Towards an Anthropology of Technology Author(S): Bryan Pfaffenberger Source: Man, New Series, Vol

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Fetishised Objects and Humanised Nature: Towards an Anthropology of Technology Author(s): Bryan Pfaffenberger Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 236-252 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802804 . Accessed: 12/09/2011 09:22

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http://www.jstor.org FETISHISED OBJECTS AND HUMANISED NATURE: TOWARDS AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY

BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER Universityof Virginia

The conceptof technology becomes useful only when its tacit preconceptions are unpacked. Linkedwith the term in Westerndiscourse are two polesof mythicthinking: technological determinismand technological somnambulism. The formerdepicts technology as thecause of socialformations; the latter denies a causallink. Both, however, disguise the social choices and socialrelations that figure in anytechnological system. To countersuch notions, technology is redefinedhere as a totalsocial phenomenonin the sense used by Mauss; it is simultaneously material,social and symbolic. To createand use a technology,then,is to humanise nature; it is to expressa socialvision, create a powerfulsymbol and engage ourselves in a formof life. The study oftechnology, therefore, is well suited to theinterpretive tools of symbolic anthropology. This pointiS illustratedina briefanalysis of Sri Lanka's irrigation-based colonisation schemes.

The study of technology,Marx wrote, is of paramountimportance for the humansciences: it 'disclosesman's mode of dealingwith nature, the process by whichhe sustainshis life'(Marx 1938). Few anthropologistswould disputethis view. Yet social and culturalanthropologists rarely turn the full force of their theoreticaltools on thesubject. That, I wish to argue,is a pity,since the unique fieldmethods and holisticorientation of anthropologysituate the field advan- tageouslyfor the study of technology. Social and culturalanthropologists, to be sure,have made valuable contri- butionsto the studyof subsistenceand extractivestrategies such as irrigation (BeardsleyI964; Downing & Gibson I974; Geertz 1972; Gray I973; Hunt & Hunt 1976; Leach I959), fishing(Acheson I98I), mining(Godoy I985;J. Nash 1979; Taussig I980), industry(Holzberg & GiovanniniI98I), and theimpact of technologicalchange (especiallyindustrialisation) on traditionalsocieties (e.g. Bodley I982; Mitchell1973; Nash I967; Pelto I973; Sharp 1952; Wallace 1978). Withoutbelittling the contributions these studies have made,however, one can observein mostof thema curiousoversight. Technology is onlyrarely seen in thesestudies as a subjectthat is itselfintrinsically of interest.On the contrary, anthropologistsfrequently equate technology with material culture and see it as a given. Technologyis portrayedas somethingfundamentally extraneous to humanlife and a forceto whichcommunities and beliefsare obliged to adapt. In theanthropology of mining,for example, there is an evident'lack of interestin the productiveprocess and workplaceitself', which in a book-lengthmono- graphon miningmay be treatedin a 'page or two' (Godoy I985: 21I). One can

Man (N S ) 23, 236-252 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 237

onlyconclude that, in theeyes of mostanthropologists, technology lies beyond thebounds of disciplinaryinterest. The lackof interest in technologyis pairedwith an equallymarked inattention to theterm's definition. In the1, 25 5 pagesofHonigmann's Handbook of social and culturalanthropology, for instance, the termis used, peripherallyand without definition,on onlysix pages. A computersearch of Sociological Abstracts revealed that,of the 8,355 articlesretrieved by a free-textsearch for anthropology and cognate terms,only thirty-eightcontained the word 'technology' in their abstractsor subjectdescriptors and only fourcontained it in theirtitles; none definedthe term. The inattentionto definitionis surprising,to say the least, in a discipline concerned with cross-culturaltranslation and the critique of ethnocentric constructs.And herewe have a termthat stands, arguably, at thevery centre of whatWesterners (and Westernisedpeople) tendto celebrateabout themselves. It would be surprisingindeed if it were not suffusedthroughout with what Mills (i963: 435) called the 'ethnocentricitiesof meaning'.The firststep towardsan anthropologyof technology,then, is to unpack the culturalbaggage or pre- understandingsthat are tacitlypaired with the termtechnology. Taking this step, as will be seen, illuminatesthe unreliabilityof the culturally-supplied Westernnotion of technology and, in addition,mandates the term's redefinition foruse by anthropologists.It also demonstrateswhy technologyis in itselfa subjectof interest to symbolicand interpretiveanthropology.

Technologyand Westernideology Textbook definitionsof technologyraise serious doubts about theterm's utility in anthropologicaldiscourse. Technology is frequentlydefined, for instance, as the sum totalof man's 'rational'and 'efficacious'ways of enhancing'control over nature'(alternatives: 'command over nature','domination over nature', etc.); e.g., technologyis 'any tool or technique,any physicalequipment or methodof doing or making,by which human capabilityis extended'(Schon I 967). The historianLynn White (I967) notes the implicitlinkage between such definitionsand the roots of Christianmetaphysics, which dictate human dominationof thenatural world. Accordingto White,this tradition has led the Westto thethreshold of a seriousand self-destructiveecological crisis. Whether or not one agrees with White's analysis of the origins of this inherently ideologicalnotion of technology,he suppliessufficient reason to treatthe term with suspicion. At the minimum,it must be recognisedthat the conceptof technologyis normative. Yet even greaterperils await beneaththe surface.The culturally-supplied notion of 'technology'carries with it two tacitmeanings, two implicitand mythicviews ofthe world in relationto technology,that profoundly affect how we understandtechnology and how we view itsrelationship to our lives. As will be seen,these two tacitmeanings stand in apparentcontradiction to one another. Yet underlyingthem is a deeplyhidden unity. 23 8 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

Technologicalsomnambulism The firstof thesetacit notions is calledtechnological somnambulism by thepolitical scientistLangdon Winner(I986). In the somnambulisticview of technology providedby Westernculture, the humanrelationship to technologyis simply 'too obvious to meritserious reflection'. This relationshipconsists merely of 'making',which is ofinterest only to engineersand technicians,and 'use', which amountsonly to an 'occasional,innocuous, [and] nonstructuringoccurrence'. Use is understoodto be a straightforwardmatter: you pickup a tool, use it,and put it down. The meaningof theuse of technologyis, in thismistaken view, 'nothingmore complicatedthan an occasional, limited,and nonproblematic interaction'(5-6). In thisview, technologyis morallyand ethically'neutral'. It is neithergood norbad, and its 'impact'depends on how it is used. What is wrong with this dream-likeorientation to technology,Winner argues,is its denialof the manyways in whichtechnology provides structure and meaningfor human life. This pointwas made powerfullyby Marx in the Germanideology (Marx & Engels 1976:3 I):

The way in whichmen produce their means of subsistencedepends first of all on thenature of the means of subsistencethey actuallyfind in existenceand have to reproduce.This mode of productionmust not be consideredsimply as beingthe reproduction of thephysical existence of these individuals.Rather it is a definiteform of activityof these individuals,a definiteform of expressingtheir life, a definitemode of life on theirpart. As individualsexpress their life, so theyare.

Technologies,then, are not merelyways of 'making' and 'using'. As technologies are createdand put to use, Winner(I986: 6) argues,they bring about 'significantalterations in patternsof human activityand human institutions'. Whatmust be recognised,Winner insists, is that:

Individualsare activelyinvolved in thedaily creation and recreation,production and reproduction,of theworld in whichthey live. Thus, as theyemploy tools and techniques,work in social labor arrangements,make and consume products,and adapt theirbehavior to the material conditionsthey encounter in theirnatural and artificialenvironment, individuals realize possi- bilitiesfor human existence. . . . Social activityis an ongoing activityof world-making(I986: I4-I 5).

Winnerdoes not mean to suggesta simplistictechnological determinism, the idea thattechnological innovations are the major drivingforces of humanlife suchthat social and culturalforms are inevitably shaped by them.To takesuch a view, Winner(I986: io) suggests,would be like describing'all instancesof sexual intercoursebased only on the concept of rape'. Choices exist in the process of technologicaldeployment/and consequent societal transformation (e.g., Noble I986). Yet technologicalsomnambulism leads us to ignorethem while, in a trance-likestate, we blindlyaccept whateverimplementation of technologythose in power choose to foistupon us. Once entrenchedin our lives,however, the technology makes a new worldfor us. We weave it intothe fabricof daily life (WinnerI986). Yet the human choices and decisions are masked,so thetechnology seems to operatebeyond human control and appears to embodythe result of an automatic,inevitable process (Winner 1977). BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 239

Technologicaldeterminism The second tacit notion supplied with the term technology,the one that contrastsso sharplywith the first,is preciselythis notion of technological determinismthat Winner is so carefulto avoid. Here we have no dismissalof technologyas ways of making and using. On the contrary,technology is viewed as a powerfuland autonomousagent that dictates the patterns of human social and culturallife. Like technologicalsomnambulism, technological determinism often operates as a tacit,unexamined assumption in scholarlydiscourse. In the grip of this notion all of historyseems to have been dictatedby a chain of technological eventsin whichpeople have beenlittle more than helpless spectators. So deeply encoded is this notion that technology'sautonomy is frequentlyassumed without comment. Indeed, the idea often operates, in scholarly writing about technology'in the elusive manner of an unquestionedassumption' (StaudenmaierI985: 143). Some scholars,however, make thisposition explicit and defendit, arguing thattechnology is appliedscience. Since scienceis progressingrapidly, the pace of technologicaldevelopment is, in thisview, so rapidthat technology is out of control;we cannotevaluate our own creationsor defendourselves against them. Yet thereare ample groundsto doubt thattechnology is appliedscience in this simplistic,linear sense (Fores I982). The relationshipbetween technology and scienceis complex, dynamic,and historicallyrecent. Many importantinven- tionsof theeighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, such as thesteam engine, were in no realsense the result of theapplication of science.Indeed, much twentieth- centuryscience stems from an attemptto discoverwhy certaintechnologies work so well. New technologies,moreover, make new lines of scientific inquirypossible, and with them,new technologies.And even when a new technologydoes incorporatescientific findings, it is notdriven by sciencealone. To createa new technologyis notmerely to applyscience to technicalmatters. It is also, and simultaneously,to deal with economic constraints,to surmount legal roadblocksand to get politicianson one's side (Hughes I983). A technology's form derives, then, from the interactionof these heterogeneous elementsas theyare shaped into a networkof interrelatedcomponents (Law I987). However inhumanour technologymay seem, it is nonethelessa product of humanchoices and social processes. Otherswould arguethat modern technology becomes an autonomousforce because,once adopted,its organisational imperatives require the ascendance of technicalnorms of efficiencyand profitabilityover alternativenorms, such as worker health and safety,environmental preservation, and aestheticvalues (EllulI962). Thus,in Chapple'searly view (I94I), thevery fact that industrial production requires rational organisationdictates the ascendancy of such norms. And further:Salz (I955) argued thatthe technicaland organisational imperativesof industrialisation'remain the same regardlessof who or what entitiesown, finance,and managea givenindustrial plant . . . and regardlessof thewider aims whichindustrialism is to serve'(I955: 5). To bringin a plantand automated equipment,then, is to bring in the efficiencynorms a factory 240 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER requires,and the inevitableresult-even in in a socialistsetting (Goonatilake 1979)-is the exploitationand 'deskilling'of factoryworkers (e.g. Gottfried I982). Yet efficientfactories have indeed been built that do not lead to the degradationof workingconditions (Noble I979), and the annalsof industrial- isationin theThird World tell of numerous instances in whichefficiency norms takea back seatto otherones. Even whereautomated devices are introducedin theWest, there is no necessary,inevitable 'impact' on social relations(Attewell & Rule I984). On the contrary,the outcome stemsfrom social and political choicesmade by engineers,managers and workers(Noble I986). The relationshipbetween technology and society,to be sure,can be simple and unproblematicin certaininstances. Giving up a bullock fora tractor,for instance,irretrievably forces a farmerinto an internationaleconomy of pet- roleum and replacementparts. Beyond obvious points such as this one, however, the outcome of a given innovationis still subject to substantial modificationby social, politicaland culturalforces. It is, furthermore,fun- damentallywrong to argue thata technologycarries with it any necessaryor consequentpattern of social and culturalevolution. The literatureon thesocial impactof Green Revolutiontechnology provides a tellingcase in point (e.g. Farmer 1977). Experience shows that the technologydoes not necessarily produce the higheryields foreseen by its proponents.Nor does it necessarily produce the socio-economicdifferentiation foreseen by its critics.A new or introducedtechnology such as thisone simplybrings a new setof possibilities to a situation.Whether people capitaliseon those possibilitiesdepends on their abilityto conceptualisethe restructuredpolitical field, to set new goals for themselves,and to mobilisepersonnel and resourcesin pursuitof thesenew goals. We hereconfront a seriesof indeterminaciesin whichthe outcome is far frompredictable. The deterministthesis, in sum, is difficultto sustainin comparativestudies. Yet thisfact is no argumentfor a returnto thetenets of technologicalsomnambulism. The factthat technology is sociallyconstructed (Pinch & Bijker I984) implies that it has social content;it is far from 'neutral'. Pinch and Bijker describethe social constructionof technologyin the followingway. In its inception,a new technologyappears in a varietyof forms. The process is analogousto thespecies-multiplying effects of an adaptiveradiation of biologi- cal formsinto an unoccupiedseries of niches. Some forms'survive'; others 'die'. In this process, the determinantof survival is not merely (or even con- spicuously)economic, technicalor rational.On the contrary,the surviving formis the one selectedby a social groupthat succeeds in imposingits choice over competingforms (and againstthe objectionsof weaker groups). Such social groups,as Pinchand Bijkerstress, include institutions and organisations, as well as organisedand unorganisedgroups of individuals, but theirfundamental characteristicis that'all membersof [the social group] share the same set of meanings. . . attachedto a specificartefact' (I984: 30, my emphasis).The social constructionof technology,in sum, occurs when one set of meaningsgains ascendancyover other ones, and wins expressionin the technicalcontent of the artefact.A technologyis thus,in Noble's words,'hardened history' or a 'frozen fragmentof human and social endeavor' (I986: xi). BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 241 The social vision woven into technologiesis at timespatently obvious and deliberate,as in thenow-famous example of Long Island's low bridges.Their designer,Robert Moses, intendedthem to obstructbuses, therebyrestricting the Long Island populationto automobile-owningwhites of the 'upper' and 'comfortablemiddle' classes (Winner I980: 121-3). And at the end of the nineteenthcentury, the radical Paris city council used preciselythe same trickto accomplisha verydifferent political objective. By makingthe tunnelsof the Paris Metro verynarrow, too narrowfor standard-gauge railway trains, the councilprevented the private railway companies from appropriating the Metro fortheir own ends (AkrichI987). Even where such designs are absent technologiesstill bring with them a definitesocial content.Any technologyshould be seen as a system,not just of tools, but also of relatedsocial behavioursand techniques.We meanjust this when we refer,for instance,to 'woodworking' or 'irrigation'.One can go further.Technology, necessarily, consists of practicalknowledge or knowhow which,although often resistant to codificationor verbalisation(Ferguson 1977), mustsomehow be sharedand transmittedjust like any otheraspect of culture (Layton 1974). Technology can indeed be defi-nedas a set of operationally replicablesocial behaviours: no technologycan be said to existunless the people who use it can use it over and over again. To the extentthat technological behavioursare replicable,the interpenetration of physicalelements (e.g., tools, resources,etc.) and social communication(diffusion, apprenticeship, etc.) is presupposed (Tornatzkyet al. I983: 2). And furtherstill: the product of technology,material culture, is far more than a practicalinstrument. Tech- nology is, simultaneously,a social object endowed withsufficient meaning to mystifythose who becomeinvolved with its creation or use. Technology,then, is essentiallysocial, not 'technical'. When one examines the 'impact' of a technologyon society,therefore, one is obliged to examinethe impactof the technology'sembedded social behavioursand meanings. Technologicaldeterminism, in short,rests on speciousgrounds. Technology is not an independent,non-social variable that has an 'impact' on societyor culture.On the contrary,any technologyis a set of social behavioursand a systemof meanings.To restatethe point: when we examine the 'impact' of technologyon society,we are talkingabout the impactof one kind of social behaviouron another(MacKenzie & Wajcman I985: 3)-a point thatMarx graspedwith clarityand subtlety(MacKenzie I984). To thispoint thisarticle will return,but it is possible now to disclose the unitythat underlies technological somnambulismand itsapparent opposite, technological determinism.

Fetishisedobjects What is so strikingabout both naive views of technology,the view that emphasisesdisembodied ways of making and doing(technological somnambulism) and theother that asserts technology's autonomy (technological determinism), is that they bothgravely understate or disguise the social relationsof technology.In thesomnambulistic view, 'making'concerns only engineers and 242 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

'doing' concernsonly users.Hidden fromview is theentire network of social and politicalrelations that are tied to makingand areinfluenced by doing. In the technologicaldeterminist view, the technologyitself (usually conceived as materialculture) is seen as somethingapart from this network. Technology is thus,in thisview, an independentvariable to whichthe forms of social relations and politicsstand as dependentvariables. So thereis indeed a hidden unity underlyingthese positions that seem to standin apparentcontradiction: technology, under the sway of Westernculture, is seen as a disembodiedentity, emptiedof social relations, and composedalmost entirely of tools and products. It standsbefore us, in otherwords, in whatMarx would callfetishisedform: what is in realityproduced by relations among people appears before us in afantasticformas relationsamong things. Marx's conceptof fetishismstems from his discussionof commoditiesin the capitalistsetting. The worldof fetishised commodities, Marx argued,is likethe 'mist-envelopedregions of the religious world. In thatworld the productions of thehuman brain appear as independentbeings endowed withlife, and entering into relationboth with one anotherand the humanrace' (Marx 1938: 43). As Godelier(1977: xxv) putsit, fetishismis

the effectin and for consciousnessof the disguisingof social relationsin and behindtheir appearances.Now theseappearances are thenecessary point of departureof therepresentations of their. . . relationsthat individuals spontaneously form for themselves. Such imagesthus constitute thesocial realitywithin which these individuals live, and servethem as a meansof actingwithin and upon thissocial reality. Marx's discussionwas limitedto thevalue ofcommodities which, he argued, is in realitydetermined by thesurplus value extracted from the wage labourer.It neverthelessappears to us in fetishisedform as a propertyof the commodity itself,rather than of thesocial relationships that produced it. WhetherMarx's analysisof surplusvalue is correctin economicterms is of littleconcern here, exceptto statethat it is temptingindeed to see thefetishism of technologyas a naturalconcomitant of the fetishismof commodities(and the capitalistecon- omy in general).What is of interestis Marx's extraordinaryanthropological insight:the Western ideology of objects renders invisible the social relationsfrom which technologyarises and in which any technology is vitally embedded. This invisibilitylies at theheart of technologicalsomnambulism and determinism.The taskof the anthropologyof technologyis to bringthese hidden social relationsto light.

Technologyin anthropological discourse Anthropologists,unfortunately, have been slow to detectthe hidden influence of technologicalsomnambulism and determinism(Digard 1979). Under the sway of the somnambulisticview, forinstance, technology is simplynot of muchinterest. Ways of making and usingare seen to deservedescription only in so far as theypreserve evidence of a disappearingway of life. Thus one is confrontedwith dreary catalogues of suchthings as arrowsand pots thatare, as Spierobserved, 'dull, unimaginative,myopic, and guiltyof generalizingfrom theparticular' (I 970: 143). BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 243 A concomitantof thisview is thattechnology, which is afterall a simple matterof making and using,does notdetermine social and culturalforms except in ways thatare so obvious thatthey are of little interest. Horticulture obviously precededirrigation, for instance, but such observationstell us verylittle about thecultures we study.This was a pointmade by Boas and a whole generationof Americananthropologists, who denied thatattempts to link technologyand social organisationor culturewould go beyond the obvious. What was of far greaterinterest to Boas was the evidence,as he saw it, thatdissimilar tech- nologiescould be associatedwith surprisingly similar cultural forms: 'we have simpleindustries and complexorganization', he wrote(I940: 266-267), as well as 'diverse industriesand simple organization'.Ruth Benedict (1948: 589), concurringwith Boas's radicaldenial of a necessarylink betweentechnology and culture,asserted that 'man can at any stateof technologicaldevelopment createhis gods in themost diverse form'. This positionis an old one in American anthropology,and it is not withoutits contemporaryadvocates. Replyingfor technologicaldeterminism are such authorsas L. A. White (I959), Wittfogel(I959) and Harris(I977), who tracemajor developmentsin culturalevolution to thepatterns of technologicalchange. Technology, in the deterministview, is seento evolve accordingto itsown, autonomouslogic: 'the diggingstick had to precedethe plow, the flintstrike-a-light had to precede thesafety match, and so on' (HarrisI968: 232). In thisview theconsequences of this evolutionaryprocess for social organisationand cultureare regularand predictable:when theplough replacesthe hoe, forinstance, the sexual division of labour altersin predictableways (Newton I985: 2I4). Wittfogel,to cite anotherdeterminist theorist, believed that large-scale irrigation systems entail bureaucraticcentralisation and politicaldespotism. And for Harris, the odd customs and bizarrepractices of tribalcultures, such as human sacrificeand witchcraft,have a readyexplanation: they have some hiddentechno-economic rationality,which is exposed only by reducingsuch practicesto their'hidden' materialaims (e. g. Harris1974). In thisview, thereare no surprisesin thejungle of ethnographicdata. Every seeminglybizarre trait can be laid down to its underlyingtechno-economic rationality. Both ofthese anthropological versions of Western cultural theory are remark- able for theirinherent dogmatism, itself a sign of theirideological origin. Somnambulistsdeny at theoutset that there is a demonstrablerelation between technologyand culture.Determinists assume such a relationshipalways exists. Both views, in short,see technologyin fetishisedform. Both disguise the fundamentallysocial behaviours in whichpeople engagewhen they create or use a technology.

Humanisednature The anthropologyof technology,must be founded, not on simplisticand ideologically-shapedpropositions, but ratheron a recognitionof the role of fetishism-specifically,in disguisingthe deep interpenetrationand dynamic interplayof social forms,cultural values and technology(Spier 1970: 6-9). To counterthe mystifying force of fetishism,it is necessaryto see technologyin a 244 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

radicallydifferent way: to view it, not throughthe fetishismof technological somnambulismor determinism,but rather as humanisednature. To say thattechnology is humanisednature is to insistthat it is a fundamentallysocial phenomenon: it is a social constructionof thenature around us and withinus, and once achieved,it expressesan embedded social vision, and it engages us in what Marx would call a formof life. The interpenetrationof cultureand naturehere describedis, in short,of the sort thatMauss (I967) would readilycall total:any behaviourthat is technologicalis also, and at the same time, political,social and symbolic. It has a legal dimension,it has a history,it entailsa setof social relationshipsand it has a meaning. So farfrom disguising the social relationsand culturaldimension of technology, thisview logicallynecessitates a recognitionof theinterpenetration of technologywith social formsand systemsof meaning. Any study of technology's 'impact' is in consequencethe studyof a complex, intercausalrela- tionshipbetween one formof social behaviour and another.There is no question of findinga nice,neat causal arrow that points from an independentvariable to a dependentone, forthe causal arrows run both ways (or everywhich way), even in what appears to be the simplestof settings.One mightbe tempted,for instance,to regardthe culture of the !Kung-San peoples of southwestern Africa, huntersand gathersuntil recently, as theproduct of environmentaldominance broughton by a low level of technologicaldevelopment-until, however, one learnsthat the !Kung-Sanregularly and deliberatelyset fireto the grasslands, and so shape theenvironment that we mightsuppose shapesthem. 'Humans', Lee observes,'have been cooking theirenvironment for as long as theyhave been cookingfood' (I979: I47). Dynamicinterplay and interpenetrationof variables is to be expected from the theoreticalstandpoint. Assertions of one-waycausality, in contrast,are suspectand requireradical questioning. Viewing technologyas humanisednature does not, unfortunately,make thingssimple. On thecontrary, it forcesrecognition of thealmost unbelievable complexitythat is involvedin virtuallyany linkbetween human technological formsand human culture.The questionsthis relationship raises, to be sure, seem simple enough on the surface(e. g. 'What is the impactof gravity-flow irrigationschemes on peasantsin Sri Lanka?'). Yet, in practice,discovering the effectsof a giventechnology on societyis, as MacKenzie and Wajcmannote, an 'intenselydifficult and problematicexercise'. Consider, for instance, the impact of themicrochip on employment:

It is relativelyeasy to guesswhat proportion of existing jobs could be automatedaway by present or prospectivecomputer technology. But thatis not theeffect of themicrochip on employment, preciselybecause the question cannot justifiably be approachedin isolationlike this. To know the microchip'seffect on employmentlevels, one needsto know thedifferent rates at whichit will be adopted in differentlocations, the nature of theindustries producing computer technology, the indirecteconomic effects of the creation and destructionofjobs, thelikely role of developments in one countrywith what goes on in othercountries, the growth or decline,and changingpatterns, of the world economy. . . in otherwords, answeringthe question of theeffects on societyof a particulartechnology requires one to have a goodtheory of how that society works. The simplicityof the question is misleading.Answering it properly will oftenrequire an understandingof the overall dynamicsof a society,and it is thusone of the most difficult, rather than one of the easiest, questions to answer (MacKenzie & Wajcman i985: 6-7, my emphasis). BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 245

Anthropology,at its best, is uniquelysuited to the studyof such complex relationshipsbetween technologyand culture.Anthropology is distinctive, afterall, not only forits local-level,small-scale studies using the participant- observationmethod. It is also distinctivefor its holism,an approachthat sees any societyas a systemof moreor less interrelatedcomponents. To undertake such an analysisrequires at leasta workingknowledge ofa society'sbiological environment,history, social organisation,political system, economic system, internationalrelations, cultural values and spirituallife. Such analysesare by no meanseasy; theyrequire nothing less thana commitmentto situatebehaviours and meaningsin theirtotal social, historicaland culturalcontext. Yet nothing less will sufficeif we seek to illuminatethe natureand consequencesof our attemptsto humanisenature.

An example:Sri Lanka's irrigation settlement schemes To illustratethis approach fully requires more space thancan be takenhere, but thebroad outlines of a studyphrased in theterms developed here can be sketched out for purposes of illustration.(References will be omittedfor brevity; see Pfaffenbergern.d. fora fullaccount.) The island nation of Sri Lanka has been much concernedof late with the developmentof gravity-flowirrigation settlement schemes, the latest of which is the massiveMahaweli DevelopmentProject. This projectseeks to develop fullythe irrigationcapabilities of the 208-mileMahaweli Ganga, Sri Lanka's longestriver. A major goal of the project,like its predecessors,is to resettle landless peasants on newly irrigatedlands withinthe country'sDry Zone. Althoughthe still-unfinished project has raisedSri Lanka's riceproduction and helped to freethe countryfrom dependence on rice imports,the economic performanceof the new rice-growingcommunities has fallenshort of expec- tations.Particularly disappointing is the project'ssocial performance.So far fromliberating landless peasants from debt servitude and agriculturaltenancy, the Mahaweli settlementsappear to be reproducingthe adverse featuresof traditionalpeasant society that the project was designedto cure. The Mahaweli Project'soutcomes echo thedisappointing performance of its predecessors,which were markedby seriousdeficiencies in the management and distributionof waterresources. The reasons,some argue,are 'technical'in nature.Since theirinception decades ago, Sri Lanka's irrigationdevelopment projectshave employedgravity-flow principles, in whicha riveris dammedand diverted,via canals, to agriculturalsettlements. The volume and pressureof watersupply in gravity-flowirrigation works is always greatestat the'top end' of the system.And not surprisingly,settlers at the top end of the irrigation projects,where the water supplyis continuousand ample, use fromtwo to seventimes as muchwater as theyneed. At thesame time,settlers at thetail end of the projectsreceive insufficient water-or no water at all. The resultis a processof socio-economicdifferentiation, in which top-enders tend to become wealthyand tail-enderstend to become poor and, eventually,lose theirland to moneylendersand land speculators. Top-endersuse theextra water to freethemselves from the expense of hiring 246 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER labourersto clearweeds (thecopious waterdoes thejob instead)and to assure themselvesan abundantcrop. They investtheir profits by encouragingirri- gationmanagement officials (in variedways) to keep thefloodgates wide open and by involvingless fortunatesettlers in high-interestloans (whichoften result in thedebtors becoming tenants on lands theythemselves once owned). In the end, thesesocial processeslead to thereproduction of some of the featuresof traditionalpeasant society (such as landlessness,sharecropping, and debt servitude)that the project was expresslycreated to circumvent. That this disparityin income between top-endersand tail-endersshould emergeis hardlysurprising when one considerswhat one observercalls the 'harshfacts of hydraulics',namely, the pronouncedtendency of gravity-flow irrigationtechnology to rewardtop-enders and punish tail-enders.This ten- dency can be combattedby buildingextensive systems of fieldchannels and automateddelivery systems, but such systems can add so muchto thecost of the projectthat it ceases to be cost-effective.If one buildsan irrigationsystem that lacks such features,the seeminglyinevitable result is economic disparity betweentop-enders and tail-enders. Yet thisinterpretation smacks of technological determinism, a viewpoint that theanthropology of technology mistrusts on theoreticalgrounds. And on closer inspection,using ethnographic material supplied by SriLanka itself,it turnsout thatthe 'harsh facts of hydraulics'are not as determinativeof social relationsas thisview would haveit. SriLankans, after all, have beenirrigating rice fields for two millennia,and as it happens traditionalSri Lankan villages had devised severalcustoms that operated to mute,if not negate,the economic disparities implicitin gravity-flowirrigation systems. In a village studiedby Leach, for instance,top-end and tail-endlandholdings were always linked,even in prop- ertytransfers, so thatthe benefitsof the top end were balanced out by the penaltiesof thetail end. This customwas accompaniedby a complexsystem of rightsto irrigationwater thatdiscouraged top-end wastage and adjusted the scope ofagricultural activity to theamount of water available. At theheart of the systemwas a clear recognitionthat, in an irrigatedproduction system, what countsis accessto water,not merely to land. Subsequentresearch has shownthat such customs are common in traditional,community-based irrigation systems. The point hereis not to romanticisetraditional irrigation customs, but simplythis: gravity-flow irrigation technology is not merelya matterof things, thatis, dams, canalsand water.This technologyis also a systemof human social behaviours,characterised by theascription or thenon-ascription-of rights to water. If rightsto land are ascribedinstead of rightsto water, one possible outcome (in the absence of countervailingcustoms) is socio-economic differentiation.The designflaw in SriLanka's irrigation settlements is thatthe need to designwater-allocation procedures and rightsinto the technologyhas been consistentlyand thoroughlyignored. The reasons for this oversightcan be known onlyby graspingthe social and culturalcircumstances under which the technologywas constructed. The SriLankan project planners envisioned communities of sturdy,independent, yeoman farmerswho possess secureland tenure.Thus protectedfrom exploitationand poverty,such farmerswould naturallyregard their protector, BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 247 thestate, with affection and loyalty.This idea, obviouslyof European cultural origin,occurred to SriLanka's conservativepolitical leadership (with, perhaps, Britishencouragement) after the second world war, when landlessnessand politicalradicalism were growingominously in the densely-populatedsouth- westerncoastal plan. The extensionof irrigationfacilities into the sparsely- populatedDry Zone was expresslyconceptualised as a way of domesticatingor co-optingthis dangerous (and increasinglylumpen) rural proletariat. Yet thereis more to the social constructionof thistechnology than this brand of Western politicalsensibility. What made it so usefulis thatit dovetailshandily with a particularlySri Lankanmodality of political legitimation. SriLanka's political elite finds its legitimacy, in part, in an indigenouspolitical frameworkthat stems from the ancient Sinhala civilisational tradition (or more accurately,from modern interpretations of thattradition). The ancientSinhala kings legitimatedtheir rule by constructingirrigation works, and modern politicians-especially those of the ruling United National Party-emulate theirexample. The early movers of irrigationprojects, the United National Partyleaders D. S. Senanayakeand his son Dudley, claimeddescent from the ancientDry Zone kings.Their UNP successor,PresidentJ. R. Jayawardene,is oftendescribed as a Boddhisattvawho, like thekings of old, is bringingwater, prosperityand justice (dharma)to the people; in an annual ceremony,he emulatesthe king of old by drivingthe buffaloes into the field to cutthe season's firstfurrow. The same elitedraws its legitimacy from another source, as well: a politically- constructedmyth about the deleteriousimpact of the colonial plantation economy on peasantsociety. This mythinsists that the foreign-ownedplan- tations,in collusionwith the British colonial government, deprived traditional villagesof land neededfor expansion, and in so doing set offa vicious cycleof land fragmentationthat finally culminated in widespreadlandlessness, sharecropping,poverty and moral degradationfor huge masses of peasants. By seeking independenceand promisingto rightthese wrongs by developing irrigationsettlements, Sri Lanka's indigenouspolitical elite found a successful formulafor politicallegitimacy. To describethis notion of the plantation's impactas a 'myth'is not to deny,to be sure,that there may be some truthto it. But it is to insistthat, like all myths,this myth tends to be applieduncritically. And nowheredid it operatemore perniciouslythan in the social designof the irrigationsettlements. The social goals of the irrigationsettlements were, from the beginning, expresslyintended to forestallland fragmentation,which was seen to have played a major role in the rise of landlessnessduring and afterthe colonial period. So thesettlement plots-surveyed and fixedplots of up to fiveacres of irrigatedrice land-were notgiven to thesettlers outright, but were assigned to themby perpetuallease and made indivisible.A peasantcould pass themon to his heirsonly by nominatinga singlesuccessor. Althoughthis social visionmay have been politicallysatisfying, it could not have been more inappropriatefor Sri Lankan conditions.By focusingon the politicallymarketable image of secureland rights for the peasantry,it failsto acknowledgethe importance of waterrights for stable irrigation communities, 248 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

and so condemnsthe settlements to preciselythe socio-economic differentiation thatthe projects were intendedto avoid. Ruled out in thestroke of a pen, too, was the kind of careful,inter-familial juggling of land holdings that, in traditionalSri Lankan communities,help farmersto put togethera holdingof economic size. In the politically-focusedlens of the project's design, such jugglings appear as 'fragmentation',and are branded-often wrongly-as undesirableindices of communitydegradation. Finally, the atomisticindi- vidualismof theproject's social design,coupled withthe diverse social origins of the settlersthemselves, has militatedagainst the formationof kin-based systemsof reciprocityand resource sharing. In successfulirrigation communities, such systems frequentlyfunction to mute processes of socio- economic differentiationby enabling what amounts to a process of intracommunitycapital transfer, as familieshelp each otherout (forinstance, by hiringkinsmen at ratesfar above theeconomic wage). Whatwas notruled out in theproject design, however, was anyeffective legal or politicalmechanism to forestallthe 'sale' of thesettler's plots to mudalalis,a class of 'self-made'landholders and moneylenderswho have long preyedon peasantsthroughout Sri Lanka. Such sales are illegalin principle,but common in practice.Since titlesare held to land, not water,'tail-end' settlers quickly fall behindin thecompetition for water and wealth,and surrendertheir holdings to land speculators.Some wind up as tenantson theirown lands,an arrangement thatmay well bringthe tenant more economic security than was possibleas an impoverished'owner' of the land in question. Moreover, the prohibitionon land fragmentationflies in theface of SriLankan inheritance customs. Not a few settlersprefer to 'sell' theirplots (illegally) rather than face the disconcerting and uncomfortableprospect of favouringone heirover others.Other factors, such as irregularitiesin watersupply, the vicissitudes of therice market,the rise of fertiliserand herbicideprices, and mismanagement,also contributeto the'sale' of plots to mudalalis.In one settlementscheme, a mudalaliwas foundto have amasseda 'holding'of IOO acresof primerice land, irrigatedat publicexpense. Thereis nothingnew aboutthe activities of mudalalis. What is new is themassive public investmentin the settlementschemes, which have createdrich new opportunitiesfor the mudalalis'activities. Indeed, the schemes create new mudalalis.They enrichtop-enders so that they may choose, among several alternativecareers, the mudalali'sway of money-lending,bribery and land speculation. That the older irrigationsettlements were promotingsocio-economic dif- ferentiationhas been known for some time, but the new phase of irrigation developmentunder the Accelerated Mahaweli Development Program (AMDP) soughtto forestallsuch processesby using the expensivetechnical solution of constructingfield channels to groups of settlers.For reasons thatare hardly surprisinggiven the above analysis,this strategy does notappear to be working. Processesof socio-economic differentiation are well at workin thenew AMDP settlements.Price fluctuations,irregularities in water supplyand otherprob- lems frequentlybring the settlers to themudalali who, forall his propensityto exploit the peasantand deprivehim of his land, stilloffers the peasantmore day-to-daysecurity than the government-sponsoredarrangements. In the BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER 249

absenceof kinsmenin theatomised settlement communities, there is nowhere else to turnwhen a child fallsill or new clothesare needed foran important event. The 'technicalfix' of fieldchannels, in sum, has not worked verywell because only the materialcomponent of the technologyhas been changed. Its social, legal and mythiccomponents have been left alone, and expose the peasantsettler to a socio-politicalcontext in which economicdifferentiation is virtuallyassured.

Conclusion Technology,defined anthropologically, is not materialculture but rathera total social phenomenonin thesense used by Mauss, a phenomenonthat marries the material,the social and the symbolicin a complex web of associations.A technologyis farmore thanthe material object thatappears under the sway of the Westernpenchant for fetishism, the tendencyto unhingehuman creations fromthe social relationsthat produce them. Every technologyis a human world,a formof humanised nature, that unifies virtually every aspect of human endeavour.To constructa technologyis not merelyto deploy materialsand techniques;it is also to constructsocial and economic alliances,to inventnew legal principlesfor social relations,and to providepowerful new vehiclesfor culturally-providedmyths. The 'impact'of irrigation technology on thesociety taking shape in Sri Lanka's irrigation-basedsettlement schemes cannot be grasped,therefore, until this technologyis seen in its totality,a totalitythat embracesnot onlythe 'harsh facts of hydraulics' (the implicit disparity between top-endersand tail-enders),but what is more, the choices that the project designersmade in definingthe colonies' social relations,and, in particular,the powerfulpolitical myths that guided them to thesechoices. There remainsto concede,however, that a technologicalinnovation's social and mythicdimensions may become starklyapparent when it is perceivedto fail. Afterthe Challengerdisaster, for instance,the Americanspace shuttle programmecame to be seenas a product,not of science and reason,but rather of politicalcompromise, flawed communication and confusedgoals. If an innovation succeeds, however, the social and mythicdimensions stay in the background. The innovation's success will be attributedto the project's unerringnavigation of the true course laid down by the laws of nature, efficiencyand reason. Here is yet anothertrap for the mind, one thatis even more insidiousthan fetishism.To arguethat only a failedtechnology is sociallyconstructed (and, by implication,that successfulones are not socially constructed)violates the principleof symmetryin sociological explanation:we should use the same explanatoryprinciples to account for a successfulinnovation as a failedone (Latour I987). Many examples-the Americanautomobile, for instance (Flink 1975)-can indeed be foundof successfultechnologies in which the technical design betraysthe thoroughinterweaving of materialsand techniqueswith social visionsand mythicconceptions. Yet we mustgo further.To createa new technologyis to createnot only a new artefact,but also a new world of social 250 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER relations and myths in which definitionsof what 'works' and is 'successful' are constructed by the same political relations the technology engenders. It could be objected, to be sure, that a technology either 'works' or it doesn't, but this objection obscures the mounting evidence that creating a 'successful' technology also requires creating and disseminating the very norms that define it as successful (MacKenzie I987). In Sri Lanka, for instance, the web of political associations created along with the dams and canals-a web that includes the influx of foreign economic assistance, the provision of lucrative construction contracts, and the creation of politically indebted communities-is of such vital significance to the ruling United National Party government that the project's 'failings' cannot be admitted, save in private and offthe record. The project may have plunged generations of Sri Lankans into debt, damaged the ecology of river valleys and created dangerous new contexts for political violence, but none of this can be conceded without undermining a political edifice of impressive dimensions and complexity. So far as Sri Lankan government officials are concerned, the AMDP project is a great success. To put it another way, these officialsare part of a huge enterprisewhose stabilityand endurance depends, in part, on constructingnew norms of 'success' and, equally, resisting the intru- sions of external and unwanted norms of 'failure'. If they succeed, the technology becomes a 'black box': few question its design or the norms thatdefine it as a success (MacKenzie I987). And its social origins disappear from view. Technology, in short, is a mystifyingforce of the firstorder, and it is rivalled only by language in its potential (to paraphrase Geertz) for suspending us in webs of significance that we ourselves create. That is why it is an appropriate -indeed crucial-subject for anthropological study.

NOTE My thanksto Mel Cherno,W. BernardCarlson and H. L. Seneviratne,whose commentson an earlierdraft of this articlehelped me shape its argument,for which I alone take responsibility. Thanksare due, too, to theSchool ofEngineering and AppliedScience, University of Virginia, for a summerresearch grant that facilitated this essay's composition.

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Objets feticheset nature humanisee: vers une anthropologie de la technologie

Resume Le conceptde technologiedevient utile seulement lorsque ses pr6conceptionstacites sont mises au jour. Dans le discoursoccidental le termetechnologie est 1i6a deux extr6mitesde la pensee mythique:le d6terminismeet le somnambulismetechnologiques. Le premierdecrit la technologle comme la cause de la formationsociale; le derniernie ce lien de causalite. Tous les deux, cependant,occultent les choix soclaux et les relationssociales qui appartiennenta toutsysteme technologlque.Pour rendrede tellesnotions caduques, la technologieest red6finieici comme etantun phenomenesocial totaldans le sens utilis6par Mauss; un ph6nomenea la foismat6r&el, social, et symbolique. Creer et utiliserune technologie,c'est alors humaniserla nature;c'est exprimerune visionsociale, creer un symbolepuissant, et s'engagersoi-meme dans une formede vie. L'6tude de la technologie,par consequent,s'adapte bien aux outils d'interpr6tationde l'anthropologlesymbolique. Ce point est illustr6par une analysebreve des projetscoloniaux d'irrigationdu Sri Lanka.