. also includes voices critiquing own perspective: Alife researcher his An uses academic languageto critiqueHelmreich'simposition of a politicalagendaon his research, choosingas well to critique Helmreich's The graspof anthropology. passage illustrates some scientists'cavalierwillingnessto presume masteryof others'crafts,butit also highlightsa tensionin ethnographic study of technoscience.Good science ethoftenprovokes informants' defensesof the prized nography terrain claims to knowledge,puttingat risk both access of to the field and the capacityto engage in technoscience. Such researchcan threaten natural scientists,as it evokes the possibilityof alternative claim-makingprocesses. As

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the attackof people like Gross and the broaderplace of in technoscienceanthropology the science wars indicate, the alteritystructured the studyof "othered" into peoplesis cover for the technoscienceethnograunavailable largely pher. If we cannot avoid science wars, can we engage in a manner avoidsthe male powermoves so muchat their that core? These works offers valuable suggestions: Listen have to say anddevelop carefullyto whattechnoscientists the skill to explaintheirpointscogentlyin theirterms.Engage deeplywithwhatthey do, includingtheperformances in whichtheyrevealtheirdreamsandhopes.Next,develop a thorough for analysisof suchperformances' implications imaginingthe future,an inevitablepartof technoscience the in practice.(Demonstrating key role of the imagination scienceis a salutary of especially accomplishment Haraway's refuseto remainin witnessing.)Perhapsmost importantly, the worldof abstraction, tie practices theirsocial inand to frastructures. In variousways, each workunderreviewmoves beyond to technoscience, critiqueto offer alternatives unreflective to sketcha vision of technosciencepracticethatis culturally informed.Harawaydoes it by framingtechnoscience problemsin aestheticas well as technicalterms.Downey concludeshis book with a chapterdescribinga CAD developed in supportof humanliberationratherthan a national pursuitof productivity. Many of Davis-Floydand Dumit's authorsdraw attentionto activistgroupsthateffectively stake claims to spaces in technoscienceinnovation andimplementation. Throughoutliningan alternative from withinnaturalscience to the connectionof approach life processandintelligence,SiliconSecondNaturepoints to alternative practices scopedwidely enoughto engageall who have a stake in the futureof life, howeverit is constructed. these authors As skill demonstrate, at suchactivities is perhaps strongest the elementof whattraining anin offerstechnoscience studies. thropology The ethicallyengagedpracticethatI see as a necessary attribute technoscience of in ethnography emergesstrongly these works.It remains thatwhatqualifiesfor me, possible a reasonablyinformed "scientist"of the anthropological variety,as masterysufficientto be takenseriouslywithin technosciencewill not be sufficientlypersuasivefor the (Hakken1999)to the specialist.I havealso drawnattention opposite problem:Demands for a high level of mastery to might limit the practiceof technoscienceethnography the small groupof ex- or apostatescientists,engineers,or technologists.This limitationwould have extensive race, gender, and class implicationsregardingthe standpoints fromwhichtechnoscience couldbe interrogated. Like these authors, have also regularly I in participated the structures practicesof the interdisciplinary of and field STS. These works draw upon the diverse literature and constructs whichthis scholarlypractice exposedme; to has I find little, other than in the centralityof fieldwork,to

separatetheir work from that of the best practitioners whose trainingtook place in, say, sociology or history. Thereis not evidencehere of a distinctlyanthropological problematic,in a disciplinaryratherthan philosophical sense, in this "reallyexisting" anthropologyof technoscience. Thereis at leastone perspective fromwhichthis is problematic.Over the years,I have met a numberof students who haveencountered technoscience difficultyin pursuing dissertation in partbecauseof what anthropology projects, theiradvisorssee as an absenceof relevantanthropological work.Because the corpusof which these texts are exemrelevance,advisors'conplaryclearlyachievesintellectual tinuedcautionalongthese lines is vulnerable the charge to of deliberateprofessional pedantry.One hopes that,reinforcedby mechanismslike the AAA's Forsytheand TextorPrizes,ourdisciplinewill learnto cultivatethe obvious studentinterestin technoscience build stronglyon this and mostimpressivework. Notes 1. An important (1979)textwassociologists LaBruno early tourand SteveWoolgar's Historian Sharon Life. Laboratory

direction. sivelyanthropological 2. Any listingof suchworkis idiosyncratic. by no means A exhaustive of authors list would include also Dubinskas, Casper, Fisher,Franklin, Forsythe, Grey,Edwards, Eglash,Escobar, Garsten, Gusterson, Hakken, Heath, Hess,Ito,Lave, Fujimura, Nader,Nyce, Perin,Pfaffenberger, Layne,Marcus,Martin, Rabinow, Stone,Suchman, Ragon6, Rapp, Tourney, Strathern, andWright. 3. Thetextsselected reviewwereproduced ethnografor by whohavebeena professional in phers presence bothanthropoland as or ogy andSTS(Science, Technology, Society, I prefer, ScienceandTechnology in Studies the current, moresanitized rhetorics disciplinarity). textsareimportant their of in own The not to nor right, selected berepresentative, should be taken they as "best case" a Rather, representquick examples. they compromisebetween editor writer and preferences. 4. I reviewtheseworks a cultural as anthropologist teaching at a technological of a stateuniversity, unit whoseresearch has focused technoscience. career benefited anthroon has from My to criticisms of pologicalattention it, and,despiteoccasional
instances,I have spenttime legitimating particular studyof technosciencein our discipline-organizing and chairingthe Committee on the Anthroplogyof Science, Technology,and Computingof the GeneralSectionof the AmericanAnthropological Association. References Cited Hakken,David 1999 Cyborgs@Cyberspace: Ethnographer An Looksto the Future. New York:Routledge. 2000 "Ethical Issuesin the Ethnography Cyberspace," of In Ethics and Anthropology: Facing FutureIssues in Human

Traweek's Beamtimesand Lifetimes(1988) moves in a deci-

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and Anne-Marie Property. Biology,Globalism, Cultural Eva and L. eds. Cantwell, Friedlander, Madeleine Tramm, New of NewYork: York Academy Sciences. Pp.170-186. and Latour, Bruno, SteveWoolgar Life: of 1979 Laboratory TheSocialConstruction Scientific CA:Sage. Hills, Knowledge. Beverly

Sharon Traweek, and The of 1988 Beamtimes Lifetimes: World HighEnergy Press MA: University Physicists. Cambridge, Harvard Turkle, Sherry and 1984 The SecondSelf:Computers the Human Spirit. and NewYork: Simon Schuster.

Dancing the Nation

ANYA PETERSON ROYCE Indiana University Paper Tangos. Julie Taylor. Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 1998. 121 pp. The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil. Hermano Vianna. John Charles Chasteen,ed. andtrans.ChapelHill: Universityof North CarolinaPress, 1999. 147 pp. exile and appropriation, idenBordersand boundaries, artists,intellectuals,and the articulation tity, nationalism, of us andthem-these aresome of the definingconceptsof present-dayanthropology,and they are well served in these two books. Taylor and Viannaboth choose forms, embodiedand wordless,thatare at once the most and the least resistantto distortionand misappropriation. arts As the whose most immediatepresencelies in performance, tango and the samba each providea subtle and multivocalic pointof entryto examinations identity-in the perof itself, but also accessiblein memoryfor moreleiforming surelyreflection. Both the tangoandthe sambahave been the subjectsof otherrecentanthropological MartaSavigliano treatments. wroteTangoand the PoliticalEconomyof Passion (1995) as an embodiedanalysisof an embodiedform,documentof tangoandits ing the overseaswanderings the Argentine of with alteredin the recombination old stereotypes return, new territories. Barbara Browning(1995) chose the samba as a way of articulatingBrazilian gender relationships, class ideologies,and the thornyrealitiesof mestizaje(race mixing). Anotherdance from Latin America,the rumba, providesthe subjectof YvonneDaniel's (1995) studythat documents bothits severalforms,its social history,andits for implications Cubanidentities. Whatis it aboutperforming suchas danceandmusic arts thatmakesthemespeciallypowerfulmeansof articulating for or identitywhether an individual for a people?And following on that,in whatways has the explosionof performand ance-basedstudies changedanthropology our underof standings the peopleswho areits focus? Beginningwith the first question,dance and music are and polysemousas well as multivocalic.Choreographies musicalscoreshave multiplemeaningsthatarecommunicated through multiple channels. These features make themradically on opento interpretation the partof boththe audiencesandperformers. Meaningreallyis in the eye of the beholderand in the body of the performer.Taylor speaks eloquentlyto the polysemousnatureof the tango, tellingus whatit meansto danceit andbe dancedby it, and tellingus whatshiftingmeaningsit has had for Argentina. In her work,Savigliano(1995) told us whatmeaningsthe tango acquiredabroadin Franceand in Japan,as well as withthe dance. tellingus of herown relationship Music anddance,especiallybut not exclusivelyin their popularforms, are also democraticin that what limits a thanaccessto formal is person'sperformance talent,rather education,class standing,literacy,and otherstatusmarkers. Both the tangoandthe samba,in fact, hadhumblebeby ginningsandarestill performed peopleof all social stations. Viannadevotes much attentionto the development of the sambaas Brazil'snationalpopularmusic, linkingit to musicianswho werelower-classurban blacksor inhabitantsoffavelas (slums).In its development, sambabethe came the favoritemusic of elites as well. The important point was that poor and elite could come togetheron a common groundof musicalaccomplishment. Viannabehis book with the story of just such an encounterin gins 1926. It took place in Rio de Janeiroandbroughttogether the educated elites Gilberto de Freyre,SergioBuarque HoPedro Dantas Prudentede Moraes Neto, Heitor landa, Villa-Lobos, and Luciano Galle-all from "good white families"-with blackand mixed race sambistasPatrfcio, Donga, andPixinguinha. They went out for an eveningof it such guitarmusicanddrinking. Perhaps was experiences as this one thatprompted elite intellectuals engagein the to "fashionable rehabilitation everything of fromthe musicof rice Pixinguinhato traditional puddingdesserts"(Vianna p. 65). The democratic natureof artssuch as dance and music meansthata greater rangeof peoplehas accessto themand therefore therearemoreanddifferentvoices delineatthat ing identities.Sometimesthese voices agreeto agreeupon a common identity;sometimes they contest the various

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