When Sociologists Met the Robots

Steve Fuller has recently completed an ESRC-funded research project on mimetic factors and individual behaviour and, as part of this, took a team of researchers to the Bristol Robotics Lab, where they examined first-hand how robots imitate each other’s behaviour:



I agree with Fuller's comment about robotics remaining largely unexplored by social scientists. Indeed, it's been some years since I last looked at the final chapter of Randall Collins's Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology, entitled "Can Sociology Create an Artificial Intelligence?" His theory of interaction ritual chains is still occasionally being taken up though to come to terms with the possible differences between "social robots" and other robots and social interaction systems (if the link doesn't work, google "Romancing the Robots" + "Randall Collins").

Not clear to me yet if Fuller will be considering these issues in the upcoming Humanity 2.0; I'm curious as well about whether he'll be debating David Noble's The Religion of Technology or attempting to contextualize his arguments by referring to the so-called "democratic transhumanist" movement.

I am of the opinion that there is also scope for social scientists to become more involved in the relatively new field of space medicine- which has been referred to as "medical sociology in space" by astrosociologists. Within the confines of a space station or other vessels, it would appear that the researcher is afforded a unique opportunity, given the lack of outside distractions, to focus on the intense interaction of astronauts with a limited range of artificial systems, as well as with their fellow crew-members. Another theoretical perspective of possible relevance in this context, albeit in need of supplementation, might be the "post social", as developed by Karin Knorr Cetina and others. Furthermore, Giddens's work on "critical situations" could prove valuable when considering alternative social structures in a vacuum. The relevant questions in such instances are the following: what kind of learning processes do they facilitate? How do they go wrong? Can they be generalized across different settings, and if so, what are the implications?

Mark Bold's startling [& very entertaining] expose of a pop philosopher

Warming up to [hopefully] tomorrow's post on "extreme tourism", I have to highlight this excellent blog post about a figure who exhibits many of the vices, and few of the virtues, of the independent researcher. It is not the first time I've mentioned the author in question on this blog. Regarding his network of readers, to whom numerous works have been cleverly niche marketed over many years, it seems plausible that they could share many of the characteristics Randall Collins talks about in The Sociology of Philosophies. Collins says there is a theory of network "submergence", as well as "emergence", by which we might understand how disenchanted figures drop out of formal curricula to develop their own positions. These may typically, although not exclusively, involve the adoption of arcane/marginal epistemologies such as the occult, or a hard as flint political philosophy that is not intended to transcend party level.

From what I can tell, there are some important questions that would need to be brought to the table when negotiating the kind of rapprochement I intimated in my previous post, (which I hope to explore further in the "extreme tourism" post) i.e. how is philosophy defined for sociological purposes?

The Wave

...both the name of two upcoming films, one of them German, about the "Third Wave Experiment" in fascism conducted by a high school teacher with his students in 1967, and a more general interest in behaviourist psychology experiments conducted in simulated "total institutions", not least prisons, (The Stanford Prison Experiment, BBC's critical re-examination of its legacy in the series The Experiment), or authoritarian power/knowledge regimes such as the laboratory (Milgram's experiments). There is also the repackaging of the tradition as entertainment, Big Brother specifically [and reality tv more generally]. Finally, and hardly least of all, the latter is followed by the phenomenon of Abu Ghraib prison, with Milgrim's old high school friend, Philip Zimbardo, who designed the Stanford Experiment, appearing for the defence in the trial of Sgt. Chip Frederick.

No doubt there are compelling reasons to be suspicious of the tacit endorsement by some German filmmakers of the conclusions reached by Milgram and Zimbardo (it will be recalled that "Die Welle" arrives on the scene after "Das Experiment"). The uniqueness of Germany's resurgent past is open to relativisation once it can be demonstrated that the reproduction of authoritarian structures in any setting can license unthinking obedience and callous indifference to human suffering. Small wonder then that Omer Bartov, in his Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Territories, feels compelled to highlight the shortcomings of Milgram's scientific "objectivity". Bartov reveals, with reference to Milgram's notes about his chosen subjects, a whole host of preconceptions which would have coloured his design of the experiment and the evaluation of any data subsequently collected. Indeed, they are appear to be little more than crude sterotypes about ethnicity and gender socialisation for the most part. This leads Bartov to conclude:

"I would argue that obedience to authority among those whose collaboration is most necessary, the educated professional elites, men and women of religion and faith...generals and professsors, comes from accepting the fundamental ideas that guide that authority and wishing them to help realise in practice; and that this becomes possible only if both the authority and those who obey it share the same prejudices, the same view of the world, the same fundamental perception of reality" (p191).

Bartov then moves onto further qualification by arguing that psychological, historical, sociological, ideological and political forces will manifest in different ways, depending upon their degrees of integration (and their later interpretation as such). Although he is not discussing this passage specifically, my earlier post on Randall Collins and his sociological concept of "forward panic", offers some clues as to the reservations he has towards Bartov. He claims, in essence, that Bartov does not adopt a sufficiently systematised approach that could explain the variation between micro and macro dynamics of violence. Collins is much closer to Goffman's thesis of "total institutions", such as the prison or the asylum, when he describes cases of violent bullying in Japan's private school system. His explanation is that such settings function in terms of high ritual density, so it is not surprising that the violence occurs on the edges of where this density can be maintained (e.g. attacks on new students or "outsiders", both of whom by definition lack solidarity ties).

So what I would like to investigate in the future is the extent to which Collins can be (mis)construed as offering an exculpatory argument for violent individuals operating in settings of high ritual density, such as Abu Ghraib. I very much doubt this was his intention, as he would otherwise appear an unusual bedfellow for the likes of Milgram or Zimbardo (which Bartov was more explicitly distancing himself from). This impression may only be confirmed or denied once his next volume on the macro level of violence is published, as this should logically necessitate more engagement with some of the other variables cited by Bartov.

Anomie and Forward Panic

Randall Collins has recently written an innovative study of the dynamics of "Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory". In his conception of "forward panic" he makes the case that violent confrontations are oftentimes about mutual emotional entrainment, and where there is equilibrium in this respect between opposing forces, this generally ensures that confrontations will not escalate into violence. This he contrasts with situations where "forward panic" eventuates, wherein the build up of tension gains an excessive release because of a sudden change in momentum (such as an unexpected gain of advantage, capitulation, reinforcement of forces on one's side etc). So forward panic carries over into patterns of overkill, and Collins adduces numerous examples where this can lead to massacres, other events such as the beating of Rodney King (where police outnumber an individual whom they confront after an ennervating protracted chase), or a raucous party erupting into violence when the outnumbered police arrive, and attempt to disperse the gathering.

The level of detail Collins marshalls is too fine for me to reproduce here, so I'll briefly concentrate instead on the flipside of the dynamic he describes. According to him, any gathering is liable to produce its own temporary stratification, a "situational elite of those who are striving to take part, and a fringe of those excluded" (p256). In other words, there is a dynamic to emergence, and conversely, there is a dynamics of "submergence"; of outsiders looking for action, something to "jump into". It's the David Hicks, and [maybe] the Lee Harvey Oswald character type all over, but only insofar as we do not psychologise them too much, or rather, read the psychology in terms of the sum total of "emotional energy" gathered from the micro situations the individual has passed through up until that time. This explains a lot too about the opportunism of those who change their levels of commitment, and indeed their political orientation, on a situational basis.

For some unable to actualise their potential in such situations, the only remaining token of commitment and belonging are fetish objects, such as the military clothing adopted by lone males in civilian life as an expression of personal identity [pictured above]. Here action does not translate into mutual entrainment, but can only be intensified by individual movement that serves no larger purpose. It is one of the most recognisable forms of anomie in contemporary societies. These tokens can be readily purchased in army surplus stores [pictured above], unlike completion of the rites of passage leading to the more highly coveted group membership (i.e. the original context of the uniform). This disparity makes the actions of the anomic type closer to the parody of rationalisation Duchamp portrayed in his machines, which technically "worked", such as a bicycle wheel fastened to a chair, (the wheel was still capable of spinning afterall), but performed meaningless functions.

Other civlian groups have got around these inherent problems of anomie by adopting the trappings of membership in (pseudo)military organisations. Football fans can thus lay claim to membership of a "Tartan Army" for example, whilst English cricket fans can participate in "The Barmy Army". Although they typify a shortcut to attaining the status of membership in something approximating the military, one should not lose sight of how violence can still perform a ritual function for some of these groups. For example,the infamous football "crews" strive in off field confrontations with rival fans to reproduce the intensity they experience in a crowd of likeminded individuals united against a common foe during a match. The biggest mistake of English football authorities then was to separate opposing fans into "cages", for what happened was that this merely intensified their feelings of solidarity, which could then more easily later spill over into forward panic.

text by nhuthnance

photos by ahuthnance