Anthropological Futures

426 Pages·2009·2.75 MB·English

by  Michael M. J. Fischer

Anthropological Futures
EXPERIMENTAL FUTURES:
Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices
A series edited by Michael M. J. Fischer and Joseph Dumit

Anthropological Futures
MICHAEL M. J. FISCHER
Duke University Press
Durham and London
2009
∫ 2009 duke university press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of
America on acid-free paper $
Designed by C. H. Westmoreland
Typeset in by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data appear on the last
printed page of this book.
Duke University Press gratefully
acknowledges the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, which provided
funds toward the production of this
book.
IN HONOR OF
ha-Fischerim, Eric and Irene
husband (1898–1985) and wife (1907–)
participant-observers of the twentieth century changes described
herein, and authors, respectively, of
The Passing of the European Age;
A Question of Place;
Minorities and Minority Problems;
and
Geometry;
Geodesy, What’s That?
and for
new generations of twenty-first century cousins: roboticists,
breakthrough thinking consultants, brain scientists, musicians,
political sociologists, and social workers
students, colleagues, friends,
and always Susann

CONTENTS
Prologue ix
∞ Culture and Cultural Analysis as Experimental Systems 1
≤ Four Cultural Genealogies (or Haplotype Genealogical Tests) for
a Recombinant Anthropology of Science and Technology 50
≥ Emergent Forms of (Un)Natural Life 114
∂ Body Marks (Bestial/Natural/Divine): An Essay on the Social and
Biotechnological Imaginaries, 1920–2008, and Bodies to
Come 159
∑ Personhood and Measuring the Figure of Old Age: The Geoid as
Transitional Object 197
∏ Ask Not What Man Is But What We May Expect of Him 215
Conclusion and Way Ahead: Cosmopolitanism, Cosmopolitics, and
Anthropological Futures 235
Epilogue: Postings from Anthropologies to Come 244
Notes 273
References 331
Index 379

PROLOGUE
Rekeying Key Words for the Contemporary World
Culture, nature, body, personhood, science, and technology are among
the key words of anthropology, the study of human beings in the world
and in their worlds—including their social and cultural worlds and the
environments, ecologies, and planetary forces with which they inter-
act. Key words, of course, key di√erent registers of meaning. Like
strange attractors, they describe dynamic patterns through which,
since at least the eighteenth century, anthropology has engaged, un-
folded, and refolded itself. Or, to shift keys again, perhaps they are like
proteins with multiple surface receptors to which alternative stem cells
can attach. Anthropology, Immanuel Kant suggested in the eighteenth
century, following David Hume, is foundational to any critical philoso-
phy of use to human beings.∞
Culture is both that which is distinctive, local, colorful, artistic, phil-
osophical; and that which is universally human. Culture is that which
is cultivated (gebildet, civilized, woven) and that ‘‘complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’’
(Tylor 1871: 1). Culture speaks to our aspirations (cultura, a future
participle) and to that which is tied to our nature. Culture is where
meaning is woven and renewed, often beyond the conscious control of
individuals, and yet the space where institutional social responsibility
and individual ethical struggle take place. At issue are not just better
methods but a return to some of the most fundamental moral and
cultural issues that anthropology and cultural analysis have long ad-
dressed: issues of class di√erences, culture wars, social warrants, social
reform and social justice; of mental health and subjectivation; of dem-
ocratic checks and balances, institutions of ethical debate, regulation,
and the slow negotiation of international law; of access to information