F. Allan Hanson

Beyond the skin bag: on the moral responsibility of extended agencies

The growing prominence of computers in contemporary life, often seemingly with minds of their own, invites rethinking the question of moral responsibility. If the moral responsibility for an act lies with the subject that carried it out, it follows that different concepts of the subject generate different views of moral responsibility. Some recent theorists have argued that actions are produced by composite, fluid subjects understood as extended agencies (cyborgs, actor networks). This view of the subject contrasts with methodological individualism: the idea that actions are produced only by human individuals. This essay compares two views of responsibility: moral individualism (the ethical twin of methodological individualism), and joint responsibility (associated with extended agency theory). It develops a view of what joint responsibility might look like, and considers the advantages it might bring relative to moral individualism as well as the objections that are sure to be raised against it.

From Symmetry to Anthropophagy: The Cultural Context of Maori Art

J. D. H. and Gabrielle Donnay have produced an instructive and fascinating analysis of Maori rafter designs. My task is to add a few thoughts from an anthropological perspective, to expand upon their insights by placing them in a broader perspective of Maori art and culture. The article will develop something like the spiral motif that is so common in Maori art, covering an increasingly wide area as it goes along. It begins with a few comments about Maori rafter patterns (kowhaiwhai), the particular subject of the Donnays article. Next it relates structures of symmetry and antisymmetry in rafter designs to other elements of Maori art. Finally, it suggests connections between those artistic patterns and other aspects of Maori culture. The discussion will concern traditional rather than contemporary Maori culture-as it was up to roughly the middle of the nineteenth century.

Which Came First, the Doer or the Deed?

Two theories of action—methodological individualism and composite agency theory—are compared, together with their associated concepts of moral responsibility. They agree that deeds are done by doers, and that moral responsibility for a deed lies with its doer, but they differ on the definition of the doer. Methodological individualism holds that doers are limited to human individuals. Composite agency theory, noting that most deeds can be done only by humans working in concert with nonhumans (this is especially clear when computers are involved), defines a doer as whatever combination of human and nonhuman entities is necessary to accomplish a deed. Methodological individualism limits moral responsibility to human individuals while composite agency theory attributes it to the combination of humans and nonhumans that did the deed. Objections to this view of moral responsibility, and responses to them, are discussed. In the West, methodological individualism is shown to be rooted in humanistic modernity, while composite agency theory emerges from postmodernity. Nonwestern examples similar to both composite agency theory and methodological individualism are reviewed.

Strictures and Ratiocinations: I. C. Jarvie's Philosophy for Anthropology

1. C. Jarvie’s new book Rationality and Relativism bears the subtitle In Search of a Philosophy and History of Anthropology’. The philosophy in question is prescriptive rather than descriptive. Jarvie is less concerned with the logic of what anthropologists do than with what, according to his lights, they should do. And if there can be such a thing as a prescriptive history (an account of what should have happened as contrasted with what actually happened), what he says about the history of anthropology is prescriptive as well. More Gibbon than Becker, his main interests are telling how the field should have developed and pointing out where it went astray. If anthropologists have not been heedful of Jarvie’s prescriptions, I think it is for a deeper reason than the disinclination to engage in philosophical debate that many of them share with other social scientists. It is because they believe that for most purposes (including, interestingly, Jarvie’s own) the field is better off as it is than as Jarvie would have it be. My effort to establish this proposition will take the form of a three-staged argument. First, I will do something that anthropologists typically do. Faced with institutions, customs or beliefs which initially appear strange or opaque, the anthropologist attempts to discern an underlying context or rationale according to which they become intelligible. Jarvie’s views about anthropology occasionally appear strange or opaque to me, but I am convinced that behind them is a network of understandings-an image of what anthropology as one science in a community of sciences should be-in terms of which those views make good

Meaning and Change: Explorations in the Cultural Sociology of Modern Societies

This is not so much a single work as a collection of essays, ‘a sequence of monographic stabs at problem-areas in modem societies and sociology’, as the author himself puts it (p. 7). After an introduction the first five essays explore the relevance of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology (particularly Weber, Shmel, and Durkheim) to problems facing contemporary scholars. In one way or another these chapters are concerned with the sociological study of how people in rapidly changing contemporary societies seek (and occasionally find) meaning in their lives. Most of these essays touch on the sociology of religion, while the final three rather brief chapters are addressed speciftcally to issues in that field. One of the most interesting questions raised in the book is the relationbetween the freedom of the individual and the imperatives of society (chapters five and six). The issue is framed by contrasting Durkheim and Simmel. The two scholars agreed that history has witnessed the development and enlargment both of the individual and of society. For Durkheim it is preciselyin the elaboration ofsocial forms that the individual finds room for growth, and hence individuation and societalization are harmonious aspects of a single process. Simmel also recognized that developments such as the division of labour enabled the growth of both the individual and society, but he held that each of them was moving toward its own completeness in different and opposed ways, so that individuation and societalization were on a collision course. This contrast between Durkheim and Simmel delineates a fertile field for further investigation. My criticism, however, is that it presents a one-dimensional image of Durkheim. To be sure, concepts such as organic solidarity do entail that a new level of social complexityopens up unprecedented latitude for individual activity, thought and expression. In that sense Robertson’s characterization of Durkheim is correct. But there was another side to Durkheim. His essay on ‘The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions** treats an inherent tension which he perceived within human beings. Only in society can we realize one side of our nature (including our relation to the‘sacred and our reasoning faculties) while society is foreign to and repressive of another part of our nature (sensations, passions). Certainly this is not congruent with the sort of opposition Simmel perceived between society and the individual, but it does indicate that Durkheim’s view ofthe relation between individuation and societalization was not quite as simple o r harmonious as Robertson suggests. Despite the significance and extensive interest of its subject matter, Robertson’s book is remarkably tough going. There are two reasons for this. Although the book claims to deal with modem societies and sociology, there is infinitely more here about modem sociology than about modem societies. For example, the penultimate essay is ‘Researching Sites of Cultural Concern: Religion in Britain’. Judging from the titles, if any essay in the book treats modem society it should be this one. But it does not. It describes problems in how the sociology of British religion has been carried out in the past and suggests how it might proceed more profitably in future. It tells us next to nothing about religion in Britain. The same point holds true for the other essays: they are concerned far more with programmatic problems in the doing of sociology than with the subject matter of sociology. Of course an author has the right to focus his work in any direction he chooses, and the direction Robertson has chosen is