Anthrograph

Overview

Becoming cyborgs: Technology and society

ANTH 3608: Semester 2 2025

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in social studies of science, and anthropology itself

Ryan Schram

July 5, 2025

On a wooden table, a silver laptop on the left and a black smartphone on the right are positioned next to each other. The laptop's screen is dark and displays a glowing blue sphere, with a button below it that reads 'End conversation.' The smartphone, standing vertically, shows a dark screen with the text 'Is it better now?' at the top and a red graphic in the center. Large, bright red text is overlaid across the top of the image, saying, 'Oh, you are also AI?', suggesting a conversation between two artificial intelligences [gen AI description, sounding a bit envious hmm...].

It's all fun and games until someone realizes this is also basically their life now. A still from a viral video about a new data transfer protocol for AI agents.

Course description

Humans, technology, and science are fundamentally entangled, the boundaries of one spilling directly into the other. This unit considers how science and technology reconfigure human and non-human existences, the speculative futures that these reconfigurations invite, and the forms of responsibility, ethics, and accountability that cyborg existence demands. The unit further invites students to reflect critically on the origins and histories of science and technology as dominant epistemological paradigms, and their uneven effects across place, time, and community. It invites attention to the new forms of enchantment and uncertainty that cyborg worlds foster.

Teaching staff

Ryan Schram
ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
Social Sciences Building, Room 410

Guides

Assignments

Title Due date Points Weight Length in words Hurdle task?
Autoethnographic reflection August 21 100 10% 600
Weekly writing assignments weekly 100 15% 900
In-class presentation as assigned 100 10% 500
In-class show-and-tell activity September 28 100 10% 500
In-class feedback activity October 31 100 10% 500
Essay, exhibit, and presentation (Research essay) November 6 100 45% 3000 Yes

Weekly schedule

Week Date Topic and reading(s)
1 August 8 Fear of a cyborg planet / Shapin (2023)
2 August 15 A woman without qualities, or We are all cyborgs now / Haraway ([1991b] 2013) / Haraway ([1991a] 2013)
3 August 22 How the nature gets made / Latour (1987a); Latour (1994) / Latour (1996); Latour (1987b); Latour (2004); Latour (2005)
4 August 29 The body is in the eye of the doctor / Mol (2003b); Mol (2003a) / Law and Mol (1995); Mol (2008)
5 September 5 Our ecologies, ourselves: Food, nutrition, and health as hybrid objects / Yates-Doerr (2020); Hardin (2021); Roberts (2017) / Hardin and Kwauk (2015); Gugganig (2017)
6 September 12 Two-way streets: Physical infrastructures, public services, liberal and democratic technocultures / Anand (2011) / Larkin (2013); Larkin (2008); Star (1999)
7 September 19 The smart city is watching you, or These walls have ears / Kang and Hudson (2024); Stucky (2025) / Brayne (2021)
8 September 26 Tying the net / Star and Griesemer (1989); Star (2010); Star and Ruhleder (1996); Star (1989) / Knox (2021); Seaver (2021)
B October 3 Mandatory school closure in honor of seasonal festivals
9 October 10 What counts: Ubiquitous communication networks, behavioral data, and value / Walford (2021) / Bowker and Star (1999)
10 October 17 Top of the charts: Measuring publics / Kusimba (2018) / Fourcade (2021); Fourcade and Healy (2024)
11 October 24 In the loop: Humanity as a network effect / Reno (2012); Rutherford (2021)
12 October 31 Among many others / Pickering (2024) / Pickering (2025)
13 November 7 Student presentations
14 November 14 Reading week
15 November 21 Final exam period

References

Anand, Nikhil. 2011. “Pressure: The PoliTechnics of Water Supply in Mumbai.” Cultural Anthropology 26 (4): 542–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01111.x.
Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 1999. “Categorical Work and Boundary Infrastructures: Enriching Theories of Classification.” In Sorting things out: classification and its consequences, 285–317. Inside technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Brayne, Sarah. 2021. Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fourcade, Marion. 2021. “Ordinal Citizenship.” The British Journal of Sociology 72 (2): 154–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12839.
Fourcade, Marion, and Kieran Joseph Healy. 2024. The Ordinal Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gugganig, Mascha. 2017. “The Ethics of Patenting and Genetically Engineering the Relative Hāloa.” Ethnos 82 (1): 44–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1028564.
Haraway, Donna J. (1991a) 2013. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 149–81. New York: Routledge.
———. (1991b) 2013. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 183–201. New York: Routledge.
Hardin, Jessica. 2021. “Life Before Vegetables: Nutrition, Cash, and Subjunctive Health in Samoa.” Cultural Anthropology 36 (3): 428–57. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca36.3.08.
Hardin, Jessica, and Christina Ting Kwauk. 2015. “Producing Markets, Producing People: Local Food, Financial Prosperity and Health in Samoa.” Food, Culture & Society 18 (3): 519–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2015.1043113.
Kang, Edward B., and Simogne Hudson. 2024. “Audible Crime Scenes: ShotSpotter as Diagnostic, Policing, and Space-Making Infrastructure.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 49 (3): 646–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439221143217.
Knox, Hannah. 2021. “Hacking Anthropology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (S1): 108–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13483.
Kusimba, Sibel. 2018. ““It Is Easy for Women to Ask!”: Gender and Digital Finance in Kenya.” Economic Anthropology 5 (2): 247–60. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12121.
Larkin, Brian. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
———. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (Volume 42, 2013): 327–43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522.
Latour, Bruno. 1987a. “Introduction: Opening Pandora’s Black Box.” In Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, 1–16. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———. 1987b. “Laboratories.” In Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———. 1994. “On Technical Mediation.” Common Knowledge 3 (2): 29–64. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/234.html.
———. 1996. “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47 (4): 369–81. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40878163.
———. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter): 225–48.
———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, John, and Annemarie Mol. 1995. “Notes on Materiality and Sociality.” The Sociological Review 43 (2): 274–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1995.tb00604.x.
Mol, Annemarie. 2003a. “Different Atheroscleroses.” In The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, 29–51. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384151.
———. 2003b. “Doing Disease.” In The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, 1–27. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384151.
———. 2008. “I Eat an Apple. On Theorizing Subjectivities.” Subjectivity 22 (1): 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2008.2.
Pickering, Andrew. 2024. “What Is Agency? A View from Science Studies and Cybernetics.” Biological Theory 19 (1): 16–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-023-00437-1.
———. 2025. Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Reno, Joshua. 2012. “Technically Speaking: On Equipping and Evaluating “Unnatural” Language Learners.” American Anthropologist 114 (3): 406–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01442.x.
Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. 2017. “What Gets Inside: Violent Entanglements and Toxic Boundaries in Mexico City.” Cultural Anthropology 32 (4): 592–619. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.07.
Rutherford, Danilyn. 2021. “Becoming an Operating System.” American Ethnologist 48 (2): 139–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13013.
Seaver, Nick. 2021. “Everything Lies in a Space: Cultural Data and Spatial Reality.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (S1): 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13479.
Shapin, Steven. 2023. “Paradigms Gone Wild.” Review of The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science, by Bojana Mladenović. London Review of Books, March 30, 2023. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n07/steven-shapin/paradigms-gone-wild.
Star, Susan Leigh. 1989. “The Structure of Ill-Structured Solutions: Boundary Objects and Heterogenous Distributed Problem Solving.” In Distributed Artificial Intelligence, edited by Michael N. Huhns and Les Gasser, 2:37–54. San Mateo, Calif.: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=94079.94081.
———. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (3): 377–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.
———. 2010. “This Is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 35 (5): 601–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243910377624.
Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (3): 387–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001.
Star, Susan Leigh, and Karen Ruhleder. 1996. “Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces.” Information Systems Research 7 (1): 111–34. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.7.1.111.
Stucky, Rami Toubia. 2025. “The Sound of Fourth Amendment Violations: Open Data DC’s ShotSpotter Map.” Sound Studies 11 (1): 184–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2024.2439209.
Walford, Antonia. 2021. “Data – Ova – Gene – Data.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (S1): 127–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13484.
Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2020. “Reworking the Social Determinants of Health: Responding to Material-Semiotic Indeterminacy in Public Health Interventions.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 34 (3): 378–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12586.