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Strathern Cutting The Network PDF
Strathern Cutting The Network PDF
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MARILYNSTRATHERN
Universityof Cambridge
Mixed narratives
At the same time as anthropologistshave made explicit the artificialor ethno-
centric natureof many of their analyticaldivisions,they find themse!vesliving
in a culturalworld increasinglytolerantof narrativesthat displaya mixed na-
ture. I refer to the combinationof human and nonhuman phenomenathat, in
the 1980s and early 1990s, producedthe imageryof cyborgsand hybrids.This
imageryhas been fed by the late twentieth-centuryEuro-Americandiscoveryof
science as a source of culturaldiscourse (Franklin1995). Neither culture nor
science is outside the other.
In the case of the hybrid,combinationshave been pressedinto interpretative
service to the point of surfeit. Narayan(1993: 29) was moved to identify an
'enactmentof hybridity'in anthropologicalwritings,citing nine works appear-
ing between 1987-92. What is true inside anthropologyis also true outside.
Culturesare everywhereinterpretedas hybridamalgams,whether of an indige-
nous kind or as the effect of exposureto one another:'almostevery discussion
on cultural identity is now an evocation of the hybrid state' (Papastergiadis
1995: 9). The Cameroonianbusinessman'sbiographyseems anotherexample.
However,Rowland'ssourceon the Bamilek6,Warnier,drawsattentionto a very
particularkind of hybridobject, using the term hybridin the sense given it by
Latour(1993) and to which I shall return.The object was the heterogeneous
knowledge createdby a researchteam investigatinga company'sbusiness net-
works (Warnier1995: 107). The researchteamcompriseda networkof different
competences. Their knowledge, a mix of technique cum social relationship,
Can networkshavelengths?
Latourrefersto the modem proliferationof hybridsas an outomeof purificatory
practice.The more hybridsare suppressed- the more categoricaldivisions are
made - the more they secretlybreed. Their present visibility is just that: the
outcome of present awarenessof this process.Yet the capacityof hybrids to
proliferateis also containedwithin them. For the very concept of the hybrid
lends itself to endless narrativesof (about, containing)mixture, including the
constant splicing of culturaldata in what a geneticist might call recombinant
culturology.In fact, the concept can conjoin anything, a ubiquity consonant
with the perceivedubiquityof culture itself I see the apprehensionof surfeit,
then, as a moment of interpretativepause. Interpretationmust hold objects of
reflectionstablelong enough to be of use. That holding stablemay be imagined
as stopping a flow or cutting into an expanse,and perhapssome of the Euro-
Americans'voiced concem over limits re-runs Derrida'squestion of how to
'stop'interpretation.How arewe to bring to rest expandablenarratives,not to
speakof the culturalanthropologist'sendless productionof culturalmeanings
(Munro in press)?'Cutting'is used as a metaphorby Derridahimself (1992, as
cited by Fitzpatrickin press.) for the way one phenomenon stops the flow of
others.Thus the force of 'law'cuts into a limitlessexpanseof 'justice',reducing
it and renderingit expressible,creatingin the legaljudgment a manipulable
objectof use;justice is operationalizedso as to producesocial effects.
If I see in the network of some actor-networktheoristsa socially expanded
hybrid, it is because they have captureda concept with similar propertiesof
auto-limitlessness;that is, a concept which works indigenouslyas a metaphor
for the endless extension and intermeshingof phenomena.
A networkis an apt image for describingthe way one can link or enumerate
disparateentities without makingassumptionsabout level or hierarchy.Points
in a narrativecan be of any materialor form, and network seems a neutral
phrasefor interconnectedness.Latour'sown symmetricalvision bringstogether
not only human and nonhumanin the orderingof social life, but also insights
from both modern and premodem societies. And that is the purpose of his
democratizingnegative,Wehaveneverbeenmodern(1993). Modems divide soci-
ety from technology,culturefrom nature,human from nonhuman,except that
they do not - Euro-Americanmodernsare like anyone else in the hybridsthey
make,even though they are rarelyas explicit.Before he castigatesanthropology
for not going far enough, he praises the discipline both for creatinghybrid
accounts (miNingnaturaland supernaturalin their ethnographies,politics and
economics, demons and ecology)andfor uncoveringthe thinkingof those who
make such hybridsexplicit (in dwelling on them, he says, such people in fact
keep them in check). The divides of modern people's thinking do not corre-
spond to the methods they actuallydeploy, and this is what people such as
PapuaNew Guineanscan tell them. There are similarities,he implies, in the
way everyoneputs hybridstogether:'Is Boyle's air pump any less strangethan
the Arapeshspirithouses?'(1993: 115).
For Euro-Americans,technologicaldevelopmentoffers a vision of the mixed
forms implied by technique(nonhumanmaterialsmodifiedby human ingenu-
ity, or human dispositionmoulded by tools). Network imageryoffers a vision
of a social analysisthatwill treatsocial and technologicalitems alike;any entity
Cuttingnetworks
Actor-networktheorists,and their alliesand critics,are interestedin the diverse
props,to use Law's(1994) phrasing,thatsustainpeople'sactionsand in the way
the props are held in place long enough to do so. Networks renderedcontin-
gent on people'sinteractionsturn out to have a fragiletemporality.They do not
last for ever;on the contrary,the question becomes how they are sustainedand
made durable.They may seem to dependon continuitiesof identity(thatis, on
homogeneity).But heterogeneousnetworksalso have their limits. I shall argue
that if we take certainkinds of networksas sociallyexpandedhybridsthen we
can takehybridsas condensednetworks.That condensationworks as a summa-
tion or stop. The Euro-Americanhybrid,as an image of dissolvedboundaries,
indeed displacesthe image of boundarywhen it takesboundary'splace.
I give two very brief illustrations,the first an instance in which the actors
involved might well have recognizedthemselves as a network in the conven-
tional social sense, and the second a case in which the social scientist might
think of the chain of elements as a 'network' in Latour'ssense and of the
resultantartefactas a hybrid.The perceivablenetworkin the first,andthe analytical
hybrid in the second, both bring potentialextensions to a halt. In both cases
these imagesof networkor hybridservethe furtheranceof claimsto ownership.
In 1987 a Californiancorporationdiscovered the hepatitis C virus.11The
virus was a discoveryin the sense of an unearthingof fresh knowledge about
the world. But the means of detectingthe virus led to the invention of a blood
test for which the corporationappliedfor, andwas granted,a patent.Patentsare
claims to inventions;that is, to applicationsof someone's inventivenesswhich
others technically could, but are forbidden to, utilize without acknow-
ledgement. This test met all the modern criteriafor a patent. It was novel,
II
Stoppingpflow
Coppet'saccountof 'Are'areof the Solomon Islandsshows the power of mak-
ing objectswhich can be manipulated.'Are'aredivide living creaturesinto three
kinds. Cultivated plants have body, domesticatedpigs have both body and
breath,while human beings also hold a name or 'image'.At death, the once
living person is disaggregatedor decomposedinto these differentelements:the
money at other points in life can stop other flows, most significantlyin homi-
cide payments(Coppet 1994: 10-11). Where there has been a series of deaths,
money alone stems the flow of revenge.
'Are'areare explicit about this finalizingsequence:they refer to it as a 'stop'
or 'break',imaginedas a fall, as at sunset,or as the sinkingof a stone. Such stops
can only be effected by means of shell money. In other types of exchange,by
contrast,money is merelya contributoryelement;these include tied exchanges
('linkedsuccession')which connect events leadinginexorablyfrom one to an-
other so that the giver's repaymentof a debt constitutes a new debt for the
recipient.Any one prestationis also composed of 'returns',the smallest se-
quence in a cycle of exchanges;exchanges are thus made up of exchanges.
Together,these activities bring about networks of different lengths: 'Are'are
measurethe length of debt in an enlargingseriesof acts,from 'return'to 'linked
succession' to 'stop', the last gatheringup all preceding flows into one mo-
ment.16 Like strands of shell money itself, these flows are simultaneously
divisibleand indivisible.In short, networksare composed of both human and
nonhumanentities;they differ in how they are absorbedor consumed.
The mortuary ceremony that makes the deceased's networks visible also
blocks their futureeffect. Old networksare cut by being gatheredup at a point
(in the deceased),whose sociallyhybrid form is dispersedand thereby brings
new networks into play. The relationshipsthat once sustained the deceased
become recombinedin the personsof others.
Bringingfw back
If the 'Are'arepersonemergesfrom such transactionsas hybrid,then its hetero-
geneity comes from the way differences are sustained between the social
relationsthat sustain it; the hybrid is an amalgamof social relations.In this
Melanesiancase, it is made visible as a networkvia funerary,bridewealthand
similarprestations,transactionsthat lay out the person in terms of the claims
diverseothers have.And vice versa:the same transactionscondense claimsinto
sociallymanipulableobjectsof consumption(things).Whatare, in a mannerof
speaking,homogeneous, implyingcontinuitiesof identity,are the forms - hu-
man and nonhuman- that these objectsof consumptiontake (the body is the
taro).With referenceto similartransactionson Tanga,Foster (1995: 166 sqq.)
reminds us that it is an illusion to imagine that differencesof value lie in the
intrinsicnatureof things:values are the outcome of relationalpractices.Thus
'identical'productsmay have 'different'values (cf Piot 1991).
Coppet analysesexchangesin terms of a hierarchyof encompassment:from
the tiniest interchangethat carries an expectationof a return, to the ritual
compulsion by which people are linked through maldng paymentsrequiring
further payments,to the capacityto gathersuch exchangesup in a mortuary
prestationthat caps them all. Here they are condensedinto money.Money can,
in turn, be spreadout and disaggregated.What is true of a man's death is also
true of a woman's marriage.Bride-giversbestow on the husband's kin the
potential for growth in their sister whom they have grown, and they receive
back,and thus consume, evidenceof growth alreadyaccomplishedin the form
of valuables.Here are objects with different values: reproductivewealth (a
future wife) in return for a non-reproductivesister. Now a non-returnable
portion of money ('money to stop the woman') is said to stop the woman's
image;her kinsmen'sidentitywill no longer flow throughher. In addition,her
kin receive furthermoney which they returnto the husband'sside in separate
lots as money,taroand pigs. Her kin therebyre-create,as separatecomponents,
the body,breathand image of the woman from the single gift of money.
'Are'areancestor-moneyis thus a condensed objectificationof the person
who can be disaggregatedinto variousmanifestationsof relationswith others.
The (homogeneous) network of elements that make up the person - human
and nonhuman - is also a (heterogeneous)network of social relationships.In
turn, the person acts as both containerand channel,blockingflow and bodying
it forth.
Kinship systems, as anthropologistsmodel them, have long providedanalo-
gies to this kind of process. Consider those curtailmentsof claims that come
with exogamy,sister-exchangeor cross-cousin marriage.If we imagine these
protocolsas creatingnetworksof varyinglengths, then they have differentca-
pacities for sustaining flow or stopping it. Many kinship systems certainly
presupposemeasurementsfor tracingthe extent of substance.Indeed we may
take this as diagnosticof 'lineal'modes of kinship reckoning.Extensivenessof
claims may be reckonedin terms of continuity of identity,as when a descent
group whose members share common substance truncates claims over its
members at the exogamic boundary;making new relationsthrough marriage
stops the flow. Or old relationsmay have to be cancelledbefore new ones are
produced.Or, again,the kind of marriagerule that invites persons to think of
themselvesas marryingcousins or exchangingsiblingsinvites them to think of
substanceas turningbackon itself Here networksare stoppedin the personsof
relativeswho become the turningpoint for directingthe flow of fertilityback.17
On South Pentecost, shortly after the birth of a child, Sa-speakersmake a
payment to the mother's kin for the loss of blood (jolly 1994: 146). This is
among those called lo sal, 'inside the road, or path' (1994: 109). Perhapsthis
particularpaymentcan be read as given both for the blood spilt at intercourse
and birth (the reasonSa people give) and for the blood dammedup, no longer
flowing with theirfertility;father'ssemen blocks mother's flow of blood (jolly
1994: 143). The child embodies maternalblood but cannot pass it on; instead,
lifelong payments are due to the maternalkin. When the mother's brother
receives a boar in recognitionof the blood which, while contributingto the
child, has no forwardeffect, he is forbiddenfrom tying it up. Insteadthat role
is performedby the mother'smother'sbrother,who in turn is forbiddenfrom
eating it. The latter has alreadyeaten pigs given him earlierby the mother's
brother (jolly 1994: 111-12); he is thus made presentbut cannot benefit from
the flow of fertilitybeyond one generation.A sister's substance,then, is not
passedon to her grandchildrenbut is stopped in her children.The grandchil-
dren of cross-sexsiblings,preferredmarriagepartners,subsequentlyremakethe
'road'(Sa for 'marriage'):a man marriesinto the place from which his father's
mother came.
While these Melanesianchains - of persons, and of the wealth that flows
along with them - are followed outwardsto a certainextent, some may turn
aroundat key points and return.This may be accomplishedover time: previous
generationsare reborn, persons making up other persons. In terms of social
III
One class of kinshipsystems in the anthropologicalrepertoireis notorious for
havingno internalstops. Bilateralor cognatic(nonunilineal)kinshipreckoning
allows that substanceflows, and evinces itself in individualpersonsbut it does
not stop in them or turn back.Indeed, indigenesmay tell themselvesthat they
are all related - trace far enough back and everyone shares substancewith
everyone else.19As a response to such systems, there was, in the 1950s and
1960s, much anthropologicaldebate about cutting networks. These debates
addressedthe problem of potentiallyendless networksof relationsthat seem-
ingly did not cut themselves.One could traceforeveroutwards.Fromthis came
the presumptionthat therewas no measurebeyondthe dictatesof contingency:
bilateralkinship appearedto have no inbuilt boundariesof its own. It was
arguedthat in orderto creategroups,for example,ramifyingkin ties had to be
cut throughother principlesof social organization.
NOTES
This article is in memory of Jeffrey Clark, and his account (1991) of pearlshellsthat flow
and pearlshellsthat grow. Alan Macfarlanehas contributedinvaluablecomments on ideas of
property,and I am furthergratefulto the severalcomments of the ESRC seminaron Technol-
ogy as Skilled Practice convened by Penny Harvey at the University of Manchesterwhich
heard a version of this article.Comments from Annelise Riles, Simon Harrisonand the Jour-
nal's anonymousreadershave been much to its improvement.Thanks to those who have given
me permissionto cite as yet unpublishedworks: Peter Fitzpatrick,IrisJean-Klein,Christopher
Taylor,Nicholas Thomas.
1 Taylor (n.d.) focuses on 'flow' and 'blockage'in certain Central and East African under-
standingsof channels of potency. A. Weiner (1992) and Godelier (1995) have commented on
similarissues to differenttheoreticalends, as hasJ. Weiner (1995a;1995b).
2 I personifya discoursefor expositionalconvenience.
on Bioethics 1995: 72). The phrasingin this paragraphis mine. The court was tryinga prelimi-
nary point of law as to whether a person had propertyrights in tissue taken from the body
(Nuffield Council on Bioethics 1995 includes a summaryof the judgment). Rabinow 1992 of-
fers a full and fascinatinganthropologicalcomment.
16A distinctionbetween those killed by other persons (death by homicide) and those killed
by ancestors(death by illness) alters the sequences here. I should add both that I have put my
own interpretationon Coppet's analysisand that my extractsdo not do justice to his fine, ho-
listic account.
17The exegeses of severalMelanesianistsare relevanthere, but I truncatethat chain of col-
laborativework in referringto one: J. Weiner (1993b)invokes a delightfulsuccession of resting
placesin his descriptionof the winged Foi pearlshellcapturingin hardenedform the life-giving
force of birds in flight, while certainshells set aside in houses immobilize the life-giving force
of shells in constantcirculation.
18 In a positive mode; negative modes would include uncontrolled flow or unproductive
blockageor obstruction(Taylorn.d).
19 However, in contrastto universesof kin where affines are alreadyconsanguines(see, for
instance,Kapadia[1994] on South India),for Euro-Americansthe possibilityis either rhetorical
or belongs to the class of bizarretruths.
20 Networks (in Latour'ssense) arise as a result of 'translation',that is, the mobilizationof
claims and interests by which people traverseor assemble components of their lives. While
Steve and his present wife try to 'treat'all the children equally, his mother-in-law cuts the
network: she ignores Steve's children from his earlier marriagesand gives treats only to her
daughter'schildren (Simpson 1994: 835).
21This observationderivesfrom Wagner's(1986) descriptionof contractionand expansionin
perceptualprocess. The figure of the father serves as a single 'iconic' image, while containing
specifiable,'symbolic',possibilitieswithin itself. These act as codes or referencepoints for the
image, but they alwaysadd up to less than the whole. I should note that in this work Wagner
is concernedwith the 'flow' of imagerywhich is 'stopped'by the specifyingpracticeof sym-
bolic reference.My focus here is with anotherside of that process:the endless abilityto create
more and more referencepoints, as in a narrative,or bring more and more elements into play,
which is 'stopped'by the singularityof the image as a particular,usableobject. Law (n.d.) ob-
serves that actor network theory createslinks in the very process of creatingobjects of study.
The 'objectof study' thus cuts potentialnetworks,by drawingthings to a particularencompass-
ing point or image.
REFERENCES
Universityof Cambridge,
of SocialAnthropology,
Department CB2 3Rf,
FreeSchoolLane, Cambridge,
U.K