Thinking Through Levees: How Political Agency Extends Beyond the Human Mind

Abstract

Emerging new materialism scholarship provides an exciting theoretical space not only for challenging traditional conceptions of human agency but also for rethinking the role of the material world in shaping political outcomes. Although a wildly diverse intellectual movement, this scholarship shares the common goal of widening traditional understandings of agency to include nonhuman objects. This article adopts insights from cognitive science to extend the concept of political agency beyond the confines of human intention. Instead of focusing on the constraining material characteristics of the nonhuman within a large-scale relational framework, we argue in support of a distributive understanding of agency based on the co-constitutional essence of the mind itself. Specifically, we integrate insights from embodied cognition grounded in dynamical systems theory into the established framework of the hydrosocial cycle to argue that residents’ experiences within an active material world help explain the existence of certain flood risk perceptions. In other words, human intention or agency—as it is commonly understood—comes into existence through a co-constitutional process involving brain, body, and aspects of a wider environment. Using qualitative interview data from two communities along the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana, we support our arguments through an investigation of three types of embodied experiences between residents and the levees that shape risk perception. Key Words: embodied cognition, hydrosocial cycle, new materialism, risk perception.

新唯物主义学术思潮的兴起, 不仅为挑战传统的 “人类能动性” 概念提供了令人振奋的理论平台, 同时还反思了物质世界在塑造政治结果中的作用。尽管这是一场极为多元化的知识运动, 但这一学术研究拥有一个共同目标：扩大对 “人类能动性” 的传统解读, 将非人类对象纳入其中。本文采用认知学观点拓展 “政治能动性” 的概念, 在人类意图的范畴之外对其进行探索。我们没有在更大的关系框架内探索非人类物质特性的局限性, 而是主张意识本身的构成具有共性, 在此基础上对能动性概念进行针对性的理解。具体来说, 我们将动态系统理论为基础的体验认知观点, 整合到水-社会循环的既定框架中, 证明人类在一个活跃物质世界中的经历, 会产生对某些洪水风险感知。换言之, 人们通常理解的人类意图或能动性, 其形成过程涉及大脑、身体以及更广泛环境中的方方面面, 是这些因素共同构成的结果。我们使用来自蒙大拿州东部黄石河沿岸两个社区的定性访谈数据, 通过调查居民与形成风险感知界限有关的三种特定体验, 支持我们的论点。 关键词：具身认知 、 水文社会循环 、 新唯物主义、风险感知 。

La emergente erudición del nuevo materialismo provee un excitante espacio teórico no solo para retar las concepciones tradicionales de la agencia humana sino también para pensar el papel del mundo material en la configuración de los resultados políticos. Así se trate de un diverso movimiento intelectual rayano en lo salvaje, esta erudición comparte el objetivo común de ampliar los entendimientos tradicionales de la agencia para incluir objetos no humanos. Este artículo adopta perspectivas de la ciencia cognitiva para extender el concepto de la agencia política más allá de los confines de la intención humana. En vez de enfocarnos en las características materiales restrictivas de lo no humano, dentro de un marco relacional a gran escala, nos manifestamos en apoyo de un entendimiento distributivo de la agencia con base en la esencia co-constitucional de la propia mente. Específicamente, integramos perspectivas de la cognición personificada anclada en la teoría de los sistemas dinámicos, dentro del marco establecido del ciclo hidrosocial, para argüir que las experiencias de los residentes dentro de un mundo material activo ayudan a explicar la existencia de ciertas percepciones del riesgo de inundación. En otras palabras, la intención o agencia humanas—como corrientemente se entiende—hace su aparición a través de un proceso co-constitucional que involucra cerebro, cuerpo y aspectos de un entorno ambiental de mayor amplitud. Usando datos de entrevistas cualitativas en dos comunidades situadas a lo largo del Río Yellowstone, en Montana oriental, reforzamos nuestros argumentos a través de una investigación de tres tipos de experiencias personificadas entre residentes y los diques naturales que configuran la percepción del riesgo. Palabras clave: ciclo hidrosocial, cognición personificada, nuevo materialismo, percepción de riesgo.

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their gratitude to Dr. James McCarthy and the three anonymous reviewers. Their incisive feedback substantially strengthened this article. The Human Ecology Learning and Problem Solving (HELPS) Lab at Montana State University supplied transcription services. We would also like to thank Dr. Richard Ready and Mr. Henry King for their collaboration. Ms. Kirsten Bergmann assisted with editing, Mr. Robert Briwa provided thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft, and Dr. Timothy LeCain provided neo-materialist inspiration. Suggestions from Dr. Katharine Rankin and other participants during the Social Relations of Infrastructure paper session at AAG 2018 helped strengthen an earlier iteration of this article. Finally, we would like to extend our heartfelt appreciation to the Yellowstone River and its human residents living in Miles City and Glendive. We could not have conducted our research without assistance from those individuals who generously shared their perceptions, passions, and homes.

Funding

This research was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF Award CMMI-1635885). A student research travel grant through Montana State University’s College of Letters & Science and a faculty writing award from the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West at Montana State University provided additional financial support.

Notes

1 Political theorist Bennett’s theory of distributive agency offers a useful heuristic to conceptualize political power in a more-than-human reality. To make sense of the 2003 North American power blackout that affected more than 50 million people, Bennett (2010) argued for an understanding of agency “distributed across an ontologically heterogeneous field, rather than being a capacity localized in a human body or in a collective produced (only) by human efforts” (23).

2 Debate continues within embodied cognition about the degree to which the boundaries of the mind extend beyond the human brain. The dynamical systems approach should not be confused with extended cognition, which also pushes the boundary of the human mind outward from the brain to include wider parts of the environment. According to extended cognition, however, certain aspects of the body and wider environment actually perform “the kind of work that cognitive science has typically assigned to the inner workings of the brain” and thus constitute an extension of the mind itself (A. Clark 1998, 268).

3 Although semistructured interviews provided the bulk of the data for this article, document analysis of pertinent secondary source material (government documents, consultant reports, and newspaper articles) also contributed to the authors’ findings.

4 This range of interview length is due to many factors, such as diversity in interview settings (outside, in a vehicle, inside, or some combination), interviewing couples versus individuals, and differences in participant personality, knowledge, and experience with flooding.

Additional information

NICOLAS T. BERGMANN is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Earth Sciences at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests lie at the intersections of political ecology, historical geography, and environmental history.

JAMIE McEVOY is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include nature–society relations, science technology studies, political ecology, and water resource planning.

ELIZABETH A. SHANAHAN is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. As one of the architects of the Narrative Policy Framework, her research is focused on the role of narratives in the policy process at the individual, community, and governmental levels.

ERIC D. RAILE is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. His research focuses on political will and public will for social change, governance issues, and the environment.

ANN MARIE REINHOLD is a Research Scientist in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. She specializes in developing quantitative methods, firmly rooted in ecological theory, to understand the mechanisms underpinning some of Earth’s most pressing environmental problems.

GEOFFREY C. POOLE is a Professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. His research emphasizes the application of quantitative techniques and spatial analysis to generate knowledge in the fields of river ecology, fluvial geomorphology, and landscape ecology.

CLEMENTE IZURIETA is an Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Gianforte School of Computing at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected]. His research focuses on software architecture, quality assurance, and software evolution and maintenance.