Paper short abstract:

The notion of being haunted has a long history in anthropological literature. It is part of that fascination that twentieth century anthropologists have had with what they called “magic.”

Paper long abstract:

Haunting can be troubling, but there are also benevolent forms of haunting. Haunting amounts to being present in absence; a continuity of presence that transcends immediate materiality.

Each one of us experiences his or her own presence as entwined with the presence of those persons and those things that we relevantly share our lives with. In short, persons are constitutively affected by the presence of other persons and other things. Participation—the sharing of one’s essence with other people and with the things around us—is precisely what makes us capable of thinking, of being a person.

Participation, therefore, is the root of all thinking, including in the case of non-human living beings. It is a determining factor in how all live beings address the world with “intention”—that is, with a will to survive. If that is the case, then, surely, we have to take manifestations of participation more seriously.

Paper short abstract:

This paper asks how master planners collectively make sense of future imaginaries in everyday practice. Drawing on ethnographic research, it posits that the entanglements of distributed cognition enact contingent relationships and enfold uncertain conditions into coordinated creativity.

Paper long abstract:

Relational studies of planning explore the complex ecologies in which planners work and the diverse social and material entities with which they interact. This paper focuses on the internal workings of teams of master planners. It asks how master planners collectively make sense of and achieve complex tasks or more to the point, how do planners think? Attending to how planners think rather than what they think about shifts the discussion away from urban matters and design decisions, towards the study of cultures of practice. Drawing from a distributed cognition approach, the study is concerned with the sociomaterial formation of thought, wherein people, materials, their spatial environments and temporal perceptions are entangled in an emerging cognitive system. Based on the ethnographic study of master planning offices, this paper follows the performative role of planning artefacts in the making. The findings show that as they make objects, teams of planners internalise the boundaries of the task, enacting contingent relationships from across the ecology of planning in which they are embedded, and enfolding the agential properties of absence into coordinated creative practice. Practices of making manifest uncertainty and enact a future time that is divisible and different from the present by foregrounding operational perceptions of time and space, generating shared forms of confidence.

Paper short abstract:

Ayurveda, a specific knowledge about human well-being, is translated into a different understanding of oneself and one's own life. Building upon an ethnographic research of Ayurveda self-care practice, I discuss how the imagined individual stability is contested through embodied and social practice.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper, I discuss how the specific knowledge about human well-being is translated into strategies of enriching individual stability. I introduce this process as an entanglement of imaginative, embodied and social practice. Furthermore, I emphasise the good and the bad passages of this process (Moser, Law 1999).

Building upon 4-years long ethnographic research of Ayurveda (one of the T&CM modalities) in the Czech Republic I look at ways of translating specific knowledge into individual strategies of stabilization. As the core field-site consisted of two schools of Ayurveda, I have followed the ways in which the students have accommodated the new ideas about the functioning of the world, society, individual mind, body and health into their understanding and everyday practice. Even though a huge amount of them have not observed any essential changes in their health since (cp. Baarts, Pedersen 2009) they still claim to benefit from Ayurveda in a form of establishing better individual stability. In my paper, I explore this process of enriching individual stability through the translation of specific knowledge into imaginative, embodied and social practice. More importantly, I discuss the incoherencies of this process, the difficulties, and misunderstandings these people are encountering within.

Paper short abstract:

Scientific creativity is prized, but it is in tension with the aim of truth. We hypothesize that the structure of science overvalues creativity at the expense of truth/knowledge, as is shown, we argue, by the replication crisis. We consider means of rebalancing the social structures of science.

Paper long abstract:

Creativity is universally prized and encouraged. But creativity can be used to produce ideas and objects that lack value or even have negative value (the work of a creative torturer or imaginative conspiracy theorist). So society may encourage creativity, but it needs also to ensure that this is directed towards producing objects of artistic or scientific (etc.) merit.

A scientific community may be regarded as collective individual bound together by division of cognitive labour and by shared rules and conventions. Under what conditions is such a community both creative and oriented towards scientific value (truth, knowledge understanding)? Creativity and truth are in tension: in general, the more imaginative an idea is, the less likely it is to be true. So a community pursuing both needs to find the right balance (N.B. this does not have to be achieved by ensuring that each individual has the right balance). Because creativity is highly prized, and because it is easier to produce and to recognize than truth, we hypothesize that the balance is tilted in favour of creativity and, relatively, away from truth. We argue that there is evidence for this in the replication crisis in biomedicine and psychology. The various possible drivers—testing too many false hypotheses, questionable research practices (such as p-hacking), the policies of scientific journals—all indicate a structure oriented towards creativity more than truth. We briefly consider how the social structure of science and its incentives might be rebalanced between truth and creativity.

Paper short abstract:

Cultural evolution studies have detailed factors allowing for the relatively faithful transmission of information, skills and practices. I explore how alternative forms of evolutionary thinking can be productive for understanding its dialectical opposite in culture, i.e. the role of creativity.

Paper long abstract:

Human culture combines two apparently contradictory traits to a remarkable degree: the extent to which it allows groups and societies to retain and transmit information, norms, skills and practices within and between generations, and the extent to which it constantly - though to vastly varying degrees - reinvents itself, adding new variants and directions. Cultural evolution studies have been somewhat successful in developing formal studies and modelling of the first trait; that is, of factors allowing for relatively faithful transmission of information, skills and practices between individuals and groups. While showing an interest in innovation, this field has mainly treated the introduction of new cultural variants has analogous to the introduction of new biological variants in molecular evolution, i.e. through mechanisms of transmission error, mutation and drift - thus leaving important, distinctly human forms of agency unaddressed. In this paper, I explore how alternative forms of evolutionary thinking can be productive for understanding the second trait, i.e. the role of creativity in cultural processes. I suggest that cultural creativity unfolds in a particular kind of 'ecological niche' where dialectics of internalization and externalization of public and tangible material structures enable new ways of exploring solution spaces and identifying 'adjacent possibles'. Resulting innovations, in turn, feed back into the ecology, continuously changing and refining affordances for collective reasoning and creativity. Addressing this dynamic complex seems to require a coordinated and integrated multidisciplinary effort, the outlines of which I will try to sketch.

Paper short abstract:

Starting from of recent interests in AI, Cyborgs and Enhanced Humanity, this paper uses Leroi-Gourhan's "delegation of memory" and Simondon's analysis of technical objects, to examine the type of (real and imagined) situated practices afforded and promoted by contemporary and future digital devices.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is an experimentation on the recent resurgence of public and corporate interests in AI, Cyborgs and Enhanced Humanity, from André Leroi-Gourhan's idea of "delegation of memory" (1964). Taking as a starting point that all technical objects are partly made of delegation of human capacities, and building on Gilbert Simondon, this paper revisits some aspects of cognition from the angle of "technical objects" and the type of cognitive, social and political milieu they can generate. Cognition, whether embodied, distributed, extended, situated or mediated, cannot exist without the material world the subject lives. In turn, each apparition of "new" technical objects thus implies the emergence of "new" forms of engagement. This leads me to suggest that the relatively recent expansion of digital devices could thus be examined from the type of situated practices they promote and afford, be they real or imagined.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the correspondence of horses and humans across moments of movement and repose in the context of horseback therapy for autism in the UK. The phenomenon suggests a highly embodied form of sociality enacted in temporal engagements across humans and horses.

Paper long abstract:

People on the autism spectrum are often negatively characterized, not only by limited social and communicative abilities, but also inflexibility and a tendency for becoming 'stuck'. Intense interests are referred to as 'fixed', and idiosyncratic behaviours pathologized as restricted and having no aim or goal (APA 2013). However, my interlocutors defined these practices actively, as a route to soothing pervasive sensory hypersensitivities and helping them to engage with others. Struggling to maintain control of shifting sensorial worlds make routine and repetitive behaviours a route to much needed stability. Indeed, the central role of nonhumans - objects and animals - in these practices is indicative of the ways the mind becomes enacted in practice and in relation to more-than-human others.

Throughout 16 months of fieldwork with the people on the spectrum receiving horseback therapy I was told "the horses just know". Horses and humans entered mutually constituting bodily attunements, corresponding (Despret 2013) creatively in the co-production of social behaviours. The phenomenon thus suggests a form of sociality enacted in temporal engagements between autistic and non-autistic people that is not only highly embodied, but distributed across humans and horses. Central to this "just knowing" was a shared sensory hypersensitivity of horses and people on the spectrum. By carefully choreographing sensory inputs via horseback movement, the practice aimed to soothe 'sensory overload', inculcating a state of 'sensory integration' and stillness. This paper explores these multispecies relations across moments of movement and repose in the context of horseback therapy in the UK and USA.

Paper short abstract:

I will be giving an account of how Merleau-Ponty's later works and its emphasis of the reversible structure between the flesh of the body and the flesh of the world can both enrich, and be enriched by Material Engagement Theory's entangled account of cognition.

Paper long abstract:

The later works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty are marked by a transition to move beyond thinking about phenomenology in terms of the visible, and to further blur the ambiguous boundaries between subject and object/world. In his later works he introduces the concept of flesh and the structure of reversibility that describes the entangled, push-pull dialectical construction of the embodied phenomenological subject. This relation between the flesh of the body and the flesh of the world is understood as a transaction where, "my hand, while it is felt from within, is also accessible from without…if it takes its place among the things it touches, [it] is in a sense one of them, [and] opens finally upon a tangible being of which it is also a part" (1968, 133). This approach to understanding phenomenology, I claim, can better serve as a framework for phenomenological approaches to investigating material culture. This approach neither (1) falls into the trappings of an internalist understanding of how embodied cognition is externally shaped by the artefactual environment, nor (2) consigns us to a 'high altitude' view of human-thing transactions that analyzes material culture from a dis-located 'view from nowhere'. Drawing on resources from Lambros Malafouris' (2013) Material Engagement Theory, we can lead phenomenology (and embodied approaches to understanding cognition more generally) into a richer understanding of how cognition is shaped by material culture. A dialogue between the late Merleau-Ponty and Material Engagement should serve to enrich both positions and lead to a deeper understanding of human becoming.

Paper short abstract:

I use the theatrical concept of blocking to investigate the role of affordances in everyday life. This allows us to think of architectural and institutional design as in some way directing our actions, and provides a perspective on the normative constraints that guide our actions.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of blocking in theater concerns the design of the performance space, the placing and movement of objects or props and especially the positioning of actors for a particular scene. Its major function is to ensure that things and actors are positioned properly from the audience's perspective so they can see what's going on. In addition blocking can affect the specific meaning of a scene. From the actor's perspective, however, blocking has an additional function not usually discussed in the textbooks. It not only puts the actor in the right place at the right time, it facilitates the acting process. It scaffolds the actor's cognitive and pragmatic performance - specifically her memory for her lines and her actions. I use the concept of blocking to discuss everyday worldly action. I relate it to the Gibsonian notion of affordance, and to recent research on the notion of 'affordance space', in a way that allows us to think of architectural and institutional design as in some way directing our actions or imposing normative constraints. From the agent's perspective it's easy to see blocking as an example of distributed cognition, with strong normative overtones. Pursuing this line of thought raises an interesting question. Is there anything like an audience perspective in regard to everyday action?

Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon field work examining the research and clinical practice in the field of cardiac genetics, this paper will examine the consequences of understandings of the social mind on creative, productive processes across institutional boundaries defined by heterogeneous forms of cognition.

Paper long abstract:

By de-centring the locus of human cognition from the individual to the collective level the social mind emerges as the relational assemblage of brains, bodies and the material environment as held within socially (re)produced cultural/institutional structures. Such a model of human cognition helps us to understand the distinctions between the creative and productive value of practices across disparate epistemic spaces. Yet in spaces of complex social organisation multiple groups are required to interact and often collaborate. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork examining the organisation of research and clinical practice broadly in the field of cardiac genetics, this paper will examine the modes by which actors enacting heterogeneous cognitive forms within everyday practice are able to engage across institutional conditions in situated practice as a means of creating knowledge and providing outcomes that are valued beyond the boundaries of the collective cognitive group.

Paper short abstract:

Concerned with the lived experience of shepherding in the Carpathian Mountains, this paper engages with shepherd's experience of solitude and silence and the way the mountain environment shapes and is shaped by shepherds' interaction with the nonhuman phenomena that constitutes that environment.

Paper long abstract:

This paper constitutes an account of the transhumant ciobani [shepherds] of Romania. The data upon which it is based was collected during ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2015-16. In the region of study, each spring, ciobani herd their flocks to the mountains to exploit seasonally advantageous pasture, returning to their village communities in late autumn to overwinter in the more clement lowlands. Historically, transhumant pastoralism represented a significant part of social and economic life in southern Europe, particularly in the Balkan Peninsula. However, transhumance is increasingly on the retreat in both Romania and Europe more broadly. The area in which the research for this paper was conducted is one of the few regions in which transhumant pastoralism is still practiced.

Theoretically, the paper is grounded in terms of more-than-human anthropology. Drawing on this body of literature, this dissertation seeks to contribute to Ingold's call for 'an ecology of life' through a focus on ciobani engagement with their flocks and the wider mountain environment. A key aim of this paper is, therefore, to explore ciobani encounters and interaction with nonhuman phenomena during these months in the mountains. Furthermore, central to this study is a concern with the ciobani experience of solitude and silence. In the mountains, ciobani spend most of their days alone with their flocks. However, the ethnography presented here reveals that this time secluded at pasture teems with myriad more-than-human entanglements which punctuate the solitude and silence of mountain shepherding.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores productive overlaps between anthropological theory and enactive and social concepts of mind. It asks how recent work in cognition can help us study creativity and imagination as fundamentally situated within shifting synthetic and social environments.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will situate recent discussions in 4E cognition within the context of ethnographic work on digital design and fabrication in architecture. This ongoing ethnography considers the productive interaction of people and their social, synthetic and technical environments within the Copenhagen based architecture studio 3XN/GXN to understand the distribution of situated cognitive processes across spatial and temporal scales.

As data and computation expand the scope of design projects, architects are faced with handling growing levels of complexity. Projects last years and go through phases with conflicting demands during competition, design development, and construction. Approaching the problem of organisational adaptability from a cognitive standpoint, the paper explores how architects at 3XN/GXN maintains relative flexibility of mind to deal with the many problems emerging during a project's lifetime.

It does so by following the evolution of design and research projects, to analyse how social organisation and software are combined to achieve flexibility within and between design teams at the studio. The paper takes up the panel theme of stability, novelty and change and will seek to develop discussions of sociality of mind to show how shared dispositions of varied scope and durability develop, are maintained, and change through shifting synthetic and social setups.

This discussion should provide a novel entry point into well-known territory for anthropology by asking how situated practice comes to shape cognition in both transient and durable ways.