nature – Anthrozine

“OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR” Hyperobjects

June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 Lionel Chin Kang Teo1 Comment

“OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR” is a safety advisory placed on the passenger side mirror of motor vehicles mandated by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards in the United States. Its purpose is to remind drivers on distance perception as convex mirrors give a useful field of view while making objects appear smaller. From an anthropological perspective, I feel a deep sense of irony as we go about our daily lives trying to ensure safety on the roads but fail to acknowledge that “objects”, or “hyperobjects” causing catastrophic environmental destruction are closer than they appear.

Hyperobjects are matter or ideological constructs that are:

Supertemporal, extending beyond the human imagination of space and time, refuting the idea of boundedness.
Viscous, sticking to any other object/subject and entraps them within its influence.
Non-local, hyperobjects are felt or perceived indirectly
Phased, hyperobjects occupy a high-dimensional space that may be invisible to the human senses
Interobjective, hyperobjects form interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects (Morton 2013, pp.1–7).

Hyperobjects are real and yet are intrinsically difficult for humans to experience or understand fully. For example, climate change is an illustration of hyperobjects. Climate change envelops humans despite our attempts to detach ourselves from it. We experience climate change in the form of natural disasters such as droughts and monsoons. Climate change also appears to be periodically phased, allowing the Ozone layer to heal while other parts of the Earth continues to degrade.

Why do we need to know hyperobjects?

Timothy Morton argues for a fluid conception between humans and objects: “no matter how hard we look, we won’t find a container in which all things fit” (2013, p.102). Rather than continuing to use the container analogy to organise social life, Morton asserts for a mesh analogy to decentre human exceptionalism and raise urgency towards the current ecological calamity that we, humans and objects alike, are responsible and are within the crisis.

Humanity’s reaction to using ironic distancing to obscure environmental degradation is delaying attempts to create a sustainable future. Ironic distancing is the attempt to distance oneself from a problem or thing that one is already embedded within. Our current attitudes reflect ironic distancing and what Rob Nixon argues as “slow violence”. Slow violence is the product of neoliberalism’s deregulation of the economy, creating massive competition in resource extraction, indiscriminate dumping of waste, etc (Nixon 2011, p.11). Such activities enact “violence” toward the environment and impoverished communities that is noticeable in time to come.

Slow violence is spectacle-deficient. For example, the effects of losing biodiversity or exposure to nuclear radiation are invisible and latent for long periods (Nixon 2011, p.47). The Chernobyl disaster was censored by the Soviet government for eighteen days, hindering effective containment strategies to prevent radiation from spreading (Nixon 2011, p.51). As a result, there was pollution to water bodies, speculative radiation estimates and an increase in mental disorders and abortions from the fear of ionising radiation or radiophobia. Thus, hyperobjects blurs international, intergenerational and somatic temporalities.

What does it mean for Anthropology?

While many “modern” anthropological concepts centres around the human, Morton argues for an Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) which I shall briefly summarise as moving away from human exceptionalism and assuming that objects have the agency for causality. In sum, “OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR” is a salient ontological reminder that our environment is afflicted with slow violence and humans need to start reconceptualising fundamental philosophical questions of existence and do away with using “distance” and “time” as defence mechanisms to shield us from the nearness and precarity of pollution and degradation.

References:

Morton, T 2013, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

Nixon, R 2011, Slow Violence and The Environmentalism of the Poor, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

PLANTS IN SPACE! On Botanical Colonialism and Selecting “Acceptable” Plants for Space Habitation

June 11, 2019June 12, 2019 Dyan TaylorLeave a comment

Space: The Final Frontier. The final colonial stomping ground for the rich and the entitled and the predominantly white. The phrase “colonisation of space” – and all its associated connotations of conquering and civilising – has long been in use in both science-fiction and real-world references to the future of humanity, as envisioned in the great starry plains of the cosmos. (The first “original” use of the phrase is difficult to ascertain). Undoubtedly, from the so-called “Space Race” of the 1950s to the 1970s, to Elon Musk’s present-day SpaceX program, the modern world appears particularly enamoured with the concept of exploring and, eventually, inhabiting space. Earth’s own moon, and the red expanse of Mars, are especially coveted as the site(s) for this proposed future habitation, as the planets deemed to have atmospheres most resembling Earth’s (from within our own solar system). At least, if not entirely resembling Earth’s, the atmospheres of the moon and Mars are deemed the most “manageable”; the most “conquerable”, and, indeed, the most “colonisable”.

Certainly, living on either moon or planet would require extensive “terraforming” of the landscape to allow the human physiology to survive. Science-fiction novels, movies, and television shows abound with images of domes and underground bunkers; great white spectres amidst otherwise barren landscapes.

Yet beyond merely being able to walk and talk and breath within these habitats, the primary concern centres around our ability to grow food. That is, to grow plants: agricultural foodstuffs such as wheat, maize, vegetables, fruits, herbs. Plants not only for our own (human) consumption but for the potential consumption of livestock as well. Without these, humanity simply will not survive a long-term habitation of space.

Plants – both agricultural, and of the garden variety – have historically been tied to many of the “original” colonization efforts of Earth nations and peoples. It is likely the same will be true of the colonisation of space (Slobodian 2015). What has been deemed the “Anthropocene” has been heavily influenced by the ‘biotic upheaval’ (Mastnak, Elyachar & Boellstorff 2014, 364) of both plants and animals (and fungi and bacteria and…) associated with Earthen colonialism, and its subsequent ideological ‘remaking of relations among humans, plants, and place’ (ibid.). For colonialism was foremost seen as a conquering of land for European empires; and only subsequently the people and animals and plants that happened to reside on that land. As European powers created settler colonies in these lands, they brought with them the plants and animals of their home countries, producing an intensive “biological expansion of Europe” (Crosby quoted in Mastnak, Elyachar & Boellstorff 2014, 367). Plants and animals once “native” to Europe (critiques of the concept of native/alien aside) can now be found across the world. In this way, colonialism and its “conquering” of foreign landscapes through human, botanical, and zoological means, arguably represents ‘the greatest biological revolution’ (Mastnak, Elyachar & Boellstorff 2014, 374) of the modern world. Space proves to be no different. For ‘how could one ever think that, on a remote planet, our environmental care would be any different’ (Calanchi, Farina & Barbanti 2017, 213) to what it has historically been on Earth?

So, let’s take a cue from science-fiction, and envision a future a hundred years from now, or two or three or four. Let’s say humans have set up habitations on Mars; we’ve figured out how to grow food plants, and to grow them well, and the first “pioneering” outposts have now expanded to great cities of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Undoubtedly these cities will be built to resemble the cities of Earth (Calanchi, Farina & Barbanti 2017), including its plant life: one can picture parks and tree-lined streets; rooftop gardens and window boxes filled with flowers. Just as Earth colonialism “imported” the plants of settler’s home countries to new lands, so too will the colonisation of space indubitably import Earth plants to the terraformed landscapes of Mars, or the moon, or whichever other planet(s) we decide to “conquer” and “civilise”. Beyond the “practical” agricultural plants mentioned previously, what other plants might be selected for space expansion, and why? How do we decide which plants are “worthy” of inter-planetary expansion, and which should remain on Earth? The botanical and zoological concepts of “native” and “alien” would gain new meaning, as the human experience becomes, literally, extra-terrestrial. Who would make these botanical decisions, and based on what criteria? What would such choices say about our relationship with the chosen plants, and with the unchosen plants, and with the Earth (as a planet) more generally?

These questions and more, coming soon to an Anthropology near you.

Featured Image Source: Samaa.tv

References:

Calanchi, A., Farina, A., and Barbanti, R. 2017, ‘An Eco-Critical Cultural Approach to Mars Colonization’, Forum for World Literature Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp.205-216

Mastnak, T., Elyachor, J., and Boellstorff, T. 2014, ‘Botanical Decolonization: Rethinking Native Plants’, Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, Vol. 32, Issue 2, pp.363-380

Slobodian, R.E. 2015, ‘Selling Space Colonization and Immortality: A Psychosocial, Anthropological Critique of the Rush to Colonize Mars’, Acta Astronautica, Vol. 113, pp.89-104

No Homo Bro: Viewing Humans as Primates and the Nature/Culture Divide

June 11, 2019June 12, 2019 Dyan Taylor2 Comments

Humans are primates. First scandalously suggested – or, at least, first credited as being suggested – by Charles Darwin, this taxonomical classification has since been confirmed by genetic DNA testing. Humans are very much primates, with our genetic similarity to chimpanzees, our closest relatives, as being ‘wellover 99%’ (Waldau 2007, 105; original emphasis removed). Humans are closer to chimps, genetically, than African elephants are to Asian elephants (ibid.).

This fact has caused ideological problems for much of the Western world. The Christian Bible has long advocated man’s dominion over animals – not over other animals, but over animals, period. There is a deep-seated belief in the idea that human are somehow intrinsically separate from, and “above”, the animal world (not to mention the worlds of plants and fungi). This view remains common today, with many Western and Westernized peoples ‘count[ing] themselves a signiﬁcant cut above animals’ (Sheets-Johnstone 2010, 347); viewing humanity as inherently ‘set apart from the rest of nature’ (Waldau 2007, 107). Carl Linnaeus’ classification of humans as animals, and, later, following Darwin, the taxonomical restructuring of humans as primates, has challenged this deeply held conviction of the Western world’s. And think about it: We classified ourselves as primates. Classification is a human concept, bounded by human-created terms and ideologies. Even the scientific concepts of genetics and DNA are arguably bound to specifically human understandings and framings of these concepts.

So why, then, do so many people still reject the idea that we are “like primates”, or that primates are “like us”? Much of it is tied to the perceived “nature/culture” divide and the socially-held idea that ‘in virtue of culture, humans transcend nature’ (Sheets-Johnstone 2010, 347). Yet modern academic critiques (both positive and negative) of the so-titled “Anthropocene” recognise this divide as ‘an untenable approach’ (Fuentes 2012, 142). Rather, our (human) place in the world and our relationship with “nature”, is ‘an important arena for [ongoing] anthropological analysis’ (Fuentes 2012, 141). This includes, undoubtedly, our ideological relationship with ourselves as primates, as well as our ideological and physical relationships with other non-human primates. The emergence of ethnoprimatology in the anthropological field is evidence of this growing interest in the link(s) between humans and primates. Fuentes writes that an ‘ethnoprimatological [sic] orientation accepts humans as primates and sees value in including other primates as co-participants in shaping social and ecological space’ (Fuentes 2012, 142). Here, ethnoprimatology draws heavily on the concept of the Anthropocene.

Certainly, the insisted separation between humans and primates is revealed to be a distinctly Western phenomenon. In many places, humans live in close co-habitation alongside other non-human primates, such as in South- and Southeast Asia, as well as in parts of Africa. Diogo (2018) argues that the negative view of primates is a uniquely European phenomenon, as many other people(s) who interact frequently with primates tend to have a much closer and even reverent relationship with them. He cites Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting Babi, the baboon God, as well as Balinese temples filled with real and sculpted long-tailed monkeys. Waldau (2007), too, references the words of gorilla scientist Dian Fossey’s guide Manuel, who, when encountering free-ranging gorillas in Rwanda, exclaimed ‘Kweli ndugu yanga’, a Swahili phrase meaning ‘Truly my kin’ (Waldau 2007, 104). This reveals intrinsic differences between Western and non-Western views regarding other non-human primates, and our relationship with them.

Of course, this culturally perceived kinship between Swahili peoples and gorillas in no way justifies or legitimises the colonial and very racialized history of Europeans referring to Black African humans as apes. Inspired by Linnaeus’s proposed sub-species (see my companion post here), the early days of physical anthropology were rife with apparently “scientific” comparisons between the physiology of Black African humans and great apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. Black Africans (and their kin across the colonies) were routinely referred to as “less evolved” or “less advanced” than their white European counterparts; further down on the evolutionary ladder and more akin to the apes than to “civilised” humans. (Of course, the idea that evolution is a “ladder” at all is a complete fallacy, but that’s an argument for another day). As such, colonial regimes of slavery, segregation, and apartheid could be legitimised through “scientific” terms. Yet once again, we see Diogo’s (2018) claim that this negative view of primates is a distinctly European perspective. Being likened to primates is, in itself, arguably not a “negative” thing – since humans are primates, and there may be much to admire in the lifestyles of primates across the globe. Only in the Christian European view were primates viewed as below humans, and therefore to be like primates was also to be below (other) humans. Modern anthropological and ethnoprimatological analyses critique these understandings, both historical and ongoing, and question, quite literally, what it means “to be human” – and to be primates.

Image Source: Business Insider

References:

Diogo, R 2018, ‘Links Between the Discovery or Primates and Anatomical Comparisons with Humans, the Chain of Being, Our Place in Nature, and Racism’, Journal of Morphology, Vol. 279, Issue 4, pp.472-493

Fuentes, A 2012, ‘Proposal 2: Humans as Niche Constructors, As Primates and With Primates: Synergies for Anthropology in the Anthropocene’, Cambridge Anthropology, Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp.141-146

Sheets-Johnstone, M 2010, ‘The Descent of Man, Human Nature and the Nature/Culture Divide’, Anthropological Theory, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.343-360

Waldau, P 2007, ‘Kweli Ndugu Yanga – The Religious Horizons of “Humans are Primates”’, Worldviews, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp.103-123

See More:

“Go Back To Where You Came From!” An Anthropological Look at Linnaeus, Taxonomy, and Classification

Things We Wish We Knew In First Year: Ethnocentrism (and Anthropocentrism)

The Anthropo Scene Part I

The Anthropo Scene Part II

Mary Douglas’s Garden

June 11, 2019June 12, 2019 Dyan Taylor2 Comments

What is a weed? Perhaps that’s a trick question. And no, I’m not talking about marijuana (although according to Agriculture Victoria, marijuana is, in fact, classified as a “noxious weed”. There you have it!). I’m talking about common garden weeds – plants like dandelions, morning glory (bindweed), crabweed, spiny emex, etc. The kinds of plants you’d recognise by sight but maybe not necessarily by name. Taxonomically speaking, there is no single family or genera of “weeds”; no uniform classificatory status. Merriam-Webster (that most cited of online dictionaries) defines a ‘weed’ as “a plant that is not valued where it is growing”, “usually of vigorous growth,” and “one that tends to overgrow or choke out more desirable plants”. They are productive and voracious growers – voracious not in the food-hungry sense of the word, but in their eagerness, their enthusiasm to grow – appearing in spaces where other plants simply wouldn’t survive; such as on concrete pathways and in rooftop gutters. They grow quickly and reproduce abundantly, colonizing available ground with speed. Certainly, they are intrinsically bound to these concepts of space and place: ‘Many plants become weeds simply by being in the wrong place’ (Creswell 1997, 335; emphasis added). Take the common dandelion, for example (Taraxacum officinale). A meadow filled with their bright yellow flowers – a literalization of the Anthropological “field” if ever there was one – would be considered charming. Look at all that yellow! Yet when a dandelion appears in a garden or public pathway, they are no longer considered charming. They are immediately relegated to the category of the “weed”.

But what, you ask, does any of this have to do with Anthropology? You want to study people, not weeds. Well, fair enough. But think about it: Who defines this notion of “right” and “wrong” places for weeds to grow? Mary Douglas, a prominent Anthropologist you’re bound to come across in your studies, is perhaps most famous for her argument that dirt is simply ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 1965, 198). So, too, are weeds simply plants that are “out of place”. They are weeds only in relation to their unwanted-ness; and, specifically, to human want and un-want. A cat, or a deer, or a bee, or a tree, has no concept of a weed; for weeds ‘are creatures of human disturbance’ (Tsing 2017, 3; emphasis added). For me, weeds highlight the human obsession with classifying things and putting them in their “right place”. This linguistic and ideological obsession is ‘deeply engrained in the way we think and act’ (Creswell 1997, 334); in how we think about and interact with the world around us. We order this world in carefully constructed ways, both scientifically – through taxonomy and nomenclature (see my companion post on Carl Linnaeus’s legacy here) – and practically. Gardens are personifications of this botanical ordering, with each plant put in its correct place, ‘forming a harmonious whole’ (Creswell 1997, 335) in which weeds would be a disturbance: ‘useless, harmful, and undesirable’ (ibid.). In removing such “weeds” from the human-cultivated space of the garden – in performing the verbal act, “to weed” – the gardener ensures that the physical world ‘conforms to the structure of ideas’ (Douglas 1965, 199). Things belong where they belong, and must remain so, bounded and boxed eternally. A garden full of weeds is not a garden at all but a representation of the “natural” and the “wild”, encroaching on the “human” and the “civilised”. Colonial terminology abounds.

Certainly, our pedantic categorising of the world around us reveals more about ourselves than, arguably, any inherent properties of the world itself. A weed is not a weed until a human deems it so, and a human only deems it so when a plant has the wild, untamed audacity to grow where it is not wanted. Anything can be a weed, in that sense (okay, except for maybe trees – which grow too slowly and would be “weeded out” before they reached anything approaching maturity). Conversely, it appears that plants can occasionally escape the denomination of “weed”, too. In my grandmother’s retirement village in South Africa, a common species of clover (nomenclature unknown), with its dainty purple flowers – long relegated to the category of “weed” in the village inhabitants’ previous suburban gardens – had achieved an ideological revolution, and was now present in almost every garden and window-box in the village. My mother was horrified. “But it’s a weed!” she cried, repeatedly. And yet the inhabitants of the retirement village had now deemed it not so. The ease with which the “weedy” clover grew was now coveted, and the flowers “sweet” and “pretty”. It makes me think of the Shakespearian idiom “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Would a weed by any other name be considered as “weedy”? As unwanted? As out of place? Clearly not.

Image Source: Travel Like a Local: Vermont

References:

Creswell, T 1997, ‘Weeds, Plagues, and Bodily Secretions: A Geographical Interpretation of Metaphors of Displacement’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 87, No. 2, pp.330-345

Douglas, M 1965, ‘Pollution’, in W.A. Lessa and E.Z. Vogt (Eds.), Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, Third Edition, Harper & Row Publishers, U.S.A., pp.196-202

Tsing, A 2017, ‘The Buck, The Bull, and The Dream of the Stag: Some Unexpected Weeds of the Anthropocene’, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, Vol. 42, Issue 1, pp.3-21