Book•
Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
01 Jul 2007-
TL;DR: Barad, a theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism as mentioned in this paper, which is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics.
Abstract: Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity.
In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of “social” and “natural” agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity, Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding of the nature of scientific and political practices and their “interrelationship.” Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically reworking Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity. Finally, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting on science; it can be used to actually do science.
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TL;DR: When Species Meet as discussed by the authors explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters and finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal and human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.
Abstract: "When Species Meet is a breathtaking meditation on the intersection between humankind and dog, philosophy and science, and macro and micro cultures."-Cameron Woo, Publisher of Bark magazine In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending over $38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of "companion species"d-knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies-includes much more than "companion animals."d In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway's vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. "A great deal is at stake in such meetings,"she writes, "and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending-socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace."d Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal-human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism. One of the founders of the posthumanities, Donna J. Haraway is professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of many books and widely read essays, including The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness and the now-classic essay "The Cyborg Manifesto,"she received the J. D. Bernal Prize in 2000, a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Social Studies in Science.
2,523 citations
01 Nov 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look closely at the ways children and things, particularly fabric remnants, work together to coconstruct stories, drawing from the theories of feminist new materialism.
Abstract: Drawing from the theories of feminist new materialism, this article looks closely at the ways children and things, particularly fabric remnants, work together to coconstruct stories. The data prese...
1,571 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the issues about naming relevant to the Anthropocene, Plantationocene, or Capitalocene have to do with scale, rate/speed, synchronicity, and complexity.
Abstract: There is no question that anthropogenic processes have had planetary effects, in inter/intraaction with other processes and species, for as long as our species can be identified (a few tens of thousand years); and agriculture has been huge (a few thousand years). Of course, from the start the greatest planetary terraformers (and reformers) of all have been and still are bacteria and their kin, also in inter/intra-action of myriad kinds (including with people and their practices, technological and otherwise). 1 The spread of seed-dispersing plants millions of years before human agriculture was a planet-changing development, and so were many other revolutionary evolutionary ecological developmental historical events. People joined the bumptious fray early and dynamically, even before they/we were critters who were later named Homo sapiens. But I think the issues about naming relevant to the Anthropocene, Plantationocene, or Capitalocene have to do with scale, rate/speed, synchronicity, and complexity. The constant question when considering systemic phenomena has to be, when do changes in degree become changes in kind, and what are the effects of bioculturally, biotechnically, biopolitically, historically situated people (not Man) relative to, and combined with, the effects of other species assemblages and other biotic/abiotic forces? No species, not even our own arrogant one pretending to be good individuals in so-called modern Western scripts, acts alone; assemblages of organic species and of abiotic actors make history, the evolutionary kind and the other kinds too. But, is there an inflection point of consequence that changes the name of the “game” of life on earth for everybody and everything? It's more than climate change; it's also extraordinary burdens of toxic chemistry, mining, depletion of lakes and rivers under and above ground, ecosystem simplification, vast genocides of people and other critters, etc, etc, in systemically linked patterns that threaten major system collapse after major system collapse after major system collapse. Recursion can be a drag. Anna Tsing in a recent paper called “Feral Biologies” suggests that the inflection point between the Holocene and the Anthropocene might be the wiping out of most of the refugia from which diverse species assemblages (with or without people) can be reconstituted after major events (like desertification, or clear cutting, or, or, …). 2 This is kin to the World-Ecology
1,294 citations
TL;DR: The authors review some of the dominant ways that management scholars have addressed technology over the past five decades and demonstrate that while materiality is an integral aspect of organisational activity, it has either been ignored by management research or investigated through an ontology of separateness that cannot account for the multiple and dynamic ways in which the social and the material are constitutively entangled in everyday life.
Abstract: Drawing on a specific scenario from a contemporary workplace, I review some of the dominant ways that management scholars have addressed technology over the past five decades I will demonstrate that while materiality is an integral aspect of organisational activity, it has either been ignored by management research or investigated through an ontology of separateness that cannot account for the multiple and dynamic ways in which the social and the material are constitutively entangled in everyday life I will end by pointing to some possible alternative perspectives that may have the potential to help management scholars take seriously the distributed and complex sociomaterial configurations that form and perform contemporary organisations Copyright The Author 2009 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society All rights reserved, Oxford University Press
887 citations
Cites background or methods from "Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quant..."
...That is, given particular methods of observing, measuring, or examining a phenomenon, certain properties of that phenomenon will become determinate, while others will be specifically excluded (Barad, 2007, p. 20)....
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...Other scholars working within a relational ontology have proposed additional conceptualizations, such as the notion of sociomateriality which focuses on how meanings and materialities are enacted together in everyday practices (Barad, 2007; Introna, 2007; Suchman, 2007)....
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TL;DR: The use of numerical/quantitative data in qualitative research studies and reports has been controversial as discussed by the authors, particularly when they are requested by reviewers for journals, and the potential problems created by such uses and how these can be dealt with.
Abstract: The use of numerical/quantitative data in qualitative research studies and reports has been controversial. Prominent qualitative researchers such as Howard Becker and Martyn Hammersley have supported the inclusion of what Becker called “quasi-statistics”: simple counts of things to make statements such as “some,” “usually,” and “most” more precise. However, others have resisted such uses, particularly when they are requested by reviewers for journals. This paper presents both the advantages of integrating quantitative information in qualitative data collection, analysis, and reporting, and the potential problems created by such uses and how these can be dealt with. It also addresses the definition of mixed methods research, arguing that the use of numbers by itself doesn't make a study “mixed methods.”
768 citations
References
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TL;DR: Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that had previously interacted with it leads to the result that one is led to conclude that the description of reality as given by a wave function is not complete.
Abstract: In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality. A sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predicting it with certainty, without disturbing the system. In quantum mechanics in the case of two physical quantities described by non-commuting operators, the knowledge of one precludes the knowledge of the other. Then either (1) the description of reality given by the wave function in quantum mechanics is not complete or (2) these two quantities cannot have simultaneous reality. Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that had previously interacted with it leads to the result that if (1) is false then (2) is also false. One is thus led to conclude that the description of reality as given by a wave function is not complete.
13,778 citations
TL;DR: An unknown quantum state \ensuremath{\Vert}\ensure Math{\varphi}〉 can be disassembled into, then later reconstructed from, purely classical information and purely nonclassical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations.
Abstract: An unknown quantum state \ensuremath{\Vert}\ensuremath{\varphi}〉 can be disassembled into, then later reconstructed from, purely classical information and purely nonclassical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations. To do so the sender, ``Alice,'' and the receiver, ``Bob,'' must prearrange the sharing of an EPR-correlated pair of particles. Alice makes a joint measurement on her EPR particle and the unknown quantum system, and sends Bob the classical result of this measurement. Knowing this, Bob can convert the state of his EPR particle into an exact replica of the unknown state \ensuremath{\Vert}\ensuremath{\varphi}〉 which Alice destroyed.
11,600 citations
11,033 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that even without such a separability or locality requirement, no hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible and that such an interpretation has a grossly nonlocal structure, which is characteristic of any such theory which reproduces exactly the quantum mechanical predictions.
Abstract: THE paradox of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [1] was advanced as an argument that quantum mechanics could not be a complete theory but should be supplemented by additional variables These additional variables were to restore to the theory causality and locality [2] In this note that idea will be formulated mathematically and shown to be incompatible with the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics It is the requirement of locality, or more precisely that the result of a measurement on one system be unaffected by operations on a distant system with which it has interacted in the past, that creates the essential difficulty There have been attempts [3] to show that even without such a separability or locality requirement no "hidden variable" interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible These attempts have been examined elsewhere [4] and found wanting Moreover, a hidden variable interpretation of elementary quantum theory [5] has been explicitly constructed That particular interpretation has indeed a grossly nonlocal structure This is characteristic, according to the result to be proved here, of any such theory which reproduces exactly the quantum mechanical predictions
10,253 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the alternative to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledges sustaining the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology.
Abstract: Recent social studies of science and technology, for example, have made available a very strong social constructionist argument for all forms of knowledge claims, most certainly and especially scientific ones. Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see. The alternative to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledges sustaining the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology. “Passionate detachment” requires more than acknowledged and self-critical partiality. Positioning is, therefore, the key practice in grounding knowledge organized around the imagery of vision, and much Western scientific and philosophic discourse is organized in this way. Situated knowledges are about communities, not about isolated individuals. The only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular.
6,090 citations