Paul Kockelman

Agency The Relation between Meaning, Power, and Knowledge

Using a Peircean theory of meaning, agency may be theorized in terms of flexibility and accountability, on the one hand, and knowledge and power, on the other. In this theory, residential agency, which is closest to notions such as “power” and “choice,” is the degree to which one can control the expression of a sign, compose a sign‐object relation, and commit to an interpretant of this sign‐object relation. Representational agency, which is closest to notions such as “knowledge” and “consciousness,” is the degree to which one can thematize a process, characterize a feature of this theme, and reason with this theme‐character relation. Agency, as a kind of social and semiotic facility, is thereby theorized as multidimensional, graduated, and distributed. This theory allows one to analyze, as concomitant phenomena, the longue durée processes that underlie relatively perduring institutions and the real‐time practices that support relatively fleeting interactions. Finally, it highlights the theoretical and empirical terrain shared by linguistic anthropology, science and technology studies, political economy, and critical theory.Using a Peircean theory of meaning, agency may be theorized in terms of flexibility and accountability, on the one hand, and knowledge and power, on the other. In this theory, residential agency, which is closest to notions such as “power” and “choice,” is the degree to which one can control the expression of a sign, compose a sign-object relation, and commit to an interpretant of this signobject relation. Representational agency, which is closest to notions such as “knowledge” and “consciousness,” is the degree to which one can thematize a process, characterize a feature of this theme, and reason with this theme-character relation. Agency, as a kind of social and semiotic facility, is thereby theorized as multidimensional, graduated, and distributed. This theory allows one to analyze,

The semiotic stance

Abstract This essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning — a sign stands for an object — is incorrect. In its place, it offers the following definition, which is framed not in terms of a single relation (of standing for), but in terms of a relation (of correspondence) between two relations (of standing for): a sign stands for its object on the one hand, and its interpretant on the other, in such a way as to make the interpretant stand in relation to the object corresponding to it own relation to the object. Using this definition, it reanalyzes key concepts and foundational arguments from linguistics so far as they relate to anthropology and psychology. Such terms include: concept, intentional state, motivation, ground, iconicity, speech community, norm, performativity, joint-attention, embodiment, intersubjectivity, agency, role, functionalism, pragmatics, social construction, realism, and natural language.

Agent, Person, Subject, Self: A Theory of Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure

Figures Tables 1. Semiotic Ontologies 1. Signs, Minds, and Meaning-in-the-World 2. Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure 2. Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis 1. Relations between Relations 2. Significance and Selection 3. Communication between Conspecifics 4. The Organization of Cognitive Processes 5. Framing 6. Artificial and Natural Selection, Sieving and Serendipity 7. Lawn-Mowers and Logic Gates 8. Relations between Relations Revisited 9. Networks of Interconnected Envorganisms 10. The Evolution and Epidemiology of Culture 3. Enclosing and Disclosing Worlds 1. The Neo-Organon 2. Semiotic Processes, Social Theories, and Obviated Ontologies 3. Social Statuses, Material Substances, and Mental States 4. Relatively Emblematic Indices 5. Semiotic Agents and Generalized Others 6. From Performativity to Transformativity 4. Residence in the World 1. From Being-in-the-World to Meaning-in-the-World 2. Heeding Affordances 3. Wielding Instruments 4. Undertaking Actions 5. Inhabiting Roles 6. Fulfilling Identities 7. From Acting Under a Description to Comporting Within an Interpretation 5. Representations of the World 1. Intentionality Reframed 2. Cognitive Representations 3. Discursive Practices 4. From Theory of Mind to the Interpretation of Signs 5. Intentionality and Emblemeticity 6. Selfhood, Affect, and Value 1. I Err Therefore I am 2. From Subjectivity to Selfhood 3. From Cognition to Affect 4. Maps, Terrains, and Travelers 5. From Meaning to Value

The meanings of interjections in Q'eqchi' Maya: From emotive reaction to social and discursive actions. Commentaries. Author's reply

In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjectionsthat is, words like oof, ouch, and bleahhave traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Qeqchi Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Qeqchi and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections in Qeqchi in terms of a semiotic framework that may be generalized for other languages. With these grammatical forms, indexical objects, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the various social and discursive ends that interjections serve in one Qeqchi community, thereby shedding light on local values, norms, ontological classes, and social relations. In short, this article argues against interpretations of interjections that focus on internal emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and...In Western philosophy and linguistic theory, interjectionsthat is, words like oof, ouch, and bleahhave traditionally been understood to indicate emotional states. This article offers an account of interjections in Qeqchi Maya that illuminates their social and discursive functions. In particular, it discusses the grammatical form of interjections, both in Qeqchi and across languages, and characterizes the indexical objects and pragmatic functions of interjections in Qeqchi in terms of a semiotic framework that may be generalized for other languages. With these grammatical forms, indexical objects, and pragmatic functions in hand, it details the various social and discursive ends that interjections serve in one Qeqchi community, thereby shedding light on local values, norms, ontological classes, and social relations. In short, this article argues against interpretations of interjections that focus on internal emotional states by providing an account of their meanings in terms of situational, discursive, and social context.

The anthropology of an equation. Sieves, spam filters, agentive algorithms, and ontologies of transformation

This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algorithm that underlies a variety of computational technologies—most notably spam filters, but also data-mining tools, diagnostic tests, predictive parsers, risk assessment techniques, and Bayesian reasoning more generally. The article foregrounds the ways ontologies are both embodied in and transformed by such algorithms. And it shows the stakes such ontological transformations have for one particularly widespread and powerful metaphor and device—the sieve. In so doing, this inquiry shows some of the complex processes that must be considered if we are to understand some of the key relations linking semiosis and statistics. Reflexively, these processes perturb some core ontological assumptions in anthropology, science and technology studies, and critical theory.

Residence in the world: Affordances, instruments, actions, roles, and identities

Abstract This essay brings Peirces understanding of meaning to bear on Heideggers critique of mind, thereby articulating being-in-the-world in terms of semiosis. Using ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes — heeding affordances, wielding instruments, undertaking actions, performing roles, and filling identities — that constitute the key modes of non-linguistic and/or non-representational meaning in which human-beings are always already holistically implicated. It doing so, it theorizes what is meant by purchases, functions, purposes, statuses, and values (as well as providing a semiotically sophisticated account of ‘material culture’). And it generalizes Anscombes idea of ‘acting under a description’ to comporting within an interpretation.

Enclosure and Disclosure

In certain historical and ethnographic contexts, scholars such as Marx and Evans-Pritchard have been able to disclose relatively coherent ensembles of meaningful practices from what at first appear to be simple objects — the commodity in modern capitalist society, or cattle among the Nuer. Around such “objects” — viewed as bundles of social, semiotic, and material relations — are unfolded group-relative modes of experiencing and behaving, thinking and acting, categorizing and evaluating. Indeed, so extensive is the reach of such objects that the ensembles of practices they disclose constitute the figure and ground of social life: space and time, substance and form, quality and quantity, ontology and cosmology. Moreover, in the hands of these devoted theorists, such ensembles of meaningful practices are epistemologically immanent: simultaneously the object interpreted and the method of interpretation. Finally, at least in the work of Marx, disclosure is situated at the intersection of knowledge and power. To paraphrase Francis Bacon — and taking the term nature to include “second nature” — if the task of knowledge is to find for a given nature the source of its coming-to-be, the task of power is to superinduce on a given body a new nature (Bacon 2000 [1620]: 102). Ethnography — and critical theory more generally — is not only a mode of disclosure but also a mode of enclosure. This term has many interrelated meanings. For example, there are enclosures in the everyday sense: not only zoos, cages, museums, and jails but also biological reserves, kraals, and chicken coops (Bacon 2002 [1627]). There is enclosure as aestheticization: to give intelligibility, form, and permanence to things that are otherwise distant, murky, and fleeting (Bakhtin 1990). There is enclosure as bios: biography as a kind of interpretive frame that

From status to contract revisited Value, temporality, circulation and subjectivity

Using Henry Sumner Maines text Ancient Law as a starting point, this article theorizes the relation between value, circulation, subjectivity and temporality. Merging the interactional framework of Erving Goffman with the political economy of Karl Marx, it introduces a metalanguage for describing transformations in subjectivity that occurred with the transition to capitalist modernity. In doing so, it unites the foundational concerns of British social anthropology (with its attention to modality, or permission and obligation) and Boasian cultural anthropology (with its attention to meaning, or signification and interpretation). And, with this unification, it seeks to illuminate transformations in social relations underlying emergent forms of contract.

Biosemiosis, Technocognition, and Sociogenesis Selection and Significance in a Multiverse of Sieving and Serendipity

This essay theorizes significance in conjunction with selection and thereby provides a general theory of meaning. It treats processes of significance and selection in conjunction with processes of sieving and serendipity and thereby systematically interrelates the key factors underlying emergent forms of organized complexity. It theorizes codes in conjunction with channels and thereby links shared cultural representations and networked social relations. And it develops the consequences of such conjunctions for various domains at various scales ranging from biosemiotic processes such as animal-signal systems and natural selection to technocognitive processes such as lawn mowers and Turing machines. In part, it is meant to meaningfully reframe the relations among the linguistic, biological, cultural, and archeological subfields of anthropology. And in part, it is meant to show the nonreductive relations between the concerns of anthropologists and a variety of allied disciplines: linguistics and psychology, cognitive science and computer science, and evolutionary biology and complexity theory.

Value is life under an interpretation Existential commitments, instrumental reasons and disorienting metaphors

This essay unfolds the critical and conceptual implications of a particular metaphor — theorizing value in terms of the relation between maps, terrains, and travelers. It synthesizes some ideas from Charles Sanders Peirce, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, and Charles Taylor. In particular, a terrain turns on social relations and cognitive representations. A map figures such a terrain in terms of differentially weighted origins, paths, and destinations. And the traveler’s interpretations of such a map are equivalent to charting a course through such a terrain. Such a metaphor is used to reframe various evaluative techniques by which we weigh the relative desirability of possible paths through a given terrain — from instrumental values (turning on graded and contoured landscapes) to existential values (turning on prototypic and exemplary paths). And this framing of value is used to theorize the relation between agency and identity.