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 THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY
DOMESTICATION

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of media domestication – the process of

appropriating new media and technology – and delves into the theoretical, conceptual and
social implications of the field’s advancement.
Combining the work of the long-established experts in the field with that of emerging
scholars, the chapters explore both the domestication concept itself and domestication pro-
cesses in a wide range of fields, from smartphones used to monitor drug use to the question
of time in the domestication of energy buildings. The international team of authors provide
an accessible and thorough assessment of key issues, themes and problems with and within
domestication research, and showcase the most important developments over the years.
This truly interdisciplinary collection will be an important resource for advanced under-
graduates, postgraduates and academic scholars in media, communication and cultural
studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural geography, design studies and social studies of
technology.

Maren Hartmann is a Professor of Communication and Media Sociology at Berlin

University for the Arts, Germany.
 THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF MEDIA
AND TECHNOLOGY
DOMESTICATION

Edited by Maren Hartmann

 Designed cover image: © SolStock / Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Maren Hartmann; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Maren Hartmann to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-032-18414-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-20918-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-26593-1 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003265931
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
 CONTENTS

List of contributors ix

“One Life Is Not Enough” – Another kind of introduction 1

Maren Hartmann

PART I
(Re-)thinking domestication 7
(Re-)thinking domestication: introduction 9
Sonia Livingstone

1 Domestication and personhood 15

Eric Hirsch

2 Domestication as user-led infrastructuring 29

Thomas Berker

3 Conceptualizing re-domestication: theoretical reflections and

empirical findings to a neglected concept 42
Corinna Peil and Jutta Röser

4 Making domestication research policy relevant 55

Carolina Martínez and Tobias Olsson

5 A dialogue on domestication 70
David Morley and Maren Hartmann

v
Contents

vi
 Contents

15 A journey from domestication approaches to practice-based theories 219

Mika Pantzar

16 The mutual domestication of users and algorithms: the case of Netflix 235
Ignacio Siles

PART IV
(Counter-)domesticating media and technologies 249
(Counter-)domesticating media and technologies: introduction 251
Shangwei Wu

17 Domesticating the domesticators: where have all the agents gone? 253
Maria Bakardjieva

18 Counter-domestication through infrastructural inversion: user

empowerment in digital platforms 266
Jo Pierson

19 Rooflessness running wild? Taming technologies, taming our fears 280

Maren Hartmann

20 Configuring the “Cuban Internet”: a networked domestication approach 296

Lorian Leong

21 Feeling good, feeling safe: domesticating phones and drugs in clubbing 313
Kristian Møller

PART V
Contextualising domestication? 327
Contextualising domestication? Introduction 329
Niklas Strüver

22 Understanding and resolving the “content-context conundrum” in

ICT domestication research 331
Yang Wang

23 Situational domestication: personal technology and public places 347

Ida Marie Henriksen

24 The digital detox camp: practices and motivations for reverse

domestication 361
Faltin Karlsen

vii
Contents

viii
 CONTRIBUTORS

Tem Frank Andersen is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University in the Department

of Communication and Psychology. Andersen’s research interests include digital leisure, user
studies and popular culture.

Kristine Ask is an Associate Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural

Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research explores
how new media technologies are made part of everyday life, and how this process can lead
to new, unexpected forms of use and meaning. With a particular interest for technologies
and topics dismissed as frivolous or trivial, Ask’s research highlights emergent user practices
and – communities of gamers and fans.

Maria Bakardjieva is a Professor and the current Chair in Communication and Media
Studies at the University of Calgary. Her research examines the social construction of the
Internet and the use of digital media in various cultural and practical contexts with a focus
on user agency, critical reflexivity and emancipation.

Will Balmford is a Learning Innovation Leader at Edrolo.

Thomas Berker is a Professor in Science and Technology Studies at NTNU’s Centre for
Technology and Society. Originally trained as a sociologist, his career started with studies
of Internet use in the 1990s. Since the early 2000s, he has first contributed to and later led
interdisciplinary research projects on technology use, design and participation – often in the
context of sustainability and the built environment.

Johanna L.H. Birkland is a Scholar and Consultant. She holds a PhD in Information
Studies (Syracuse University), an MS in Instructional Design (Syracuse University), an MS in
Organizational Communication (Ithaca College), and a BS in Biological Sciences (Cornell
University). Her research interests include studying the domestication of technologies, older
adults, and intergenerational communication.

ix
 List of contributors

Alex Borkowski is a PhD student in Communication & Culture at York University,

Toronto, where her research examines histories and politics of female-coded interfaces, as
well as sound and new media art practices. She holds an MA in Aural and Visual Cultures
from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and her writing has appeared in various
academic and arts publications. ORCID: 0000-0002-8309-3032.

Deborah Chambers is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Newcastle

University. Her research centres on the role of media technologies in the home; mobile
media; social media; and mediated intimacies. She has taught and researched in the UK and
Australia and her most recent books include Cultural Ideals of Home (Routledge, 2020) and
Changing Media, Homes and Households (Routledge, 2016).

Hugh Davies is a Curator and Researcher in the School of Media & Communication at
RMIT University.

Tricia Marjorie Fernandez is currently a Research Associate at the Singapore Management

University. She has worked in a variety of research settings which include market research
firms and academia. Her research interests range from cognitive neuroscience to the societal
impact of technology.

Leslie Haddon is a Senior Researcher and Part-time Lecturer in the Department of Media
and Communications at the LSE. His diverse research over the course of more than 30 years
has focused on the social shaping and consumption of ICTs, especially looking at studies of
domestication. For the last 15 years, his main focus has been on children’s digital experience,
including co-coordinating the EU Kids Online project. He has published numerous journal
publications, book chapters, encyclopaedia entries and books.

Hans Peter Hahn is a Professor of Ethnology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt/

Main. His research interests include material culture, crafts, consumption and globalisation.
In addition to international museum cooperation projects, he has conducted ethnographic
research on migration in West Africa as well as on the appropriation of consumer goods such
as mobile phones. During 2010–2019, he was the spokesperson of a DFG-funded research
training group on “Value and Equivalence of Material Objects.”

Maren Hartmann is a Professor in Media and Communication Sociology at Berlin

University of the Arts. Recent publications include The Routledge Handbook of Mobile Socialities
(Routledge, co-edited with Annette Hill and Magnus Andersson) and a special issue of Space
and Culture on “Gentrification and the right to the geomediatized city,” co-edited with
André Jansson. In 2019, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney; in 2023, she
is a visiting scholar at the University of Denver. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5140-6620.

Jo Helle-Valle is a Social Anthropologist and Professor in the Development Studies

Department at Oslo Metropolitan University. Fieldworks include Botswana, Uganda,
Ethiopia and Norway. His main research areas include media practices, gender, local politics
and economy, and theoretical issues related to the social sciences. Helle-Valle has served as a
Visiting Scholar at Harvard, Oxford, Simon Fraser University, University of Botswana and
Makerere University. He has – together with Ardis Storm-Mathisen – recently published an
anthology on media and development in Africa.

x
 List of contributors

Ida Marie Henriksen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of

Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(NTNU). She has been engaged in social-interaction, personal technology and public places
since 2012, and from 2018, she has been working on digitalization of the electric grid and
everyday life. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9906-1713.

Eric Hirsch is a Professor of Anthropology at Brunel University London. He has a

long-standing interest in the ethnography and history of Melanesia and is the author most
recently of Ancestral Presence: Cosmology and Historical Experience in the Papuan Highlands,
Routledge, 2021. His earlier research examined the relations between information and
communication technologies and the domestic sphere, resulting in the co-edited volume
with Roger Silverstone, Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces,
Routledge 1992. ORCID: 0000-0002-1690-9871.

Larissa Hjorth is a Distinguished Professor, Digital Ethnographer and Socially Engaged

Artist in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University.

Indigo Holcombe-James is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the ARC’s Centre of

Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society, RMIT. Indigo examines digital
transformation in cultural institutions, collaborating with over 100 sites to date.

Lars Bajlum Holmgaard Christensen holds a PhD from 2006 in Digital Media,
Communication & Culture from the University of Aalborg. The primary focus of his
research was the domestication of the interactive smart-TV. During his PhD, he was a Marie
Curie fellow at Dublin City University under the supervision of Pascal Preston. The fel-
lowship allowed him to participate in parts of the EMTEL research project. As the Head of
Research for New Media at the Danish School of Media and Journalism from 2008 to 2013,
Holmgaard Christensen has also worked directly with media professionals and from a media
ethnographic approach he has explored the impact of social media on journalism practice.
Today, he is an external lecturer in strategic media communication and management at
Copenhagen Business School and University of Southern Denmark.

Faltin Karlsen (PhD) is a Professor of Media Studies at Kristiania University College in

Oslo. His research interests concern media users, game culture, media discourses, intru-
sive media, digital detox, and media design. He has published in high-ranked international
media and communication journals and co-edited the book Transgression in Games and Play
( Jørgensen & Karlsen, MIT Press, 2018). He is currently part of the project Digitox, in
which he explores intrusive media design, media users, and the media industry.

Jenny Kennedy is a Senior Research Fellow in Media and Communication at RMIT

University and an ARC DECRA Fellow. She is an Associate Investigator in the ARC
Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Her research
examines shifts in digital technology practices against the context of rapid evolutions in digi-
tal infrastructures impacting digital inclusion, smart devices and automated decision-making
in the home.

Vera Klocke wrote her dissertation on the role of television in households with a schol-
arship from the Institute Villigst. Until recently, she was working as a Research Associate

xi
 List of contributors

on the topic of homelessness and digital media at the Berlin University of the Arts; now she
works as a freelance researcher, cultural producer and journalist.

Leah Jerop Komen is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication at Daystar

University, Kenya. Dr. Komen has researched and published on mobile telephony and devel-
opment in rural contexts in rural Kenya. Her research area is mobile communication and
development. She is keen on examining how mobile telephony is domesticated by users
to meet their everyday life, but also examines how development is contextualized in these
regions.

Lorian Leong is a Senior Product Leader with over a decade of experience in the tech
industry. Her work has taken her across Europe and Asia helping to build digital and hard-
ware products and evangelise user perspectives. In addition to industry work, she also
engages in media scholarship. Her current research focus explores technology in every-
day life, examining the cultures and publics engaged with information and communication
technologies with particular focus on the Internet, mobile phones, and smartphone apps.
ORCID: 0000-0001-7275-503X.

Sun Sun Lim is Vice President, Partnerships & Engagement and Professor of Communication
and Technology at Singapore Management University. She has researched and published
extensively on the social impact of technology including Transcendent Parenting - Raising
Children in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2020). She frequently offers her expert
commentary in international outlets including Wall Street Journal, Scientific American and
ChannelNewsAsia and writes a monthly TechTalk column in The Straits Times. She was a
Nominated Member of the 13th Parliament of Singapore and an honoree of the inaugural
Singapore 100 Women in Tech 2020 list. See www.sunsunlim.com.

Rich Ling (PhD, 1984, University of Colorado, Sociology) recently retired from the
Shaw Foundation Professor of Media Technology, at Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. He has also worked at Telenor, the Norwegian Telecommunication Operator.
For more than three decades, Ling has studied the social consequences of mobile com-
munication. He has studied its use in microcoordination, emergencies, its adoption by
teens, and its use by women and small-scale entrepreneurs in places such as Cote d’Ivoire,
Kenya, and Myanmar. His focus has been on how mobile telephony illuminates fundamen-
tal social forces such as strong-tie bonds and triadic interaction. Ling has written or edited
11 books and over 100 peer-reviewed papers/book chapters. He is the former head of the
ICA Mobile Communication Interest Group. He is an ICA Fellow, and a member of Det
Norske Vitenskaps Akademi (The Norwegian Academy of Science and Arts) and Academia
Europaea.

Sonia Livingstone FBA, OBE is a Professor of Social Psychology at the Department

of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political
Science. Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research exam-
ines how changing conditions of mediation reshape everyday practices and possibilities for
action. She has published 20 books including Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and
Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives. She directs the projects ‘Global Kids Online’
(with UNICEF) and the ‘Digital Futures Commission’ (with 5Rights Foundation). Since

xii
 List of contributors

founding the 33 country EU Kids Online network, Sonia has advised the UK government,
European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, OECD and UNICEF,
among others. See www.sonialivingstone.net.

Justine Lloyd is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Macquarie University. Recent publi-

cations include ‘The Non-Sexist City: Then and Now’ in the edited collection Contentious
Cities (Routledge). In 2019, she was a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology at the
University of Alberta. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5822-315X.

Carolina Martínez is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at

Malmö University, Sweden. Her research interests concern children and digital media and
issues related to media literacy and media education.

Kristian Møller works as an Assistant Professor at Roskilde University. He researches how

LGBTQ intimacies are mediated, platformed and infrastructured, drawing mainly on queer
theory, affect, and assemblage. He has published on dating/hook-up apps, the mediated
negotiation of non-monogamous relationships, sexualized drug use on video conferencing
services like Zoom, the algorithmic production of porn genres and sexual publics, as well as
digital mobile ethnography and ethics. Twitter @kristianmj.

David Morley is the Emeritus Professor of Communications in the Department of Media

Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, London. His early work in audience
studies included Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, Routledge 1992. His more recent
work in cultural geography has included Communications and Mobility, Wiley Blackwell, 2017.

Stephen J. Neville is a Research Associate at the Infoscape Lab and a SSHRC-funded PhD
student in the joint-program of Communication and Culture at York and Toronto Metropolitan
Universities in Toronto, Canada. His master’s research on privacy and surveillance issues
of smart speaker technology was awarded the 2019 Beaverbrook Prize by the Canadian
Communication Association. Working at the intersection of media, sound, and surveillance
studies, his research has been published in various journals. ORCID: 0000-0001-7731-7418.

Iohanna Nicenboim is an Interaction Designer and Researcher, originally from the

Global South and now working across Europe. With a background in new media and indus-
trial design, Iohanna’s research investigates human-technology relationships in everyday life
through design. Within a posthumanist design orientation, she creates poetical design prov-
ocations that both problematize traditional frameworks and materialize alternatives. Before
starting her PhD in human-AI relations at Delft University of Technology, Iohanna had
worked as a curator and design researcher on various projects in the areas of critical design,
digital fabrication, city making, and participatory design. Website: http://iohanna.com/.

James Odhiambo Ogone is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Languages, Literary, and
Communication Studies at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology
( JOOUST), Kenya. He obtained his PhD in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the
University of Potsdam, Germany, in 2015. Ogone has research interests in the discipline of
Literary and Cultural Studies with several publications on the contextual domestication of
technologies in African societies.

xiii
 List of contributors

Tobias Olsson is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies. He made his first con-
tributions to domestication research in the late 1990s, and he has ever since made continuous
returns to the field. He currently serves as the Associate Dean of Research at the Faculty of
Education and Society, Malmö University.

Mika Pantzar (PhD) is a Professor (Consumer citizenship) in Consumer Society

Research Centre, University of Helsinki. His academic work has focused on various differ-
ent themes, e.g. domestication of technology, rhythm analysis and evolutionary econom-
ics His current research interests focus on data economy and the ways big data and large
data sets of various forms (human physiology, netnography, social media, etc.) are used in
consumer research. Mika Pantzar has published articles widely within consumer research,
design and technology studies, rhetoric of economic policy, food and future studies and
systems research.

Corinna Peil (PhD) is a Media and Communication Scholar at the Department of

Communication Studies at the University of Salzburg in Austria. In her research, she is
interested in the mediatization and digitalization of everyday life and related processes of
social change.

Jo Pierson (PhD) is full professor of responsible digitalisation and head of the School
of Social Sciences at Hasselt University in Belgium (research group R4D - Research for
Digitalisation, Diversity & Democracy). He is also professor of media and communication
studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School at the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel in Belgium (research group imec-SMIT).

Ingrid Richardson is a Professor and Digital Ethnographer in the School of Media &
Communication at RMIT University.

Jutta Röser is a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Münster. Her

research interests include the mediatization of everyday life, audience and reception research,
media sociology, and domestication. In a long-term research project, she dealt with “The
Mediatized Home in Transition” in Germany.

Marianne Ryghaug is a Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Norwegian

University of Science and Technology where she leads the research group on Energy, Climate
and Environment. Her research interest is in the interface between public participation and
engagement, innovation and technology development and energy and climate policy.

Ignacio Siles is Professor of Media and Technology Studies in the School of Communication
at Universidad de Costa Rica. He is the author of Living with Algorithms. Agency and User
Culture in Costa Rica (MIT Press, 2023), A Transnational History of the Internet in Central
America: Networks, Integration, and Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and Networked
Selves: Trajectories of Blogging in the United States and France (Peter Lang, 2017).

Knut H. Sørensen is Professor Emeritus of Science and Technology Studies (STS), a ffiliated
with the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU). He has published extensively in social studies of technol-
ogy, including information and communication technologies, sustainable energy, and public

xiv
 List of contributors

engagement of technology. His current research focuses on universities, including gender

issues and interdisciplinarity.

Ardis Storm-Mathisen is a Sociologist and Professor at the Faculty of Education, Department

of Early childhood Education and former Research Professor at Consumption Research
Norway (SIFO), Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research has focused on everyday life of
families and children, uses of digital global media and infrastructures (digital consumption) and
on developmental and educational issues relating to identity, inequality, risks and vulnerabili-
ties. She conducted research in ‘The New Media Practices in Africa’ project (from Centre for
Gender Research, University of Oslo and as a visiting researcher at the University of Botswana
2015–2019). She has directed three larger projects funded by the Research Council of Norway
about household’s media consumption, digital vulnerabilities and risks management strategies.

Niklas Strüver is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Siegen, Germany. His research
concerns itself with the socio-technical construction processes of voice assistants. In general,
his interests are the impacts digital devices have on the different involved parties and how
the process of technology development is, in turn, shaped by the concerned entities, their
background and relationships.

Peter Vistisen is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University in the Department of

Communication and Psychology. In his research, Peter studies the use of digital media used
to facilitate better communication of complex information, as well as a design material on its
own premises. His passion is to help and support the further development of the intersection
between media and design research by doing research which promotes more critical audi-
ences and users across sectors.

David Waldecker is a Sociologist and Post-doc at the Cooperative Research Centre “Media
of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen, Germany. His current research deals with the
domestication of intelligent personal assistants and smart speakers and the concurrent sur-
veillance and data practices. He has also published on music making in the recording studio,
Theodor W. Adorno, methods of qualitative research, and digital surveillance.

Yang Wang is a Research Fellow in Asia Research Institute at National University of

Singapore (NUS). She received her PhD in Communications and New Media from NUS.
Her research interests include ICT domestication, transnational communication and digital
transformation in the workplace. She has published in leading international journals.

Shangwei Wu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at

Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. His current research considers the use of media tech-
nologies in social relationships, and he has published several peer-reviewed journal articles
on mobile dating applications. Shangwei completed a PhD in Media and Communication at
Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s
degrees from Renmin University of China.

xv
 “ONE LIFE IS NOT ENOUGH”1 –
ANOTHER KIND OF
INTRODUCTION
Maren Hartmann

I am writing these words, having just learnt that I will not grow old or indeed that I might
not live much longer (the length of time for my potential survival is yet undetermined). I was
diagnosed with cancer three years ago, underwent a whole range of treatments and have
now been told that the cancer has metastasized into various organs. This is possibly the worst
possible outcome and I am currently struggling to come to terms with this news.
Usually, this would not be the place to write about what is deemed to be a personal mat-
ter (and one that concerns my body). Nonetheless, I am writing about it here. This is partly
an egocentric move: writing helps me to keep myself busy in times of uncertainty when
thoughts are often rather negative; writing about the cancer helps me to find relief, i.e. to
have an outlet for these as yet unsorted feelings. It might also be the last introduction I write,
the last book I publish. And it would feel weird not to acknowledge this mixture of emotions
accompanying this writing process. On top of this, I simply have difficulties concentrating
on purely academic thoughts at the moment.
There is, however, also a content-reason: my current emotional rollercoaster closely
relates to the concept under scrutiny in this book: to the idea of domestication as a form
of appropriation. I am currently trying to appropriate this cancer, the process of dying, to
‘make it my own.’ And much of this has to do with ontological insecurity but also with the
question of home and processes of homing. It is indeed a domestication turned upside down (but
not reverse domestication): I am trying to tame something that I am not only afraid of, but
despise (hate even?), that I want to get rid of as soon as possible and as much as possible.
I am trying to tame an enemy inside myself – an enemy that will – in one form or another –
accompany me for the rest of my life. All I can do is try to keep the wild beast at bay as long
as I can. I am sure that there are approaches around somewhere that ask you to accept your
illness, to learn to not see it as a problem, but as a natural part of life. Maybe I will eventually
turn to these. At the moment, they are not mine. Hence, my current processes of appropri-
ation feel rather like a constant battle – a battle that I will ultimately loose. Battle, however,
is also a difficult metaphor when one can never win.
Maybe labelling this as a process of domestication is a bit far-fetched. Maybe I am trying
to create links that do not really exist – maybe it is an attempt at making sense of something
that is ultimately senseless. Maybe some of you will find this inappropriate in an academic
setting, overly dramatic. But in times like these (by which I mean not only my personal

DOI: 10.4324/9781003265931-1 1
 Maren Hartmann

trials, but also the state of the world), being dramatic might turn into a new quality. I feel
as if we (including myself ) have grown to become complacent all too easily, clinging on
to a somewhat bearable (and often comfortable or even luxurious) status quo. And again,
ontological security comes to mind. I have repeated this maybe once too often, but I do
think that Andrew Feenberg’s early critique of the question of security within the domesti-
cation framework (albeit mentioned only in passing) manages to capture the core quality of
the idea of ontological security as well as its main problem (see Feenberg, 1999). The word
security already implies that something is known, is comforting, not threatening or new.
And this appeals to a core human need: to have a reliable world around one in order to live.
While temporary disturbances of reliability are not problematic (or even desired – see, for
example, the desire for adventure holidays), longer-term disturbances (in the form of war,
displacement, but also unemployment, homelessness, etc.) tend to leave negative traces in
people’s mental health and affect their lives.
Living through a time where all my unspoken expectations of life (that I would grow old,
see my children grow up, write another book, teach more seminars, etc.) are turned upside
down, where all of these things might still happen to some extent or maybe not at all – the
question of ontological (in)security is suddenly central. As Giddens (1984: 50) underlines:

ordinary day-to-day life - in greater or less degree according to context and the vagaries
of individual personality - involves an ontological security expressing an autonomy of bodily
control within predictable routines. The psychological origins of ontological security are to
be found in basic anxiety-controlling mechanisms.

But Giddens also outlines critical situations, where the usual protection mechanisms are
simply not enough anymore. His examples are definitely of a more extreme kind than what
I am currently encountering. They cannot be compared to an illness since they concern
imprisonment, life in concentration camps, war situations and other such extreme examples.
Nonetheless, when he writes that the “swamping of habitual modes of activity by anxiety
which cannot be adequately contained by the basic security system is specifically a feature
of critical situations” (Giddens, 1984: 64), this rings incredibly true for my current situation
(at least in the first few days after the initial diagnosis). Anxiety swamped my habitual modes
of activity; it was extremely hard to uphold these. At the same time, they were one of the
few elements of calm in the sea of storm of the initial crisis. Preparing the kids’ lunch boxes
in the morning was soothing. I did not have to use my brain very much but could rely on
my body’s memory in performing this task. I had a purpose. The routines kicked in – major
crisis or not.
And yes, one part of the emotions of the last few days has been the anticipation of the loss
of such routines in the upcoming months/years. There is an anxiety that I will not be able to
perform just such tasks anymore (and be it for particular periods of time only). The reliability
of these routines has been soothing, but it has also been attacked. This causes further fear.
The darkest moments, however, have been not so much caused by the anticipation of loss
of this kind. This massive anxiety (mixed with a diffuse anger and major regret of sorts) is
caused not so much by the anxiety of missing out on routines to come, but on missing out on
all the (sometimes tiny) new things that are meant to take place in the future. My ontological inse-
curity is less based in the now than in a future that will not happen. The routine expectation
of gradual change is disturbed. Usually, it is precisely the (boring) ability to fill the kids’ lunch
boxes every morning, which is related to their growth and their ability to bring home news
of their small steps in the discovery of the world when they return with the empty boxes.

2
 “One Life Is Not Enough”

The reliability of the known allows a slow entry into the unknown – or, as Giddens states,
“the generation of feelings of trust in others, as the deepest lying element of the basic security
system, depends substantially upon predictable and caring routines established by parental
figures” (1984: 50).
Suddenly, however, there is too much change with too little expectation of a future. Or,
in Giddens’ words: “Ontological security is protected by such devices but maintained in a
more fundamental way by the very predictability of routine, something which is radically
disrupted in critical situations” (ibid.). To work against the ensuing insecurity, I need to
concentrate on the here and now. This is a particular form of ontological insecurity but
nonetheless it has a similar effect to those mentioned above.
In a moment like this, one does not need a reminder about non-media-centric approaches
to the social world – the media immediately disappear from sight. But slowly, they do return,
find their niche, offering their services. My particular (and then again not very individual)
approach was the use of my mobile phone to call people closest to me, to tell them ‘my news.’
Another aspect of media use was information searches about metastasized cancer performed
rather frantically after the initial diagnosis. I also wrote and received many messages on
diverse channels – plus I began using social media erratically (and sparsely) to communicate
about this weird state of being (and stopped doing so very soon after). Podcasts in particular
have been soothing and liberating.
Nonetheless, while cancer and its treatment have become as mediatized as other aspects
of the social world, they, too, are under the spell of the popular. The consequences of this
popularization can only be understood if a wider net is drawn and regarded. One example
thereof: I only now discovered a divide in the breast cancer community – between the
so-called survivors (and all those aspiring to become one) and those ‘on the other side.’
Hence, the popular media depiction tends to be of survivors – or those who tragically died.
It leaves out those who struggle over months or years, in major treatment, knowing that
they will die. Those who know that they will not survive, but nonetheless live an everyday
life, albeit one that has all the characteristics of a chronical (and ultimately terminal) illness.
These tend to be ignored. This can easily be explained through ontological security since
this kind of depiction would not necessarily aid those who are trying to overcome their fears
and turn into survivors. This leads to misrepresentations of the illness – as well as to attempts
to overcome these. Both, however, are not media-phenomena – they are only played out
most visibly (and therefore observably) in the media. Their origin and the emotional rela-
tions though, are played out elsewhere, lived in the quotidian lives of chronically ill patients.

The book
I wrote these words above shortly after I first heard my diagnosis. A few weeks have passed
since; time that I spent to adjust to the news, time with the family, with friends, on holiday
(yet another interesting concept), receiving treatment, losing my hair. The soothing (and
threatening) nature of the everyday, of domestic routines, which was indicated above, has
indeed helped to reduce the anxiety a bit. After all, I was in a position of ontological secu-
rity when the news struck and I have since managed to rebuild some of it. This is, I know,
only a temporary relief. The monster is still lurking in the corner (or shall I say inside
myself ?). One strategy to keep it at bay at least a bit is to keep starting new things, i.e. to
not let the idea of closure cover up everything. Which is why I have gone parachuting and
started to sing in a choir. Which is also why I am hoping to continue to work at least to
some extent.

3
 Maren Hartmann

This is the point that brings me back to the book. The idea of it was actually born in
my initial phase of cancer in 2020. At some point, I was trying to find new domestication
material for teaching. This in itself was fairly easy – many journal articles with diverse foci
provided an impression of a lively research culture around the concept, ranging from toys to
finances (Brause & Blank, 2020; Brito, Dias & Oliveira, 2019; Fox, 2019; Lehtonen, 2017;
Leong, 2020; Lim & Wang, 2021). What was missing, however, was an edited collection on
the topic (or books in general).2 It seemed that nothing much in this format had appeared
since we published the book on Domestication of Media and Technology in 2006 (Berker et al.,
2006).3 This seemed a pity, given all the interesting new material out there and the liveliness
of the debates. Ultimately, it appeared as if the concept was still very useful, wherefore I
started a call for papers inside and outside the networks I assumed had an interest in the topic.
The response was extremely delightful. I am grateful to all those who responded positively –
including those who could not fit it in at the time but still found words of encouragement
for the endeavour. I am also grateful for the patience of all those who contributed – first, the
pandemic slowed the process down; then, my illness struck again shortly before the submis-
sion date. More than that, though, I am grateful for the content.
While I leave the summaries of the contributions to the introductions to each section (an
additional thanks is due to these six authors), I would briefly like to highlight a few points.
Many of the here collected contributions underline what I stated above in relation to my
personal story: there seems to be a clear need for routines and conventions but this need has
an ambivalent relationship to conservation and newness. Additionally, digital media also
tend to play an ambivalent role therein, opening avenues while also reinforcing or sometimes
threatening the existing. The role for the social within individual media use is a battle field
galore.
Quite a few contributions additionally underline the need to draw the net wider, to
critically reflect on the role of the content producers and those that claim to ‘only’ provide
the underlying networks. These networks have grown exponentially in recent years – and
so has the need for an inclusion of the infrastructure and production side in user stud-
ies. It has become increasingly difficult to concentrate on users’ appropriation, when any
kind of appropriation (apart from radical non-use) is also feeding the larger structures of
exploitation. Plus, thanks to mediatization processes everywhere, it has increasingly become
difficult not to use ‘media.’ Many ideas of emancipation have therefore become problematic
or at least highly more complex. This is in stark contrast to the early days of the Internet,
when new forms of public spheres were hoped for, where the emphasis was on the possibili-
ties of individual expression. They, too, have become a reality and form our media uses. But
the exponential growth of possibilities has been accompanied by an equally large growth of
exploitation and risk. That is why I am very fond of one of the contributions’ title: the dark
side of domestication. Nonetheless, the book addresses these just as much as it shows that
individual appropriation processes do still take place – in often unexpected ways, in many
places and in diverse social formations. These underline, once again, that ‘the media’ does
neither exist nor simply dominate. But just as much as the media landscape has changed
since the domestication concept was first developed, some of the conceptual aspects remain
in need of constant checking and adaptation. Maybe even the idea of ontological security
cannot easily be upheld anymore?
Let me add one final thought here. While searching for new work on domestication,
I could not help but notice that the particular notion of ontological security was used exten-
sively in the field of international relations, where it is applied to larger social constructs such
as nations. While I cannot do justice to this debate here, I found their emphasis on processes

4
 “One Life Is Not Enough”

of securitization quite helpful, seen as reactions to more or less recent developments.

Underlying this is the perception that “ontological insecurity has become part of the norm
of living in the Global North, often designated as a zone of security” (Wright, Haastrup &
Guerrina, 2021: 2). In times like the current, this is not necessarily limited to certain parts
of the world. This type of insecurity is “fundamentally destabilising and challenging estab-
lished worldviews, routines and core conceptions of self hood” as Christopher Browning
outlines (2018: 337).
The international relations studies literature adds one core element to the existing media
studies debate, i.e. “notions of societal trust” (Browning, 2018: 337). Worldviews, routines
and conceptions of self hood (ibid.) are all part of ontological security (and have thus been
reflected upon in the domestication literature). The question of societal trust, however, fea-
tures much less often. Browning has studied this in relation to Brexit, interviewing those
people who had voted to remain. If “such background anxieties” are indeed declared to be
“a fundamental part of the human condition,” (Browning, 2018: 3378) the question is how
these anxieties are generally pushed away in everyday life (Browning calls it ‘bracketed
out’), letting us live our lives, i.e. continue the everyday. This is something I currently ask
myself every day but it could also be asked about media use: what is its role when ontolog-
ical insecurity on a societal level is rising. How much can we still appropriate when we are
actually caught between the possibility (and responsibility?) to produce content (and contact)
and the feeling of being exploited by larger systems? What role does ‘society’ play in this,
when it is not clear what society consists of? I think the concept of domestication is helpful
in answering these questions, as long as it is regarded as a process, a construct that needs to
be questioned and adapted. I hope that the contributions to this book deliver some building
blocks with which this construct can be rebuilt. And I wish us all that we can still bracket
out some of our anxieties for some time yet to come.

Notes
1 This is the translation of a German book title – Ein Leben ist nicht genug – by Maxie Wander,
who died of breast cancer (Wander, 2007).
2 It is interesting to note that a couple of recent books develop their own concept of media domesti-
cation, which each takes the metaphor of animals, feeding as well as agricultural selective breeding
quite literal (Kempt, 2020; Stanfill, 2019).
3 One possible exception is Vincent and Haddon (2018).

References
Berker, T., Hartmann, M., Punie, Y. and Ward, K. (eds.) (2006) Domestication of Media and Technology,
Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Brause, S.R. and Blank, G. (2020) ‘Externalized domestication: Smart speaker assistants, networks and
domestication theory,’ Information, Communication & Society, 23 (5), 751–763. https://doi.org/10.10
80/1369118X.2020.1713845.
Brito, R., Dias, P. and Oliveira, G. (2019) ‘The domestication of smart toys: Perceptions and prac-
tices of young children and their parents,’ in G. Mascheroni and D. Holloway (eds.) The Internet of
Toys - Practices, Affordances and the Political Economy of Children’s Smart Play, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 111–133.
Browning, C.S. (2018) ‘“Brexit.” Existential anxiety and ontological (in)security,’ European Security,
27 (3), 336–355. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2018.1497982.
Feenberg, A. (1999) Questioning Technology, London & New York: Routledge.
Fox, S. (2019) ‘Trying times: Domestication of healthcare technologies amidst challenging dynamic
contexts,’ Social Theory & Health, 17, 291–306. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-019-00107-y

5
 Maren Hartmann

Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Kempt, H. (2020) Chatbots and the Domestication of AI - A Relational Approach, Cham: Palgrave/Springer
Nature.
Lehtonen, T.-K. (2017) ‘Domesticating insurance, financializing family lives: The case of private
health insurance for children in Finland,’ Cultural Studies, 31 (5), 685–711. https://doi.org/10.1080
/09502386.2017.1328516.
Leong, L. (2020) ‘Domesticating algorithms: An exploratory study of Facebook users in Myanmar,’
The Information Society, 36 (2), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2019.1709930.
Lim, S.S. and Wang, Y. (2021) ‘Lessons from our living rooms: Illuminating lockdowns with
technology domestication insights,’ Journal of Children and Media, 15 (1), 17–20. https://doi.org/10.
1080/17482798.2020.1858909.
Stanfill, M. (2019) Exploiting Fandom. How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans, Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press.
Vincent, J. and Haddon, L. (2018) Smartphone Cultures, London: Routledge.
Wander, M. (2007) Ein Leben ist nicht genug, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Wright, K.A.M., Haastrup, T. and Guerrina, R. (2021) ‘Ontological (in)security and Covid-19:
Reimagining crisis leadership in UK higher education,’ Critical Studies on Security. https://doi.org/
10.1080/21624887.2021.1978648

6
 PART I

(Re-)thinking domestication
 (Re-)thinking domestication
Introduction

Sonia Livingstone

Over three decades ago, Roger Silverstone, David Morley, Andrea Dahlberg and I wrote:

It is in the notion (and the practices) of domestication that we think the two debates
(about the future of the family and the future/impact of technology) meet: in the sphere
of domestic consumption about which we know so very little.
(1989: 4)

The intersection of family, technology and future remains a preoccupation in academic,

policy and public debates. The nature of both ‘the family’ and ‘technology’ has evolved
through the vicissitudes of late modernity, and certainly, now we know much more about
them. Over this period, domestication research has broadened to encompass spheres beyond
the moral economy of the family and home, in some respects merging with other fields –
media and communication studies, cultural studies, consumption studies, science and tech-
nology studies, digital anthropology and more. Common across these fields is a concern
to recognise the actions of the everyday public within larger processes of power – not to
celebrate or exaggerate their effects but, as an intellectual and critical commitment, to
acknowledge and document the nature and creative or resistant potential of these actions
while simultaneously uncovering how they are socially shaped, given political-economic
interests and constraints.
Domestication refers to a set of processes positioned between the past and the future, for
the very meaning of change is articulated by looking back to how things were (for, at least,
the past is known, insofar as it is remembered) and forward to what they might become
(which, the future being unknown and unknowable, attract often-impossible hopes and
fears). Decades after the original formulation, I heard again from families I interviewed for
‘Parenting for a Digital Future’ (Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020) how society’s heightened
attention to digital technologies tends to channel and crystallise popular understanding of
change itself. Whether through nostalgia for lost traditions or sci-fi imaginaries of things to
come or in other ways, people mobilise symbolic, emotional and material resources about
the past and future to face the ever-changing demands of their present circumstances. In so
doing, they make and remake the meaning of ‘family’ and ‘technology,’ as the six chapters in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003265931-3 9
 Sonia Livingstone

this section explore, while also taking domestication theory in new directions, as befits our
fractured and challenging times.
Acknowledging the traditional definition of domestication as the transformative process
whereby information and communication technologies gain meaning and value by being
appropriated within the moral economy of the household, Hirsch attends to the comple-
mentary process by which people are transformed through the relations they form with
technologies. The nexus of relationships we are all embedded in now includes relationships
with and, I suggest, through technologies. Recalling the history of the domestication of
plants and livestock, Hirsch reminds us of the dynamic that holds people meaningfully
within their domestic contexts: not only do we try to ‘tame’ our environment to suit our
needs and interests but we also dance to its (animate or inanimate) tune. In domesticating
technology, we too are domesticated; thus, our personhood – our social, relational, embed-
ded self – is transformed. He illustrates his argument by noting how text messaging was
initially feared by parents for embedding their children in unknown relationships yet, later,
encouraged by parents to ensure that their children adapt and fit in with the social group:
“it was not that the technology needed domesticating, rather the children needed to be
‘domesticated’ in relation to using the technology” – and thus their personhood is rendered
normative.
Once technologies are domesticated and taken for granted in everyday life, Berker argues,
collectively, they become or contribute to infrastructures – in our homes and in society. The
past three or four decades have witnessed the transition from domesticating wild technologies
entering our homes to living with (or, as Deuze (2012) would say, in) media. Today’s digital
infrastructures are not only taken for granted but they blur home and work (as highlighted
in remote working practices during the COVID-19 pandemic); they are increasingly per-
sonalised (now mediated by the actions of algorithms in response to dynamically produced
micro-segmentations of the population); they have become ubiquitous (to the point where
the public has had to give up on its beloved panic about screen time, and where researchers
can no longer count hours of digital activity as indicative of anything).
Infrastructures necessitate a new kind of ‘work,’ Berker argues. From their users, this
work involves maintaining, repairing and micro-managing the socio-technological infra-
structures that underpin our lives. For domestication researchers, too, the work is not over,
for we must make these infrastructures visible, re-wilding them to recognise and critique
their ‘imagined’ or ‘inscribed users’ and trace their social consequences for actual users.
Berker here highlights a tension in the analysis of domestication in everyday life (or, in
Habermas’ terms, the lifeworld) between Marx’s productive and estranged forms of labour,
the latter being exploited by the system world. This raises questions about other parts of
the circuit of culture – the domination of digital platforms in the most valuable global
companies, for example, or the through-going mediation (and platformisation) not only of
everyday life but also of democracy, commerce and international relations.
The value of the concept of infrastructure is that it encompasses all of this and more,
crucially recognising that behind the devices, networks and apps that the public engages
with as end-user is a complex global ecosystem of cables, cloud services, data brokers, stan-
dards bodies, digital business-to-business services and so forth. I am reminded of the par-
allel debate in audience studies over whether to recognise the audience’s work in making
media meaningful as agency (Katz, 1996) or alienated (Andrejevic, 2002). There is no neat
answer to be had: as Silverstone et al. (1989: 96) concluded in that original statement about
domestication, written by way of preparation for the empirical work on ‘The Household
Uses of Information and Communication Technologies’ project, consumption is inherently

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 (Re-)thinking domestication: introduction

political, for “the commodity, its circulation and its consumption, is the focus for a struggle
over its meaning, a struggle which is the expression of the different interests of those who
are engaged in the consumption process.” But the outcome of the struggle varies according
to the context and its defining influences.
Moreover, we need to grasp the wider circuit of culture to understand, for instance,
Hirsch’s argument that technologies “are person-like in many ways: they summon inter-
action and communication.” How can technologies ‘summon’ responses from their users,
domesticating them to suit the technology, using rather than being used by them? To answer
this, we need to examine not only user practices and the cultural contexts in which they are
embedded but also technological affordances and the economic contexts that shape the work
of businesses, designers, developers, marketers, regulators and more (Mansell & Silverstone,
1996). Consider the example of notifications. For users, these generate a form of sociality
that embeds them in a network of obligations. Yet, for businesses, they contribute to a mar-
keting strategy that deploys dark patterns to monetise user attention. Such considerations
lead Morley to critique the concept of consumer choice, which, he contends, explicitly
or implicitly leads some empirical research on domestication to overstate an individualised
notion of user agency. Here, it is helpful to recall Bakardjieva’s (2005) nuanced framing of
user agency within critical and cultural theories of power.
Andersen and Vistisen pursue the question of domestication theory’s relation to power in
exploring what they call the ‘dark side’ of domestication, referring to people’s hyperfocus
on technology and fear of missing out. Returning our attention to users’ everyday experi-
ences, they highlight the existence of a liminal space between the public and private spheres,
which they describe as an emergent space of reflexivity regarding the very process of domes-
ticating technology. This is driven by the tensions within the household that impede any
consensus in ‘household’ domestication, often centred on generational differences or even
conflicts, though gendered tensions have long mattered too. In what Andersen and Vistisen
see as a historical reversal, social media initially developed to promote social belonging have
come to undermine it, resulting in a degree of everyday discomfort which drives ‘reflexive
domestication’ towards, for example, digital detox strategies, or a heightened awareness of
the risks of social media visibility. The result, they argue, is not only caution and anxiety but
also a reflexive awareness that the moral economy of the household has its limits.
The notion of re-domestication is helpful here, as set out by Peil and Röser, who observe
that technology may first be domesticated in one way (or at one time or context) and
then differently. We could think of re-domestication as a process driven by biographical
developments – think of a student taking the TV set from their bedroom in the family home
to their student residence and then, later perhaps, to a house shared with friends: at each
point, the TV set changes its meaning, and is (re)positioned within different social practices.
Peil and Röser explore the transition to parenthood – an interesting moment not only in
the family’s life but in the re-domestication of domestic technologies to suit new times and
enable new possibilities. Looking beyond individual or family biographies to the history of
technologies, one can imagine other forms of re-domestication.
Consider the example of text messaging. This was first appropriated by early adopter
adults, proud possessors of expensive mobile technology. It was then taken up by (Western)
youth en masse for peer-to-peer chat. Then, it was reappropriated by the world’s poor (in the
West and the global South) for low-bandwidth communication. Now it is used primarily by
companies for marketing and business-to-consumer messaging, while young and old have
moved for their ’real’ communication to social media. Each of these moments of domesti-
cation has rightly been analysed for its distinctive motives, meanings and history. What the

11
 Sonia Livingstone

question of re-domestication adds, as I understand it, is the question of whether and how
each moment bears a relation to the other, perhaps even incorporating and extending what
went before.
Again, it seems crucial to interrogate the relation between domestication and innovation
in the circuit of culture. For instance, in their first case study, Peil and Röser document
the domestic history of the internet from when it was first given a special place in the
household – I recall interviewing children using a connected computer in the niche under
the staircase. Then, they suggest, the internet was re-domesticated as not distinct from but
now embedded in the household’s everyday life – perhaps on a laptop in the kitchen or the
desktop perched at the end of the dining table. Most recently, the internet has once again
been re-domesticated as mobile, personalised and omnipresent. This history certainly cap-
tures the feel of many domestication studies, inviting analysis of household tensions (recall
when the computer was placed in the smallest room, newly dubbed ‘the office’ and coded
‘male’ or ‘adult’; Livingstone, 1992). How shall we determine whether socio-cultural shifts
drive these processes of re-domestication or, rather, technological and business innovation
(for example, in the development of wireless routers and laptop computers)?
I am reminded of the days when, in the late twentieth century, television was talked of as a
‘push’ technology (sometimes called a ‘sit back’ technology by marketers), while the internet
was a ‘pull’ (or ‘sit forward’) technology, heralded for its potential to activate users to make
choices about what to see or who to reach out to. Today, of course, the situation is reversed,
as television viewers face many choices among broadcast, catch-up and streaming services,
while internet users – so it is said – scroll mindlessly through social media feeds algorith-
mically tailored to sustain their attention. However, domestication (and re-domestication)
research complicates this historical shift, reminding us that even the audiences of old engaged
with television’s then-limited content offer in myriad ways, according to their diverse needs
and interests. Furthermore, while today’s television audience are indeed offered a cornuco-
pia of content enabling a highly personalised experience, many nonetheless seek a common
experience by accepting what is ‘pushed’ towards them (such as ‘what’s trending’). My point
is that a critical analysis of the power dynamics between the technological offer and use
cultures is vital to understanding the meanings and practices that shape our everyday lives.
Regarding this larger project, Martìnez and Olsson usefully argue that domestication
research has taken unto itself the task of providing a critical corrective to the technological
determinism endemic not only to theory but also to policy. For example, domestication
research generally shows socio-technical change to be evolutionary rather than revolution-
ary. It excels at countering the hyperbole of techno-panics with solid evidence of moderate
rather than catastrophic effects on everyday life, these also being diverse rather than mono-
lithic precisely because they are significantly shaped by both user agency and the different
structures and practices of everyday life. In short, domestication research has inserted a vital
pause between innovation and intervention. When it comes to policymaking, the focus of
their chapter, it must be acknowledged that, if we don’t know what an innovation means
till we have researched how it is domesticated in context, policymakers must wait for the
research findings (fund them, even!) before intervening.
They share three case studies of domestication research that found a policy audience, and
it is interesting to consider what they have in common. Each sought to represent ‘voices from
below’ to those in power – explaining to policymakers how encouragement to get connected
was experienced as pressure by working-class families, explaining to school administration
the missed opportunities of locking up students’ mobile phones during class, explaining to
government how grandchildren can indeed help their grandparents to gain digital skills

12
 (Re-)thinking domestication: introduction

but making this policy perpetuates inequalities also, as not all elderly people have willing
grandchildren living nearby with time to commit. Since domestication research generally
focuses on the quotidian, private practices in domestic spaces, and since it seeks out ‘ordinary’
populations for study, attending to their diversity and differences, it is surely well-positioned
to speak truth to power on behalf of those whose voices often go unheard. From my policy-
relevant research with children, I have learned from the world of child rights that such work
brings its ethical obligations: to co-design research with those being represented, to find
ways to include their voices and their recommendations in policy briefings, and to feedback
to them the response from policymakers, including news of beneficial (or other) outcomes.
It will be apparent that because domestication unfolds over years, even decades, there
is welcome attention to history and theory in the chapters in this section. They insist on
recognising the complex co-evolution of technologies and socio-economic forces shaping
everyday life, mapping these in interesting ways onto the biographies and generational shifts
of those we research. Concerned that much media research has become ahistorical, obsessed
with the present and content to wave a hand at ‘the past’ without serious examination of
either continuities or historical complexities, Morley welcomes domestication research’s
attention to history. In interrogating the different histories we tell, he explores how we
find ourselves – as we must – also adopting a non-media-centric approach to domestication.
Although researchers focus their immediate gaze on domestic practices around technologies,
both the explanations and the social consequences of such practices often lie elsewhere,
in the tensions and struggles in the wider culture. Morley’s conversation with Hartmann
encompasses a range of social consequences of domestication, spanning the home (includ-
ing the design of sofas for shared viewing, the loss of privacy from ubiquitous surveillance,
and the impact of home working during the pandemic) and the globe (where globalisation
demands our attention not only to satellite networks but also to the flows of container ship-
ping vital to long-distance supply chains).
Their discussion also troubles domestication theory’s somewhat ‘cosy’ focus on the
domestic by drawing attention to those who have no home – Hartmann has researched the
homeless (or the ‘roofless’ as she terms them, for some can find a ‘home’ in places that lack a
conventional roof ) and Morley discusses immigrants who live between homes or divorced
from their home of origin or making efforts to establish a new home. In short, people create
opportunities for ontological security in both likely and unlikely places while facing its lim-
its, often due to circumstances not of their making. Once again, we find ourselves debating
the extent to which people’s actions (whether at home, outside the home or without a home)
alter or disrupt established power at key points of articulation (representation, consumption,
identity) in the circuit of culture.

References
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Bakardjieva, M. (2005) ‘Conceptualising user agency’, in Bakardjieva, M. (ed.) Internet society: The
internet in everyday life, London: Sage, pp. 9–36.
Deuze, M. (2012) Media life, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Katz, E. (1996) ‘Viewers’ work’, in Hay, J., Grossberg, L. and Wartella, E. (eds.) The audience and its
landscape, New York: Routledge, pp. 9–22.
Livingstone, S. (1992) ‘The meaning of domestic technologies: A personal construct analysis of
familial gender relations’, in Silverstone, R. and Hirsch, E. (eds.) Consuming technologies, London:
Routledge. Available at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/61632/.

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 Sonia Livingstone

Livingstone, S., and Blum-Ross, A. (2020) Parenting for a digital future: How hopes and fears about technology
shape children’s lives, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mansell, R. and Silverstone, R. (Eds.) (1996) Communication by design: The politics of information and
communication technologies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Silverstone, R., Morley, D., Dahlberg, A. and Livingstone, S. (1989) Families, technologies and consump-
tion: The household and information and communication technologies. CRICT Discussion Paper, Centre
for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology, Brunel University. Available at http://
eprints.lse.ac.uk/46657/.

14
 1
DOMESTICATION AND
PERSONHOOD
Eric Hirsch

Introduction
In what ways are technologies such as computers and mobile phones1 similar to persons?
A relation with a person involves some kind of interaction, some form of communication.
In fact, such a personal relation implies interaction and communication. The same holds
true in unique ways with technology. Once a computer or a mobile phone is possessed and
one begins to use it after it is activated (switching on its circuits), one can feel compelled to
communicate with it. It is only through their activation that the devices exist as technology.
In this way, technology can never be completely domesticated – subdued or controlled –
because it can only exist through the activated use of it by persons. The persistent presence
of the activated technology summons a response, not unlike that of relations with persons
(Strathern, 1992: xi). What is now known as social media is a most recent illustration of the
presence of an activated technology calling for a reply.
In a similar manner, persons and their social relations can never be completely restrained
or controlled by the technology because as a condition of the technology’s existence, there
is the active relationship persons have with their devices. Although the technologies seem
to increase the experiences and choices of people, they do so in relation to the people them-
selves. In short, “it is those very autonomous, self-circuiting, social realities of … [modern]
person as an active individual agent that makes consumers most mirror the technology with
which they ‘interact’” (Strathern, 1992: xii).
It is sometimes the case, though, that the passionate relations people have with technol-
ogy, such as computers and mobile phones, is pathologised – viewed as unhealthy (see Sutton,
2020). Such a view of social media use is the outcome of a more general view of information
and communication technology (ICT) and especially digital technology as a form of social
relations or sociality that is less “authentic” than social life prior to ICTs (cf. Turkle, 2011,
2015). Miller and Horst (2012: 13) suggest that this view of ICTs is the result of a particular
“cultural value”. The point they stress is that people are no less social when they interact and
communicate online (Sutton, 2020: 17). Rather, they are social in different ways and with
different effects.2

DOI: 10.4324/9781003265931-4 15
 Eric Hirsch

Conceptualising personhood
The attention to authenticity – being true to one’s self – is associated with a particular view
of personhood.3 Marilyn Strathern (2020: 9) reminds us that it was A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
(1952: 188–204) who differentiated the “individual” as a non-social entity from the “person”
that was a node in a network of social relations. In Radcliffe-Brown’s view, every human
being was both a “biological organism” and a “complex of social relationships”. It is the latter
that he designated as the person. Two years before Radcliffe-Brown’s general statement con-
cerning personhood (published in an article about “social structure”), Marcel Mauss (1985)
examined a range of historical and ethnographic material on conceptions of the person found
in different societies across time and space. While Mauss highlighted the uniqueness of the
Western idea of the person, Radcliffe-Brown suggested that personhood in whatever its
forms involved the centrality of social relations.
Mauss’ (1985: 3) intention was to show how recent is the word “self ”, as used philosoph-
ically. In a similar manner, how recent was the “category of ‘self ’” as well as the “cult of
the ‘self ’”. All languages have some recognition of the self as in the terms for “I” and “me”.
Mauss’ interest was to document the emergence of a notion of the person that is bound up
with explicit categories of the self. He turns to ethnography to show that many peoples are
not individuated in terms of a unique self. Rather, the person’s standing, as among Australian
Aborigines, for instance, is bound up with a name that assigns a locus of duties and rights
within the clan (Mauss, 1985: 11). It is only with Christianity, Mauss argues, that a legal and
political personality (deriving from ancient Rome) is wedded with an internal life in the
form of a morality and a universality through the relation conceived between each person
and God.4
One of Mauss’ foremost students, Louis Dumont (1985), elaborated on the scholarship in
Mauss’ essay, conveying what he called the Christian beginnings of modern individualism.
Dumont argued that in Western societies, the individual has a paramount value. “Modern
consciousness”, Dumont (1986: 236) states, “attaches value predominantly to the individ-
ual”. Dumont is using the notion of individual differently from Radcliffe-Brown. This is
because Radcliffe-Brown did not acknowledge that in Western societies, “the distinction
between the individual and person is hard to make” (La Fontaine, 1985: 125). The idea of
the individual predominates in Western ideology (cf. Ouroussoff, 1993). At the same time,
“‘society’ is seen to be what connects individuals to one another, the relationship between
them” (Strathern, 1988: 12).
In a wide-ranging critique of anthropological practice, Strathern (1988) argues that
the relation between the individual and society – of central significance in Western
conceptions – has either explicitly or implicitly informed the analysis of Melanesian ethno-
graphic material. She argues that this is inappropriate, given the Western origins of these
ideas. Instead, she proposes a different vocabulary to talk about Melanesian persons and
their relations. “Melanesian persons are as dividually as they are individually conceived”
(Strathern, 1988: 13; cf. Marriott, 1976: 111). Strathern (1988: 273) suggests that the person
in Melanesia is “construed from the vantage points of the relations that constitute him or
her; she or he objectifies and is thus revealed in those relations”. In other words, there is no
encompassing notion of society in this context. Rather, persons are part of other persons
(persons are “divided” between persons [as dividuals]) and the cause of a person’s actions is
other persons.
The reconceptualisation of personhood in Melanesia undertaken by Strathern has been
influential. In fact, some have argued that Strathern’s analysis of the Melanesian “dividual”

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 Domestication and personhood

person is not restricted to Melanesia and that in all societies there exist dividual as well as
individual modalities of personhood (LiPuma, 1998: 56). Whether this is the case depends
on how this is interpreted ethnographically, given the differences in historical transforma-
tion between societies. Nonetheless, the notion of dividual personhood has been applied to
contexts beyond that of Melanesia. This is the case in anthropological studies of Facebook.
Dalsgaard (2008) in particular has drawn on Strathern’s model of Melanesian personhood
for his own explorations of this social media. He suggests that the technologies that are the
basis of social networking sites are designed according to the ideas of Western individuality
but in practice exhibit forms of social relations and personhood that are more akin to divid-
uality. The digital collection of “friends” on Facebook reveals how persons are composed of
relations. This is done by displaying the digital images that friends provide and putting them
on the “friends list”. It is this process that is seen as analogous to the dividuals theorised by
Strathern (McKay, 2010: 486).
The research of Dalsgaard (2008) and McKay (2010) contests the idea that social network-
ing sites largely foster networked individualism (see Wellman et al., 2003). McKay (2010)
worked with people of Northern Philippines and with their migrant families in the UK.
She describes how photographs of various kinds are used on social networking sites by those
who remain in the Philippines (e.g. photographs of local persons are juxtaposed with iconic
old buildings from their town). This is done, McKay found, because when a family member
from the diaspora enters the site, the site needs to represent not just an independent person
but a connection in an extended family ancestry. This is very different from the individual-
ism assumed by Wellman.
Implicated in the social relations of the person nowadays and for some decades are the
ICTs that are increasingly part of the social lives of people in diverse social and cultural
contexts, as the above examples show. How are we to understand the part played by ICTs in
these social relations? The use of ethnographic techniques deriving from anthropology has
been influential here. In parallel with the use of ethnography has been the use of domestica-
tion theory, to which I now turn.

Domestication theory
“Domestication theory”, the “domestication approach” or “domestication framework”
(Haddon, 2006) first emerged in the early 1990s when ICT became a single object of study.
This model has been used to examine how the social dynamics and spatial arrangements
of the household “domesticate” ICTs as well as how ICTs reconfigure the dynamics and
arrangements of domestic spaces. The approach has been prominent (see Kennedy et al.,
2020: 59–64).
As originally formulated (Silverstone et al., 1992), domestication is understood as a trans-
formational process where ICTs acquire a specific value in the moral relations of house-
holders and families. What are foregrounded are the object or media and their movement
and transformation across the threshold of the home and into the social and moral lives of
its inhabitants. Four elements of this process are distinguished. Appropriation identifies the
shift of things as commodities to those of possessions, an alteration from the formal economy
to the moral economy. Objectification recognises the display of possessions and how they
fit into the symbolic system and aesthetic structure of the home. Incorporation concerns
the everyday use of objects, texts and media, while the notion of conversion highlights the
complete appropriation of ICTs into the moral economy of the household.

17
 Eric Hirsch

In her study of home computing, Lally (2002: 101) utilises the domestication framework
to understand the complex associations the computer has in the domestic context – a source
of entertainment and leisure as well as educational and work-related uses. However, for the
computer to be effectively “domesticated”, that is, “to become an established part of the
household it must find its place within the pre-existing structures of value and activity with
the home”. Although Lally does not refer to ethnography, her research adopts a seemingly
ethnographic approach. While her account highlights the domestication of computers, the
detailed material of her study simultaneously signals, but more implicitly, an analogous kind
of domestication occurring in the domestic context, that is, the domestication of persons.
What is implied but not a focal point of the domestication framework is that the transfor-
mations suggested by the model are effected by persons (e.g. family members) and their myr-
iad social relations. Although the domestication approach argues that it was ICTs that were
domesticated, I want to suggest something different. It is true that ICTs find a place in the
social and moral lives of people, but I want to propose that it is persons that are transformed –
domesticated – through their relations with ICTs. This is because the relations persons form
with ICTs are analogous to that formed with persons; ICTs are comparable to persons in the
way they summon interaction and communication.

Domestication: another view

By proposing this different view of the domestication framework, I am also suggesting that
it is important to view the very idea of domestication itself in a different light from the way
it is usually perceived (cf. Berker et al., 2006). Consider the following example, the source of
which derives from an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.5
In 1866, George Eliot published Felix Holt, The Radical, a novel set during the time of the
Reform Act of 1832. This is the political context in which the story is set. However, a major
subplot involves a female character, known as Esther Lyon, who is the object of affection of
the novel’s two male protagonists, Harold Transome and Felix Holt. In the course of the
narrative, Esther’s relation with the Transome family is described and Eliot uses the concept
of domestication to characterise this connection: “Her domestication with this family had
brought them into the foreground of her imagination” (Eliot, 2000 [1866]: 460).
This is the first time in English published writing that domestication is used to refer to
a person. The noun in this context conveys something similar to the verb domesticate –
Esther has been made to feel or to be at home with this family. She had become enmeshed
in the relations of the Transome family and those relations have become a part of her person.
The relations with the Transomes summon a response in Esther – they are brought into the
foreground of her imagination. It is this transformation of Esther through her relations with
the Transome family that Eliot glosses as domestication. The use of the term in this context
has an analogy with the way domestication is used in connection with domestic pets, for
example. The pet and owner summon responses from one another based on their estab-
lished mutual relations. Domestication is this quality or capacity for reciprocal relations with
human persons. One does not have such a relation with a wild animal unless it is subject to
some form of domestication.
Until the time of Eliot’s novel, domestication had only been applied to animals or vege-
tation. The first use of the noun in this way is by the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Lord
Kames (Henry Home) in his book Sketches of the History of Man (1774). Darwin used it in a
comparable way some 60 years later upon the publication of his Narrative of the surveying voy-
ages of His Majesty’s ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836 (1839).

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 Domestication and personhood

We know that agriculture as it is generally practised would not be possible without the
domestication of plants just as livestock farming could not exist without the domestication
of animals. In both cases, it is a matter of bringing these entities under human control.
Domestication in this sense is perceived as intrinsic to a “civilised” existence. Although
domestication is conventionally applied to plants and animals, others see domestication as a
“primary organising principle” of capitalism more generally.

Domestication is first and foremost a mode of inhabiting the world by occupying it.
Occupation here is meant in the settler-colonial sense. Indeed, from an inter-species
perspective, every human occupation is an act of settler colonialism since one occupies
a space that is always already occupied by other domesticators, whether insects, animals,
plants or trees. Each of these inhabits the world with some degree of instrumentalization
too: a tree spreads itself above and below the ground in its struggle to extract nutrition,
sun, and so on. Ants also organize and transform their surroundings in a specific way.
What defines human generalized domestication is the act of occupying a space by declar-
ing one’s own interest as its primary organizing principle. As such it relates to prior occupiers
of the same space according to how their being can be harnessed to the advancement of
our own being. What comes in the way is excluded or exterminated.
(Hage, 2017: 94–95; quoted in Carnerio de Cunha, 2019: 183, who added the emphasis)

However, domestication does not necessarily have the single occupying and controlling
connotations suggested by the above view. Although numerous scientists concerned with
plant and animal domestication argue that “proper domestication is that state of affairs that
demands that the very life and reproduction of a species be strictly dependent on human
care”, not all domestication involves the “absolute subjection of the domesticated to the
domesticator” (Carneiro da Cunha, 2020: 177). This is especially the case among South
American Lowland Indigenous people. On the one hand, it is generally recognised that
the Amazon is an important centre of plant domestication (Carneiro da Cunha, 2020: 175).
On the other hand, Lowland Indigenous peoples do not view themselves as domesticators.
Rather, in Lowland Indigenous peoples’ ideologies, plants have volition, demands and even
initiatives.
These ideas are connected to how they view the forest. In Western ideologies, agricul-
ture is inimical to the forest. Many South American Lowland Indigenous peoples perceive
the forest as cultivated, not by humans currently living, but by “people” of a different kind:
“animals, spirits, masters, even planted and cared for by other plants” (Carneiro da Cunha,
2020: 172).

There is abundant worldwide evidence of cultivated plants as ‘people’ requiring spe-

cial attention and coaxing. Anne-Christine Taylor (2007) and Philippe Descola have
described Achuar women’s extreme maternal dedication to their plants (Descola 1994
[1986]). Rio Negro women endeavor to make their manioc children happy in the gar-
dens by providing to them companion species who should play music and comb their
hair (Emperaire, van Velthem, and Oliveira 2012).
(Carneiro da Cunha, 2020: 176)

Nonetheless, as Hugh-Jones (2020) stresses, depending on circumstance and location, sim-

ilar outlooks are present in people who have very different worldviews from those of South
American Lowland Indigenous peoples. Carneiro da Cunha (2020: 176, n.10) mentions such

19
 Eric Hirsch

a brief example: “I recall this old Portuguese lady who pitied her cabbages: ‘my cabbages are
sad, poor things’” (Carneiro da Cunha, 2020: 176, n.10).
To someone who is not an expert, the Amazonian forest appears “pristine”. However,
it has been documented that the forest is to some degree anthropogenic. “In short, one
could say that [Amazonian peoples] do not submit the forest to human generalized domes-
tication. They no doubt made the forest more favourable to human life but did not colonize the
forest” (Carneiro da Cunha, 2020: 184, emphasis added). The forest is analogous to a sentient
being – comparable to a person – with its own agency; it is a person-like and people have a
relationship with it.

Persons and things, things as persons

Does our (Western) everyday relation with things (including technological things) resemble
more the worldview of these indigenous peoples than the idea of capitalist domestication
suggested by Hage? Consider the argument of Gell in his book Art and agency: an anthropolog-
ical theory (1988). He cites the example of a person and their car. From one perspective, the
car is just a possession and means of transport and is not a centre of agency belonging to the
owner or the car. However, Gell suggests that car owners often consider their car as a body-
part, a prosthesis. It has this quality because it is endowed with the social agency of the car
owner in relation to other social agents. “Not only is the car a locus of the owner’s agency,
and a conduit through which the agency of others (bad drivers, vandals) may affect him – it
is also the locus of an ‘autonomous’ agency of its own” (Gell, 1998: 18). Gell provides a per-
sonal example. Not only does the car reflect the owner’s personhood, but the car has its own
personhood. He mentions the Toyota he possesses, which is cherished. It has its own personal
name, Toyolly or “Olly” for short. He speaks of the car as being “reliable” and “considerate”.
Because it has these personal qualities, Gell indicates that the car “knows” it will only break
down when it will cause only minor bother. If, however, the car were to break down far
from home or late at night, he would hold the car “personally and morally culpable”. From
Gell’s perspective, the conduct of the car in this way would be an act of “gross treachery”
(Gell, 1998: 18–19).
Here is a clear example of a thing as a person where the relationship is conceptualised
as involving qualities associated with living persons, for example, reliability and consider-
ation. Relations with ICTs may have similar traits. The more general point I want to make,
though, is that it is important analytically to be able to conceptualise relations with things
having person-like characteristics.
There is then the issue of domestication. Cars, as with ICTs, cannot be used until they
are activated. Is it these things that are brought under control (domesticated) or are persons
domesticated to the properties of the thing? I want to propose that persons have to become
different sorts of persons in order to use and engage with these things that have person-like qualities. In
a way, they have to be under the “control” of the technology to use it, master it and make
it part of themselves and their social relations. In so doing, they acquire new capacities and
their agency is transformed.
Driving a car, learning how to use a computer or a mobile phone, these capacities become
part of our personhood, not as explicit knowledge (although they can be explicitly articu-
lated) but more as a habitus as suggested by Bourdieu (1977) or what Bloch (1992) refers to as
“what goes without saying”. Various theoretical frameworks have been proposed to under-
stand these processes. Some speak of technology as skilled practice (Harvey, 1997). Ingold
(2000) refers to enskillment and a more recent refinement of these ideas is suggested by

20
 Domestication and personhood

Grasseni and Gieser (2019) as skilled mediations. The source for most of these ideas derives
from the situated learning model developed by Lave and Wenger (1991).
Consider a recent ethnographic study from Australia (Kennedy et al., 2020). One of the
historical examples the authors provide concerns MSN messaging and the concerns parents
had about their children’s use of this technology and the foreign forms of social relating it
enabled. The parents did not see how it was possible for their children to use the technology –
to create a relation with the technology – which they deemed acceptable. The problem was
not the technology itself but the kind of social relations the use of the messaging might foster.
At the time, this was a new form of creating relations and the problem was that unknown
persons or persons deemed unacceptable may enter the personal realm of the children. It was
this unknown that the parents feared. The children, by contrast, welcomed this adjunct to
their personhood and the network of their social relations (Kennedy et al., 2020: 35).
However, some years after MSN was introduced, the attitude of parents had radically
altered. Parents were encouraging their children to use MSN where this was now perceived as
an acceptable technology and as an acceptable way of conducting social relations. If anything,
the parents were concerned if their children did not use MSN. From their perspective, it was
important that the children “fit in” socially. It was not that the technology needed domesticat-
ing; rather, the children needed to be “domesticated” in relation to using the technology; they
needed to have a relation with MSN so as to facilitate the networks of relations their parents
saw as necessary. Initially, this was a skilled practice the parents did not want their children
to acquire and engaged with. However, over time, parents realised that having the technical
skills of MSN was important for their children to become persons with a network of relations,
a form of fitting in with peers that was seen as desirable. Without this capacity, the children, it
was feared, would lack the agency needed to sustain a network of friends.
The authors also point to a generally well-known fact in many Western societies and
this has to do with age-appropriate forms of conduct connected with the personhood of the
child. There are marked changes associated with life-cycle stages of the person, such as when
the child is old enough or independent enough to sleep over at a friend’s house; to acquire
their own front door key; or to be allowed to drive the family car. Each of these transitions
is connected with increasing autonomy but also potentially with growing webs of social
relations that constitute the person. Part and parcel of these transitions is a range of ICTs that
are simultaneously implicated in the composition of the child as a person: the mobile phone,
the social media account, the computer and iPad (Kennedy et al., 2020: 179). Understanding
technology as rooted in social relations repudiates the split between technology and soci-
ety that many scholars call for. Tim Ingold (1997: 107) argues that “technical relations are
embedded in social relations, and can only be understood within this relational matrix, as
one aspect of human sociality”. However, as Michael Jackson (2002: 334) observes, Ingold
“says little about how this embeddedness is experienced”. Jackson (2002: 336) provides an
example from his son:

My 9-year-old son, Joshua, is playing a ‘hard version’ of a game on his Gameboy. The
game is not going well for him. He flings down the machine, and walks away, tears of
frustration in his eyes. ‘It’s not fair!’, he exclaims. ‘What’s not fair?’ I ask. ‘It isn’t fair. If
you miss just one thing the game ends. It should give you another chance to get some-
thing. But it keeps on making me lose.’

What this example captures is how the boy speaks about the machine as if it were a person.
His relation with the machine parallels how people more generally speak of their relations

21
 Eric Hirsch

with people they engage with. When the relationship with technology, such as ICT, is good
and “works”, then it is felt as a kind of balanced exchange, much as one would have with
another person. But when the machine does not conform to what is expected or a sense of
fair play is missing as in the example above, then people become irritated in a way similar
to a person who treated one dishonestly or did not reciprocate a present one gave ( Jackson,
2002: 336). What this brief example again highlights is that persons are domesticated by
ICTs in the sense that they need to acquire capacities to engage with the technology just as
one acquires a new role when engaging with a new person.
What I now turn to are two cases that further elaborate the perspective on domestication
I have so far discussed. The examples serve two purposes. One is to include non-Western
cases to show that what I am suggesting is not just a parochial phenomenon. The second is
to indicate that persons are constituted by social relations and the domestication of persons
may also entail the domestication of social relations depending on the context and the ICTs
concerned. The first case is a study of internet use among one family in China. The second
is a study of mobile use among peri-urban people in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Aligning family relations

Red Mountain Town is the name given to a county-town in south-west China where the
anthropologist Tom McDonald conducted fieldwork. At the time of his research, internet
cafés were frequented by young men playing games. Many of these young men made the
internet cafes their effective home, given the amount of time spent there. During McDonald’s
time in the town, he lived with one family, a family he refers to as Li. They had two sons; the
younger one spent considerable time in an internet café to the dismay of his parents, espe-
cially his mother. In order to overcome this problem, the parents decided to install internet
in the home so that their son would now spend more time in the household. McDonald
studied the result of this domestic transformation.
In China, the family unit defines itself through the practice of sharing food from a com-
mon stove. When children neglect family meals, they are missing this convention of shared
relations associated with eating together from a common source (McDonald, 2015: 22). Due
to the widespread influence of internet cafés, this is not an isolated problem and parents seek
to overcome this issue by installing a home internet connection. In so doing, the hope is to
lure the offspring back to the home. McDonald reports that various Chinese operators were
able to provide such home internet services.
After the internet was installed in the Li home, the computer was located in the boys’
bedroom. This had the effect of significantly altering the Li family’s domestic practices.
A key feature of this daily routine was what the mother referred to as “eat dinner, watch
TV”. McDonald (2015: 23) tells us that she recited this expression with joy after each meal.
This meant that the family habitually retired to what they referred to as the “guest hall” fol-
lowing dinner. There, they watched television together, viewing programmes such as soap
operas and game shows. Watching television together was analogous to eating food together
that came from the domestic stove.
However, the introduction of home internet did not resolve the problem of the family
dining and family television viewing. Although the younger son was now in the home and
not based in the internet café, his engagement with the family meal was minimal and he
did not watch television together with his parents after the meal. Instead, he would have
to be repeatedly called to the family meal, usually arriving last. He would then quickly
eat his food and instantly return to the bedroom to continue gaming. His lack of interest

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in properly eating with the family greatly troubled his mother. He was not observing the
conventions expected of him both in response to his mother and to the creation of family
unity (McDonald, 2015: 23).
In order to obviate this problem, the parents performed a further transformation in their
home. They redecorated a small “entrance hall” room and moved the computer there.
Together with the computer, the parents placed several extra chairs enabling more people
to gather around the computer. This had the effect of placing the son in a more visible place
when playing computer games and he was often observed by his parents. By relocating
the computer in this way, the family was able to be together more often not only around the
computer, but also when watching television. In fact, McDonald (2015: 25) records that all
the family played games of doudizhu 6 or majiang 7 on the internet. The outcome of this spatial
transformation was that the computer had now become analogous to television as a place
where the family could gather and express its unity.
What this case illustrates is that a specific morality informs family relations in the home
and that in order to sustain this morality, persons need to align themselves with technolo-
gies in a specific manner. From one perspective, it might appear as if the technology – the
computer – is being domesticated in this context. However, what the case illustrates is the
domestication of the person – the son – in his relations with the technology, and his relations
with his family. McDonald (2015: 25) draws on Deirdre Hynes’ research who “expresses
preference for the domestication of the technology model, owing to its capacity, as she notes,
‘to analyse the discrete phases of the process through which technologies become a part of
everyday life’” (Hynes, 2009, p. 26). What I am suggesting, though, is that it is persons and
their relations with technologies that are “domesticated” – that the network of relations in
which both are imbued must take a particular form, given the morality that informs any
domestic context.
In fact, McDonald (2015: 18, emphasis added) comes to a similar conclusion, emphasising
“that rather than individuals being motivated by getting ICTs to ‘fit in’ to the household,
individuals instead seem preoccupied with how to align other family members to these technologies in a
particular way”. In this case, the son had already been domesticated, so to speak, by the com-
puter and internet in the internet café where he spent large amounts of time. Computer use
eventually entered the home. The issue that pre-occupied his parents was getting him to
abide by the moral conventions of the family. This meant gathering together for meals, for
television and eventually for games on the internet. In this, the relations of the family were
domesticated by engagement with the internet through the computer.

Sustaining moral persons and relations

The second example concerns mobile phones in PNG, a country lacking much of the
telecommunications infrastructure one finds in North America, Europe and even China.
Nonetheless, mobile phones have become common in urban, peri-urban and even in some
rural settings. Having said this, the digital communications infrastructure is still limited
with many regions lacking access. The anthropologist David Lipset studied mobile phone use
among low-income Papua New Guineans, specifically Murik people of whom many now
reside in Wewak, a market town and provincial capital of East Sepik Province. His previous
research focused on Murik people in their village-based, rural homes. In general, he found
that Murik people have enthusiastically adopted mobile phones. At the same time, their uses
of mobile phones are inserted in the “kinship-based networks they hold dear” (Lipset, 2013:
341).8 Because kinship relations are perceived as the core relations of the person in this social

23
 Eric Hirsch

context (as they are in different ways in the Chinese context described above), mobile phones
are implicated in sustaining these relations. Lipset provides several examples.
He describes an occasion when he was sitting with some men and one of them noticed a
missed call from a village kinsman. This caused the man worry as he wondered whether the
kinsman was alright or whether he was in trouble. He called back straightaway. It transpired
that the kinsman was requesting that he transfer telephonically some prepaid units which the
man immediately got up to do. Kinship relations entail obligations of one sort or another and
the mobile phone is deployed to facilitate those relations. Lipset records similar examples,
such as a man receiving a call from his brother in Port Moresby (the national capital) several
hundred miles away asking him to send betelnuts without delay; or a grandfather who called
his granddaughter to know whether her son was at home and whether he could buy some-
thing from a street vendor for him as he was too tired. The examples provided by Lipset all
illustrate the way Murik people seek to micro-coordinate their everyday life and the effect
mobile phones have in this process (Lipset, 2013: 341).
Relations between kin also involve friction and disparagement. Two classificatory
brothers through their fathers were also rival siblings. One was a villager named Jakai who
was temporarily living in town. The other, Sandar, was an educated peri-urbanite who was
raised in the village but now retired. He worked for Air Nuigini in the late 1970s where he
was based in Melbourne, Australia (Lipset, 2013: 342–343). When they encountered each
other, there was often tension and anger. Lipset describes how Sandar called Jakai’s sister
Maggie at the settlement camp where he was staying and asked her to put Jakai on the phone.
Lipset (2013: 343) was present when Jakai was handed the line.

In a loud, clearly audible voice, Jakai kept asking, ‘Who is calling? Who are you? Speak
louder! I can’t hear you! What do you want?’ Sandar yelled out his name repeatedly.
Soon enough, Jakai handed the phone back to Maggie. ‘Jakai doesn’t know how to speak
on a mobile’, Sandar explained to her exasperated. ‘Ask him what he wants to do about
sending petrol to the village’.

Later, Sandar told Lipset that people like Jakai do not know how to communicate on a
mobile phone. Because they are not speaking face-to-face, they do not understand how one
speaks on a mobile. Sandar spoke of Jakai as “backward”. However, Jakai later revealed that
he intentionally did not recognise Sandar because he did not want to speak with him on this
occasion.
In Murik social life, the mother’s brother and sister’s son have what is referred to as a jok-
ing relationship and are understood to be joking partners. For example, a mother’s brother
teased his unemployed sister’s son for always talking on the phone. Lipset (2013: 346) records
the observation made by the uncle regarding his nephew: “If a woman rings, he runs off.
Upon return, I ask him, ‘Who called? Was it a man or a woman?’ What work does he have
to do? Sex, sex, that’s all! Hey! Hey!” As Lipset (2013: 346) notes: “This expression of gossipy
caricature, which is of a piece with ordinary ribald mockery in Murik joking repartee, has
now absorbed the new communications technology”. It may be asked, though, whether the
new communication technology has absorbed such joking conduct or whether, more accu-
rately, joking relations are now arranged in concert with the technology.
Mobile phones are also implicated in sexual liaisons. Before the advent of mobile phones,
illicit sexual encounters occurred in both the peri-urban and village settings. What this
technology has done, if anything, is potentially increase forms of illicit relating. Lipset (2013:
345) describes the observations of Murik people who tell him of a couple arguing due to a

24
 Domestication and personhood

mobile phone call or a provincial administrator being chased by his wife for the same reason.
Village life also has such illicit meetings and domestic violence provoked by sexual jealousy
occurs in both contexts. What is distinctive of the mobile phone is that the traces of betrayal
are more easily identified.
The examples of mobile phone use among Murik people that I have provided above are in
many ways comparable to what we might find in other social and cultural contexts (cf. Ling
& Campbell, 2009). Nonetheless, the differences matter. One area where the use of mobiles
summons a response that is perceived as appropriate and conventional with this technology is
personal or collective greetings. When Murik people meet face-to-face on village footpaths
or on a town street, the conventional greeting is “where are you going” or the person or per-
sons might indicate where they are going or where they have come from, if asked. However,
greetings on mobiles do not take that form. Rather, the greeting is “are you ok” when first
speaking to someone on a mobile phone. Lipset (2013: 347) suggests that this is evidence of
a “modern” subjectivity being elicited by the use of the technology.
In general, the use of this new technology enables the extension of social relations in both
space and time but what is paramount in these interactions is the maintenance of a particular
moral personhood that mobile phones both sustain and potentially transgress (Lipset, 2013:
351). As in the Chinese case described above, the technology is implicated in the creation of a
form of personhood and the social relations it supports. It is not so much that the technology
is domesticated as much as people are aligned with the technology to sustain a distinctive
moral personhood and social relations.

Conclusion
I have suggested an alternative view of domestication and ICTs. Instead of ICTs being
domesticated by, for example, the dynamics of family life and household rituals, I have pro-
posed that it is ICT that domesticates people. In order to use and engage with various forms
of ICTs, one must become skilled in some way that enables persons to have capacities and an
agency that they did not possess before. The reason ICTs have this effect is because they are
person-like in many ways: they summon interaction and communication. And because they
do so, people must align their personhood and social relations with ICTs in order to sustain
certain ideas of moral conduct.
The view of domestication I am proposing is not necessarily opposed to the original
framework developed by Silverstone et al. (1992). If anything, they are most likely comple-
mentary. However, what domestication theory originally underplayed, I think, was not only
the significance of personhood and social relations, but also the person-like agency exhibited
by ICT and its effects on persons and their relations. By focusing more centrally on ideas
of personhood, including the relations that constitute a person, the analyst is able to more
clearly appreciate the transformative effects of ICTs. It is clear that families and households
provide “homes” for ICTs and in that sense domesticate the technology. But ICT simultane-
ously domesticates its users, given its person-like qualities and the need of living persons to
acquire the skilled practice that all people must possess in dealing with others.

Acknowledgements
I want to thank Maren Hartmann for inviting me to contribute to this volume and for pro-
viding very helpful feedback on a draft of my chapter. For any errors in fact or form that
remain I only have myself to thank.

25
 Eric Hirsch

Notes
1 Here, I am selecting two from a range of information and communication technologies.
2 This is not to suggest that some people do find the use of social media as less authentic. Sutton
(2020) studied a group of “digital detoxers” in northern California who attend an annual camp
over a period of several days where the participants remove technology from their person. In doing
so, they are in a position to get closer to “nature” by camping in the woods and participating in
various therapeutic exercises. The detox camp attempts to recreate living arrangements associated
with more small-scale societies where campers live in villages with “nature” names (e.g. Bobcat)
and assemble by tipis and campfires when they practice remaining in silence for hours at a time.
What is created in this setting is a vision of an authentic human existence that is more in touch
with nature and less mediated by technology.
3 Humphrey (2009) studied Russian chat rooms and her research highlights a particular modality of
authenticity. The avatar enables the Russian player to fully communicate their true being, which
is highly constrained in the offline world. The avatar is meant to express the inner state of the
person. While ordinary life is a suppression of the true “self ” (often represented as such in Russian
literature), the avatars are closer to the soul and the powerful emotions the soul can express. In this
way, online activity is not something entirely foreign but accords with what is typically Russian
(see Miller & Horst, 2012: 15).
4 In this regard, Mauss (1985: 21) places great emphasis on sectarian movements of the 17th and
18th centuries. It was then that much debate focused on individual conscience, the right to be
one’s own priest in communicating with God, and by having an inner God. It is these movements
(e.g. the Puritans) that established the idea that the person equals the self and that the self equals
consciousness. As Mauss (1985: 22) notes, “[t]he one who finally gave the answer that every act
of consciousness was an act of the ‘self ’…, the one who founded all science and all action on the
‘self ’…, was Fichte”, creating the condition for the emergence of modern scientific psychology in
mid-19th-century Germany (cf. Rose, 1999 [1989]: 221–222).
5 https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/56670?redirectedFrom=domestication#eid (visited on 9/2/22).
6 Literally translated as “fighting the landlord”, a popular card game played by three or four players.
7 A tile-based game developed in 19th-century China.
8 The kinship-based networks referred to can also be conceptualised as dividual relations theorised
by Strathern (1988), as discussed above.

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28
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Il richiamo della
foresta
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Il richiamo della foresta

romanzo

Author: Jack London

Translator: Gian Dàuli

Release date: August 26, 2023 [eBook #71490]

Language: Italian

Original publication: Milano: Modernissima, 1924

Credits: Barbara Magni and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IL RICHIAMO

DELLA FORESTA ***
Il Richiamo della Foresta
 JACK LONDON

IL RICHIAMO
DELLA FORESTA
ROMANZO
PREFAZIONE E TRADUZIONE DI
GIAN DÀULI

MCMXXIV
MODERNISSIMA
MILANO
 PROPRIETÀ LETTERARIA RISERVATA
Stab. Tipo-Lit. FED. SACCHETTI & C. — Via Zecca
Vecchia, 7 — Milano
INDICE
 JACK LONDON

Credo che non vi sia scrittore il quale abbia vissuto e sofferto, amato
e odiato con tanta disperata e selvaggia intensità, come Jack
London. I Gorki, i Dostoiewski, gli Upton Sinclair, i Rimbaud, i
Baudelaire, tra miserie fisiche e morali, hanno saputo, sì,
rappresentare visioni mai concepite da altri, ma vivendo una vita
che, per quanto agitata, non soffrì che in parte del grandioso e
avventuroso travaglio che agitò l’esistenza dura ed eroica del grande
scrittore americano, le cui opere suscitano in noi sentimenti di paura
e di tenerezza, di amore e di dolore e, soprattutto, di ammirazione.
Ci pare di trovarci di fronte all’uomo delle caverne che riveli alla
nostra sensibilità moderna i misteri e le ferree leggi della vita
primitiva.
Perciò, con senso di pena, ho visto in questi giorni pubblicata, a cura
del Prezzolini, la prima traduzione italiana di uno dei romanzi di Jack
London, «Il lupo di mare», come uno dei tanti libri per ragazzi. Poveri
innocenti! Le opere di London affidate nelle mani di adolescenti che
s’affacciano alla vita, e non conoscono ancora il male, e ignorano i
feroci egoismi degli uomini, la cecità del Dio cristiano, le leggi
inesorabili della natura? Quale errore!

***

La favola di questi romanzi, per quanto avventurose ne siano le

vicende e pittoresco il paesaggio entro il quale si svolge, appare
poca cosa in confronto dello spirito realistico che l’ànima e della
visione totale della vita e del destino dell’uomo che l’autore vuole e
riesce a comunicarci. Egli mira al nostro cuore e alla nostra
coscienza, più che alla nostra mente e alla nostra fantasia, da
selvaggio armato di frecce avvelenate e infallibili. Ossequiente alle
leggi naturali della vita che accomunano l’uomo all’animale, nella
foresta, egli ci mostra, a fini sociali, nell’animale, l’uomo, e gli istinti
dell’uno nell’altro, rivivendo, con profondo senso primigenio,
selvagge emozioni ereditarie che dormono nella natura umana,
attraverso il ricordo di antenati preumani e di migliaia di generazioni.
Così che si ripensa, per associazione d’idee, alle crudeltà della
guerra mondiale, agli errori ed orrori della rivoluzione russa, ai
massacri degli ebrei, alle violenze dell’attuale guerriglia sociale, alle
aberrazioni quotidiane della vita umana costantemente insidiata da
brutale malvagità, e vien fatto di pensare: — Possiamo, dunque,
senza vergogna, affermare d’essere fatti ad immagine di Dio? O non
forse è vero che anche noi, come gli altri animali, barcolliamo nelle
tenebre, spinti dagl’istinti più bassi, che nelle forme più estreme e più
elementari sono legge di vita per i cani e per i lupi? Pare oggi, infatti,
che la legge della mazza e dei denti abbia sopraffatto millennî di
diritto civile, e ci riconduca in pieno mondo londoniano, dove il più
forte, per istinto, non per crudeltà, abbatte ed uccide il più debole,
divorandoselo poi, e la ferocia della passione sensuale fa strage, e i
maschi si uniscono e combattono insieme sotto il pungolo della
fame, e s’uccidono l’un l’altro appena il pungolo è attenuato,
ciascuno conducendo via la compagna quando ha ucciso i rivali.
Solo ritegno conosciuto, in questo mondo primigenio, è l’istinto della
propria conservazione, che tiene unito il maschio alla femmina e
spinge il maschio a nutrirla! Dappertutto è libertà assoluta,
dappertutto è la paura della morte onnipresente e sovrana.
Ma il London non si limita a mostrarci, con crudele realismo, il
rapporto naturale tra la vita selvaggia e la vita civile, ma rappresenta
il contrasto diretto tra l’una e l’altra, affermando, invece della licenza,
la legge; invece dell’istinto, il trionfo dell’autorità. Devozione del forte
al debole, venerazione del debole per il forte, ecco la grande legge
della vita che combatte gli impulsi selvaggi: ideale questo o, meglio,
regola di vita veramente civile, che la società umana potrebbe a
dovrebbe attingere se non fosse così mal ordinata da sembrare fatta
per la conservazione e lo sviluppo degli istinti primitivi.

***

Per dare degnamente inizio alla pubblicazione delle opere complete

di Jack London, scegliemmo, nella sua vasta produzione, due
romanzi: «Il richiamo della foresta» («The Call of the Wild») e
«Zanna bianca» («The white fang»), i quali a nostro avviso,
caratterizzano, meglio di tutti gli altri, non solo il temperamento dello
scrittore, ma il processo di sviluppo della sua anima di pensatore
temprato dall’esperienza della vita.
Nel primo, «Il richiamo della foresta», è il racconto di un cane che,
attraverso perigliose vicende, per la crudeltà degli uomini e
l’asprezza dell’esistenza finisce col diventar lupo, facendo, cioè, a
ritroso, di gradino in gradino, il cammino inverso della civiltà, da una
vita sicura, tranquilla, soleggiata, familiare, quale godeva. Aveva
fede negli uomini, e la perde; credeva nell’onestà e nell’onore, e
finisce col rubare per vivere, e uccidere per non essere ucciso: e
quando l’ultimo amore umano cade, egli si ritrova nella selva,
animale primitivo signoreggiato dai soli istinti naturali.
La vita di questo cane che diviene lupo, rispecchia materialmente e
spiritualmente la vita dello stesso scrittore. Egli ebbe certamente un
primo albore d’infanzia felice nell’amore dei suoi, sino a quando,
fanciulletto, passava intere giornate sotto un albero a sorvegliare,
per i contadini, il ritorno degli sciami delle api dalla loro vita operosa
e errabonda. Breve albore al quale seguì ben presto la miseria più
dura. Non ancora decenne, per aiutare la sua famiglia caduta in
povertà, egli vende giornali per le vie di San Francisco, per le vie
della sua amata «Frisco», dove egli era nato il 12 gennaio del 1876.
Poco dopo, è operaio in una fabbrica di prodotti alimentari, dove
sente i primi morsi dell’odio contro la piovra sociale, e i primi impeti
di ribellione. Infatti, a soli quindici anni egli abbandona la famiglia e il
lavoro per unirsi a una banda di pirati, e a sedici anni possiede una
sua barca, la Razzle Dazzle, e la sua donna, una fanciulla della
stessa età, ed è chiamato dai contrabbandieri il Principe del Banco
delle Ostriche, perchè egli solo osa fare il contrabbando nella baia di
San Francisco, sotto gli occhi della polizia, con una donna a bordo.
Vestito di lana grigia, con scarponi da marinaio, e la larga cintola di
cuoio rigonfia d’una grossa rivoltella, solido e robusto benchè ancora
imberbe, egli si sente re del proprio destino, e con pacata
sfrontatezza ingoia alcool, tra perduta gente, con la tenera
mantenuta al fianco, nella bettola dell’Ultima Fortuna. Durò un anno
quella vita selvaggia ch’egli definiva, sette anni dopo, come la più
rischiosa della sua esistenza; durante la quale guadagnava in una
settimana quello che più tardi non riusciva a guadagnare in un anno.
Diciassettenne, si decide o per amore di avventure o forse con la
speranza di liberarsi dall’abitudine di bere, a partire, mozzo, per una
crociera al Giappone, su un trealberi; ma non muta tenore di vita;
come egli stesso confessa nel suo libro «Memorie di un bevitore»:
«Incominciava la sera quando arrivammo ad un caffè e... è tutto
quello che vidi del Giappone! E purtanto il nostro veliero stette
quindici giorni nel porto di Yokohama! Quindici giorni passati a bere
in compagnia dei migliori ragazzi di questo mondo».
Dal Giappone passa alla caccia delle foche nei mari della Russia
orientale, e quando ritorna in patria, si dà a tutti i mestieri, ma
soprattutto a quello del vagabondo, contro il suo vangelo sociale che
considerava il lavoro fisico come un dovere per l’uomo, un dovere
che conferisce alla salute e santifica la vita. «L’orgoglio che io
traevo», scriss’egli, «da una giornata di lavoro ben compiuto, non si
può nemmeno concepire. Io mi sentivo lo sfruttato ideale, lo schiavo
tipo, ed ero quasi felice della servitù». Ma forse egli traeva a quel
tempo più orgoglio dall’essere considerato da tutti come il «boy
socialista», il vagabondo rivoluzionario. Per un certo tempo egli fa
parte dei «two thousand stiffs», dei duemila irrigiditi, i terribili
sovversivi che, condotti dal generale Kelly, mossero dalla costa del
Pacifico alla socializzazione del mondo. La piccola armata di ribelli
catturava treni, metteva a sacco città e villaggi, militarizzava tutti
gl’uomini che incontrava sul suo cammino. Quando le autorità
governative riescono ad arrestare la marcia di questi sovversivi e a
disperderli, Jack London ritorna al suo vagabondaggio ed è spesso
messo in prigione, come disoccupato senza fissa dimora.
Così, Jack London è in condizioni da ascoltare e sentire in sè tutto il
fascino dell’appello della vita selvaggia, the call of the wild, e alla vita
selvaggia si abbandona con l’impeto inconsiderato della sua
esuberante natura. E davanti agli aspetti sempre più terribili della
realtà, fra esperienze strazianti, lo spirito gli si rinvigorisce e s’affina.
Il destino l’afferra, l’attanaglia, l’abbatte, l’abbrutisce: il cane diventa
lupo, ma il lupo è signore della selva, dominatore nella vita
selvaggia. Ma Jack London è un sensitivo, un delicato a dispetto
della sua vita, uno spirito universale che non può perire schiacciato
dal contingente; ed ecco ricominciare il travaglio affannoso dell’uomo
che, per virtù del suo ingegno, pur rincantucciato nell’antro, ad
affinar la selce, nella desolata solitudine della Vita selvaggia, spia se
stesso, studia le voci arcane della natura, e, attraverso ostacoli
tremendi, risale alla superficie della civiltà, mercè la potenza del
patissero.
Il lupo diventa cane. (White fang).
Jack London ritorna spesso col pensiero al primo libro letto da
bambino, l’Alambra, di Washington Irving, e cerca altre letture. Vuole
istruirsi, e finisce — ha allora diciannove anni — per far ritorno alla
famiglia, stabilita, a quel tempo, ad Oakland, dove l’attende la
dolorosa sorpresa di trovare il padre graduato dell’odiata polizia. Egli
vince, tuttavia, la ripugnanza che l’occupazione del padre e la vita
ordinata destano in lui, ed accetta il posto di portinaio in una scuola
secondaria. Poco dopo, collabora al bollettino letterario della stessa
scuola, e, ad un tratto, diviene scrittore. Un giornale di San
Francisco offre un premio per un articolo descrittivo: Jack London
tenta la prova a vince. Incoraggiato dal primo successo, invia un
altro articolo allo stesso giornale, che glielo rifiuta, questa volta.
Allora, disgustato del suo mestiere di portinaio, riprende la vita
nomade, e attraversa a piedi tutto il continente americano fino a
Boston. Visita il Canadà, diviene minatore d’oro e pescatore di
salmone nell’Alaska. Ma, intanto, il suo pensiero, in mezzo a tante
traversie, si forma e precisa. Ha letto Spencer e Carlo Marx: la
società gli appare sempre più mal combinata, il capitalismo odioso,
con i suoi eccessi che ne fanno un mostro crudele, divoratore; allora
il socialista per istinto diviene socialista rivoluzionario per
ragionamento, convinto che il socialismo «mira, se non altro, a
mettere ciascuno al suo posto».
Al ritorno dall’Alaska, incomincia a predicare in pubblico le sue idee
socialiste, la bellezza della rivoluzione e del mondo nuovo che deve
sorgere dal crollo della società capitalistica, ed è, alla fine, arrestato,
non più come vagabondo, ma come rivoluzionario.
Uscito di prigione, Jack London sente il bisogno di compiere la sua
istruzione: va a San Francisco e riesce a farsi ammettere
nell’Università, conciliando il bisogno dello studio con la necessità di
guadagnarsi il pane, giorno per giorno. Si occupa in una stireria. «Il
ferro e la penna si alternavano nella mia mano», ricorda egli più
tardi, «ma dalla mia mano stanca la penna cadeva sovente, e
sovente i miei occhi si chiudevano sui libri».
Dopo tre mesi di accannito lavoro, egli, robustissimo, non riesce più
a reggersi. Allora decide di ritornare a piedi ad Oakland, di
riconciliarsi con la famiglia; ma una nuova crudele delusione
l’attende. Il padre è morto, la madre e i fratelli sono in miseria.
Questa nuova traversìa, se lo costringe per qualche tempo ancora al
lavoro manuale, non gli toglie la speranza di un avvenire diverso e
migliore. Nelle solitudini nevose della terra del Nord «dove nessuno
parla, dove tutti pensano», egli s’era ripiegato su se stesso ed aveva
intravisto il suo vero orizzonte, che era quello del lavoratore
intellettuale. Riprende a scrivere. Un giornale di California accetta un
suo racconto, un altro gli chiede degli scritti. «Le cose
incominciavano a prendere una buona piega, e sembrava che io non
dovessi aver più bisogno, per qualche tempo almeno, di scaricare
carbone». In fondo, la Società, maledetta da Jack London,
incominciava a tendergli la mano. Nel 1900 appare il suo primo
Volume: The son of the wolf, «Il figlio del lupo» [1], raccolta di
racconti del paese dell’oro, che gli fece acquistar subito fama di
scrittore originale e poderoso, a ventiquattr’anni!
D’allora seguirono nuovi libri quasi senza interruzione e con
crescente successo. Sposatosi, con la sua amata compagna,
London gira il mondo e attende alle sue opere. Ma lo spirito
d’avventura non si spegne in lui. Egli vive un certo tempo nei
bassifondi di Chicago e di Londra, fa il giro del mondo in un
minuscolo yacht, lungo appena quindici metri, fa il corrispondente di
guerra al Giappone e in Manciuria nel 1904 e al Messico nel 1914,
nè cessa mai la sua inesorabile requisitoria contro la Società mal
costituita.
A soli quarantanni, nel 1916, dopo aver pubblicato una cinquantina
di volumi, la Morte lo coglie proprio all’inizio della sua vera gloria di
scrittore più letto e più discusso, più odiato e più amato, nel suo
paese. Ancora oggi non si sa come egli sia morto; e il mistero che
vela gli ultimi istanti della vita del rude avventuriero e scrittore di
genio, è degno di quel capolavoro di irrequietezza che fu, tra opere
pari, l’anima di questo Grande.

***

Così visse Jack London, lo strano romanziere che s’avvia a diventar

popolare in tutto il mondo, popolare, per la ragione semplicissima
che nello scrittore è l’uomo, ricco di una sua esperienza nuova da
raccontare, con parola nuova.
Già scrivendo di Jack London nell’Azione di Genova, nel febbraio del
1921, lamentavo che, purtroppo, bisogna cercare nelle opere
straniere quei più vasti orizzonti ideali e quell’aria pura e vivificante
di cui ha bisogno il nostro spirito, stanco o viziato, per ritornare
fattivamente alla meditazione dei più profondi problemi dello spirito e
della vita sociale.
Oggi, più che nel ’21, c’incalzano e premono da tutte le parti
formidabili problemi rivoluzionarî, e ci sentiamo oppressi da un alito
di continuata tragedia nascosta che gli sbandieramenti patriottardi
non riescono a mascherare del tutto, nè le fanfare e i canti a
completamente soffocare. Il domani si presenta pauroso agli spiriti
alacri e indipendenti, nei quali è un’avidità di sapere, di udire la
verità, o parole coraggiose e nuove che aiutino a rintracciare la
verità, a risolvere la profonda crisi di pensiero e di sentimento che
travaglia le coscienze migliori. Che ci dà oggi la letteratura nostrana?
Lettere alle sartine d’Italia e vergini da diciotto carati, romanzetti
pornografici e sentimentali ed esercitazioni stilistiche e cerebrali,
senza mai un accento di umana commozione per le tragedie politico-
sociali del mondo o anche solo una parola che la mostri consapevole
del profondo travaglio spirituale della patria. Oh, intellettuali italiani!
eccovi una folata d’aria gelida purificatrice! Anche senza farvi uscire
dal sicuro romitaggio del vostro egoismo o dai caffè affumicati cari
alla vostra presuntuosa pigrizia, anche senza farvi deporre livree o
indossare armi. Jack London vi condurrà, con le sue opere, dalla
bettola dell’Ultima Fortuna ai confini del mondo, sui perduti sentieri di
tutti gli ideali e di tutti gli ardimenti! Giova almeno con lo spirito
partecipare alla grande avventura del mondo! Senza l’azione,
l’azione costante, la Morte è là in agguato e non tarda a lanciarsi su
di noi, inesorabile.
Troverete nel «Richiamo della foresta» e in «Zanna bianca» la
rappresentazione realistica dell’Umanità che lotta costantemente
contro la prepotenza dell’infinito, dell’inafferrabile, dell’imponderabile.
Scenda o risalga il millenario cammino della civiltà — il cane diventi
lupo o il lupo diventi cane — ogni creatura vivente, insoddisfatta,
cerca sensazioni nuove, è costretta a sgombrare il proprio cammino,
a vincere mille ostacoli, chè la vita si rinnova con sempre maggiore
Varietà di forme e con più rapidi mezzi di distruzione. Questi due
romanzi racchiudono una lezione in atto; questa: che la civiltà non
deve indebolire il carattere nè affievolire lo spirito; il lupo che diviene
cane è travolto, e forse il cane trova il suo completo sviluppo nel
lupo! Da questa crudele lezione, i socialisti, conservatori, comunisti e
aristocratici possono trarre elementi per scindere la parte viva da
quella morta della propria filosofia o del proprio credo. La lettura di
queste opere ci può lasciare immutati, ma non impassibili: l’odio e
l’amore trovano in esse accenti definitivi che toccano le radici della
nostra coscienza e dello nostra sensibilità. E mentre l’occhio spazia
per vastità nuove e terribili, e ammira terre e solitudini sconosciute, e
vede esperienze impensate, il cuore, il cuore dell’eterno fanciullo che
è in noi, mormora inconsapevolmente una parola d’amore e di
solidarietà ultraumana.

***

Pubblicheremo, in seguito, «Martin Eden», «L’amore della vita», «Il

vagabondo delle stelle» e gli altri romanzi nei quali Jack London
profuse i ricordi e le impressioni dei suoi movimentati viaggi e
vagabondaggi attraverso il mondo. Ma forse daremo ai lettori italiani,
prima di essi, la traduzione di almeno uno dei suoi romanzi sociali,
del terribile Tallone di ferro, che a noi sembra oggidì opera di viva
attualità.
Il «Tallone di ferro», scrisse Anatole France, presentando, l’anno
scorso, il volume ai lettori francesi, «è il termine energico col quale
Jack London disegna la plutocrazia. Il libro che, tra le sue opere,
porta questo titolo, fu pubblicato nel 1907. Rintraccia la lotta che
scoppierà un giorno tra la plutocrazia e il popolo, se il Destino, nella
sua collera, lo permetterà. Ahimè! Jack London aveva il genio che
vede quello che è nascosto alla folla degli uomini e possedeva una
scienza che gli permetteva d’anticipare i tempi. Egli previde
l’assieme degli avvenimenti che si sono svolti nella nostra epoca. Lo
spaventevole dramma al quale ci fa assistere in ispirito, nel Tallone
di ferro, non è ancora divenuto una realtà, e noi non sappiamo dove
e quando si compierà la profezia dell’americano discepolo di Marx.
«Jack London era socialista spinto, socialista rivoluzionario. L’uomo
che, nel suo libro, distingue la verità e prevede l’avvenire, il saggio, il
forte, il buono, si chiama Ernesto Everhard. Come l’autore, fu
operaio e lavorò con le sue mani. E voi sapete che colui che fece
cinquanta volumi prodigiosi di vita e d’intelligenza e morì giovane,
era figlio di un operaio e incominciò la sua illustre esistenza in
un’officina. Ernesto Everhard è pieno di coraggio e di saggezza,
pieno di forza e di dolcezza, tratti tutti che sono comuni a lui e allo
scrittore che l’ha creato. E a integrare la somiglianza che esiste tra
loro, l’autore assegna, a colui ch’egli realizza, una moglie d’anima
grande e di spirito forte, della quale il marito fa una socialista. E noi
sappiamo, d’altro canto, che Mrs. Charmian lasciò, con suo marito
Jack, il Partito del Lavoro dopo che cotesta associazione diede segni
di moderatismo.
«Le due insurrezioni che formano materia del libro che io presento al
lettore francese sono così sanguinarie, e presentano nel disegno di
quelli che le provocano una tale perfidia e nell’esecuzione tanta
ferocia, che ci si chiede se esse sarebbero possibili in America, in
Europa, specie in Francia. Io non lo crederei, se non avessi
l’esempio delle giornate di Giugno e la repressione della Comune del
1876, che mi ricorda come tutto sia permesso contro i poteri. Tutto il
proletariato d’Europa ha sentito, come quello d’America, il Tallone di
ferro.
«Per il momento, il socialismo in Francia, come pure in Italia e in
Ispagna, è troppo debole per temere il Tallone di ferro, poichè
l’estrema debolezza è l’unica salvezza dei deboli. Nessun Tallone di
ferro calpesterà questa polvere di partito. Qual’è la causa della sua
diminuzione? Ci vuol ben poco per abbatterlo in Francia dove la cifra
dei proletarî è esigua. Per diverse ragioni la guerra, che si dimostrò
crudele col piccolo borghese spogliandolo senza farlo gridare,
giacchè questi è un animale muto; la guerra non fu troppo
inclemente per l’operaio della grande industria, che trovò da vivere
fabbricando armi e munizioni e un salario, magro sin troppo dopo la
guerra, ma non caduto, tuttavia, mai troppo in basso. I dominatori del
momento vegliavano, e quel salario non era, in sostanza, che della
carta che i grossi proprietarî, vicini al potere, non penavano troppo a
procurarsi. Bene o male, l’operaio visse. Aveva udito tante
menzogne che non si stupiva più di nulla. Fu quello il momento che i
socialisti scelsero per disgregarsi e ridursi in polvere. Questa pure è,
senza morti e feriti, una bella disfatta del socialismo. Come
accadde? E come mai tutte le forze di un grande partito
s’addormentarono? Le ragioni da me esposte non sono sufficienti a
spiegarlo. La guerra ci deve entrare per qualche cosa, la guerra che
uccide gli spiriti come i corpi.
«Ma un giorno la lotta del lavoro e del capitale ricomincerà. Verranno
allora giorni simili alle rivolte di San Francisco e di Chicago, delle
quali Jack London ci mostra, per anticipazione, l’indicibile orrore.
Non vi è alcuna ragione, pertanto, di credere che in quel giorno (o
vicino o lontano) il socialismo sarà ancora frantumato sotto il Tallone
di ferro e affogato nel sangue.
«Avevano gridato nel 1907 a Jack London: «Voi siete uno
spaventevole pessimista!». Socialisti sinceri l’accusavano di gettare
lo spavento nel partito. Avevano torto. Bisogna che quelli che hanno
il dono prezioso e raro di prevedere, pubblichino i pericoli che
presentono. Ricordo di avere udito dire parecchie volte dal grande
Jaurès: «Non si conosce abbastanza fra noi la forza delle classi
contro le quali abbiamo a combattere. Hanno la forza e si attribuisce
loro la virtù; i preti hanno messo da parte la morale della chiesa per
coltivare quella dell’officina; cosicchè la società tutt’intera, allorchè
queste classi saranno minacciate, accorrerà a difenderle». Egli
aveva ragione, come London ha ragione di porgerci lo specchio
profetico dei nostri errori e delle nostre imprudenze.
«Non compromettiamo l’avvenire: ci appartiene. La plutocrazia
perirà. Nella sua potenza si scorgono di già i segni della rovina. Essa
perirà perchè ogni regime di casta è votato alla morte; il salariato
perirà perchè è ingiusto. Perirà gonfio d’orgoglio, in piena potenza,
come perì la schiavitù e la servitù.
«E già, assentandolo attentamente, ci si accorge che è caduco.
Questa guerra, che la grande industria di tutti i paesi del mondo ha
voluto, questa guerra che è stata la sua guerra, questa guerra nella
quale essa riponeva la speranza di nuove ricchezze, ha causato
tante distruzioni e così profonde, che l’oligarchia internazionale è
essa stessa scossa e s’avvicina il giorno in cui essa crollerà su
un’Europa rovinata.
«Non posso annunziare che perirà d’un colpo e senza lotta. Essa
lotterà. L’ultima sua guerra sarà forse lunga e avrà diverse fortune. O
voi, eredi del proletariato, o generazioni future, figli di giorni nuovi,
voi lotterete, e allorchè dei crudeli rovesci vi faranno dubitare del
successo della vostra causa, riprenderete fiducia, e direte col nobile
Everhard: «Perduro per questa volta, ma non per sempre. Abbiamo
appreso molte cose. Domani l’idea risorgerà, più forte in saggezza e
in disciplina».

***

Non abbiamo potuto resistere alla tentazione di riprodurre nella sua

interezza la presentazione che Anatole France fa del Tallone di ferro,
perchè, confortati dal suo giudizio, nell’ora torbida che attraversa
l’Europa tutta, premuta com’è dal tallone del bolscevismo
dell’estrema sinistra e dell’estrema destra, dalle dittature rosse e da
quelle monarchico-militaristiche, è più che mai necessario che quelli
«che hanno il dono prezioso e raro di prevedere, rendano noti i
pericoli che presentono».
A parte il grande godimento intellettuale che dà l’opera di Jack
London, essa racchiude in sè un insegnamento e un ammonimento
che non debbono andare del tutto perduti. Sin dal 1904, egli aveva
scritto una terribile requisitoria contro la società capitalistica attuale.
Il suo inesorabile «j’accuse», dal titolo «War of the Classes», Guerra
delle classi, vibra di sincera e profonda rivolta contro la borghesia
trionfante, e predica il socialismo come una santa crociata. In lui
l’amore del proletario è qualche cosa di più alto, di più universale
dell’amore di patria; e nell’accusare e nel difendere trova accenti che
impressionano e commuovono, perchè ci fa sentire nella sua
personale e dolorosa esperienza tutta l’ingiustizia di una società
«dove sono uomini che sprecano ricchezze non guadagnate col
proprio lavoro, e uomini che languono nella miseria per mancanza di
lavoro».