Things that Believe: Talismans, Amulets, Dolls, and How to Get Rid of Them

This article looks at religious and semi-religious paraphernalia in everyday life from the perspective of disposal. Recent research in religious studies and anthropology has focused on the ways in which beliefs are performed through religious objects. But what happens to the object that is not performed? What notions of materiality do they bring into play? By using the notion of migawari (body substitution) and ethnographic vignettes, I argue that talismans and amulets become “believing substitutes” that allow for an externalization of belief altogether. They become problematic again at the point of disposal. In particular, in the case of dolls, where body substitution acquires a literal sense, questions of the relationship between dolls and their owners, and of their value and inalienability, add to the dolls’ ambiguity. Memorial rites for dolls instill a sense of closure for participants by appealing to orthopraxy rather than by addressing beliefs concerning dolls

Robot Companions: The Animation of Technology and the Technology of Animation in Japan

Contemporary Japan is often described in utopian terms as a place where humans and nonhumans live and work together in harmony. This acceptance of nonhuman others is explained by some anthropologists as stemming from an “animist unconscious” (Allison 2006) that allows people to attribute “life” to robots and other artefacts, a notion that is explicitly linked to the “Shinto universe” of “native animist beliefs” (Robertson 2010). Contrary to the darker tone of robot fantasies in the EuroAmerican tradition, this “techno-animism” turns technological objects into non-alienating allies, or so the narrative goes. This chapter critically examines the ideological underpinnings of these claims. Instead of attributing “modern techno-animism” to a native and naïve ontology, the author argues that all forms of animism are “techno-animism” because they are based on a technology of animation. In turn, this technology of animation is based on what Bird-David (1999) understands as “relatedness”, but which the author hesitates to call a “relational ontology” because what enables animation is often a relation that emerges from an unexpected and surprising encounter. Drawing on the work of Japanese roboticists and anthropologists of technology, this chapter proffers the heuristic device of an “animation continuum” to better apprehend the broad range of relations that result in animation

Roadmap on semiconductor-cell biointerfaces.

This roadmap outlines the role semiconductor-based materials play in understanding the complex biophysical dynamics at multiple length scales, as well as the design and implementation of next-generation electronic, optoelectronic, and mechanical devices for biointerfaces. The roadmap emphasizes the advantages of semiconductor building blocks in interfacing, monitoring, and manipulating the activity of biological components, and discusses the possibility of using active semiconductor-cell interfaces for discovering new signaling processes in the biological world

Hôtes et otages : Entasser des objets chez soi dans le Japon contemporain

Material culture studies often use a framework defined by appropriation, in which human actors can make circulating objects their own by investing them with meaning. But what happens when a present given to you cannot entirely become yours ? This article looks at object-human relations in Japan through the lens of hospitality, in order to grasp the dynamic tension between active accommodation and passive exposure to the presence of objects in domestic spaces. Three ethnographic vignettes on contentious relationships with stuffed animals, dolls, and clutter illustrate the need to rethink such relationships in terms of stewardship rather than ownership. In the first vignette, stuffed animals come to replace the students of a teacher of Japanese dance ; in the second, dolls who outlive their owners become uncanny presences that can only be gotten rid of through doll funerals. Finally, in the case of clutter, domestic sociality with human others is completely eclipsed by « being-with » things. Rather than to interpret this as « things becoming social others » (as it is sometimes put in psychological literature), I will argue that the hoarding of clutter in Japan can be understood as extinguishing the person-part of the thing, as a means to return it to untampered « thinghood ». Hospitality thus is granted to another form of alterity, the autonomous quietness of things. While human and divine guests become more or less controllable or at least better known entities through hosting, the opposite happens when things are being hosted. As many informants reported, cut from shared meaning and circulation, things become increasingly « stranger » over time

Robots in the Wild: An Ethnography of Robot-Human Interactions outside the Laboratory

This exploratory research project looks at how robots interact with the French public in the ‘wild’; that is, outside of the controlled environment of the laboratory or the psychological experiment. The aim was to understand concrete human-robot interactions as they happen from an ethnographic perspective. Under what conditions did interactions with robots foster a sense of the robot being alive? For this, I used a heuristic device called the animation continuum that I have developed in the context of Japanese research on animism. My initial intention was to undertake intensive participant observation at the Mairie du 15ième, but the trial with Pepper and Nao was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, regular weekly observation was carried out in the robot exhibition at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie and, for a shorter and more intense period, at the Japan Expo. In both sites it became clear that constraining the openness of a situation was the most important requirement for successful interaction. By providing a clear frame of reference – the environmental constraints at the museum and the frame of the wrestling match at the Caliban stall – simple movements or gestures were transformed into meaningful behaviour. The robots did not even have to work properly, quite the contrary: it was often resistance to expected behaviour, theorised here as recalcitrance, that led to the attribution of agency, volition and personality