Network theory

Hey guys, I saw this on a blog I like to check out. It's artworks, but they are prefaced by a quote about Network Theory which we discussed a few weeks back:

"In network theory, a node’s relationship to other networks is more important than its own uniqueness. Similarly, today we situate ourselves less as individuals and more as the product of multiple networks"

It's kind of interesting seeing this theory in relation to art. Images and a link to the blog are below.








Click for Blog.

Natural?

Front page of CNN.com today had an article that is very related to what we were talking about in class yesterday- so I thought I'd share. Couldn't figure out how to re-post the video, but you can check it out on the site.

The bulk of the short video discusses the new technologies and methods being used in the rebuilding to make the town green and sustainable But the parallel made between the tornado storm and the 'storm of rebuilding' made me question if one of these happenings is more natural than the other?

Reading 4/20

I really enjoyed Ereshefsky's writing style. It was structured in a very clear way which made it understandable (unlike some of the other readings). It was an outlined collection of questions and answers, but it progressed in a fluid and relevant way. He included a lot of different quotes and ideas, but none of them were long or boring.

I agree with his main point that discussing what is natural and what is human is a waste of time when talking about preservation. The whole idea of labeling things as natural and human seems pretty pointless- we can't communicate with other species, so we are just labeling ourselves to ourselves, and we can't even agree on a definition within our species. Whatever we do will be natural and human. We devise and study our own history- thinking about human culture has becomes part human culture. So discussion of this sort of seems like a distraction from being/doing. It is more important to think about what we can control/do something about. And this is the point Ereshefsky is trying to make (in this case about choosing what to preserve).

The special tour last Thursday of the Anthropology wing of the Museum collection was really fun. Although I have read about the ways in which every item is stored, seeing the storage system first hand was really amazing mainly because I could see the huge effort it took to design and construct this collection of 540,000 objects. I also appreciated the fact that our guide (I’m so sorry I forgot his name) cared so much about the preservation of these objects that he has been working on it since the seventies.
The most interesting part of the museum was the smudge room, the only room in the museum where a match can be lit. This relatively small room was built so that indigenous groups that visit the museum can perform smoke ceremonies. The room itself is very sterile, similar to the other parts of the storage facilities and yet various important rituals take place periodically in this room. He also said that groups come to the museum to perform smoke ceremonies on some of the objects in the collection, meaning that according to these indigenous populations, these objects do not lose their spiritual significance when they are removed from their place of origin. But when I saw all the objects themselves placed in climate controlled metal cabinets within the storage facilities, they looked so out of place, very far removed from their communities.

Biodiversity 4/19

Stories passed down through generations form the basis of history. It is incredibly interesting to think that stories also inform biodiversity as well. I never thought of discussions of agriculture taking place in social context , as Anna Tsing discusses in her article “This earth, this island Borneo” from Friction: an Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton University Press, 2005). I can relate to the premise of the article – that as the year 2000 approached (a milestone certainly) there was a need to list ‘all the contents of this earth, this island Borneo.’ That is a credible attempt to understand and document biodiversity, as well as contribute to the history of the times.

For Uma Adang to attempt to list the thousands of species of plants (and animals) that inhabit this island is an incredible undertaking, but to combine them into a story that relates agriculture, personal preference and social context is intriguing. I never thought of biodiversity in the framework of cultural and geographic diversity before. Sure, it occurred to me that we don’t have the same type of plants in Illinois as they do in say Africa, but I thought of it in terms of agricultural efficiency and taste preferences; more along the lines of economics of the cash value of a crop, or juggling the most protein available for the lowest cost or adapting to poor soil and unique labor conditions. But to think of biodiversity as filling a cultural link is to view it in a whole new context. As Tsing notes, production of rice is the centerpiece of the Meratus swidden field. But it is the diversity of the field that truly tells the picture of the culture. The Meratus grow many kinds of crops for the diversity they value in taste, and because it increase the chances of a good harvest. Following the scientific reasons for an improved yield are the social reasons, for experimentation, for trading vegetables, for discussing the yield and ways to use them.

In many cultures, rice is not only the staple of the diet but a source of societal stability. Just as the Eskimo have many words for snow, in Feudal Japan there were many words for rice. Its use ranged from a source of food to a means of currency, from glue to paper. The social uses for food only tie to the biodiversity of the planet. The bigger picture, as Tsing notes, is that the knowledge of nature is always cultural knowledge, whether we are scientists or farmers. The social bond that is achieved through agriculture brings together diversity on many levels. An understanding of bio, cultural, social and ethnic diversity can all be tied together through something as simple as agriculture.

Response 4/20

As others have pointed out, the Ereshefsky article brings up an issue that has been discussed frequently in class--namely, whether we can objectively claim that humans are in someway separate from nature; that our actions (some of them at least) can be considered unnatural. Ereshefsky uncovers the fallacies of this way of thinking, and goes on to discuss the effects that they have on environmental preservation. He claims that the attempt to differentiate between humans and nature is in the end only a pointless distraction from the goals of conservation, and concludes by saying that we should instead determine what parts of the environment we want to save based on other criteria, and then get on it without wasting time pondering useless philosophical questions.
This logic seemed contradictory to me. I agree with the fact that we cannot say that humans and nature are wholly separate entities--although we do have certain differences from other animals--and I agree that this difference should not be the grounds for considering which animals to save etc. However, applying this type of deconstructive ontology to Ereshefsky's conclusion is problematic: how should we go about deciding what aspects of the environment are worth saving?

response 4/19

Marc Ereshefsky's "Where the wild things are" definitely has some interesting points about nature and humanity, and what makes something natural. Are humans natural? Is what we do natural? The text shows several different sides of the problem, and quotes both those who think humans & our behavior is "unnatural" , and those who disagree. What seems to be an irrefutable fact, however, is that humans are in some way or another different from other animals. Though we are still mammals and have come from this Earth, it would be difficult to argue against the fact that we've had a profound impact on the rest of the planet. Though other mass species extinctions have occurred before;
"According to Ridley (1993, p. 613), between 5 and 23 mass extinctions have occurred since the Cambrian period. All of these mass extinctions occurred before the existence of humans."
these were caused by things other than a species of animal.
The debate over whether certain aspects of human culture/behavior are natural and others unnatural is also raised, with one scientist (Katz) stating; "All human activity is not unnatural, only that activity which goes
beyond our biological and evolutionary capacities... In this sense, then,
human actions can also be judged to be natural – these are the human
actions that exist as evolutionary adaptations, free of the control and
alteration of technological processes."
It seems that the definition of "natural" varies greatly from person to person, and it is certainly a difficult concept to have a definitive opinion on. Can something be unnatural when all the building blocks come from the Earth? We humans have evolved naturally, so how can anything we do be unnatural? We have, however, greatly changed how the world works. Sometimes I feel as though humans are becoming a little too presumptuous when it comes to our importance - the recent natural disasters, and the current state of Europe, should remind us that there are still forces beyond our control.

Mario Cedeño Response 4/19

In, “Where the Wild Things Are: Environmental Preservation and Human Nature” Marc Ereshefsky brings up interesting questions and issues regarding what divides humans from the rest of the natural world. Ereshefsky highlights the major arguments in the debate; one argument considers humans part of the unnatural world, highlighting human’s distinctive nature. The opposing view argues that humans are natural and highlights what is distinctive about humans. This debate brings up interesting issues such as what determines something to be natural or unnatural, and if that should be the determining factor in environmental preservation. Others issues are brought up such as should the distinguishing factor in determining natural from unnatural be human’s distinctive influence on the earth, or should the uniqueness of human culture be considered. Debates like these are good to be considered but these issues should not necessarily be the determining factor in environmental protection. Environmental protection should not be thought of in regards to issues like deciding what is unique about humans, or deciding what is natural. Ereshefsky argues that human uniqueness is neither necessary nor sufficient for determining what is a candidate for preservation, and that deciding what to preserve does not depend on determining what parts of the world are natural. Instead of focusing on issues like these she suggests that we should focus on what parts of the environment we value and how we can preserve those parts in the best possible way.

Reading for 4/20

What I thought was interesting about these articles is that they all brought up (yet again in anthropology) the problem with definitive answers, versus the problem with not having definitive answers. By that I mean straddling both meta social constructions ideas, as well as having certain (albeit changeable) definitions and meanings. Obviously the articles were all looking at these concerns through bio-diversity and what constitutes nature.

I really enjoyed the Tsing article which talked about the human understanding of biodiversity, through cultures, as a collaborative act. Tsing examines alternative cultural definitions of the natural world in context with Western science, which she shows can be quite similar in various ways. This is also an interesting idea when thinking about the Ereshefsky piece. Ereshefsky shows the complexity of defining what is natural, when only defining it in juxtaposition with humans. In fact he shows that humans and animals have a lot of similarities, but that plants and fauna do not. He explains that humans agency doesn't determined naturalness because it's comparable and definable by things that are determined to be natural. I also really enjoyed that despite the implication that conservation is useless, because everything can be argued to be natural, we should focus on protecting things in a collaborative effort as opposed to placing everything on a scale of naturalness.