Anthropobiology

L’Anthropobiologie d’Arnold Gehlen1 partage avec la cybernétique de Wiener l’intérêt pour les systèmes de régulation du comportement animal et pour leurs applications à la fois à une sociologie et à une science des machines, dans un sens large, philosophique et expérimentale. Ce travail veut montrer quelques-uns des points partagés entre ces deux paradigmes contemporains de manière à rebondir sur certains aspects de la cybernétique qui seront traités ailleurs (la transposition des domaines ontologiques et le statut de l’analogie, la communication et l’information comme résistance à l’entropie, l’ambiguïté de la technique, le rapport ontologique aux machines). Je vais discuter trois aspects d’une théorie de la régulation dans lesquels Gehlen fait allusion aux travaux de Wiener, soit pour s’y accorder soit pour s’y détacher : (i) la notion de rétroaction (feedback) appliquée au comportement, (ii) les rapports entre la biologie et la technique –le rôle vital de la technique (iii) les principes que (i) et (ii) dégagent pour une théorie du langage/communication. Pour illustrer mieux les parallèles entre Gehlen et la cybernétique, je suis obligé de commencer par une introduction de la problématique d’une Anthropologie Philosophique en général. Ensuite, j’aborderai brièvement les précisions à en tirer pour une Anthropobiologie.

The Khoisan in the 19th century anthropological literature : scientific networks and the making of knowledge in the age of Darwin and Barnum. Summary: Saartjie Baartman, a Khoisan woman, was a great attraction in England and France during the years 1810-1815. Even though a copious critical literature has recently focused on the "Baartman case", an observation of its meaning and effects on a longer period was still to be done. The anthropological studies that dealt with the "Hottentot Venus"
gave the impulsion to a large number of works published during the XIXth century, that attributed to the Khoisan (a Southern Africa population) an intermediate position in the chain of beings. Moreover, many other Khoisan people were exhibited and studied in Europe and in the USA. This article emphasizes the making of the anthropological knowledge, and shows the symbiosis between the world of science and the world of entertainment. We also observe the history of some racial concepts (Hottentot, Bushman), a history that follows the changes in scientific paradigms, the academic logic and the dynamics of information networks.

In Mongolia, since the collapse of communism in 1990, the government has implemented a centralized system of veterinary care inherited from the Communist period that suffers from inadequate infrastructures. Highly contagious diseases chronically re-emerge, undermining the country, its economy, and the way of life of its affected inhabitants. Since the early 2000s, the government has put in place a new surveillance system that relies on nomadic herders as 'sentinels'. These herders combine popular perceptions and treatments of animal diseases with some veterinary practices and international standards of surveillance and control. But they sometimes refuse to cooperate with private veterinarians or report symptoms, out of a lack of trust in the system of financial compensation for culled herds, compensation that – if sufficient – would enable them to maintain a substantial herd and a nomadic way of life. This article argues that Mongolia constitutes a sort of laboratory to study a neoliberal governmentality toward animal diseases, where the capacities to manage diseases that spread across species (wild/domestic, animal/human) and political borders (regional, national, continental) are delegated to local actors (nomadic herders) who resort to compromises in order to address tensions with political leaders regarding how to control highly contagious animal diseases.