From Studyplace

Contents 1 Discussion 2 Comment 3 Reaction papers 3.1 George Barvinchak 3.2 Lauren Click 3.3 Michele Giorlando 3.4 Zhaodan Huang 3.5 Jonathan Lewis 3.6 Joseph Lim 3.7 Brian McNamara 3.8 Harshita Pant 3.9 Sarah Usmani 3.10 Julie Warner 4 Archives

Discussion

What is the difference between inheritance and devolution?

I think that 'devolution' is passing of wealth, privileges, or authority from one group (e.g. a government) or individual to another and 'inheritance' is the receiving wealth (or the wealth itself) from another group or person according to certain rules (as per below - rules of devolution). For example, one form of inheritance could be as per Goody - diverging devolution where wealth is inherited by both sons and daughters. Note: From information in a chapter by Duran Bell in 'Kinship, networks, and exchange' compiled by Thomas Schweizer, Douglas R. White, Cambridge University Press, 1998 Bell contests Goody's interpretation of dowries as a form of female inheritance, because the dowry is typically not the property of the bride. As for devolution, Bell says that "A system of inheritance is one in which the claims upon a person's estate are socially prescribed by unambiguous rules of devolution." --GeorgeB 19:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Give an example of the way your parents may be "devolving" their capital to you.

An example of devolving capital could be 'gift giving.' US devolution rules for gifts are outlined in IRS publication 950 detailing "how much money or property you can give away during your lifetime [gifts] or leave to your heirs at your death before any tax will be owed.." --GeorgeB 19:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

What might be an argument for the relationship between advanced industrialization and the "sexual revolution" or the entry of women into the salaried workforce?

Industrialization could have triggered a number of societal changes that caused the entry of women into the salaried workforce: 1. Smaller family size - not only are fewer children needed to help the family economy, but family planning and lower death rates may have contributed to smaller family size. 2. The spread of labor saving devices - allow the woman for free time in which to pursue an education and work outside of the household. 3. New machines in the work place - new machines a.) amplifying a person's physical ability helped to equalize gender difference related to strength and stamina or b.) making gender differences irrelevant (e.g. typewriter). --GeorgeB 19:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment

We were talking about wikis in the last class, and the affordances and constraints it offers in allowing certain forms of communication. I was thinking, though, that we might also distinguish between the technology of wikis (i.e. the software that allows people to edit, the syntax it follows, etc.) and the social practice of using wikis. It might be a misleading to call StudyPlace a wiki because it leads people to think that it should prompt people to create Wikipedia-like articles, where authorship is slightly more concealed. We can use the wiki software to do any number of things; we can use it as a message board, or as a venue to play games, or even engage in synchronous chatting if, for some reason, two people do decide to simultaneously and continuously respond on one another's comments. We had talked about the meaning of an action as something that has to emerge through social interaction, so we shouldn't define the "meaning" (and purpose) of a wiki software to mean Wikipedia-like entries.

It leads me to wonder who decided the structure of Wikipedia, and whether the fact that is is called "Wikipedia" leads people to think of creating encyclopedia-like articles. Certainly, if I made an entry that isn't encyclopedia-like, I will be instructed to change (or more probably, it would be deleted). Aaron Hung 11:26, 6 June 2008 (EDT)

Reaction papers

Assignment

Each reaction paper should be between 500 and 1000 words long. Each should minimally focus on one of the issues raised in one of the required readings in term of one of the other required or recommended readings. Maximally, and particularly as the course progresses, the reaction papers should cross reference more of the required or recommended readings, including those for earlier sections.

The assignment should be on StudyPlace by the time class starts on the day that it is due.

Guidelines

1. Write up your paper on a word processor like Microsoft Word
2. Find your name on the list and click on "Edit". It should open up a box that shows a space for you to enter text
3. Copy and paste your paper from the word processor onto the StudyPlace window
4. Click on "Show Preview" if you want to see what it looks like
5. Click on "Save Page" to finalize your changes
6. Email a copy of your paper to Professor Varenne and Aaron Hung. If you are stuck at any point, feel free to email Aaron.
7. Feel free to comment on other students' assignments. You can put your comments at the bottom of the other student's paper. Be sure to sign your name by typing ~~~~. This will automatically sign and date your comment.

You can also watch a video tutorial of this on Youtube.

George Barvinchak

Based on our readings in the first part of ITSF - 4026, I think that it could be shown that technology, culture, and education interrelate to instantiate and build upon one another. This Reaction Summary focuses primarily on the interrelationships between culture and technology highlighted in the readings.

The culture of a people is, at least, partially defined by the technologies that the people use and develop. The use to which people put technology is influenced, as Cremin via Varenne ('Difficult Collective Deliberations: Anthropological Notes toward a Theory of Education', Varenne ) noted, thought the 'knowledge, attitudes, values, skills and sensibilities' transmitted through the channels of education in the society. In turn, the use to which people put the technology further helps to define and change their culture.

The major early readings of this course to date highlight the complexities of the interrelationship between culture and technology. Karl Marx's 'Illusions of German Ideology - First Premises' focused on how individuals and societies are defined by their means of production (technology), its use, and misuse. Similarly, Leo Marx illustrated how 1.) the young American nation first sought with idyllic fervor agrarian technologies and 2.) later its ambivalence when faced with the overwhelming cultural transformation offered by the technological advancements arriving in the middle of the nineteenth century. Varenne and McDermott provided insights into the interplay of technology and culture and the enabling and disabling effects that the interplay has on members of a society. B. Latour illustrated how technology/science is actually 'done' (processes and strategies) in modern cultures.

Since K. Marx started his first premises with man's arrival on the scene (i.e. his existence), it is a good place to begin. Marx reflected on the interplay of technology and man's lives/societies. From his point of view, man is differentiated from animals though his use of technology and is defined not only by his technology but also what the technology produces. From the social perspective he said that those who are actively producing in an economy are in turn also actively engaged in the social and political activities of the society. I think that this can be taken to mean that the users of technology are actively engaged in building and shaping their culture. The First Premises did not contain any explicit references to education's role in society. The only source of 'knowledge' noted was knowledge generated from the 'reflexes and echoes' of actual life processes under which society labors. He noted that societies do evolve, but not based on the will of the members of the society, but based on economic realities independent of their will. Leo Marx addressed similar economic inevitabilities encountered when the Industrial Revolution reached North American in the middle of the nineteenth century. He, as shown below, did not use such stark fatalistic terms. In summary, K. Marx described some of the basic considerations of ITSF - 4026 i.) means of production (technology), ii.) society and man's inter-relationships with technology (culture), and iii.) the sources of knowledge/consciousness (loosely related to education). Contrary to the potentially synergistic relationships proposed in my first paragraph above, K. Marx writes that the three moments are destined to interrelate, but only to come into contradiction with one another. The contradiction that he highlighted is, I think, resolved as the 'three moments' interrelate, change, evolve, and adapt.

The interrelationship between technology and culture is the major theme of Leo Marx's 'The Machine in the Garden'. Prior to the early nineteenth century, America possessed a fairly isolated coherent culture.

The isolation is illustrated by the industrialization of Europe years prior to the new world. As the century progressed the cultural coherence of the primarily agrarian economy began to dissipate (i.e. the cultural container began to 'leak' (Varenne and McDermott) ). Differences in esthete values and priorities in the populace began to appear. The use of the steam engine in railroads, navigation, and factories magnified the new nation's ability to produce more with its abundant resources and limited population. The incorporation of new technology into the American landscape was especially contentious because of the amplification that the new machines provided for previously labor intensive work and the alienation that it produced in the potentially adversely impacted populace.

L. Marx selected excerpts from writings of the time, notably Walker and Carlyle, to highlight the spirit of the controversy involved with adoption of the new technology. The documented controversies illustrated the deliberative nature of the national educational process that was underway. Proponents of the new Revolution expounded on how the new technologies could enable a 'waste land [to be] ... transformed into a garden', how the new technology could be used to not only amplify man's abilities but also favorably impact the very laws of physics by the 'annihilation of space and time.' Writers of the period (e.g. Timothy Walker) even noted that the shortcomings of Nature itself could be corrected by: supplying rivers where they were not provided; removing mountains that blocked expansion and the dissemination of the democratic ideal; and leveling trails too irregular for wheels with 'iron pathways.' Walker postulated that without technology there is no culture.

The alienation discussed by L. Marx is reminiscent of K. Marx's suggestion that the evolution of societies are based on economic realities independent of the will of men. Also, the differences of opinion and potential inequalities in a heretofore isolated 'cultural container' set up an environment for the demarcation of cultural 'disabilities.' Some enticed by the power and efficiency of the new technology saw that its adoption would benefit many. Prominent players (Coxe and Morris) of the time saw that this unique mixture of technology and America's republican (cultural) institutions were particularly suited to release all of the capabilities (i.e. power) of the new machines. On the other hand, others like the English writer Carlyle warned that the use of the new machinery that was so externally focused that it could cause the populace to lose their internal moral and physical 'control.' While, many saw potential rewards and power in adopting the new technologies, others exhibited concern with its potential problems and liabilities: the loss of solitude and tranquility, the loss of property through eminent domain and the railroad's use of land, and ceding control of the citizenry's destiny to undemocratic corporations.

Daniel Webster addressing the dissenters summarily dismissed their concerns as being of little importance to reasonable men. Webster is portrayed as showing that those holding traditional agrarian values should not be taken 'seriously.' The Webster strategy as illustrated by L. Marx is reminiscent, to a degree, of the imposition of cultural disabilities by constraining agents on the constrained ('Culture as Disability', Varenne and McDermott). The disabilities projected by the industrial advocates were similar to the disabilities of difference and, to some extent, deprivation. The cultural difference disability was clear cut in that the constraining agents proposed that concerned citizenry be dismissed and not taken seriously simply because of their (different) values. Varenne and McDermott describe the deprivation disability as the assignment of a cultural disability on the grounds that the constrained are lacking a certain characteristic ('physical, mental, economic, or neighborhood'). In the case of Webster's arguments the industrialists assigned a cultural disability to citizenry who didn't possess their enlightened economic sensibilities.

In summary, the readings show the very close and synergistic interrelationships of technology and culture. In addition, although not directly or extensively addressed as education, K. Marx and L. Marx make many references in their writings to peoples' knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, or sensibilities (as per Cremin via Varenne) implying at least an underlying recognition of the importance of 'education' in the transmission of technological and cultural values to members of society.

Posted --GeorgeB 16:09, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Lauren Click

In order to address the works we have examined as of yet in class and their perspectives on technology and culture, I would like to think with an example: a cup. As a simple example that spans, I would argue, all of homo sapien sapien existence, I think it appropriate to place in the theories as a point of reference.Note that the cup itself does not change, but rather its location in the methodology used by each (do the theorists even care about a cup?) and its place theoretically (as a technology) that may differ.

“Life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life” (9).

Marx argues in “The German Ideology” that it is vital to begin not with the ideology or abstractions but with the “real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those already existing and those produced by their activity” (4). While this sounds like Garfinkel’s “work” and Latour’s Laboratory Life study, Marx expands his argument beyond particular individuals and particular conditions to a macro-examination of producers and how they produce. Production exists on a societal level of developing steps of hunter-gather (the tribal and undeveloped stage of production (6)), to the ancient communal and State ownership, to private, feudal and estate property. With each step the technology of production has changed thus the relationships between individuals, and their relationship to their work. Without the technology necessary for each step (sufficient water and food, forms of energy from gas or electricity or steam, etc.) there would not be movement to the next step of interaction and societal form (culture). Where is the cup through this argument? As Marx argues, with the “broadening of activity into world-historical activity [separate individuals have become] more and more enslaved under a power alien to them”(14). The cup that was once created in the family unit and used within the small group became created by a specialist (through the division of labor). Eventually the steps of creation fall out of the sight of the user entirely to only be created in towns and factories. Just as the creation of the cup is lost from view, so to is the control of the productive power. But, to be noted, Marx does not mention the cup.

“We are concerned with the social construction of scientific knowledge in so far as this draws attention to the process by which scientists make sense of their observations” (32).

In Laboratory Life technology is treated as one piece of many in the social construction of fact. The action is the point of interest, as opposed to larger schemes of technological and societal advances. What has become Khuhn’s “normal science” are the mythologies and rules created by the forbearers of the laboratory. Thus, as with Marx, there is a history inherent in action, though Latour and Woolgar concern themselves with the present use of that history. Latour and Woolgar state that "An important feature of fact construction is that "social" factors disappear once a fact is established." (23) Tracing the stages of a statement with an author (cups might be good for holding coffee, says Lauren) to a statement which exists as an assumption (cups are clearly for holding coffee), the authors follow the historical creations into the present constructions and actions by watching precisely the interactions using these assumptions and what facts arise from these new, active facts. Technology, as well as humans, present very real constraints and limitations. What goes assumed in the use of a cup for coffee is that it should be held a certain way to combat gravity, by the handle so as not to burn the human skin it is built for, it should not have holes in the bottom or be made of soft materials because it is to contain hot liquid. But, these assumptions are so far beyond what needs to be discussed that rather the concern is the current interaction with the cup. Latour and Woolgar “use culture to refer to the set of arguments and beliefs to which there is a constant appeal in daily life and which is the object of all passions, fears, and respect” (55). Could the laboratory biologists continue their work without their coffee cup and coffee? How does the cup become an active part of laboratory culture and what constraints arise if it is not present?

“The coherence of a culture is crafted from the partial and mutually dependent knowledge of each person caught in the process and depends, in the long run, on the work they do together” (2).

For Varenne and McDurmott the cup is as the house being inhabited. It comes as one piece of technology but can be used as another (like the one holding pens on my desk). Perhaps we were devolved the cup from our parents or grandparents, or purchased the cup in a coffee shop. The technology is a piece of the past; it is a piece of the potter that created it, the steps it took to get to the shop, the form it takes being optimum at its moment of creation for the producer. Like Marx, the authors do not deny the historical, and very real grounds upon which the current moment is built. The interest lies, though, in the use of this history in present action (like Latour). I have been taught to drink from a cup as a child, but how it is being used in daily life is the vital point of interest. Do I hold my pinky up when I drink? If so it is not from internalizing this habit from my childhood socialization but that in this environment this is what I have chosen deliberately to do and what is appropriate now. Here we are reminded of Latour in that the authors are interested in the work of creating what is culturally appropriate is in day to day action, and education others of that act (or being educated). The (arbitrary) ways of how one should hold a cup is made culturally relevant by this ongoing action and the education of it to others. Also, if I can not hold a cup this may be seen as a disability; then again, if no one had arms then straws would be the culturally appropriate. Culture becomes a disability when it leaves a place for a disability to exist, a means to determine able and disable, and the consequences of that determination.

Michele Giorlando

On the surface, “culture” and “technology” seem simple terms to describe. After all, the words themselves are used on a daily basis throughout the world. One could easily brush off culture as merely the beliefs and characteristics of a particular society and technology as a means of communications and advancement through invention. Yet it is clear from the readings of Marx, Latour and Varenne/McDermott that these words carry much more weight and are very much connected. To explore them is to give a better understanding of our present being, useful, of course, for the educator.

It seems as though the culture of a society is directly related to its technology. In The German Ideology Marx (1932) makes such an argument early in his writing, explaining that what individuals (and collectively, a culture) are coincides with what they produce and how they produce it. A concrete example of this is found in the footnotes, when Marx comments on the building of houses. Such structures, such technologies, have allowed societies and cultures to separate themselves from previous, nomadic ones. Examples such as this make the connection between culture and technology obvious. It is the more specific examples of how cultures respond to technologies (and vice versa) that strike me as the more intriguing discussion.

Varenne and McDermott (1995) discuss the fictional society in H.G. Wells The Country of the Blind and the largely deaf society of Martha’s Vineyard two centuries ago in Culture as Disability. In both societies it was necessary for the culture to make adaptations to accommodate the differences of their people and use technology as an enabler and equalizer. It was then possible that through technology (ex: angled pathways and sign language) the seemingly disabling characteristics of blindness and deafness were no longer viewed as a disability and the society accepted these traits as part of their culture.

Why is it then that our present culture rejects these traits and views them as disabilities? Perhaps it is because of the misinterpretations of facts and the misinterpretations of technology. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1979) explore the declaration of “facts” in Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. They note that there are different types of statements and that “in any given instance, there seems to be no simple relationships between the form of a statement and the level of facticity which it expresses.” (p. 79) Scientific facts, (a form/result of technology) are validated by the culture’s perceptions and beliefs of these facts. This of course, leads to misinterpretation. The cartoons titled “Science in Action” and “The Science News Cycle” are humorous, pictorial representations of how statements become misinterpreted as “facts.” With these very basic examples, it is clear how information can be construed differently by individuals based on their cultural experiences and beliefs. Then technologies and facts can influence and affect cultures differently.

Cleary culture and technology exist as both a cause and effect of each other. As discussed in class, it is the classic “chicken or egg?” conundrum as to which was here first. Although that subject can be debated it seems anthropologist, educators and humans in general are more interested in the interaction of culture with technology. In the brief examples discussed here it shows that technology, in the case of The Country of the Blind, posed a way to better culture, equalizing the society. Yet at the same time, to an outsider, it disabled the culture as a whole. Humans can interpret, represent and assume different positions about facts, leading to a representation of their intricate culture and its uses of technology.

Zhaodan Huang

According to Levi-Strauss (1969), culture refers to “the processes through which human beings take the facts build for them over the course of human history, transform them and thereby build further facts for future human beings.” In other words, the premise of creation of culture is the existing physical facts or materials that human beings utilize for further production. This definition aligns with what Carl Marx put in his work The German Ideology (1845), the way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of substance they find in existence and have to produce. However, I wonder what the premise is for those physical existences. I guess another way to ask this is how human history was created. As Marx put in the same work, the creating of history must always set out from the actual physical nature of man and the natural conditions in which man finds himself and the modification in the course of history through the action of man. Through the process of making, modification, adjusting, and remaking, human beings create culture. I cannot help but wonder what facts boiled down to be recorded as part of culture and history.

I once discussed with a Chinese historian about human history and culture. One of his points stuck to my mind until today. It seems to him, facts of the history that got to be recorded were not necessarily mainstream culture or major events of the time being, but rather unusual or different incidents, because normal daily repetitive happenings would not have struck record-keeper as hard as something unusual. To prove his point, he gave an example of a small episode happened during the civil war period of Chinese history in the 1940s. The Red Coat Woman Army was reported and referenced in many major Chinese literatures and was made in films, ballets and dramas. We would assume that Red Coat Woman Army must be a great and grand phenomenon back then. However, some researchers dug in the history and found out that the army was made up of a small group of woman peasants who voluntarily united and joined the war. Why and how this small group of women got so much attention and took up so much space in Chinese revolution history. One explanation is that its rareness and un-usualness.Over the thousands of years of human history, is it right to assume that the recorded history and culture are actually skewed?

Now I would like to talk about the term technology. This term in this course is definitely more general and broad of a term then I always envision. According to professor Varenne’s notes, technology is looked as the things (facts) humans made that make them make new things or repair the old, or as what human beings have made that they now depend on to continue to live together in a style to which they are now accustomed to. This statement makes a lot of sense when we think of how human developed to who we are today. From using rocks as hunting tools or weapons, to using friction of rocks to set fire, human used existing facts to make things that will continue to benefit or hinder human development. My understanding of the relationship of culture and technology is that technology is one means of production and culture is the side product, which will further guide human being through the course of human history.

Zh2113 16:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Jonathan Lewis

One of the cardinal questions emerging from the initial readings for the course is what distinguishes technology and culture. One must consider them in terms of each other, but the borders between the distinctions of each are fuzzy. They loop back on each other to form a broad network of definitions for what it means to be in a society. Is it technology that creates culture or culture that creates technology? Our readings suggest that both are true. This notion is further complicated by the problem of determinism. Are certain aspects of culture inevitable, if so, to what extent? I largely agree with Marx here; briefly that cultural development is a product of nature and history and cultural change must take place within this context.

Marx’s materialism suggests a heavily deterministic aspect to the development of culture and technology. He begins with the physical world, and humans in that world. As human populations expand they must produce more and more. The environment determines the means by which they choose to do this and their production subsequently determines the culture. As Marx puts it: “The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.” And as he traces the development of culture, each step, even a step that one hopes to influence, is constrained by the historical realities from which it springs.

The anecdotes used by McDermott & Varenne further suggest technologies and cultures deeply influenced by exterior factors. In H.G. Wells’s blind society and on Martha’s Vineyard with its large deaf population, fundamental features of culture and technology developed in response to the physical realities in which those societies found themselves. McDermott & Varenne’s “Culture as disability” suggests imposed influence on culture by nature and history as it considers why cultures define the disabilities that they do. Put another way, why is blindness a considered a disability? Because sightedness is the default mode of being for most human beings and this reality shaped the culture to fit.

How then, within the constraints of history and nature, does cultural change take place? Here is the direct role of technology and education and their interactions with the culture. Which ideas get disseminated and take hold is a function of communication and human relations. This is, for Dewey, the essence of education. In “Democracy and Education,” he defines education as the transmission of cultural heritage from person to person through human communications. He does not limit his definition to schools, but to any interchange that accesses elements of culture. This wider definition is similar to the one adopted by Varenne in his article “Difficult Collective Deliberations.” It is through these educational exchanges that culture is not simply passed on, but shaped, and where in turn, culture influences the processes of education.

Consider the formation of scientific “facts” described by Latour & Woolgar. Science purports to an objective uncovering of the laws of nature, but Latour & Woogar show it to be a complex social and cultural interchange. These “facts” that influence our thinking about the world and are used to create technologies that can potentially shape our culture, are themselves shaped by our cultural heritage as expressed by the processes of social interchange taking place in the laboratory. The process extends by the integration of technology and scientific knowledge into the greater society, outlined succinctly in the two cartoons included in the class notes.

Cultural change progresses as a loop. This loop of influence on a culture by that same culture is filtered through the educative and technological processes and constrained by nature, but theses processes and constraints are themselves a transformed by the culture.

Jonathanwlewis 10:37, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Joseph Lim

“Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” This almost ubiquitous phrase from the Bible’s John 8:32 has come to define the dominant conception of truth as not just a liberating force but a singular and stable holy grail that awaits our recovery or revelation. Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts and Varenne’s “Difficult collective deliberations: Anthropological notes towards a theory of eduction” challenge this traditional perception of truth. The common strand in their arguments deals with the performative element of social life and how truth (via scientific facts and social views on individuals or communities) is actually negotiable and unstable. Latour and Woolgar’s work parallels the work of critical theorists who disavow traditional attempts to attain the “real meaning of texts” (Latour & Woolgar, 1986, p. 273) by showing “real” to be an “infinitely negotiable concept.” Likewise, science and the process of scientific research are layered with multiple interpretations and ever mutating meanings. For them, science is devoid of “inherent qualities” (p. 284 – 285). Through this lens, the traditional notions of science as objective and essentially about the search for a stable, singular point of truth are dispelled.

By recognizing science as a practice filled with biases is “neither self contradiction nor self defeat”, according to Latour and Woolgar. In fact, it enables the reader to see science as not so much about informing us about some illusory truth but about performing (scientific research “do not so much as inform as perform”). Latour and Woolgar’s aim is to galvanize us to acknowledge this performative element and participate in the “research, investment, redefinition of the field, and transformation of what counts as acceptable argument”. Perhaps this is a means to democratize the scientific discourse by demonstrating that even non-experts can and should participate in the on-going generation of scientific facts?

Likewise, this call to act is evident in Varenne’s essay. The emphasis on acting and agency is seen through the line: “Social life is not about storing knowledge, but about getting others to act” (Verenne, 2007, p. 1574). Both works are empowering in their own way, hinging on the notion of individual and group agency (both in terms of the authority and those under the charge of the authority). Verenne’s essay argues that social structures such as education and practical politics must strive to help people (“newborns) to “full authoritative participation” through a recognition that everyone experiences “difficult collective deliberations” (p. 1578). Ostensibly, Latour and Woolgar’s anthropological take on scientific research is skeptical and unnerving to any scientific researcher because science is not depicted as a reassuring source of stable truths. However, this new take on research also offers an alternative way to not just view but act in a world of science where the “construction on scientific facts, in particular, is a process of generating texts whose fates… depend on their subsequent interpretation”. The recognition of bias and multiplicity of interpretations is not limiting. Rather, it positions both the researcher and the non-researcher (who is not equipped with the knowledge and skill sets of the researcher but still has agency) to constantly question, probe and better understand how “the daily activities of working scientists lead to the construction of facts” (p. 40). We are called upon to participate in this series of “subsequent interpretation”, to actively engage in continuous discourse that can either debunk or support the scientific facts. For Latour and Woolgar, this is all part of the performance of scientific research. For Varenne, the culmination of a stable truth is also illusory because people must continuously “deliberate, in renewed ignorance” throughout their daily interactions with others and institutions. This point is particularly critical when social research and policy are used to help others (especially those of lesser authority). Recognizing that those we are helping are in a state of flux in terms of making sense of things around them and coming to some points of truth should not be limiting or constraining to research and policy development. Rather, they should encourage us (those with authority) to “focus on our ignorance, propose new accounts and policies, and educate” (p. 1580) Re-perceiving truth, scientific facts and social life as unstable and dynamic is liberating. It enables us to escape the handicap of social labels and the illusion of pure objectivity.

Brian McNamara

“The most human thing about us is our technology.”
– Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes

“Any new technology is an evolutionary and biological mutation opening doors of perception and new spheres of action to mankind.”
– Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes

Technology and culture are terms that are multifarious in meaning and usage and that connotate differently the world over.

What is left then is an examination of what they can mean to an individual. In his chapter “First premises of Materialist Method,” begins an exploration of the terms, oddly enough, without ever using either one. It is in Marx that I find much correlation to my own views on technology and culture. The idea that human beings are distinguished from other life not only by how they interact with their environment but how they change it as well is one that not only believe in, but something that I was instructed in during my undergraduate studies in anthropology and communications. What is curious is that Marx seems to share these views yet I had not encountered this particular tract until now.

In reading Marx’s work I was reminded of reading Marshall McLuhan, quoted in epigraph above, who argued that all media – all technologies – were an extension of any human sense, mental capacity or literally an extension of the human body. Therefore, not only were tools and modern computers technologies but also language and the way in which people interact through gesture or alphabets. As Marx states it “This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse of individuals with one another.” For Marx, there is no creation – or extension – without communication. Creation becomes a group activity. He continues by stating that the intercourses increase in number and complexity as a population expands. This rich tapestry of intercourse that Marx describes is easily identifiable as a form of culture.

“Culture is not merely juxtaposed to life nor superimposed upon it, but in one way serves as a substitute for life, and in the other, uses and transforms it, to bring about the synthesis of a new order.” This quote from Clause Levi-Strauss encapsulates best not only my personal views on what culture is, but also serves as a synthesis of what Marx, Latour and Varenne & McDermott were discussing. Culture does not exist in a vacuum. It is the direct result of actions taken by human beings in interacting with their environments, each other and other groupings of humans. In Varenne and McDermott we are given a new idea that “The coherence of a culture is crafted from the partial and mutually dependent knowledge of each person caught in the process and depends… on the work they do together.” Culture is not merely the limits between two disparate groupings. Instead it is the whole of interactions present in a polity that include subversive and counter-cultural intercourse.

However, cultures, as Marx says, change over time as populations grow and eventually break off. Indeed, Latour finds that the references, jargon and patterns of a science laboratory form a culture that is distinct from non-Laboratory life. In our current technologized world, one must learn to navigate between different groups with different cultural expectations, most likely forming new “cosmopolitan” cultures.

What we find then from these readings is that technology and culture are interlinked. They can each form a basis for human interaction and also both the result of human interaction. This odd relationship underscores the confusion the two often carry with them. Simple questions like what is a technology or what constitutes a culture can quickly become mired in contradictions and generalizations. What all three writers present is a presentation of a complex symbiotic relationship with an eye toward stripping out all but the basic ideas underlying the one.

Sources

Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar
1979   Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Levi-Strauss, Claude
1969[1947]   “Nature and culture” in The Elementary structures of Kindship. Boston: Beacon Press. 3-11.

Marx, Karl
1932[1846]   “The first premises of the materialist method” in The German Ideology.

McDermott, R. and H. Varenne
1995   “Culture as disability.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 26: 324-48.

McLuhan, Marshall and David Carson
2003 The Book of Probes. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press.

--23:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC)BMc

Harshita Pant

The relationship between technology, culture and education is not merely one that is black and white in nature; rather all three components are interrelated. This reflection paper will demonstrate my understanding of the power, impact and role each of these components carry in practice. The traditional role of a school is seen as that of an institution for knowledge building. Pierre Bourdieu challenges this notion by asserting it “ as the central cog in the reproduction of social inequalities”(Difficult collective deliberations: Anthropological notes towards a theory of education). Keeping in mind the human capital theory, we can conclude that the learning that takes place in schools is in accordance to fulfill the needs of the economy. To further illustrate this point, it can be seen that professions such as doctors and engineers are highly paid jobs as compared to an artist or a teacher. Such a shift in the way of perceiving development and progress also illustrate how a culture values certain aspects more than others.

This ties into Marx’s belief that humans may make history, but according to the situation that they’re born into. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”, Karl Marx (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). In other words, children born into a low socioeconomic family is a circumstance that they do not choose, therefore even if they change history by getting wealthier the scope of improvement is still grounded by the original circumstance. Similar to Bourdieu’s view of a school, culture too can limit one’s ability to compete against power leading to disruptive results. John Dewey argues against this disability caused by cultural differences as he refers to them as factors that bring people together. As discussed in class, there are a lot of problems when people in other cultures mix. Linguistic property is one such example and needs to be internalized, results as being limited. English is regarded as the official language of conversation in many countries especially those involved in heavy exports and import of products and services. However, there are many concepts in spoken English that do not exist in other languages. In Hindi for example, there is no difference between liberty and freedom whereas in the United States these two words hold very distinct definition. Does this example put Hindi speakers at a lesser advantage than English speakers in the United States? Language can be seen as a form of technology that is ever evolving. Levi- Strauss refers to technology as, “the production of new things with old things”. Human beings live in a world that is biological and cultural therefore they begin to internalize certain aspects making them habits to survive in new technology. In The Country of the Blind, Varenne and McDermott describe a deaf society where people use technology as a tool to overcome obstacles that distinguish some as disabled and others as the norm. The key leanings from this story was that action was taken to acclimate oneself to the existing and new technology to iron the differences among the people in the society. Unlike the example discussed in class about the original family to use forceps as an innovative technology during childbirth, but it was hidden from the rest of the society for many years to come. In other words, if technology is available but not used to its best ability, then there is a chance of stagnation.

To conclude it is evident from the reading that technology, culture and education share more in common than we learn in the day-to-day world. There is not one particular definition of the above components rather they are evolving as is the rest of humanity. Having said that, I believe that the degree with which one component advances more than the other has to do with competition for power.

Sarah Usmani

Julie Warner

In cultural studies, the concept of culture refers to a society’s whole way of life, including its values, beliefs and practices. This is how I have understood it up to this point. Interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary shows early meanings (ca. 1450) for the word culture as related to tilling or cultivating land from the Latin “cultura”. It is not until four hundred years later that the word came to mean “the distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a particular society, people, or period. Hence: a society or group characterized by such customs, etc.” according to the OED. This is derived from “colo” which means “to live in”. The range of connotations seems to envelop the act of both developing our lives in a place and developing the place itself.
Common contemporary conceptions of culture have to do with foods, clothing, traditions, and languages. Varenne and McDermott warn us that stereotyping cultures in this way downplays the complexities of cultures. Instead, they contend that the unity of a culture comes from common goals or the work that the people in a culture partake in together. They describe culture as a process of “hammering a world”.

Their definition seems to be linked more to the “cultura” lineage of the definition of culture. To illustrate the way that cultures are defined by the work they do together to create a reality, they look at the ways that cultures create disabilities.

They follow a line of thinking related to that of Foucault (1961) who proposed that perceptions of what is considered “normal” in a culture are a social construct and explains the tendency of our culture to view difference not as a facet of identity but as something that need be normalized.

Varenne and McDermott describe their approach to viewing culture and disability which they call “culture as disability” where culture teaches individuals to what they should aspire and what qualities are necessary for efficient access within that culture. These qualities are related to those needed for proficient work within the social structures or culture that a society has created to further their existence. This is akin to Marx’s notion of culture as defined by the social structures that are in place to provide the means of subsistence.
I would agree that economic realities (which originate from and/or are part of these social structures toward subsistence that we create) define culture but I would go further and echo Bordieu who urged that “culture is not what one is but what one has, or rather, what one has become”. He suggests that culture can be defined as the product of class rule. So culture is not only what people do to survive, but also where they end up as a result of the power structures, which Marx would argue they themselves create and perpetuate. I come back to Braverman (1974) who applied Marx’s analysis of the labor process to modern technology saying that technological change occurs as a capitalist means of labor control. In sum, my understanding is of culture as a utilitarian means of organization which also acts as a controlling force. Also as Varenne and McDermott suggest, culture is a way of organizing that ultimately comes to serve as a lens through which we see the world and human activity therein (which can also be viewed as means of control).
Technology is usually thought of as having more to do with computers and less to do with say, the wheel. But the Oxford English Dictionary shows a definition of technology that is based simply in the work people do: the “practical or industrial arts”. According to Varenne and McDermott’s description of culture, the coherence of culture comes from the work they do with their technology. Latour and Woolgar suggest that technology is socially constructed, historical and subject to change. What a culture knows (be it utilitarian knowledge or scientific “fact”) is actually just what is useful and what a culture doesn’t know is what is not useful. Varenne offered the example of knowledge of how to harness horses to plows; if this knowledge is not useful within a society for producing life, then it is not common.
To tie together my understanding of culture and technology via the readings up to this point, I recall the notion of disability as a social construct. Social and political arrangements comprise and are comprised of the routine and daily tasks of people—what they do with their technology in order to survive. Science according to Woolgar and Latour IS a social arrangement (or at least is ruled by social arrangements). Accordingly, we can observe that much of what has passed for science, despite its supposed emphasis on neutrality and objectivity, has played a large role in furthering or justifying inhumane treatment of people in the realm of education. Psychiatrics was used to claim that certain people had “organic defects”, to further the harmful view that certain peoples’ learning is “static” (Kliewer, et. al., 2006). Sleeter (1986) explains how the category of learning disabled was catalyzed by the standards movement post-Sputnik, when U.S. schools came under attack and an emphasis on being internationally competitive became prominent. Students who did not perform well on standardized tests were labeled slow learners, mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, culturally deprived, and learning disabled. As Ferri and Connor urge, “science is always inside culture” (2006).
We can also turn to economic factors to observe that in our capitalist culture, production is king and Sleeter (1986) purports that tracking (based on supposedly “scientific” academic measurement) serves to deliberately separate students by socioeconomic class to prepare them for a stratified labor market. It can be argued that the push for increased or full inclusion of formerly-labeled special education students is a push for teaching everyone the values of the capitalist mainstream. In our capitalist society, value is a function of what one produces and schools are structured to teach what one will need in order to be productive (Ervelles, 2005).
The social, economic, and political arrangements which we both create and are controlled by as we live within them comprise culture. These arrangements then serve as the lens through which we view our lives and other human beings. The objects and tools we create in order to live and prosper within these structures is technology. As such, we can see that technology and science are neither objective nor neutral but are instead value-laden as they are a product of the arrangements that we create that are inextricable from values that propel the culture “forward” and are based on inequity.

References

Braverman, H. (1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degredation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York, Monthly Review Press.

Erevelles, N. (2005). Understanding curriculum as normalizing text: disability studies meet curriculum theory. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(4), 421-439.

Ferri, B.A., & Connor, D.J. (2006). Strange bedfellows: Race and disability in U.S. history. In Reading resistance: Discourses of exclusion in desegregation and inclusion debates (pp. 23-39). New York: Peter Lang.

Kliewer, C., et. al. (2006). Who may be literate? Disability and resistance to the cultural denial of competence. American Educational Research Journal, 43(2), 163-192.

Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Marx, K. 1932. The first premises of the materialist method. in The German Ideology.

McDermott, R. & H. Varenne. (1995). Culture as disability. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 26: 324-48.

Sleeter, C. E. (1986). Learning disabilities: The social construction of a special education category. Exceptional Children, 53(1), 46-54.

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