The Material Life of Human Beings

Artifacts, Behavior and Communication

Michael Brian Schiffer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134637249
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this ground-breaking work, the distinguished anthropological theorist, Michael Brian Schiffer, presents a profound challenge to the social sciences. Through a broad range of examples, he demonstrates how theories of behaviour and communication have too often ignored the fundamental importance of objects in human life.
In The Material Life of Human Beings, the author builds upon the premise that the most important feature of human life is not language but the relationships which take place between people and objects. The author shows that artifacts are involved in all modes of human communication - be they visual, auditory or tactile. By creatively folding elements of postmodernist thought into a scientific framework, he creates new concepts and models for understanding and analysing communication and behavior. Challenging established theories within the social sciences, Michael Brian Schiffer offers a reassessment of the centrality of materiality to everyday life.

Chapter 1
Introduction

The nature of human existence

For centuries, people have pondered the question, “What is it about human life that sets us apart from all other species in the animal kingdom?” In response to this question, social scientists, among countless other scholars, have supplied sundry answers (for recent discussions, see Betzig 1996; Cartmill 1990). Some investigators suggest that humans alone communicate symbolically and thus language is the definitive trait (e.g., Deacon 1997; Lieberman 1991; Noble and Davidson 1996: 8, 15); others argue that the ability to make tools is unique to our species; still others see only in people a capacity for self-awareness or consciousness (e.g., McGuire 1995; Noble and Davidson 1996: 215); and some say that culture is confined to humans. ¹ One could fill a large book with a list of the anatomical, behavioral, and cognitive traits that have been advanced as humanity’s distinctive features.

Attempts to distinguish the members of our species from others tend to founder when confronted with information on animal behavior. Communication is widespread if not universal among animals, especially mammals (e.g., Albone 1984; Hauser 1996; Moynihan 1985; Peters 1980; Sebeok 1968, 1977; Smith 1977; Snowdon 1990; Vauclair 1996), and a few primates in the laboratory can create and manipulate symbols (Deacon 1997: 340; Savage-Rumbaugh and Brakke 1996). Tool making in the animal kingdom is far from uncommon (e.g., Beck 1980: 105–116; McGrew 1992, 1993; Peters 1980), and tool use is ubiquitous (e.g., Beck 1980: 13–104; Beck 1986; Vauclair 1996: ch. 4). That other animals are self-aware or have consciousness remains controversial (see the papers in Ristau and Marler 1990), but this claim has its champions (e.g., Crisp 1996; Deacon 1997: 450; Griffin 1991, 1992; Parker et al. 1994; Radner and Radner 1989). And, on the basis of theory and considerable evidence, it has also been argued that some nonhuman species are culture-bearers (e.g., Boesch et al. 1994; Bonner 1980; Harris 1964; McGrew 1992), at least in the sense that a group perpetuates, through learning, behavior patterns not shared by other groups of that species (see Galef 1990). One after another, supposedly unique human traits have been revealed by advancing knowledge of other species to be exaggerated or erroneous (Byrne 1995:34–35).

Although some purportedly unique or near-unique human traits have withstood the recent onslaught of ethological findings (e.g., among primates only people have a fully opposable thumb and walk habitually upright on two legs [Fleagle 1998]), previous investigators have ignored what might be most distinctive and significant about our species: human life consists of ceaseless and varied interactions among people and myriad kinds of things. These things are called “material culture” or, better, artifacts (Rathje and Schiffer 1982: ch. 1). An artifact is provisionally defined here as any material, in contradistinction to spiritual or mental, phenomenon that exhibits one or more properties produced by a given species (for another expansive definition of artifact, see Deetz 1977: 10–ll). This definition allows one to refer not only to human artifacts but also to artifacts of bees or beavers. However, unless otherwise specified, “artifact” in the present work denotes human artifact.

What makes humans unique, then, is that we take part in diverse interactions with innumerable kinds of artifacts in the course of daily activities. Indeed, from a sacred ceremony to the most common craft, human activities – virtually without exception – have specific artifact requirements (Rathje and Schiffer 1982; Schiffer 1992b). As a result, every society, which consists of countless activities, develops hundreds or thousands or even millions of artifact types. Although other animals make and interact with a limited number of artifact types on a sustained basis (e.g., bee hives and honeycombs, beaver dams and lodges), in no other species do the variety of artifacts and the diversity and complexity of interactions begin to approach those found in even the most materially impoverished human society. Incessant interaction with endlessly varied artifacts is, I maintain, the empirical reality of human life and what makes it so singular.

To gain greater insights into this feature, let us employ some “thought experiments.” First, imagine that members of a different – but also sapient – species are undertaking a philosophical examination of Homo sapiens. Our closest kin, the chimpanzee – “a most accomplished tool user” (Vauclair 1996: 82; see also McGrew 1993) – can serve this purpose. Chimps make tools of twigs, which they use to extract termites from their nests, and some even crack nuts with stones (McGrew 1992); so, the mere fact that people make and use tools would hardly be remarkable. Nor would there be surprise that humans reckon their kin and display a “Machiavellian intelligence” in social relationships, for chimps do the same (Byrne 1995: 222–225).

As the chimp philosophers ponder their hair-impaired cousins, they are more likely to notice that people employ artifacts for all undertakings, interposing them between every basic need – e.g., food, shelter, defense, reproduction, and establishing and manipulating social relationships – and its satisfaction (Schiffer 1992b). For example, in Western societies, even the acquisition and consumption of vegetable foodstuffs directly involves myriad things: farming implements and machines, pesticides and herbicides, trucks and warehouses, packaging materials, grocery display cases, grocery carts, bags, automobiles, refrigerators and cupboards, cooking and serving utensils, plates and bowls, silverware, garbage disposals, and so on. Similarly, religious ceremonies cannot be practiced without a host of appropriate paraphernalia, including special buildings, lights or candles, icons, sacred scrolls, hymn and prayer books, and priestly vestments. Even so basic an activity as sex often requires certain scents and clothing, beds and bedding, perhaps lubricants, and – for a few – whips and chains. Most surprising of all is grooming, an important chimp pastime (Byrne 1995: 200), which has taken a strange turn in human hands, for the latter are occupied in manipulating combs and brushes as well as lotions and potions. Chimps would doubtless observe that, in proliferating artifact types and using them in so many ways, humans in every known society have needlessly complicated their lives, taking time away from high-quality person-to-person interactions. What is more, the chimps might marvel that never during a person’s lifetime are they not being intimate with artifacts.

The simian philosophers are also prone to draw a pessimistic conclusion about the ability of humans to study themselves. They might remark, for example, that the terms “interpersonal” interaction and “social” interaction, which permeate publications in the social sciences, are misnomers, for nearly always artifacts – at the very least body paint, clothing, and ornaments – accompany individuals in virtually every interactional setting. Humans, it appears to the chimps, interact not with other humans per se but with artifacts and humans compounded with artifacts. What is more, the artifacts attached to – and part of – people have demonstrable and sometimes far-reaching effects on interaction sequences and on the forward motion of activities. Thus, our chimps conclude, it is a mistake of cosmic proportions to arbitrarily abstract “interpersonal” and “social” interactions from human life and study them apart from the artifacts in which they are embedded.

If the nature of human existence involves varied and incessant transactions with numerous artifact types, why has this ontological truth eluded so many social scientists? Perhaps viewing ourselves from the vantage point of still another animal, in a second thought experiment, can help us to apprehend the problem. Let us suppose that tropical fish are learned and can philosophize. What would these fish conclude upon peering out of an aquarium at the surrounding room, a “family” room in an American home? They would observe humans, sometimes with painted faces, wearing clothing, watches, and jewelry. The people would be lounging on chairs and sofas, opening beer cans and pretzel packages and consuming their contents, sniffing food being cooked in the kitchen, puffing on cigarettes, handling and reading magazines and books, manipulating remote controls, gazing at a TV set, fiddling with tapes and VCR, walking on the rug, taking off and putting on sweatshirts and jackets, looking at pictures on the wall, dusting furniture, picking up and rearranging knickknacks, wrestling with a vacuum cleaner, and, all the while, intermittently uttering sounds.

Might not the fish wonder how social scientists, who like all other people spend the entirety of their time engaged with artifacts (especially books and chairs and computers), could be so oblivious to the medium that envelops them? People’s lives are spent shaping and responding to this material medium, yet social scientists cannot see it for what it is, much less understand its pervasive influence (cf. Latour 1993: 54). Instead, human investigators lavish attention on the sounds that people produce, on the specialized artifacts that encode or record the sounds, and on the social, cultural, and biological bases of sound production, reception, and interpretation. Preoccupation with these phenomena, concludes our piscine philosophers, has seriously skewed the study of human behavior. Apparently, total immersion in the material medium has blinded social scientists to the distinguishing characteristic of their species – of their lives.

Fortunately, we need no further assistance from philosophical fish and chimps. As social scientists, we can work through the implications of an ontology founded upon the premise that what is singular about Homo sapiens is the constant intimacy of people with countless kinds of things – our immersion in the material medium. This new ontology can be used as a springboard for rethinking and relating the fundamental phenomena of human behavior and communication. As we shall see, an appreciation for the thorough embeddedness of behavior and communication in people– artifact interactions furnishes insights into both phenomena.

One obvious approach is to acknowledge that communication is behavior. Indeed, people move their tongues and lips, contort their faces, and wave their arms and hands, all of which fall comfortably within traditional definitions of human behavior as muscular movements. Intuitively satisfying and conforming to positions widely held in the social sciences and in ethology (e.g., Smith 1977), this move nonetheless hinders our ability to explore other relationships between behavior and communication. After all, a case can also be made for the reverse proposition (see Chapters 5 and 7), that all human behavior is communication, as in Hanneman’s (1975: 21–22) claim that “when we interact with others, anything we do communicates…Behavior is communication and communication is behavior.”

In the final analysis, however, statements to the effect that all communication is behavior or all behavior is communication are far too glib and vacuous to be useful in a scientific project. Thus, in the course of the present work, both communication and behavior are rethought and redefined; on the basis of this foundation, I specify exactly how both are related. But not until later chapters will we have in hand the terms needed for expressing that relationship precisely. If behavior and communication are in important respects related, then it might be possible to construct one theory that explains both phenomena. The overall strategy of this study, then, is to build a general theory of communication that also handles behavior. Conventional definitions of these phenomena leave out artifacts or treat them as epiphenomena, and thus are unacceptable in light of the new ontology. In contrast, I advance the sweeping – and counterintuitive – proposition that virtually all communication and human behavior involve artifacts. Building on this perspective, I integrate artifacts explicitly and thoroughly into the theory developed below. In short, this book makes the case that, in everyday life, both communication and behavior are related and both consist mainly of people–artifact interactions.

Material-culture studies

Because the social sciences beyond anthropology have in recent decades discovered artifacts, often called “material culture” (for a review, see Schiffer and Majewski n.d.), the participation of artifacts in communication and behavior no longer goes entirely unnoticed. Even so, material-culture studies as a genre have, from the perspective of the present work, several serious shortcomings.

In the first place, material-culture studies are largely marginalized in the major social science disciplines. This can be easily shown by a perusal of prominent literature in psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

The following serial publications were consulted for the period 1986 through 1995: Annual Review of Anthropology, Annual Review of Sociology, Annual Review of Psychology, American Anthropologist, American Sociological Review, and American Psychologist. These publications, which are believed to represent high-profile, mainstream research in. the three disciplines, were searched exhaustively for papers treating material culture, artifacts, or technology (in anthropology publications, only papers in sociocultural anthropology and ethnoarchaeology – the archaeological study of living societies – were examined). The results demonstrate that material-culture studies are far from mainstream. In sociology and psychology, fewer than 1 per cent of the articles concern artifacts or technology. In anthropology, where material-culture studies have more than a century-long history and are augmented by ethnoarchaeology, the showing is better, with 7.7 per cent of the papers in the Annual Review of Anthropology and 6 per cent of those in American Anthropologist dealing with artifacts or technology (e.g., Hakken 1993; Lawrence and Low 1990; Miller 1995; Pfaffenberger 1992; Starrett 1995). If, as I maintain, every realm of human behavior and communication involves people–artifact interactions, then all studies in the social and behavioral sciences ought to attend diligently to artifacts. Evidently, this is not happening – even in sociocultural anthropology. What is more, one searches major journals in communication, such as Communication Theory, Communication Monographs, and Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, in vain for papers that discuss artifacts seriously.

Second, beyond being marginalized, material-culture studies often suffer from a more severe problem: they simply project conventional ontology and theories into new empirical domains, treating people–artifact interactions as secondary to processes of culture. The manufacture and use of artifacts is regarded, for example, as just one more arena in which people negotiate culturally constituted meanings, such as individual and group identities (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Cordwell and Schwarz 1979; Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981; Dittmar 1992; Douglas and Isherwood 1979; Kaiser 1985; Lemonnier 1992;McCracken 1988; Miller 1994; Weiner and Schneider 1989). In these studies one does not dispute culture as the organizing principle of everyday life or contest its hegemony for formulating research questions. Even the term “material culture” subordinates artifacts to a cultural frame of reference, acknowledging objects but denying the materiality of human life. Apparently, material-culture studies have been domesticated and pose little threat to theoretical hegemonies, much less traditional ontology.

Third, as has been noted elsewhere (e.g., Rathje 1979; Schiffer 1992a, 1992b; Schiffer and Majewski n.d.), material-culture studies beyond ethnoarchaeology tend to be methodologically unsophisticated. For example, investigators seldom ground their generalizations in naturalistic, systematically obtained, and quantitative observations of people–artifact interactions. Instead, there is a reliance on statements gleaned from interviews, which are subject to innumerable but seldom elucidated biases (D’Andrade 1995:184–193; T. Jones 1995; Neupert and Longacre 1994; Rathje and Murphy 1992; Schiffer 1978, n.d.). Moreover, descriptions of artifacts themselves, when provided at all, are superficial and incomplete. These methodological shortcomings are not surprising, given that the rigorous study of artifacts is not included in the training of social scientists (other than archaeologists).

Though marginalized, deeply invested in conventional ontology and theories, and methodologically unsophisticated, material-culture studies in the major social sciences have furnished empirical regularities, concepts, and insights that contribute to the present project. In addition, artifact studies undertaken in cultural geography (e.g., Rapoport 1990), folklore (e.g., Bronner 1986, 1989, 1992; Glassie 1975; Musello 1992), history (e.g., Quimby 1978; Schlereth and Ames 1985), and art history (Prown 1980, 1993) can be mined for the occasional nugget.

An archaeological perspective

I almost entitled this book An Archaeology of Communication and Behavior, and it would have been apt. Indeed, I contend that concepts and principles appropriate for building a theory of communication and behavior can come from archaeology. More than a few books claim to be “An archaeology” of this or “The archaeology” of that (e.g., Oudshoorn 1994; Perriault 1981) or purport to treat a subject “archaeologically” (e.g., Fahie 1884: viii). What these books mostly have in common is, first, a focus on origins or arcana, which the public – and even other scholars – associate with archaeology; and, second, they are not written by archaeologists. The present effort is an exception to both generalizations in that it treats neither origins nor arcana and its author is an archaeologist, specifically an anthropological archaeologist specializing in behavioral studies (see, e.g., Cameron and Tomka 1993; Gould 1990; Longacre and Skibo 1994; Schiffer 1976, 1992b, 1995a, 1995b; Skibo 1992; Skibo et al. 1995; Walker 1998; Zedeño 1997). Anthropological archaeologists ask both historical and scientific questions about past societies, seeking to reconstruct and explain their trajectories.

Whether their interests are in prehistoric, historical, industrial, classical, or modern societies, archaeologists are preoccupied with discerning how people and artifacts interact. Among social scientists, then, archaeologists are least alienated from appreciating the character of human involvement in the material medium. After all, only artifacts remain from ancient societies; to learn about life in the past, we must understand people–artifact relationships of all kinds (Reid et al. 1975; Schiffer 1976). Seemingly, an archaeological perspective might be of some value for probing the potential of the new ontology.

As an archaeologist, I can readily draw upon the formulations of people– artifact relationships that my discipline – especially behavioral archaeology – has produced, as well as exploit our methodological tools for studying phenomena of the material medium. In particular, I generalize the process of archaeological inference to all communication and, eventually, to all human behavior. A provisional definition of an inference, useful in Chapters 2 and 3, can be provided: an inference is a conclusion about something arrived at through reasoning from evidence.

Examples that ...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: What is human behavior?
• Chapter 3: Artifacts and “interpersonal” communication
• Chapter 4: Some first principles
• Chapter 5: A general theory of communication
• Chapter 6: Basic communication processes
• Chapter 7: Explaining performance a general model of receiver response
• Glossary
• Notes
• References