Is It Convincing to Propose That Matter Can Have Agency - Research Paper Example

?Can Matter Have Agency? The term matter refers to tangible material objects that make up the earth in which we live. The term is used liberally to mean naturally occurring objects such as solids, liquids and gasses that surround our daily existence (Oxford, 2006, 216). Agency in sociology refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently, making free personal choices. This is as opposed to structure which is a sum total of the factors that restrict the individual from acting independently of the social setting (Barker, 2005, 448). There are also scholars who argue that matter does not have agency. They say that it is individuals and societies who tend to ascribe some kind of agency to matter, but that is limited to continuums of time and space. The substance of this paper is to examine in depth the assertion in Sociology that matter has agency or a life of its own so to speak. This is understood in the context that human beings tend to attribute life like characteristics to inanimate objects which gives them conventionally accepted life and functional forms that they did not have initially. This paper delves into the extent of truth about this assertion that matter does have agency. Meaning of Matter in Social Life Human beings are essentially social beings. They do not exist on their own even if they do make individual decisions at times. In order to augment their existence, they inevitably use matter. Take the cross for example; in Christian ideology the cross symbolizes the crucifixion of Jesus Christ by the Roman authorities in order to enable the salvation of mankind from sin. However, in a much wider sense, the presence of the cross on a building has become an insignia of Christianity as a religion (Christiano, 2008, 228). Another much explored meaning of matter in sociology is on the question of security. The passport is considered an important document of identification in international travel. Once a passport is handed over at an airport, there are coded messages in it in the form of barcodes which can be read by a computer to establish identity. Moreover there is an attached photograph and writings which identify the holder. A lot of communication takes place between the passport and the security agent examining without any input from the passport holder. As such the passport is capable to communicate on its own just as if it were a person (Carter, Simon, 2008, 8). These examples are seen as giving the cross and passport a life of their own independent of the people immediately using them. Since they both play an important role in social life; the cross being an agent of Christian identity and belief and the passport being an agent of individual identity and right of getting through a checkpoint; they are both seen as having agency (Carter, Simon, 2008, 8). An important factor to consider in analyzing this role of matter as having agency is the issue of individuality. An individual is a constant factor of sociological analysis. Though there is raging controversy on whether an individual is the basic unit of sociological analysis or there is no such thing as an individual outside the social setting; the bottom-line is that any society is made up of individuals. Certain circumstances, like moving through customs, force persons to present themselves as individuals even if they are in a family group. Individuality is therefore an inevitable aspect of human existence and identity (Carter, Simon, 2008, 9-10). The passport helps in identifying the human person as an individual. At an airport, even in a family group, an individual has to produce his own passport which identifies him only and not as part of the larger group. Yet the individual is shaped by society and in sociology is therefore seen a s part of the larger social group. To sociologists therefore, the individual is always seen as part and parcel of the society that shapes his character and world view. Moreover, the passport not only serves as a means of individual identity, but its very existence is for the greater security of the wider society. Passports are used to allow legitimate individuals into a country and miscreants out of it. So the individual is a microcosm of wider society which cannot successfully be separated from it (Carter, Simon, 2008, 8). Another important aspect of the analysis of mater as an agency is mediation. Mediation in sociology refers to the all the social factors that inform the individual before he carries out a particular action. Such social mediating factors include stories, advice, information and precedents offered on all possible situations. For instance, there is a lot of information on marriage, childcare, education and so on, offered to the individual through the media, cultural stories and personal experiences of others. All these are supposed to be guidelines on what is supposed to be done by anyone faced with a similar situation (Carter, Simon, 2008, 7). Mediation acts as a guideline for persons on how to tackle given situations based on previous experiences of others in a similar situation. There are various social institutions involved in mediation. Among these are families, religions, formal and informal schools, peer groups, professional organizations and of late even social networking sites. All these organizations plus individuals are involved heavily in giving guidelines on how an individual should tackle different situations in which they are involved (Carter, Simon, 2008, 7). Human Interaction with Nature In the course of their lifelong interaction with nature, human beings inevitably develop attachments to objects and other humans in their environment. These attachments develop from the innate need to feel secure in the environment in which one lives. A child for example may learn to love and trust the person giving it care in early life and thus grow up with a sense of being loved and protected. Consequently, the child will also learn to love and care for others and have a heightened feeling of self worth. On the contrary, a child who is brought up in the hands of untrustworthy and unreliable caregivers may grow up into an insecure and untrustworthy being with a heightened feeling of low self esteem (Redman, 2008, 2). The relationships in early life have been known, especially in psychology, to determine the kind of person an individual grows up into. It is not just the people in one’s life that he learns to relate to at this early age but the objects around him as well. In many traditional societies objects that cause insecurity such as active volcanoes, flooding rivers and dark forests have tended to be regarded as of a certain religious value both negative and positive. As such, the Amazon jungle is steeped in many myths among the natives living around it. Animals too are revered or derided depending on the productive or danger value they have in society. Snakes, which are viewed as silent and dangerous killers, have earned the wrath of various societies including the Judeo-Christian mythology (Redman, 2008, 4). As has been stated above, people develop attachments to matter that help to define matter in a manner ascribed by the individual. This concept is analyzed in greater detail below. Why Matter Has Agency In the course of the above mentioned human interaction with nature, matter does gain prominence as an integral part of human existence. The growing child learns to attach importance to shelter, food, clothing and other basic necessities that contribute towards supporting human survival. However, shelter is not just shelter, the quality of house in which one lives helps to define status. Persons living in a permanent house with creature comforts such as running water, electricity, good furniture, air conditioning system, heating system and lots of space, tend to feel they are of higher status than those who lack some of these amenities. The house therefore defines status rather than just providing shelter (Redman, 2008, 2). Apart from things like passports and houses, which tend to define an individual, the other form of matter that has agency is money. The history of money is quite interesting. Money came about as a standard form of exchange which saved merchants the trouble of having to carry bulky goods for exchange in batter trade. For this reason, money came to be a standard form of defining the value of every type of good. Redman (2008,2) describes how a desperate man Amerigo Bonasera seeks the deadly services of a mafia boss Don Corleone to take revenge on two miscreants who have raped the former’s daughter. Bonasera hopes that the Don will use his network of criminals to punish the miscreants, but tries to pay for these services using cash. However, the Don turns down the cash offer and instead offers to help Bonasera provided that the latter will remain forever indebted to him. In the example above, one person values services in the conventional way, in terms of cash value while the other sees it completely differently. This valuation of almost every service or good in terms of cash is what gives money its lifelike role in life. Like the passport, money has several security features that make it difficult to produce for fraudsters. Genuine money is therefore pursued with a lot of zest since it is a life defining and life changing agent. In many cases money is even valued above human life when robbers kill to get hold of it. The bottom line however, is that money is simply matter, but in large quantities it has a life of its own. Due to the process of mediation, individuals are induced at an early age to the culture of money. Money is given a significant amount of reverence and persons grow up to regard it as an important aspect of human existence just as if life itself is dependent on it. To a great extent life does literally depend on the amount of money one has at any given time. However, money does get accumulated by individuals beyond any amounts they and their dependants can realistically spend even in 10 lifetimes. This kind of behavior boils down to elevating money to the level of some kind of deity. The boundary between money as a currency of exchange and a god to be worshipped is therefore very thin. Another case of matter having agency is discernible in the use of totems. Totems are artifacts considered to represent the ancestors of a given group of people. These ancestral representations include totem poles, flags, carvings and paintings. What they have in common is that they have a high level of reverence attached to them by the communities in which they are found. In some cases, the totems have a religious value in addition to the function of communal identity that they play. Modern day versions of the totems include national flags and courts-of-arms which play a significant role in defining national identity for contemporary nations (Giddens, 1996, 118). In recent times, human beings have gained a lot of attachment to computers and modern electronic gizmos. Many people today cannot consider writing without the use of a computer. These computers which were once just machines for swift calculation have grown into items used to control many events in modern life. Computers form an integral part of cars, household appliances, broadcasting systems, airports, mobile phones, trains, ships, cash transfer and military hardware among many other things. It is no wonder then that people have learned to rely so much on computers so that they cannot imagine what life would be like without these appliances (Russell & Norvig, 2003, 24). The emergence of artificial intelligence has only made this reliance more intense. Artificial intelligence is defined as the study aimed at designing intelligent agents in the form of machines. It aims at making machines with systems that can perceive their environment and take appropriate actions which maximize the chances of success (Russell & Norvig, 2003, 27). Notably the computers here are defined as agents, which signifies that they can actually act on their own. A notable example of the use of artificial intelligence is in war planes. The US pilotless drones have been used on various occasions to bomb dangerous targets without risking the lives of pilots who might otherwise be shot down and captured. This method was quite instrumental in bombing Al Qaeda terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, thus resulting in the killing of at least 20 main terrorist leaders and their supporting combatants (Pike, 2011, 1). This program was quite successful in the area in which it was used and is seen in some quarters as the future of aerial warfare (Pike, 2011, 2). These kinds of warplanes have played and integral role in US warfare especially in the Middle East. The main motivation for their development were the politically unpopular scenes of pilots captured and displayed in front of television screens after being shot down by the enemy. This made it necessary to come up with a self flying plane in which there would be no such casualties. This idea of a self flying plane, has found its way into the world of fiction with self driving cars, self opening and shutting doors, and so on. In reality though the idea of a cybernautical robot that calculates human like emotions is still the stuff of fiction such as the popular Schwarzenegger film Terminator (Pike, 2011, 2). This is because, despite its successes, artificial intelligence is obviously an idea that is still developing. There have been some spectacular failures as well. One of these is the killing of civilians by the US drones in the above mentioned operations. In many cases the drones mistook fleeing civilians for armed combatants and thus killed them. There is also the fact that the flight route is directed by an individual of the ground even though he does not control the aircraft from moment to moment. What still obvious is that machines cannot make decisions on their own in a reliable and consistent way. They only rely on preprogrammed situations but are completely lost when they encounter new situations which call for intelligent judgment. In the latter situation any new born baby is far more intelligent than the most complicated computer system (Winston, 2008, 68). These kinds of inconsistencies in the performance of artificial intelligence have led critics to believe that the misadventures into the sector may end disastrously on a massive scale for mankind and the planet on which we live. However, pundits are of the considered opinion that similar criticisms have been leveled at all sorts of scientific innovations in their developmental stages only for them to turn out to be efficient and highly reliable later (Winston, 2008, 108). Arguments Against the Agency of Matter Whichever way one looks at it, machines like computers are nowhere near acting on their own whims. They may operate efficiently and spectacularly, but the bottom-line is that behind every successful machine, there is a manipulating human. So the idea of machines having their own agency, well not exactly, they simply have agency ascribed by humans just like money, passports and homes. Though some argue that this is the very agency that scholars talk about when they analyze the agency of matter, if you take away the ascribed aspect of agency, then agency does not exist (Bandura, 2001, 25). In fact the whole idea of matter having agency does not seem to stand when critically analyzed outside the sphere of human influence. Taking art as an example, it is only those who understand the intricacies of difficulties that go into developing a certain painting or sculpture who fully appreciate it. True it may have a significant effect on the person observing it even if they do not know the first thing about art, but such individuals cannot go into the a fully appreciative analysis of all the facts involved. As such, the agency of matter is many times limited only to those who fully understand the import of its significance. Others only come to appreciate it through the process of mediation and thus they see the objects through the lenses of experts (Bandura, 2001, 25) Matter does not have agency if one considers that whatever agency is ascribed to it is not universal. Even the mighty American Dollar means absolutely nothing to a native of Bujumbura who does not use it to buy anything. Agency of matter is mostly ascribed through the process of mediation. A human being is socialized by his family, peers, teachers and community. The process involves information about how the physical and social environment operates. This process is reinforced by a series of trial and error experiments until some kind of pattern is established that more or less best supports human existence. This process does involve a lot of material things that the individual learns to relate to (Bandura, 2001, 26). However, even the process of mediation is not always completely successful. Persons always have the option of making their own choices on matters that affect their immediate environment. This is the reason that phenomena such as evangelization, establishment of dictatorial states and the school system, do not completely capture the imagination of all the subjects exposed to them. Evangelization is a continuous process because there are those who reject the religious messages as shallow and illusionary. Individuals like Martin Luther King changed the face of Christian religion by rejecting some of the more fanatical behavior of the powers that be in the Vatican, which until then, had the last word on Christianity. Many dictatorial regimes have come tumbling down for precisely the same reason. The school system too is subject to continuous reviews after critiques of its usefulness and relevance. The same case applies to the mediation on matter (Bandura, 2001, 26). Conclusion In the face of the foregoing, matter has agency, but it is ascribed to it by people. Just like behind every intelligent computer there is a manipulating human being, so is the case with agency of matter. It is very dicey to try and state that matter on its own can have agency. Those who argue this way have some pretty convincing points as seen above. They have advanced the cause of artificial intelligence and robots. They have also mentioned things like totems which have both a religious and communal identity value. However, this sounds like someone who is alleging that parrots can talk. It is an obvious fact that Parrots can only imitate the sounds they hear; and anyway talking involves not jus t making sounds but understanding those sounds as well which cannot be said of parrots. It is an irrefutable fact that parrots cannot human like sounds unless there are people around them to make such sounds. Moreover, as noted above even the attribution of agency to matter is not universal. There are those who will accept it, but then again there are those in the same society who will not agree that the values attributed to a particular object are true. Agency of matter also depends on the community in which the matter is found and the importance the community attaches to it. Even universally accepted forms like passports are only important to those who use them for international travel and those charged with inspecting them. References Barker, Chris, 2005, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, London: Sage. Carter, Simon et al, 2008, Security: Sociology and Social Worlds, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bandura, A, 2001, Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology. Christiano, Kevin J et al, 2008, Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Giddens, A, 1996, The Constitution of Society, California: University of California Press. Pike, John, 2011, Predator MAE UAV, Federation of American Scientists, Retrieved on 20/2/2011 from: Oxford English Learners Dictionary, 2006, Oxford: OUP. Russell, Stuart J. & Norvig, Peter , 2003, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.), New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Winston, Patrick Henry, 2008, Artificial Intelligence. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley. Read More