Ethnography of Capital and Power： Towards an Ecology of Publicness

Keywords

selfishness,economy,network

Objectives

This joint study will pursue a deeper anthropological inquiry into the concept of public interest from the perspectives of “selfishness” and “economy.” To that end, we will focus on the practices of various stakeholders (companies, NGOs, individuals, and communities) that seek to profit from recent advances in information and communications technology. We will then perform an ethnographic comparison of examples of public spaces and networks that have emerged from the interactions of selfish stakeholders involved in supplying basic necessities for life (food, shelter, education, health care, welfare, etc.). Through these considerations, we will devise strategies to develop anthropological solutions to problems affecting the public interest within the global political and economic setting. This will also be an inquiry into how societies arise from conditions that do not guarantee their existence. To that end, this joint study will (1) place its focus on the selfish actions of diverse stakeholders striving to ensure their own survival under conditions that do not presuppose the existence of a civil society or its normative values; (2) devote attention to economies that comprise interactions accompanied by flows of materials and energy; (3) view as an emergent social phenomenon those circumstances that allow such economies to create spaces and networks invested with a specific set of values and ethics, and, through the consideration of these mechanisms, develop an “ecology of the public interest.”

Research Results

The Ecology of Publicness project has focused on how interactions with others emerge in a wide range of aid-related contexts, such as development aid, welfare, and humanitarian assistance. During this process, the project purposely explored the possibility of a society arising not from independence, autonomy, reciprocity, or equality, but rather from dependence and parasitism, concepts which represent the antithesis of the former.
The advent of the Anthropocene epoch, which was precipitated by human intelligence and reason, indicates that the notion that “human life outweighs the earth” is becoming increasingly less obvious. Even in the context of development aid, welfare, and humanitarian assistance, it has become apparent that that notion that a better life can be achieved through human exceptionalism, as has been the case in the past, is rapidly becoming a shaky prospect.
By nature, our lives consist of interactions with a wide variety of others who exist whether we like it or not. Human exceptionalism thus far has resulted in self-evident definitions of “others who do not require consideration,” such as heterogeneous species or humans who deviate from accepted norms. In addition, the discussion of democratic processes in the public sphere has stressed the importance of membership and language literacy. However, thus far little consideration has been given to the treatment of those who are not “standard humans” as members of public spaces, or to the potential for the creation of public spaces through non-linguistic actions.
In reality, however, others or different species have already inserted themselves into the formation process of various urban spaces, whether we like it or not, resulting in the emergence of public spaces for living and eating. This is the very process of “making kin” (Haraway, 2017) that incorporates new outsiders according to the logic of kinship, rather than identity. In the current age of dysfunction in the states and markets that affect our lives, we must put aside for a moment the linguocentric belief that careful deliberation and debate are the only means of finding ways to coexist with others. Instead, it has become clear that we must consider cases in which the cumulative and intertwined nonverbal actions of a variety of others, including different species of organisms, results in the creation of spaces for coexistence with others.
When discussing the “public,” the various actions taken by those considered “others who do not require consideration” in order to realize a higher quality of life include actions that may be considered deinstitutional or immoral. Behavior that involves the denial of subjectivity and liabilities, such as dependency and parasitism, is also practiced by various entities in order to achieve a higher quality of life. The Ecology of Publicness project has endeavored to acknowledge the transgressive political and economic practices of various other entities that would elude the logic of conventional political science and economics. This represents an exploration of the potential for a new kind of social consciousness that cannot be viewed in terms of the conventional values of the public sphere.