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Umwelt Extended: Toward New Approaches in the Study of the Technologically Modified Body
Abstract
This study introduces the practice of body hacking, modification, and extension of the body through technological means, and discusses a possible approach to anthropological research on people with technologically extended sensory apparatus. Most DIY modifications promise to extend capacities of the body not just quantitatively by enhancing what already exists, but qualitatively by adding new senses or organs that enable new connections with the outer world. The question is how it is possible to approach in social science research the subjective bodily experience of someone with sensory abilities beyond the human norm. This article proposes to look at this phenomenon from the standpoint of von Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt, which focuses on the study of the subjective experiential world of nonhuman animals and puts emphasis on processes of meaning creation, and not only in a symbolic and discursive way. Following current criticism of representationalism in anthropology, it will be suggested here that the Umwelt concept has a great potential for conceptualization of the technologically modified body in sociocultural anthropology and related disciplines.
Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems hold the potential to foster human flourishing and self-actualization. However, we believe contemporary BCI system design approaches unnecessarily limit these potentialities as they are approached from a traditional interaction perspective, producing command-response experiences. This article proposes to go beyond “interaction” and toward a paradigm of human-computer integration. The potential of this paradigm is demonstrated through three prototypes: Inter-Dream, a system that integrates with the brain's autonomic physiological processes to drive users toward healthy sleep states; Neo-Noumena, a system that integrates with the user's affective neurophysiology to augment the interpersonal communication of emotion; and PsiNet, a system that integrates interpersonal brain activity to amplify human connection. Studies of these prototypes demonstrate the benefits of the integration paradigm in realizing the multifaceted benefits of BCI systems, and this work presents the brain-computer integration framework to help guide designers of future BCI integrations.
Body fluidity and corporeal reaching towards as described in the previous chapter hint at a broader process of transformation that gives rise to new configurations of the world around us—new sensorimotor associations, experiences, behaviours, and intentionalities. The changing of the body and its sensorimotor schemes entails a change in the world that we come to perceive. To make this quantum leap from becoming bodies to becoming worlds, we need to think of worlds (always in the plural) as created through the ways in which subjects perceive of and give meaning to objects in their surrounding environment (Kadlecová and Krbec 2020). Such world-making or “enworlding” (Brown 2020) has been described by ethologists as the “phenomenal world or the surrounding world (umwelt, in German) of the animal” (von Uexküll 1992: 319). From this perspective, subjects are actively constituting the world they are in touch (or sight, or smell) with, along the contours set by their sensorimotor capacities.
The visual acuity loss enables the brain to access new pathways in the quest to overcome the visual limitation and this is well-known as neuroplasticity which have mechanisms to cortical reorganization. In this review, we related the evidences about the neuroplasticity as well as cortical anatomical differences and functional repercussions in visual impairments. We performed a systematic review of PUBMED database, without date or status publication restrictions. The findings demonstrate that the visual impairment produce a compensatory senso-rial effect, in which non-visual areas are related to both cross (visual congenital) and multimodal (late blind) neuroplasticity.
This paper takes a loosely “quantum” approach to political possibility. In other words, depending on how the present is characterized, both past and future possibilities are defined simultaneously. Political history is full of such quantum moments, which revolutionize our understanding of the historical subject. It is normally assumed that some version of Homo sapiens is the historical subject. However, post-and trans-humanism challenge that assumption, albeit in rather different ways. For example, the “genetic” and the “superorganic” figure in both but are given quite different spins, neither implying that the morphology of the upright ape is inviolate. Posthumanists stress our overlap with other species and interdependency with nature, while transhumanists stress the variability and mutability of genes, which allow enhancement. Posthumanist sociology emphasizes the “superorganic” biological and evolutionary roots of social behavior, while transhumanists emphasize humanity’s extension into technology and our accelerating cultural evolution. Both posthumanists and transhumanists see our simian nature as a platform or way station that opens up into a much wider range of possible ancestors and descendants than conventional politics normally countenances.
"Posthuman" has become an umbrella term to refer to a variety of different movements and schools of thought, including philosophical, cultural, and critical posthumanism; transhumanism (in its variations of extropianism, liberal and democratic transhumanism, among others); the feminist approach of new materialisms; the heterogeneous landscape of antihumanism, metahumanism, metahumanities, and posthumanities. Such a generic and all-inclusive use of the term has created methodological and theoretical confusion between experts and non-experts alike. This essay will explore the differences between these movements, focusing in particular on the areas of signification shared by posthumanism and transhumanism. In presenting these two independent, yet related philosophies, posthumanism may prove a more comprehensive standpoint to reflect upon possible futures.
Media anthropology is a new and interdisciplinary field of research with very different subjects and methods that seems to be already heavily informed by a comparatively narrow understanding of media as mass media (e.g. TV, Internet, social web, etc.). Therefore, most theories in this field, at least implicitly, employ a hierarchical and often dichotomic preconception of the two poles of media-human relations, by analysing the operationalities and ontologies of the human and the media independently from one another. This article deviates from this line of thought by advocating an expanded, symmetrical and relational understanding of the terms media and human, taking them as always already intermingled facets of a broader dynamic configuration. Starting from a consideration of the historically powerful, yet overlooked media of the so-called habitat diorama, the heuristic concept of "anthropomediality" is to be developed. Eventually, this relational approach may open up a new, interesting field for interrogation of (media-)anthropological analysis in general.
This chapter discusses the concepts of nature and culture. It reveals that Radcliffe-Brown had a poor opinion of the concept of culture; he neglected to consider that the concept of nature was no more concrete or directly observable than ‘culture’. The chapter shows that other civilisations were able to adopt a variety of ways to distribute qualities to beings in the world, thus resulting in forms of discontinuity and continuity between humans and non-humans. It stresses that people should treat the modern ontological grid — moral singularity versus physical universality — as one of several other formulae employed to describe the structures of the world.
Within the last four decades, our view of the mature vertebrate brain has changed significantly. Today it is generally accepted that the adult brain is far from being fixed. A number of factors such as stress, adrenal and gonadal hormones, neurotransmitters, growth factors, certain drugs, environmental stimulation, learning, and aging change neuronal structures and functions. The processes that these factors may induce are morphological alterations in brain areas, changes in neuron morphology, network alterations including changes in neuronal connectivity, the generation of new neurons (neurogenesis), and neurobiochemical changes. Here we review several aspects of neuroplasticity and discuss the functional implications of the neuroplastic capacities of the adult and differentiated brain with reference to the history of their discovery.
Today, the anthropomorphism of the tools and the development of neural interfaces require reconsidering the concept of human-tools interaction in the framework of human augmentation. This review analyzes the plastic process that the brain undergoes when it comes into contact with augmenting artificial sensors and effectors and, on the other hand, the changes that the use of external augmenting devices produces in the brain. Hitherto, few studies investigated the neural correlates of augmentation, but clues on it can be borrowed from logically-related paradigms: sensorimotor training, cognitive enhancement, cross-modal plasticity, sensorimotor functional substitution, use and embodiment of tools. Augmentation modifies function and structure of a number of areas, i.e. primary sensory cortices shape their receptive fields to become sensitive to novel inputs. Motor areas adapt the neuroprosthesis representation firing-rate to refine kinematics. As for normal motor outputs, the learning process recruits motor and premotor cortices and the acquisition of proficiency decreases attentional recruitment, focuses the activity on sensorimotor areas and increases the basal ganglia drive on the cortex. Augmentation deeply relies on the frontoparietal network. In particular, premotor cortex is involved in learning the control of an external effector and owns the tool motor representation, while the intraparietal sulcus extracts its visual features. In these areas, multisensory integration neurons enlarge their receptive fields to embody supernumerary limbs. For operating an anthropomorphic neuroprosthesis, the mirror system is required to understand the meaning of the action, the cerebellum for the formation of its internal model and the insula for its interoception. In conclusion, anthropomorphic sensorized devices can provide the critical sensory afferences to evolve the exploitation of tools through their embodiment, reshaping the body representation and the sense of the self.
The technological ability to alter biology, along with the social conditions and cultural expectations that enable such transformations, is spawning a variety of techniques that augment bodily forms and functions. These techniques, collectively known as enhancement technologies, aim to improve human characteristics, including appearance and mental or physical functioning, often beyond what is ‘normal’ or necessary for life and well-being. Humans have always modified their bodies. What distinguishes these techniques is that bodies and selves become the objects of improvement work, unlike previous efforts in modernity to achieve progress through social and political institutions. There are profound effects on sociality and subjectivity. This chapter reviews analytical approaches through which researchers have attempted to illuminate the practices, moral and economic reasoning, cultural assumptions and institutional contexts constituting enhancements, framing the discussion by examining the concept o...
This paper aims to meditate on the importance of Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt in Merleau-Ponty’s research of an ontophenomenological path - that is to say, in Merleau-Ponty’s putting to the test of some of the thesis and presuppositions that were at the heart of both La structure du Comportement and the Phénoménologie de la perception. As Merleau-Ponty is looking for a way to develop and overcome the results of an investigation based on the point of view of consciousness, this notion of Umwelt will become–namely in the three lecture courses on the concept of Nature, delivered by Merleau-Ponty in the late 1950s at the Collège de France–more and more decisive.Este artículo trata de meditar acerca de la importancia de la noción de Umwelt de Uexküll en la búsqueda de un camino ontofenomenológico por parte de Merleau-Ponty, es decir, en la puesta a prueba de ciertas tesis y presupuestos que estaban presentes en el núcleo tanto de La structure du Comportement como de Phénoménologie de la perception. Siendo así que Merleau-Ponty persigue encontrar un camino para desarrollar y superar los resultados de una investigación basada en el punto de vista de la conciencia, esta noción de Umwelt llegará a ser –especialmente en las lecciones de los tres cursos sobre el concepto de Nature, impartidos por Merleau-Ponty a finales de los años 50 en el Collège de France– cada vez más decisiva.
The article contains an interview conducted with Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas during research at Temple University in Philadelphia (funded by the Kosciuszko Foundation), at the invitation of professor Joseph Margolis, as part of a larger forthcoming research project—a monograph on cyborg persons. It asks how the artefactual senses implanted by Harbisson and Ribas affect their perception and cognition, allowing consideration of how these two cyborg persons redefine their relationships to the environment in both social and ecological terms. Harbisson and Ribas are case studies for answering the question of how new cyborg senses (obtained by inserting implants into their bodies) change their beliefs and attitudes toward their own bodies, the bodies of others, and the world at large. I seek to identify changes in the knowledge of the world experienced by cyborg persons, trying to understand their perceptual and emotional experience of the world.
In his book A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, originally published in1934, Jakob von Uexküll argued that all living beings – no matter how simple or complex – had to be understood as subjects, and that the worlds they lived in were constituted through their specific ways of perceiving their Umwelten. This article focuses on an exploration of Uexküll’s argument set out in this classic text, considering its relevance for contemporary thought in anthropology that seeks to move beyond the human to embrace more-than-human world making and multispecies perspectives. Despite its largely positive reception in anthropology and other disciplines the paper also points to possible problems and limitations that Uexküll’s argument might pose for more-than-human anthropology by considering the ethnographic example of falconry practice in which humans and birds of prey, learn to communicate and cooperate in hunting.
This chapter briefly introduces biosemiotics, a new perspective on living systems based upon standard contemporary biology reinterpreted through a qualitative organicist tradition in biology inspired by Jakob von Uexkiill and Charles S. Peirce. To be emphasized is the difference between a living organism as a general semiotic system with vegetative and self-reproductive capacities ("the body of biology") and an animal body also with sentience and phenomenal states. The "representationalism" invoked by critiques of cognitive science tends to focus only on simplistic notions of representations. However, these must be distinguished from a Peircean notion of representation as an embedded ongoing process. The implications of this distinction for theorizing about the physical, biological, animate, phenomenal and social body will be made. It will be argued that these very dimensions of embodiment must be accounted for coherently and seen within an evolutionary emergentist perspective. Such a perspective requires a "Non-standard Neo-Aristotelian Pluralist notion of Causation" (NNPC), and I will argue that biosemiotics offers an approach to animate embodiment compatible with NNPC. However, biosemiotics is not enough to account for the characteristics of human embodiment because of what shall be called our intrinsic cyborg nature as techno-culturally embedded beings within a space of meanings that are not only symbolic, but argumentative and socially empowered by different kinds of sociocultural systems.
Tracing the evolution of contemporary body discourse Getting Under the Skin analyzes the tension between a fragmented and holistic body concept in performance art, popular culture, new media arts, and architecture.
The body as an object of critical study dominates disciplines across the humanities to such an extent that a new discipline has emerged: body criticism. In Getting Under the Skin, Bernadette Wegenstein traces contemporary body discourse in philosophy and cultural studies to its roots in twentieth-century thought—showing how psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cognitive science, and feminist theory contributed to a new body concept—and studies the millennial body in performance art, popular culture, new media arts, and architecture.
Wegenstein shows how the concept of bodily fragmentation has been in circulation since the sixteenth century's investigation of anatomy. The history of the body-in-pieces, she argues, is a history of a struggling relationship between two concepts of the body—as fragmented and as holistic. Wegenstein shows that by the twentieth century these two apparently contradictory movements were integrated; both fragmentation and holism, she argues, are indispensable modes of imagining and configuring the body. The history of the body, therefore, is a history of mediation; but it was not until the turn of the twenty-first century and the digital revolution that the body was best able to show its mediality.
After examining key concepts in body criticism, Wegenstein looks at the body as "raw material" in twentieth-century performance art, medical techniques for visualizing the human body, and strategies in popular culture for "getting under the skin" with images of freely floating body parts. Her analysis of current trends in architecture and new media art demonstrates the deep connection of body criticism to media criticism. In this approach to body criticism, the body no longer stands in for something else—the medium has become the body.
In this article, different types of posthuman experimentation are described, including biohacking implants (of one sort or another) and neural implants. Actual practical results are presented for discussion, as opposed to mere theoretical or philosophical concepts. The possible impact and potential effect of such realizations are also considered. Based on these techniques, some realistic future scenarios involving the capabilities of posthumans, over and above those of normal humans (as we know them today), are discussed in terms of the implants introduced. These include extended/extra sensory input, nervous systems extended over networks, and communication by thought.
This book argues that qualitative methods, ethnography included, have tended to focus on the human at the cost of understanding humans and animals in relation, and that ethnography should evolve to account for the relationships between humans and other species. Intellectual recognition of this has arrived within the field of human-animal studies and in the philosophical development of posthumanism but there are few practical guidelines for research. Taking this problem as a starting point, the authors draw on a wide array of examples from visual methods, ethnodrama, poetry and movement studies to consider the political, philosophical and practical consequences of posthuman methods. They outline the possibilities for creative new forms of ethnography that eschew simplistic binaries between humans and animals.
Ethnography after Humanism suggests how researchers could conduct different forms of fieldwork and writing to include animals more fruitfully and will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including human-animal studies, sociology, criminology, animal geography, anthropology, social theory and natural resources.
Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, Originaltext von 1921
The chapter presents the main events of Jakob von Uexküll’s life (1864–1944): the childhood in the estate of Keblaste, the school years in Coburg, the university years in Tartu, the study and research trips to Italy and France, the economic and professional difficulties due to World War II and the Russian Revolution, the creation of the Institut für Umweltforschung in Heidelberg, the frictions with the Nazi Regime, the decision to move (for health reasons) to Italy, where Uexküll died in 1944. Along with the biographical events, the chapter introduces some reference points that will be important to understand the Uexküllian concept of Umwelt: the Kantian transcendental approach, the influence of vitalism, the relations with the emerging discipline of ethology.
It is a well-rehearsed claim that the modern western conception of the human is premised on the ontological distinction between nature and culture (Franklin 2003, Haraway 2008). Nature is the undifferentiated foundation upon which culture is applied, and culture is what distinguishes and differentiates us from other animals. This opposition, as Palsson points out (2006: 73), emerged with the advent of modernism, and rapidly became a key component in our conceptualization of the human. While in medieval Europe the person was viewed as entirely embedded in a nature-culture world, in the western modernist ontology the person is envisioned as the product of a culturally specific process of socialization. Thus, as Ingold describes this view, the person is 'made through the imposition of a specific cultural form upon a pre-existing and undifferentiated material substrate' (2006a: 181). While ethnographic examples of non-western peoples have provided a clear indication that the nature-culture divide and other related binaries are not universal, the critical examination of the distinction between the social and the biological within western ontology has only recently gained force (Latour 1993, Descola and Palsson 1996, McLean 2009).
This paper talks about the body in a movement of extreme body modification called Body Hacktivism. The aspiration of this movement is to unite hacking, body modification and activism. The Body Hacktivism is a current whose enthusiasts are found in different places in Europe, the United States, and South-America, and are connected through a network. Alongside the fieldwork, it is noticeable that many times the body hacktivists' accounts do not converge into a single version of what the movement is. Beyond that, their accounts about the body vary consistently, interfering directly in their body-related practices. The interviews presented partially here are the fruit of ethnographic research with body hacktivists from Europe and Brazil. In their speech about Body Hacktivism and the body this paper will try to shed light on the way they manage the complexity of their speech associated with body transformation, by paying more attention to the details of social life. Diverse questions can be raised regarding the appropriateness of various body enactments in the actors' speeches. Starting from the assumption that "nature/body" and "culture/modification" are not two completely distinct domains, this research is built by incorporating the issues of the ontological border set between these two concepts. By trying to trace interactions involved in this wide phenomenon, I expect to have unique insights into how ideas such as nature, culture, body modification, and technology are intertwined regarding Body Hacktivism in contemporary society.
Ways of Sensing is a stimulating exploration of the cultural, historical and political dimensions of the world of the senses. The book spans a wide range of settings and makes comparisons between different cultures and epochs, revealing the power and diversity of sensory expressions across time and space. The chapters reflect on topics such as the tactile appeal of medieval art, the healing power of Navajo sand paintings, the aesthetic blight of the modern hospital, the role of the senses in the courtroom, and the branding of sensations in the marketplace. Howes and Classen consider how political issues such as nationalism, gender equality and the treatment of minority groups are shaped by sensory practices and metaphors. They also reveal how the phenomenon of synaesthesia, or mingling of the senses, can be seen as not simply a neurological condition but a vital cultural mode of creating social and cosmic interconnections. Written by leading scholars in the field, Ways of Sensing provides readers with a valuable and engaging introduction to the life of the senses in society.
How can we hold in the same view both cultural or historical constructs and generalities about social existence? Kinship, Law and the Unexpected takes up an issue at the heart of studies of society - the way we use relationships to uncover relationships. Relationality is a phenomenon at once contingent (on certain ways of knowing) and ubiquitous (to social life). The role of relations in western (Euro-American) knowledge practices, from the scientific revolution onwards, raises a question about the extent to which Euro-American kinship is the kinship of a knowledge-based society. The argument takes the reader through current issues in biotechnology, new family formations and legal interventions, and intellectual property debates, to matters of personhood and ownership afforded by material from Melanesia and elsewhere. If we are often surprised by what our relatives do, we may also be surprised by what relations tells us about the world we live in.
All human life unfolds within a matrix of relations, which are at once social and biological. Yet the study of humanity has long been divided between often incompatible 'social' and 'biological' approaches. Reaching beyond the dualisms of nature and society and of biology and culture, this volume proposes a unique and integrated view of anthropology and the life sciences. Featuring contributions from leading anthropologists, it explores human life as a process of 'becoming' rather than 'being', and demonstrates that humanity is neither given in the nature of our species nor acquired through culture but forged in the process of life itself. Combining wide-ranging theoretical argument with in-depth discussion of material from recent or ongoing field research, the chapters demonstrate how contemporary anthropology can move forward in tandem with groundbreaking discoveries in the biological sciences.
"... Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." -Science Books & Films"Don Ihde is a pleasure to read.... The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work... the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." -John Compton"A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies.... perhaps the best single volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." -Choice"... important and challenging... " -Review of Metaphysics"... a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition... The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." -Teaching PhilosophyThe role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book.
This essay develops its idiosyncrasy by concentrating primarily on the trend of body hacking. The practitioners, self-defined as body hackers, self-made cyborgs or grinders, work in different ways to develop functional and physiological modifications through the contributions of technology. Their goal is to develop by themselves an empirically man-technique fusion. These dynamic “scientific” subcultures are producing astonishing innovations. From pocket-sized kits that sample human DNA, microchip implants that keep tabs on our internal organs, blood sugar levels or moods, and even 3D printers that produce tailored hip replacements, the technical innovations of the body hacking trend are beginning to filter into mainstream use, and the repertoire increases every day. These physical transformations with intersecting techniques actively challenge long-held normative beliefs about what bodies do, what they should look like and how they should behave. They provide an alternative discourse on man’s correlation with the world and its biocenosis. Sculpting oneself has become an existential data. Medical technoscience crystallizes the effectiveness of new powers over the organism. Scientific temptation to recreate and enhance the human according to its normative principles has brought up experimental practices that have become the edge of a radical activism operating in the core of western societies, which will be the theme of this paper.
Unrivalled in its clarity and coverage, this sparkling new edition of Chris Shilling's classic text is a masterful account of the emergence and development of body matters in sociology and related disciplines.A timely, well reasoned response to current concerns and controversies across the globe, it provides chapter-by-chapter coverage of the major theories, approaches and studies conducted in the field. Each chapter has been revised and updated, with new discussions of ‘action network theory’, bodywork, pragmatism, the global resurgence of religious identities, ‘new genetics’, biological citizenship, and figurations of the living and dead.Packed full of critical analysis and relevant empirical studies the book engages with the major classical and contemporary theories within body studies including the: Naturalistic; Constructionist; Structuralist; Realist; Interactionist; Feminist; PhenomenologicalOriginal, logical and indispensible, this is a must-have title for students and researchers engaged with the study of the body.
Science studies has often been against the normative dimension of epistemology, which made a naturalistic study of science impossible. But this is not to say that a new type of normativity cannot be detected at work inscience studies. This is especially true in the second wave of studies dealing with the body, which has aimed at criticizing the physicalization of the body without falling into the various traps of a phenomenology simply added to a physical substrate. This article explores the work of Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret in that respect, and shows how it can be used to rethink the articulation between the various levels that make up a body.
Common Knowledge 10.3 (2004) 463-484
My subject is the cosmological setting of an indigenous Amazonian model of the self. I will examine two major contexts, shamanism and warfare, in which "self" and "other" develop especially complex relations. Shamanism deals with the relation between humans and nonhumans; and in warfare, a human other, an "enemy," is used to bring a "self" into existence. I will deliberately use a set of traditional dichotomies (I mean, in the tradition of modernity) as both heuristic instruments and foils: nature/culture, subject/object, production/exchange, and so forth. This very crude technique for setting off the distinctive features of Amazonian cosmologies carries the obvious risk of distortion, since it is unlikely that any nonmodern cosmology can be adequately described either by means of such conceptual polarities or as a simple negation of them (as if the only point of a nonmodern cosmology were to stand in opposition to our oppositions). But the technique does have the advantage of showing how unstable and problematic those polarities can be made to appear, once they have been forced to bear "unnatural" interpretations and unexpected rearrangements.
If there is one virtually universal Amerindian notion, it is that of an original state of nondifferentiation between humans and animals, as described in mythology. Myths are filled with beings whose form, name, and behavior inextricably mix human and animal attributes in a common context of intercommunicability, identical to that which defines the present-day intrahuman world. Amerindian myths speak of a state of being where self and other interpenetrate, submerged in the same immanent, presubjective and preobjective milieu, the end of which is precisely what the mythology sets out to tell. This end is, of course, the well-known separation of "culture" and "nature"—of human and nonhuman—that Claude Lévi-Strauss has shown to be the central theme of Amerindian mythology and which he deems to be a cultural universal.
In some respects, the Amerindian separation between humans and animals may be seen as an analogue of our "nature/culture" distinction; there is, however, at least one crucial difference between the Amerindian and modern, popular Western versions. In the former case, the separation was not brought about by a process of differentiating the human from the animal, as in our own evolutionist "scientific" mythology. For Amazonian peoples, the original common condition of both humans and animals is not animality but, rather, humanity. The great separation reveals not so much culture distinguishing itself from nature as nature distancing itself from culture: the myths tell how animals lost the qualities inherited or retained by humans. Humans are those...
Under the rubric of an “anthropology of life,” I call for expanding the reach of ethnography beyond the boundaries of the human. Drawing on research among the Upper Amazonian Runa and focusing, for heuristic purposes, on a particular ethnological conundrum concerning how to interpret the dreams dogs have, I examine the relationships, both intimate and fraught, that the Runa have with other lifeforms. Analytical frameworks that fashion their tools from what is unique to humans (language, culture, society, and history) or, alternatively, what humans are commonly supposed to share with animals are inadequate to this task. By contrast, I turn to an embodied and emergentist understanding of semiosis—one that treats sign processes as inherent to life and not just restricted to humans—as well as to an appreciation for Amazonian preoccupations with inhabiting the points of view of nonhuman selves, to move anthropology beyond “the human,” both as analytic and as bounded object of study.
This article investigates the types of intentionality involved in human–technology relations. It aims to augment Don Ihde’s
analysis of the relations between human beings and technological artifacts, by analyzing a number of concrete examples at
the limits of Ihde’s analysis. The article distinguishes and analyzes three types of “cyborg intentionality,” which all involve
specific blends of the human and the technological. Technologically mediated intentionality occurs when human intentionality takes place “through” technological artifacts; hybrid intentionality occurs when the technological actually merges with the human; and composite intentionality is the addition of human intentionality and the intentionality of technological artifacts.
Do virtual museums really provide added value to end-users, or do they just contribute to the abundance of images? Does the World Wide Web save endangered cultural heritage, or does it foster a society with less variety? How can information technology help to preserve the diversity of cultures in our fast-changing world? These are the questions that are raised and answered in this book, the result of a long path across the digital heritage landscape. This book gives a broad overview of eCulture and digital heritage. It is divided into three main sections: main issues and general guidelines; technological fundamentals and the main solutions; and applications and services, including a wide range of case studies. Starting from the basics the reader will be introduced to virtual museums issues and achievements, cataloguing, digitizing, publishing, and sustainable exploitation of cultural content, all exemplified by real-world case studies and applications. Taking into account more than 15 years of experience and results in digital cultural content research, the author provides a comprehensive view on issues and achievements in digital collections and cultural conten.
