International Sociology

http://iss.sagepub.com/ Reviews: Reflections On Culture: Massimo Negrotti, ed., Yearbook of the Artificial: Nature, Culture and Technology, Volume 5. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008, 284 pp., ISBN 9783039114764, 43.50
Czarina Saloma-Akpedonu International Sociology 2010 25: 670 DOI: 10.1177/02685809100250050602 The online version of this article can be found at: http://iss.sagepub.com/content/25/5/670

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International Sociology Review of Books Vol. 25 No. 5

Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao is currently Director of the Institute of Sociology and Joint Fellow of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Academia Sinica. He is also Professor of Sociology, National Taiwan University. His research areas include: civil society, social movements and new democracies in Asia, AsiaPacific middle classes, sustainable development for island societies and NPO and the third sector research. His most recent publications are: The NPO Sector: Organization and Practice (co-editor, 2009), Deepening Local Sustainable Development: Taiwans Nine Counties-Cities Examined (co-editor, 2008), Hakka Ethnic Groups and Local Societies: Taiwan and the World (co-editor, 2007) and Social Movements and Democratization in East Asia (co-editor, 2007), among others. Address: Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Section 2, Taipei, Taiwan. [email: michael@gate.sinica.edu.tw]

Massimo Negrotti, ed., Yearbook of the Artificial: Nature, Culture and Technology, Volume 5. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008, 284 pp., ISBN 9783039114764, 43.50.
keywords: causality chance probability randomness science The Yearbook of the Artificial: Nature, Culture and Technology is concerned with the conceptual and methodological issues surrounding the artificial, or the realm of the reproduction of natural objects and processes by means of available technology. With the theme, artificial chance, natural chance, the current volume presents various works in areas in which chance plays a significant role and where the three cultures (Kagan, 2009) natural sciences, social sciences and humanities bridge each others territory. Sixteen contributors, namely, Massimo Negrotti, Denis L. Baggi, Danila Bertasio, Aldo Celeschi, Mariella Combi, Mario Compiani, Maurizio Dapor, Masanori Funakura, Jose M. Galvan, Guiseppe Lanzavecchia, Stefano A. E. Leoni, Giorgio Mainini, Sabrina Moretti, Ephraim Nissan, Giuseppe Padovani and Fumihiko Satofuka offer exegeses of chance and case studies in art, cultural events, manufacturing, modern science, music and texts. In the first essay, Negrotti (Chance Would Be a Fine Thing) presents the paradoxes of the origin and nature of chance, a persistent theme in this volume. Despite being undefined, real causal power is being attributed to chance and, indeed, is being reproduced through drawing of lots, sampling, simulation, statistical distributions, among others artificially. Negrottis presentation of two conceptions of chance moves the discussion forward. The first is Aristotles definition of chance as a random unexpected event generated by causes preordained for other aims (Aristotelian chance). The second is the quantitative conception of chance wherein events are distributed according to probability curves (probabilistic chance). From Negrotti, we learn that the differences between the two are more apparent than real: both involve unpredictability, both involve chance. Probabilistic chance, while not exactly predictable, implies knowledge of all the possible initial and final states of the phenomenon. While appearing to be isolated, Aristotelian chance actually belongs to a population that includes all events,

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even if hitherto unmeasured, that are possible in a given context. Negrotti concludes by hinting at the nature of chance: in the initial state at both microscopic and macroscopic levels (from the physical to the economic, from the biological to the sociological), chance appears through the calculation of probabilities, but the nature of chance which intervenes right from the start remains obscure (p. 18). The nature of chance is addressed head-on by Lanzavecchia, who asks in the title of his essay: is chance a law of nature or a cultural construction? His answer: If every event has a precise cause . . . then chance is a cultural construction . . . [if] there is a fundamental indeterminacy, if not an incoherence . . . already at the submicroscopic level . . . the world is, at least in part, random (pp. 1545). The author is, however, convinced that only science through approaches and methods proposed, for example, in mathematics, quantum mechanics and physics can provide an answer to this dilemma; although so far, it has yet to arrive at definitive conclusions. In another essay, Celeschi (Chance: From Problem to Product) tries to improve ones understanding of chance by presenting three common usages of the concept: as a fortuitous event (e.g. a coincidental or unforeseen event), as a generator of events that are not dependent on anyones wishes (i.e. luck, destiny, fate) and as a particular and special situation (e.g. occurrence, predicament). It is, however, the conception of chance as unpredictability that is being adopted by the sciences. To address unpredictability, statistics is inevitably used, not to predict the occurrence of an event, but to ascertain the probability of a random occurrence. Celeschi then segues into issues in the measurement and reproduction of chance by means of algorithms or devices. As an economic good, the hardware or software that produces the distribution of random numbers in use in medicine, engineering, games and insurance, among others, is ascribed with implications of quality. Unfortunately, the goodness of the product can only be established by tests of the same statistical nature; in the end, therefore, the product could only be judged through the goodness of the empirical results. A number of essays in the collection show chance or randomness at work. The attribution of chance to random events may be seen as an epiphenomenon of a societys constant search for explanation and meaning. To support this suggestion, Combi (Chance as a Cultural Event) compiles, as if in answer to Lanzavecchias question, a number of anthropological studies featuring situations whose origin or significance is traceable to chance. From Evans-Pritchards study of the Azande belief in witchcraft and its consequent use in the explanation of misfortunes to Turners account of the accidental origins of the circumcision rite of the Ndembu, Combi highlights a societys attempts at understanding natures laws and meanings, identifying external causes (that which allows intervention and social control is oftentimes chosen as the cause) and controlling the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity that accompanies various events. In contrasting the Japanese tradition of takumi against the western tradition of technology, Satofuka (Rationality and Randomness in the Skill Formation of Takumi as Japanese Traditional Culture) sheds light on the spaces of randomness and rationality in Japanese manufacturing processes. At the heart of the discussion is Japans cultural inheritance of adaptation, accommodation and conformity, expressed in the term, takumi, or technique. Whereas the western technological tradition is based on standardization and homogeneity (rationality), Japanese practical knowledge which is intuitively gained is expressed in the

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International Sociology Review of Books Vol. 25 No. 5

pattern as randomness (p. 276). Satofuka uses the quality control process in Japanese sword-making as an example: relying on the five senses and experience, the craftsman achieves quality randomly by judgement-based measurements of the process (i.e. observation of the flame, observation of the ventilating hole, observation of the smelt, observation of the sound in the furnace). To demonstrate that randomness has been and can be used in programs to create music from scratch, Baggi (The Use of Randomness in the Simulation of Creativity) presents examples of computer music, starting from the 18th century (e.g. Wuerfelspiel, which facilitated the automatic composition by Mozart and Haydn) to the 20th century (e.g. Illiac Suite, which was programmed on an Illiac computer at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign in 1956; reproduction of music in any format such as MP3, WAV, MPEG and MIDI by Standard IEEE P1599, under completion at the University of Milan). In carefully chosen examples, Baggi explains that the simulation of human creativity is achieved by a series of random numbers following a set of rules or prescribed choices that give rise to an infinite number of outcomes. In his essay, Galvan (Creation and Causality: The Case in Christian Theological Anthropology) shares the idea that the Judeo-Christian belief, departing from the forms of determinism present in some natural religions, recognizes chance, at least in the Aristotelian sense (i.e. two causes which are not preordained to cause one another). In this recognition, chance does not dilute the centrality of God; instead it allows people more sensitivity towards causes. If, indeed, chance and probability play a central role in the physical and social worlds, and people continually face hazards and risks in everyday life, then Mainini (Randomness: A Course in Survival) argues that an understanding of probability and statistics is one of the core competencies that schools should aim to develop among young students. Using illustrations such as lotteries, screening for cancer, the death rate, DNA analysis, paternity tests and casino roulette, Mainini makes some convincing arguments. Specialists on artificiality will, without doubt, welcome the volume. However, the raison dtre of yearbook series in this case, to connect different researchers and designers of the artificial who would not have known of each others works threatens to be the main weakness of the volume. Indeed, the absence of a lead article turns this potential weakness into a real one. Such an essay would have easily expanded the audience to include laypersons (the educated reading public) and the well-informed (e.g. sociologists of science and technology who do not specialize in the study of the artificial). Eschewing the lead article leaves the reader alone in navigating the theoretical and methodological landscapes in the study of chance, from Lucrezios clinamen (chance as a motor that generates, at an atomic level, the objects of reality) to Laplaces conception of chance as unpredictability and the impossibility of tracing the causal processes, from the Turing Test to Monte Carlo methods. An essay that introduces the collection would have been useful to the reader who is faced with a wide variety of writing styles, resulting in some articles being easy to comprehend and a number difficult to digest. Nevertheless, these weaknesses do not totally erode the importance of the volume. Readers from one culture can treat themselves to the rich body of knowledge of the other two cultures sans too many technical details. Moreover, by presenting

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an updated discussion of chance as a phenomenon in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, the volume reminds readers of the possibility of choice between the research models of physics and biology. Physicists aim for a unified theory that would explain light, electricity, gravity and forces in atoms, whereas biologists, recognizing specificity and dynamic changes in the contextual constraints of nature, present no unifying theory for all life phenomena (Kagan, 2009).

Reference
Kagan, J. (2009) The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Czarina Saloma-Akpedonu is an associate professor of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and director of the Institute of Philippine Culture of Ateneo de Manila University. Her professional responsibilities include being president of the Philippine Sociological Society and secretary of the board of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Science and Technology of the International Sociological Association. Address: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University, PO Box 154, 0917 Manila, Philippines. [email: csaloma@ateneo.edu]

Johan Fischer, Proper Islamic Consumption: Shopping among the Malays in Modern Malaysia, Monograph Series 113. Copenhagen: NIAS (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) Press, 2008, 258 pp., ISBN 9788776940324, 17.99.
keywords: body consumer culture consumerist lifestyles diet ethnic identity gated communities middle classes modernity religious ethos shopping malls This book connects with the series of works undertaken on consumer culture in Southeast Asia such as the writings of Chua Beng Huat (2000, 2003), the late Anandah Rajah (Rajah and Beng Huat, 2003) on Singapore and Ziauddin Sardar (2000) on Malaysia. The incorporation of consumer culture as a field in cultural studies is relatively new, and few studies have been undertaken in that field in developing countries. With the exception of works on the impact of the spread of McDonalds in the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia (Watson, 1997) and the rise of a consumerist bourgeoisie in Turkey, well described in the volume edited by Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayse Saktanber (2002), much research is needed regarding the emerging lifestyles of the new rich under global neoliberal agendas. In this context, Johan Fischers work is certainly welcome as a significant and timely contribution. He provides insights into the New Malay culture that emerged after the economic takeoff of the NEP (New Economic Policy) under

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