bnsembies or biosociai resatsons Li
2
Ensembies of biosocial relations
Knowledge, including (and perhaps above all) biology, is one ofthe ways
by which humanity seeks to take control of its destiny and to transforrn
its being into a duty. For this project, man’s Iu~owledge about man is of
fundamental irnportance. The primacy of antliropology is not a form of
anthropornorphism, but a condition for anthropogenesis.
Georges Canguilhem, Knowledge oflift (200811965]: 19).
In a well-known passage in his Theses on Feuerbach, the sixth thesis,
Marx observed (1998: 573) that ‘the essence of man is no abstraction
inherent in each single individual. In its reality, it is the ensembie of
the social relations.’ At least two points are worth noting about such a
statement. For one thing, it suggests a relational, constitutive notion of
the human being, an ‘ensemble’ firmly embedded in the company of
others. A fifteenth-century term derived from medieval French (ensem
blee), ‘ensembie’ denotes ‘all the parts of something considered
together and in relation to the whole’ or ‘a unit or group of comple
mentary parts that contribute to a single effect’ (The Free Dictionary
2010). one example ofwhich would be a musical band. The other point
concerns the notion ofthe ‘social’ which, for Marx, served to establish a
contrast with Feuerbach, for whom the essence of humans could oniy
‘be regarded ... as “species”, as an inner, “mute”, general character
which unites many individuals only in a natural way’ (Marx 1998: 573;
emphasis in the original). In Cnindrisse, Marx similarly cliallenged the
‘illusion’ of the natural individual ‘posited by nature’ rather than
‘arising historically’ (1973: 83). A growing body of scholarship uses
the sketch of Marx’s sixth thesis to engage with the human production
Eiosodal Becomings: Integrnting Socfal and Biologice? Anrhropology. eds T. Ingold and G. Palsson.
Published by cambridge University Press. © cambridge University Press 2013.
ofnature in the context of environmental issues. Loftus (2009: 161), for
instance, suggests that “Society” and “nature” are . . thoroughly inter
woven as an ensemble of socio-natural relations’. What might be
gained by expanding Marx’s notion of the ensemble to address
human becomings, by speaking ofbiosocial relations, and by collapsing
the distinction between that which is posited by nature and that which
anses historically? How might the life sciences of the twenty-first
century, including anthropology, benefit front such an extension?
Etymologically derived from nascere (‘to be bom’), the concept of
nature has connoted that which is given front birth or independent of
hurnan activities — in opposition to the ‘artificial’ products ofhuman
labour. Some things are provided by nature while others are con
structed by humans. The naturalizing of phenomena renders them as
given, elevating them to a large extent above consciousness, debate,
and political action. While some schools of thought, including struc
turalism and evolutionary psychology, present the nature/culture axis
as an essential classificatory, theoretical, and existential device, oper
ating at the deep levd of cognition, myth, language, and evolution,
many scholars argue that it is neither an ethnographic nor a historical
universal (see, for instance, Descola and Palsson 1996, Ingold 2000,
2011, Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007). Indeed for years if not
decades, the nature/society divide has been subjected to critical discus
sion in anthropology and several other fields, including biology and
philosophy. Such critique has gained increasing support as a result of
growing recognition of the artificiality of nature, represented by the
reconfiguring of ‘life itself and large-scale human refashioning ofthe
global environment. This is the so-called Anthropocene, characterized
by both escalating human impact and human awareness ofit.
Arendt’s work Vie Human Conclition provides some useful insights
on this score. ‘For some time now’, she begins, citing attempts ‘to
create life in the test tube’, ‘a great many scientific endeavours have
been directed toward making life artificial”, toward cutting the last
tie through which even man belongs among the children of nature’
(1958: 2). For Arendt, the activity of labour which ‘remained stationary
for thousands ofyears, imprisoned in the eternal recurrence ofthe life
process to which it was tied’ was finally ‘liberated ... from its circular,
monotonous recurrence and transformed into a swiftly progressive
development whose results have in a few centuries totally changed
the whole inhabited world’ (1958: 46—47). Such developments, Arendt
suggested, destabilized the nature/society divide: ‘The social realm,
where the life process has established its own public domain, has fet
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Ensembies otbiosocial relations 25
loose an unnatural growth, so to speak, ofthe natural’ (Arendt 1958: 47; my
emphasis). Arendt’s work foreshadowed later understandings of mc
implications ofbiotechnology and the new genetics in highlighting the
human refiguring of genomes (see, for instance, Rheinberger 1995,
Rabinow 1996, Goodman, Heath, and Lindee 2003, Landecker 2007),
in particular recent attempts in ‘synthetic biology’ to design and con
struct new life forms from scratch. What are the implications of the
‘unnatural growth ofthe natural’ for understanding human becomings
and for the study of humans and its fragmentation?
My main concern here is with the splitting of the study of
humans along the biology/society axis. While this is the central divi
sion ofanthropology, separating its main tectonic plates, 50 to speak, it
makes littie sense, given the confiation ofthe biological and the social,
failing to dojustice both to the ‘unnatural’ growth ofthe natural and to
some ofthe voices we often encounter in the field. I suggest mat much
depends on what is meant by the concepts ofthe ‘biological’ and the
‘social’ and how we see their articulation, an issue addressed by lngold
more man two decades ago in terms of a kind of ‘relationships
thinking’ (1990: 208). As Gare argues, if the divide between nature
and culture is to be bridged, ‘it will be necessary to develop a science
which takes becoming as basic ... and conceives “beings” as islands of
stability within the flux ofbecoming’ (Care 1995: 107). Attempting to
move beyond both dualism and simple interactive frameworks linicing
separate domains of human existence, I argue that it makes sense,
paraphrasing early Marx, to speak of human becomings as the config
uration ofensembies ofbiosocial relations. The ‘nature’ with which we
are bom and which we develop is thoroughly biosocial, embodied
through human activities.
In the rest ofthis chapter I proceed in outline as follows: The next
section discusses the collapse of the theoretical notions of the biolog
ical and ffie social. This is followed by a discussion of the limits ofgene
talk and the usefulness of reimagining humans as ensembies of bio
social relations. Focusing on name talk, in mc next section I argue that
such reimagining resonates with a good deal of ethnography. Finally, I
conclude with sorne general observations. Kohn reminds us (2007: 5)
that while such terms as ‘nature-cukures’, whose current use is a
‘necessary strategy’, may sometimes reproduce ffie very dualisms we
seek to overcome, they point to ‘very real connections of which we
need to be aware’, facilitating a perspective that ‘might allow us to
better account for the worlc that goes on in the space that the hyphen
seeks to bridge’. Similarly, in the absence of a better non-dualistic
language, ffie notion ofensembies ofbiosocial relations may heip US
move beyond what Fox Keller refers to as the persistent ‘mirage’ of a
space between nature and nurture (2010), challenging current under
standings of mc division of biological and social anthropology and
their essentialist perspectives on key issues, including those of
human nature and relatedness and the interdependencies of humans
and other Icinds ofbeings.
RETHINKINC TRE BI0LOGICAL: LIFE IN CONTEXT
In his heavily cited essay on the growing artificiality of life itself in the
walce ofthe new genetics, an essay that effectively launched the con
cept of ‘biosociality’, Rabinow remarks that a ‘crucial step iii overcom
ing of the nature/culture split will be the dissolution ofthe category of
“the social” (1996: 99). Since ffie publication of Rabinow’s piece, ‘the
social’ has been scrutinized and deconstructed. While the term
‘biological’ has also received considerable attention it has probably
remained more stable. Why should this have been mc case and what
might be gained by a similar dissolution ofthe ‘biological’?
Twentieth-century biology was the culmination ofa long process
drawing upon several conceptual developments, including the notions
of the genetic code and the cell, both of which contributed to the
individuation of life. In earlier European theories of generation,
Müller-WiJle and Rheinberger note, ‘nature and nurture, or heredity
and environment, were not yct seen as oppositions’ (2007: 4); the
metaphors of alchemy and art were the dominant ones. Darwin and
Calton, they suggest, launched a new ‘epistemic space’ with the appli
cation of the metaphor of heredity, a term (derived from the Latin
hereditas) borrowed from the legal spherc where it was applied in the
context of inheritance and succession. Anthropology positioned itseif
at the centre of emerging debates about mis new epistemic space as
‘one of mc “hot spots” Glearly, this was a field that could not be
directly accessed by experiment, the only substitute, though with its
own irresolvable aporias, being the observation of “savage children”
(Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007: 22).
Interestingly, in his Variation of Animals and Plants Under
Domestication, Volunie II, published in 1868, Darwin referred to ‘invisible
characters, proper to both sexes ... and to a long line of male and
female ancestors ..,‘; ‘these characters’, Damwin added, ‘like those
written on paper with invisible inlc, lie ready to be evolved ..‘ (in
Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007: 24). Continuing the textual
Ensembies ofbiosocial relations 27
metaphor, Galton, sometimes seen as the founding father of modern
hereditaiy thought, used the analogy ofa post ofiice:
Ova and their contents are, to biologists looking at the’n through their
microscopes, rnuch what mail-bags and the heaps of letters poured out
ofthem are to those who gaze through the glass windows ofa post office.
Such persons may draw various valuable conclusions as to the postal
communicatlons generally, but they cannot read a single word ofwhat
the letters contain. All that we may learn ... must be through inference,
and not by direct observation; we are therefore forced to theorize.
(Galton, in Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007: 6)
The metapliors ofthe post office, heaps ofietters and iliegible words of
course foreshadowed the modern notion of the genetic code of the
autonomous organism. While modern students of genomics are no
longer forced to theorize’ to the same degree as Galton’s contempo
raries, thanks to technoiogical and digital apparatuses that allow them
to gaze into what they sometimes call the ‘universe within’, the meta
phors still draw upon the notion ofthe ‘book ofiife’ — indeed even more
5° than in the past.
The notion ofthe cell, another key term of modern biology, also
has an interesting social history of its own. Canguiihem emphasizes
(2008) that the development ofthe concept was intirnately related to
the concept of the individual. Not only, he points out, was ‘ccli’ bor
rowed from the contained world of the beehive in order to represent
the autonomy ofthe living organism, but also, unconsciously perhaps,
it introduced the notion of cooperation characteristic at’ the construc
tion of the honeycomb: ‘Just as a honeycomb ccli is an element of an
edifice, bees are ... individuals entirely absorbed by the republic. ... It
is certain that affective and social values ofco-operation bom, near ar
far, over the deveiopment of cdl theory’ (Canguiihem 2008: 30).
It now seems as if a new epistemic space has been fashioned,
downplaying the emphasis on individual autonomy and cooperative
interaction while highlighting the mutual relationship of organism
and context. Canguilhem anticipated same of the developments
involved: ‘would it ... be possibie’, he asked, ‘without rendering biol
ogy suspect, to ask of’ it an occasion, if not permission, to rethink or
rectify fundamental phibosophical concepts, such as that oflife?’ (2008:
59). ‘The notion ofmiiieu’, he observed, echoing the Umwelt semiotics
ofvon Uexküll (1982) and the dweliing perspective of Ingold (2000), ‘is
becoming a universal and obligatory mode of apprehending the expe
rience and existence ofliving beings; ane coulcl almost say it is now being
constituted as a category of contemporary thought’ (Canguilhem 2008:
98; my emphasis). For Canguilhem, the ‘individuality ofthe living does
not stop at its ectodermic borders any more than it begins at the ccli.
The biological relationship between the living and its inilieu is a func
tional reiationship, and thereby a mobile one’ (2008: 111).
The constitution of the category of the miheu was delayed by
the successes of the new genetics in the 1950s and 60s and the
more recent mapping of genomes which shifted attention from
organisms to genes. Ironically, even Canguilhem himself seems to
have been swayed by the rhetoric of the code of life. Now, how
ever, as the category of the milieu is finally taking off,
Canguilhem’s qualification ‘one could almost say’ is no longer
needed. The focus on milieu does not mean that the living organ
ism has disappeared from sight, devoid of agency: on the contrary,
the organism is the radiating centre of pragmatic activity: ‘Biology
must first hold the living to be a significative being, and it must
treat individuality not as an object but as an attribute within the
order of values. To live is to radiate; it is to organize the milieu
from and around a center of reference, which cannot itself be
referred to without losing its original meaning’ (Canguilhem
2008: 113—114).
Given the embeddedness of the organism, its fleeting boundaries,
the fuzzy nature of ‘genomic stuff’ (Paisson and Prainsack 2011) some
times regarded as informatic assembiy and sometimes as a material
thing, and the co-production of organisms, species, and environments,
it is difficult to see how the Aristotelian category of zoé — ofthe shnpie
fact ofliving, life itseif, life as such, or bare life, to mention some ofthe
popular terms in the literature — can remain intact, as a realm separated
fram bios, the ways oflife in thepofls. ‘Bare life’, as Thrift remarks (2004:
147), ‘is now heavily pohticized’. In bight ofthis, anthropology might be
expanded and redefined as the study of more than one species — as the
‘anthropology oflife’ — ‘to encourage the practice ofa kind ofanthro
pology that situates all-too-human worlds within a larger series of pro
cesses and relationships that exceed the human’ (Kohn 2007: 6). Kohn
suggests that expanding the rebational gaze to other kinds of beings
necessitates inhabiting their multiple natures or umweits, a transfor
mative process ofontological blurring that he calis ‘becoming’ (2007:7).
In this vein, drawing on Haraway’s argument (2008: 244) that ‘becoming
is aiways becoming with’, Kirksey and Helmreich argue (2010) for a
broad ‘nnultispecies ethnography’. Indeed, it seems reasonabie to
broaden the discussion presented here and to regard animab becomings
r
ZÖ Is15’1 raIsson Enseinbies ofbiosocial relations 29
in general as the configuratian of ensembies of biosocial relations. In
this perspective, the study of humans is inseparable fram the study of
other animals (Palssan 2013). Many ethnographic studies would support
such an argument, giving voice to people who refuse to make a funda
mental difference between humans and other beings in this respect.
Thus, Fuentes has analysed the relationships between macaques and
humans in Ball as ‘a suite of ecalogical, bialogical, and social processes
that act as niche canstructian mechanisms’ (2010: 605). Elsewhere
(Palssan 2009), I have suggested it may be useful to spealc af ‘biosocial
relatians ofproduction’ to capture the different regimes and hierarchies
of interspecies callaboration.
BEYOND NATURE AND NURTURE
The discovery of the double helix by the middle of the last century
fostered the notion ofgenes as the ‘secret aflife’, accaunting for practi
cally everything fram speciatian to ontagenic development, health
risks and persanality traits. Genes, it was assumed, kept the conversa
tian af life going. With the development of biotechnology and the
mapping of genomes, gene talk daiuinated the scene for years. The
horizon, hawever, has been significantly braadened step by step, as we
will see, maving fram the levd of single genes ta large-scale enviran
mental regimes. The failure ta make significant medical predictions an
the basis af single genes, apai-t fram accounting for a few ‘Mendelian’
diseases, meant that analyses of genatype—phenatype carrelatians
increasingly turned ta multigenic studies assuming complex interac
tion and articulation. The gename, it turned aut, althaugh many laba
rataries still busily search far signals, did not have much ta say.
Mareaver the stability af the genome has been seriously questioned.
While it has been knawn far decades that cells under stress may
mabilize systems that reshape their DNA by turning genes on and atT
(Jablonka and Lamb 2005: 88), the genome has largely been seen as ‘an
ensemble afgenes strung along the chramasames’ (Barnes and Dupré
2008: 76) with identical capies in every cell. It naw seems, hawever,
that cansiderable variatians creep in and that, as a result, ‘the dagma
that all the cells afan individual contain the same DNA needs revision’
(Sgaramella 2010: 33). Perhaps this underlines Canguilhem’s paint that
ane must not lase sight afthe radiating arganism. Ifit turns aut that the
genames af many arganisms, including humans, are unstable and
variable assemblies, it becomes increasingly difficult ta sustain claims
abaut authentic ar ‘real’ genames. It is not abviaus, though, what this
means far the biasocial argument develaped here. Three camplications
ofgreater relevance need to be added.
Far ane thing, many genames hast a set af ‘alien’ genes, harizan
tally ar laterallybarrowed fram ather ‘unrelated’ organisms. As a result
afsuch borrawing, the genealagical view aflife that emerged in Burope
during the Middle Ages - a view that drew upan the metaphar af
cannnan ‘roots’ — is being replaced by rhizamatic natians ofrelatians
(see, far instance, Ingald 2000, Palsson 2007a) that challenge the basic
assumptians of genetic determinism, and that qua1i~’ ar even undermine
the verticality af established discaurses afgenetics, relatedness
and the ‘tree aflife’.
ilven more impartantly. perhaps, grawing evidence suggests that
the human gename is fundamentally entangled with the micrabiames
afather organisms. The human bady carries with it a vast number and
variety of mutually beneficial micrabes, canstituting about 90% af its
ceils and including same 99% afits genes. ‘Ifhumans are thaught ofas a
campasite af micrabial and human cells’, as Turnbaugh and his cal
leagues point out (2007: 804), and ifwe see ‘the human genetic land
scape as an aggregate af the genes in the human gename and the
micrabiame, and human metabalic features as a blend af human and
micrabial traits, then the picture that emerges is ane af a human
“supra-arganism”. The same applies to many ather arganisms. As a
result, as Barnes and Dupré suggest (2008: 136), ‘rather than thinking
af.. genomes as the exclusive praperty af individual organisms, we
shauld think ofa metagenome encampassing all the genamic resources
available ta a micrabial community’.
Finally, maving beyand genes and genames, arganisms are partly
regulated thraugh a hast af enviranmental farces that leave an imprint
an their genomes that is passed an fram ane generation ta anather.
Grawing evidence suggests that such epigenetic regulatian is prevalent
in the human gename. Nan-DNA related aspects af aur develapmental
trajectary turn aut ta be inherited, allawing us ta be the heirs af our
biasocial heritage. The lives ofaur parents and ancestars, in atherwards,
and the traditions and conchtions af their cammunities in all their
camplexity, fram dietary factars and exposure ta toxic substances to
behaviaural habits, are embadied and memarized in our genames, turn
ing on same genes and silencing athers, leaving a lasting ‘hereditary’
impact in a samewhat nea-Lamarckian fashian. Sometimes this pradu
ces severe adverse effects, including several fonns afcancer. Faad seems
particularly impartant in this cantext. According ta the grawing fleld of
nutridanal epigenetics, as Landeclcer paints out (2011: 177), ‘foad enters
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Ensembies of biosocial relations 31
the body and neverleaves it, because food transforms the organisrn’s being
as much as the organism transforms it. It is a model for how social things
(food, in particular) enter the body, are digested, and in shaping metab
olism, becorne part of the body-in-time, not by building bones and
tissues, but by leaving an iinprint on a dynamic bodily process’. Some
argue that epigenetic evidence is already profoundly affecting legal and
ethical discourse on genedcs, equity, and justice, and mat ‘what is now
known may only be the tip ofthe iceberg’ (Rothstein, Cai and Marchant
2009:22). ‘The sileuce ofthe genome’, as Franklin puts it, ‘has given way
to the cacophony of the epigenetic’ (2006: 169). While the notion of
epigenetics is used in different ways among biologists, social scientists
aud humanities scholars, it need not confijse us here. ‘Biology’, in any
case, is far more fleeting and complex man normally imagined. Aud
heredity and generation are biosocial things.
Years ago, Waddington (1957) launched the notion of’epigenetic
landscape’ in order to move beyond simplistic genetic models ofinher
itance. While epigenetics is a move in the right direction, emphasizing
ffie complexities of generation both laterally aud vertically, the term
itself— epigenetics — assumes an epistemic space with gene tallc at the
centre, juxtaposing genetics aud everything else (‘beyond genetics’).
One of the figures Waddington presents in his book, significantly
entitled Vie Strategy oj’ the Genes, presents the ‘system of interactions
underlying the epigenetic landscape’ (see Figure 2.1). Tlie accompany
ing text underscores the ‘modeling’ impact ofgenes: ‘The pegs in ffie
ground represent the genes; the strings leading from them the chem
ical tendencies which the genes produce. The modeling of the epige
netic Iandscape, which slopes down from above one’s head towards the
distance, is controlled by the pull ofthese numerous guy-ropes which are
nttiniately anchored to Vie genes’ (1957: 36; iny emphasis). A similar genes
and-the-rest flaw is exemplified by the title of Richerson and Boyd’s
recent book, Not by Genes Alone (2008), which seeks to introduce culture
iuto the epigenetic landscape. Dual categorizatious ofgenes and every
thing else are beginning to bok outdated, given the complex array of
theoretical and empirical innovations nowadays associated with life
itseif, including those of microbiomes, ‘molecular vitalism’ and
‘developmental systems’ (see, for instance, Kirschner, Gerhart and
Mitchison 2000, Oyama, Griffiths and Gray 2001), innovations tliat
tend to characterize living regimes as ensembles ofbiosociab relations.
One illuminating context for research on some of mc biosocial
complexities discussed above is that of so-called ‘extreme environ
ments’. Irrespective of whether they are located in the Arctic or outer
Figure 2.1. Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (Waddington 1957: 36:
courtesy ofTaylor & Francis Books).
space, they seem necessarily to generate concerns with the constitu
tion ofthe mllieu and ffie essentials for human becoming and survival.
Drawing upon lier own ethnography of astronauts and Canguilhem’s
work on ‘milieu’, Olson refashions and expands the notion ofbiopo
litics to speak of ‘ecobiopolitics’ as ‘truth claims based on kuowbedge of
niilieu processes, power relations that take milieu as their object, and
the modes of subjecthood and subjectiflcation that designate subjects
as milieu elements’ (2010: 181). Space biomedicine, she argues (2010:
179). places the human species ‘within a cosrnic techno-ecological
context of “becoming”, problematizing in the process tlie categories
of ‘life itseif’ and ‘ecology’. While mc notion of ‘ecobiopolitics’ grew
out ofa project on outer space, it is not, as Olson acknowledges (2010:
181), ‘a far-out concept when put into historical context’. Along with
historians and phibosophers, anthropologists are exploring ‘milieu’s
conceptual revival in today’s post-genomic research in gene expres
sion, gene regulation, and epigenetics’ — in otherwords, rethinking the
constitution of ffie organism and its relation to environment. It
becomes increasingly difficult, in these circumstances, to maintain
any kind of distinction between nature and nurture.
Just as biobogy has expanded its horizon from the gene to epige
nomes, metagenomes, and large-scale biological regimes, linguistics
i
e
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32 Gisli Palsson Ensembies of biosocial relations 33
has extended its discussion beyond ‘language ... in and for itsel?, as
Saussure haci it (1959[1916]: 232), to the context ofthe spealcer, culturai
conventions, and discursive communities. While such extensions
enhance understandling of the process of life, they have their limits.
On its own, the extension of causality beyond the gene and the ccli
simply complicates and expands the rules ofthe game, inuch as socio
iinguistics complicates and expands the rules ofgrammar, phonology,
and syntax — the ‘dictionary’ in people’s heads — to embrace the char
acteristics of events and contexts. The organism and the speaker are
still rendered as if operated by codes and rules, however complex
they may have become. To the extent that the metaphor of language
helps to illuminate life itself, a pragmatic perspective along the lines
of Malinowski and Voloshinov might offer a better way forward.
As Goodwin and Duranti point out (1992:4), a relationship ofmutuality
in the maldng of a larger whole is ‘central to ffie notion of
context (indeed the term comes from the Latin contextus, which
means “a joining together”)’. Given such a perspective, they suggest,
the relationship between a speech act and context is ‘much like that
between “organism” and “environment” in cybernetic theory’. Context
and taflc, they emphasize, drawing upon Voloshinov’s critique of
Saussurean linguistics, ‘stand in a mutually reflexive relationship to
each other, .., talk, and the interpretive work it generates, shaping
context as rnuch as context shapes talk’ (Goodwin and Duranti 1992:
31). Just as speakers and their utterances are inseparable front the
comnunity in which they are embedded, so the organism is insepa
rabie from the environment.
Moss (2003) suggests such a pragmatic perspective as a way to
theorize life beyond codes and genes, highlighting the roles ofagency
and conversations, Pointing out that mucli of the recent debate
between gene-centrists and advocates of a new epigenesis ‘can be
construed as a debate about the scope of coding’ (2003: 184), he empha
sizes that the ‘critical decisions made at mc nodal points oforganismic
deveiopment and organismic life are not made by a prewritten script,
program, or master plan but rather are made on the spot by an ad hoc
committee [ofsignaling and regulatory molecules]’ (2003: 186). ‘After
the (confiated) gene’,2 he conciudes, ‘it is the living organism, as an
To expkin the word confiated’: Moss arg’aes that the idea that genes ‘code for’
phenotypic traits is based upon an ilticit conflation of two legitimate gene con
cepts embedded in different disciplinary practices, i.e. Genes-P, which track
phenotypic markers but are indeterminate with respect to DNA sequences
THE EPI5TJ3MIC SPACE OF NAME TALK
The preceding discussion of biosocial relations and epigenetics is
echoed in several ethnographic analyses of naming practices and
narne tallc. Anthropologists often argue that their ethnographies
need to be taken seriousiy, as evidence of genuine theorizing
among the peopie with whorn they study, on many of the key
issues addressed by their discipline, including notions of becom
ing, personhood and agency. Because they are right under our
nose, taken for granted, and essential to every person everywhere,
personal names have often eluded the theoretical and analytical
scrutiny they deserve. Focusing primarily on modern Anglo-Saxon
naming practices, Finch suggests (2008: 709) that ‘sociological
research on names and their use is surprisingly sparse given their
social significance’. Due to their central importance in our every
day lives we tend to take an ethnocentric approach to names,
ignoring mc variety of practices documented through ethnography
and history and assuming we know all there is to know.
However, anthropology and related disciplines have created a
fairly extensive literature on the variety of systems ofnaming in differ
ent times and cultural contexts (see, for instance, Bodenhorn and vorn
Bruck 2006), emphasizing ffiat naming is a speech act shaping mc life
course and the person involved. The reason why names ‘sticlc’ and
become powerful agents — why the speech acts work, guaranteeing
what Pina-Cabral (2011) refers to as mc ‘ontological weight’ of
names — is that somehow the acting spealcer is granted the licence to
name by the community involved, tlwough a formal or informal social
contract. Otherwise the person would not embody his or her name, and
the name would simply be discarded like worn or irrelevant clothes.
Subjectivity and identity, then, are informed by the social and political
environment in which naming is embedded. This is why naming prac
tices are often a contested issue for groups campaigning for human
rights and socialjustice.
(since these are typically based on the lack ofsomething) and Genes-D, which are
defined by nucteic acid sequences bot are indeterrninate with respect to pheno
typic outcomes (due to the rnultilayered contingencies ofdevelopmental context).
active agent ofits own adaptive ontogeny and evolvability, that is once
again poised to move back into mc ontological driver’s seat’ (Moss
2003: 198).
tnsembles ot biosocial relations iS
One intriguing ethnographic case testifying to the significance of
name talk for the understanding of human becomings is that of the
Inuit of the Arctic. Throughout Inuit territory, from Alaska to
Creenland, name talk has an important role to play (Bodenhorn
2000). Whlle ethnographic interpretations do not always agree and
there are significant differences between lnuit communkies, the for
mation ofan Inuk’s person largely takes place through the bestowal of
personal names. Names imply certain traits that are passed from one
person to another, recycied with each new generation. Relatives,
friends and acquaintances give each other nanies both as children
and later in life. The set of names for a given person, as a result, is
repeatedly expanded and revised during the life course, For Inuit,
naming is a powerful speech act that constructs the person. The ‘same’
individual can be different persons depending on context and, moreover,
several persons at the same time.
The role attributed by many Inuit to personal names is both
similar and dissimilar to that of genes in the program theory of
genes. As I have argued elsewhere:
sone ethnographers have used a quasi-genetic language of’vehicles’,
‘nutations’, and ‘substance’ siniilar to that of rnainsrrean genetics
While, however, for inany lnuit the role of personal naming is similar to
that of hereditary inaterial in modern gene talk, there are important
differences. Essentially, Inuit discourse on identity and relatedness is
non-reductjonisfic and relatjonal, in line with ffie principles of
epigenetics. For lnuit and other epigenetic theorists, ‘biology’ (in ifie
conventional Western sense) is beside ffie point; fatherhood and
motterhood are always ‘real aud embodied It is partly through
naming that children are positioned in a relational field, through which
their biosociality unfolds. (Palsson 2008: 557)
Inuit name tallc, then, represents an epistemic space, addressing fun
damental issues of human existence, including those of human becom
ings. relatedness and identity.
Similarly, among mc Yup’ik of Alaska the bestowal of a name
signifies bom belonging and identity. In the process of naming, the
person becomes more than a relative: ‘One gains not only social con
nections but a distinct social identity, becoming a unique “real per
son” (Fienup-Riordan 2000: 192). The ceremony duringwhich a child is
named is called kangilinyaraq, which literally means ‘to provide with a
beginning’. For the Yup’ik, the essence ofwhat it means to be human
passes through the name. Personhood would not be generated without
parents and biological birth, but what matters above all are ancestral
names defining a person’s identity and position within a particular
genealogy.
A further interesting and highly complex ethnographic case is
that of the Tsimshian of Northwestern British Columbia analysed by
Roth (2008). Roth addresses the key question of what makes a
Tsimshian person, emphasizing fundamental differences between
Tsimshian and white Euro-American society. For Tsimshian, reincar
nation is of central importance, ‘an undeniable fact of the
universe It is a fact of nature rather than an aspect of their
“culture” (Roth 2008: 62). The English term ‘reincarnation’ is in fact
a translation ofindigenaus terms denoting salmon ‘running together’
or ‘coming back’ to their spawning grounds year after year. Such
togetherness and continuity is ensured through Tsimsluan activities
that bring names and bodies together. While much of this would
apply equally to lnuit concepts and practices, Tsimshian epistemic
space seems even more name-centred than that of Inuit. Thus the
act of naming ‘gives the person to the name’ (Roth 2008: 15), as
Tsimsluan say, rather than the other way around. Proper names are
selected from a ‘basket’ of ‘vacant’ or ‘floating’ names, bypassing
names that have been disgraced by a wearer, ‘buried’ or left vacant
indefinitely.
Although Inuit, Yup’ik and Tsimshian discourses are name
centred, there are important differences in emphasis. As Roth sug
gests (2008: 94), Northwest Coast names in general do not have mc
standard referencing of the Euro-American person-name format:
‘These names, to the extent that they are mere names, do not refer
to individuals; they belong to individuals and refer to, or rather are,
immortal entities mat are not souls and not quite sentient
agents but are, in fact — there is no other succinct way to put k — natnes’
(Roth 2008: 95). ‘Tsimshian names’, Roth goes on, ‘refer to inunortal
personages — bundles of prerogatives, points or slots in a social
structure ... — which are independent of the biological individual:
names move fl-om body to body during a lifetime, they can accumulate
ar multiply on a single body (sa that a biological individual can
literally be several personages), and successive name holders in a line
age can be linked to one another as in some sense the same social
person’ (2008: 97). It may be tempting to render some of these highly
complicated Tsimshian terms as evidence for an essentialist nature/
culture divide. For one thing. a Tsimshian name is a full-blown social
actor:
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hnseinbles otbiosocial relations 37
Even today, when Tsimshjans orate, interact, and exchange wealth in
the feast hall they do so not as the individual bodies into which they
were bom ... but as nalnes.A name is a fully formed identity - aperson —
with a gender, a status, a history, a future, and a living social network
that links it to other names. (Roth 2008: 32)
Moreover, as Roth observes, Tsimshian name tallc makes a distinction
between history and structure: ‘An examination ofTsimshian concepts
of personhood reveals a distinction between, on the one hand, the
onomastic seif, the essence that is prior to any real-world social arrange
ments, manifested in a name rooted in a matrilineal hoiase, and, on the
other hand, the embeddedness of houses in a web of relations with
other houses, a social context that is more part of histo,y than of
structure’ (Roth 2008: 90; my empliases). While, however, the refer
ence to ‘the essence that is prior to any real-world social arrangements’
might be read as a form of gene talk, naming is a biosocial process
aligning persons and households through an array of human institu
tions and activities.
It would be wrong, then, to conclude that Tsimshian, Innit and
Yup’ik have already arrived at a kind ofprimitive essentialism through
their namingtheories. Their own form ofepigenetics or developmental
systems theory, in fact, moves beyond essentialism to relations and
processes. Their notions ofsociality and personhood evident in much
oftheir name tallc highlight the irrelevance ofthe idea ofthe autonomy
ofthe ‘biological’ as commonly understood. Although Tsimshian, lnuit
and Yup’ik notions of naming and ldnship are anathema to genetics,
they have a clear bodily reference. We may keep in mmd that the abuse
of names or harassment in the form of nicknames — a practice well
documented in the ethnography (Bodenhomn and vom Bruck 2006) also
testifies to the bodily reference; often it involves physical violence
in a quite literal sense, generating sensation and shame. As Scheff
remarks (1988: 405), drawing upon GoffiTlan’s worlc on ‘face’, embar
rassnent is a firmly embodied response, involving ‘a biosocial system
that functions silently, continuously, and virtually invisibly, occurring
within and betweeu members ofa society’.
Names not only speci~’ and individualize their bearers, they also
represent technologies ofthe seif, serving as means ofboth domination
and empowerment, facilitating collective action, surveillance, and
subjugation - exclusion as well as belonging. While modern states
and empires encourage and sometimes enforce stability of names,
assuming the same name from birth to death (Scott, Tehranjan and
Mathias 2002), names frequently change. Some extreme cases of
renaming come from the history of slavemy. Slaveholders were usually
keen to rename their slaves, often with names not unlike those applied
to pets and livestock. Thus, the persona ofthe slave was deformed with
a new name, tom from its former social environment (Benson 2006:
181). Significantly, when slaves were granted freedom they often
insisted upon formally receiving a new name in front ofwitnesses, to
regain dignity and to publicly confirm the ontological weight of the
new name.
Given the historical role and significance ofpatrilineal surnames
in Europe, it need not be sumprising that they still seem to provide
indicators ofthe regional, cultural and genetic structure ofcontinental
populations. Taking a broad geographic perspective, Mateos (2007)
suggests mat often people’s names offer a convenient window into
population structures, especially in the absence of reliable knowledge
about seif-identified ethnicity, and, as a result, names both open up a
new era of genetic genealogy and an important tool for policy in
today’s nulticukural society. A perennial problem, however, for social
and biological analysts as well as policy-makers and administrators is
how to define and demamcate human ‘populations’. While molecular
studies removed anthropometry and the categorization of races to mc
sidelines decades ago, at least in scientiflc discourse, focusing on gene
frequencies and sequences rather than phenotypic characteristics,
they tend to fall back on problematic notions of populations
and ethnic groups. Years ago, Ardener launched a critique of the
bounded notion of populations and ethnic groups in demographic
studies, a critique that seems pertinent to many moden studies of
genomic differences and human variation: ‘are the entkies called
“populations”, he asked, names or numbers? If names: named for
whom, and by whom? If numbers: counted by whom, and for whom?
In asking the questions “by whom?” and “for whoin?” we also ask in
particular: by om for the “people” concerned? Om by or for ffie anthro
pologist or otker scientiflc observer?’ (Ardener 1989: 110; emphasis in
the original). Including the human geneticist and the biological anthro
pologist, we might add. As many anthropologists have emphasized,
among them Ardener, ethnic groups are fluid units with flexible boun
daries, subject to both self-identiflcation and naming.
The challenge is to rethink both the social and the biological, as
these temms take for granted a western framework that is increasingly
suspect and problematic, and, indeed, increasingly deconstmucted in
biology as well as in anthropology and philosophy. Kinship is both
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social and biological or, in other words, ‘biosocial’; not however in the
reductionist sense that is in common use today (as in such phrases as
‘the biosociality ofcrime’), nor in the sense of the two separate inher
itance systems ofbiology and culture (Richerson and Boyd 2008), but
rather in the relational sense of the ‘ensemble’ that resonates with
name talk and naming practices. Such perspectives seem to be quite
broadly represented in ethnography from the Arctic to Melanesia,
echoing the recent theoretical construct of the ‘dividual’ person. As
Strathern remarks, we are ‘forced to collapse the conventional analyt
ical difference between persons and relations. Put abstractly, we could
imagine persons as relations, and vice versa’ (1991: 198—199; see also
Bamford 2004). Relational notions of the person, however, may be
closer to the old world than one might think. The historical anthro
pology of medieval Scandinavia developed by Gurevich, for instance,
ernphasizes the conflation both of persons and of persons and things
and, moreover, ‘a general awareness of the indivisibility of men and
the world of nature’ (1992: 178).
CONCLUSIONS
‘What are the implications, then, of the epistemic space ofepigenetics,
ensembles of biosocial relations, and the name talk developed by
Tsimshian, Inuit, Yup’ik, medieval Scandinavians, Melanesians and
many other anthropological subjects for the disciplining ofanthropol
ogy and, more generally, of the life sciences? Keeping in mmd the
preceding discussion of name talk, meta-genomes and developmental
systems, it seems pertinent that we turn anthropological boundary
expertise and its observant gaze inward — to our own academic com
munities, to our field, its subfields and practices (Palsson 2010). Broad
fleids of enquiry, disciplines and subdisciplines anse, develop and
(sometimes) disappear. It is important to explore this evolutionary
process, how it is disciplined (in the dual sense of controlling and
fraginentation), what establishes the candidacy for a field or discipline,
and what languages and metaphors might be the most appropriate for
the theoretical understanding of current and future developments.
Keeping in mmd the biosocial relations discussed here, there are
good grounds for reintegrating the two main wings of the study of
humans. Given the arguments of the name talk discussed above,
embodiment and materiality are not privileged themes for the natural
sciences; rather they are open to useful scrutiny and theonizing right
across the disciplinary spectrum. As we have seen, the Arendtian
‘human condition’ — the social and political life of anthropos — has been
radically expanded and transformed; not only does the moden polis
admit women, slaves and barbarians; a host of non-human species —
animals, plants and microbes — have also entered the scene. If human
beconiing is best described as the configuration of ensernbles of bio
social relations, a radical separation between social and biological
anthropology seems theoretically indefensible. We should speak,
then, of anthropology as a one-field project.
The notion of ensembles of biosocial relations, I have argued,
helps to undenline a few related points: humans may usefully be
regarded as fluid beings, with flexible, porous boundaries; they are
necessarily embedded in relations, neither purely biological nor purely
social, which may be called ‘biosociaF; and their essence is best ren
dered as something constantly in the maldng and not as a fixed,
context-independent species-being. While naming theory has some
parallels with gene talk, assuming that personhood is generated
through the embodied coding of names, the parallel masks a more
fundamental aspect, namely the central importance of the practices
ofpersonhood and relatedness subsumed under the activity ofnaming.
The empirical evidence generated by epigenetic research seems
to call for a theoretical approach that abandons the rigid analytical
dualism of nature and society. It is important to note, however, that
nature and society have always been one; thus their merging is not the
result of current escalations in the refashioning of life itseif, nor do we
need to elicit evidence of such escalations in order to demonstrate that
they are inseparable. Zerilli points out that Arendt’s reference to
‘unnatural growth’ bears an ‘uncanny resemblance to what Michail
Bakhtin calls the “grotesque body”... that “outgrows itself, transgress
ing its own limits”. Indeed, tius unnatural growth, this grotesque body,
stands both as a reminder that nature is always already culture — what
else can an unnatural nature mean? — and as an indictment to resurrect
ancient borders against the body that knows none’ (Zerilli 1995:
176—177). A somewhat similar notion seems conveyed in Plessner’s
early idea (1975) ofthe ‘natural artificiality’ ofhuman existence. It is
precisely, however, beccusse ofthe escalations of‘unnatural growth’ that
we have become aware of the inseparability of nature and culture and
sensitized to its implications (Szerszynski 2003). As a result, the dual
ism no longer sounds convincing.
Some anthropologists have attempted to bridge the nature/culture
divide along neo-Darwinian lines. Ilius, Richerson and Boyd stress the
importance of culture in shaping human affairs, suggesting that
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~tV ~.y1M1 rdI5stJJI Ensembies at biosoctat relations 41
‘culture itseif is subject to natural selectian’ (2008: 13). Far them, it is
essential ‘ta think ofgenes and culture as obligate mutualists, like two
species that synergisdcally cambine their specialized capacities ta da
things that neitlier ane can do alane’ (2008: 194). While such an appraach,
in their view, wauld ‘allaw a smooth integration of the human sciences
with the rest afbialogy’ (2008: 246), it fails ta clear the muddy waters.
Many anthropalagists wauld reject such an appraach, not sa much
because they ‘fear a reunian with biology’, as Richerson and Bayd insin
uate (2008: 14), but rather because they are uncomfortable with the
evangelical cammitment ta ‘smaoth integratian af the human sciences’
(see, for instance, Schultz 2009). Indeed it seems that far Richerson and
Boyd, the biolagical project, and by extensian the project of the human
1des, has been defined and settied for all time. ‘Science’, they maintaffl
without a hint of irony, ‘is baund by its charter ta pursue explanadons af
human evolution!’ (2008: 254; ariginal emphasis). Such pronauncements
fall ta accept the fuzziness af ‘biology’ itself. Human becaming is a
thoraughly relational, biosocial plienomenon, collective history embad
ied and endlessly refashioned in the habitvs. Resisting the biologizing af
kinship that pervades westen discaurse, epigenetics and name talk
nevertheless suggest that relatedness is bath bialogical and embadied.
In such an expanded sense, bialagy is destiny.
We may not chaase our genes in the way Inuit and Tsimshian
chaase km, despite genetic engineering and madern repraductive
technalogy. That does nat mean, hawever, that genes are us. Ta reduce
our ‘bialogy’ ta genetic makeup, alang the lines of mainstream gene
talk, is ta ignore the embodiment af our everyday experience (Ingald
2001a), including that af prenatal development, the intonation oflan
guage and musical sensibilities. It is difficult to see why the term
‘bialogy’ should be restricted ta a fraction ofwhat we are ‘barn’ with.
Not only wauld it overlaok ‘the relative arbitrariness ofbirth as a paint
af demarcation’ (Fax Keller 2010: 75), missing the entire parenting
pracess fram conception to birth, not ta mention ‘labouring’ itself; it
would also disregard the ways in which postnatal development and
becoming are outcomes ofbiosocial relatians. An expanded notian af
bialogy would include everything that is embadied during aur develop
ment, the broad ensembie af biasocial signatures generated and
assembied in the caurse of our lives. Such an expanded notion is
equivalent ta that of ‘society’. Thus, the two terms have been radically
inerged, beyond mere ‘overlap’ and ‘interaction’. After all, ‘bialagy’
and ‘society’ are not separate categories ofbeing. As Canguilhem sug
gested, biolagical knawledge is. abave all, ‘ane of the ways by which
humanity seeks to take control afits destiny. . .. The primacy afanthro
palogy is not a form of anthropomorphism, but a condition for anthro
pogenesis’ (Canguilhem 2008: 19). One form ofanthropogenesis is the
growing industry of personal genomics, both ca-produced and studied
by anthropologists (see. for example, Palsson 2012).
Epistemic space, of course, does not anse fram thin air. Mflller
Wile and Riieinberger suggest (2007) thatthe modern notion ofheredity
was partly the product ofbourgeois culture and its preoccupation with
property. Moreover as we have seen, and as Canguilhem has argued
(2008), the concept of the cell is inseparable fi’om the palitical histoiy
ofthe concept ofthe autonomous individual. What developments in the
larger world might have generated the epistemic space for developmen
tal systems and associated theoretical constructs — and, for that matter,
for nanie talk? While a solid answer to such questions necessitates a
thorough ethnographic and historical investigation of its own, it seems
safe ta assume that theorizing along these lines is related to glabaliza
tion and the current environmental crisis.
A c K N 0W LE 0 G E M E N T 5
Research for this chapter has been supported by the University
of Iceland Research Fund. I thank Carole Browner (University of
California at Los Angeles), Siguråur Örn Guåbjbrnsson (University
of Iceland), Emnia Kowal (University ofMelbourne), Hannah Landecker
(University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles, Center for Society and Genetics),
Lenny Moss (University of Exeter), Barbara Prainsack (King’s College,
London) and Christopher Roth (University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee)
for stimulating discussions on sonie ofthe issues covered in the chapter.
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Biosocial
Becomings
Integrating Social and
Biological
Anthropology
Edited by
TIM INGOLD
Depcirtment ofAnthropology,
University ofAberdeen
and
GISLI PALSSON
Department ofAnthropology,
University oficeland
~ CAMBRIIJGE
uNrvERsrTy PRESS
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