Epistemic artefacts: on the uses of complexity in anthropology

Distinctions between the ‘simple’ and the ‘complex’ have enjoyed a long and varied career in anthropology. Simplicity was once part of a collective fantasy about what life was like elsewhere, tingeing studies of tribal life with human longing for simpler ways of being. With the reflexive turn and the rise of cultural critique, simplicity has been all but excommunicated in favour of widespread diagnoses of complexity. In this article, I tease out some transformations in the uses of complexity in anthropology, and weave in some critical responses to these uses, spanning many decades, from within the discipline. I pay special attention to recent critiques by anthropologists who are beginning to grow weary of complexity as both an end‐in‐itself for scholarship and an empirical diagnosis. For these critics, complexity is deeply entwined with anthropological methods and knowledge practices. Drawing on these critical views, I suggest that complexity may be an epistemological artefact, rather than something that can be diagnosed ‘out there’, and offer a way of reframing complexity as a ‘dominant problematic’ in anthropology and beyond.     

Measuring acoustic complexity in continuously varying signals: how complex is a wolf howl?

Communicative complexity is a key behavioural and ecological indicator in the study of animal cognition. Much attention has been given to measures such as repertoire size and syntactic structure in both bird and mammal vocalizations, as large repertoires and complex call combinations may give an indication of the cognitive abilities both of the sender and receiver. However, many animals communicate using a continuous vocal signal that does not easily lend itself to be described by concepts such as ‘repertoire’. For example, dolphin whistles and wolf howls both have complex patterns of frequency modulation, so that no two howls or whistles are quite the same. Is there a sense in which some of these vocalizations may be more ‘complex’ than others? Can we arrive at a quantitative metric for complexity in a continuously varying signal? Such a metric would allow us to extend familiar analyses of communicative complexity to those species where vocal behaviour is not restricted to sequences of stereotyped syllables. We present four measures of complexity in continuous signals (Wiener Entropy, Autocorrelation, Inflection Point Count, and Parsons Entropy), and examine their relevance using example data from members of the genus Canis. We show that each metric can lead to different conclusions regarding which howls could be considered complex or not. Ultimately, complexity is poorly defined and researchers must compare metrics to ensure that they reflect the properties for which the hypothesis is being tested.     

Responses to FTO genetic test feedback for obesity in a sample of overweight adults: a qualitative analysis

Current evidence indicates that genetic testing for obesity risk has limited affective or behavioral impact, but few studies have explored the effects among individuals who self-identify as having weight problems. Here, we report findings from in-depth telephone interviews with seven overweight or obese volunteers who were genotyped for one weight-related gene (FTO), which may offer interesting insights into motivations to seek out genetic testing and immediate reactions to it. All participants had a BMI > 25. The gene test identified one participant as homozygous for the ‘higher-risk’ variant (AA), three heterozygous (AT), and three homozygous for the ‘lower-risk’ variant (TT) of FTO. All participants said they took part to find an explanation for their personal struggle with weight control. Those with one or two higher-risk variants experienced relief and saw the result as confirming their private assumption that they were susceptible to weight gain for reasons perceived as ‘external’ to them. However, at the same time, they described themselves as more motivated to overcome their genetic predisposition. Those with lower-risk variants reported brief disappointment, but then focused on alternative explanations, reinforcing the multifactorial nature of obesity. Despite objectively low ‘information value,’ all individuals derived some ‘personal’ benefit from FTO genetic test feedback. However, improving education about the multifactorial nature of complex conditions is important to decrease polarized thinking and associated genetic determinism and stigma to derive the greatest benefits of novel genetic technologies for individuals and their health.     

Gould and the fairies

This paper examines Stephen Jay Gould’s concept of science and religion as ‘nonoverlapping magisteria’ with reference to Spiritualism, specifically the case of the Cottingley fairies. It argues that this is a case in which the magisteria are neither separate nor overlapping but instead exist in a far more complex relationship. Through an exploration of this complexity, this paper offers discussion of the relationship between religion and science. In doing so, it problematises the common use of the terms ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ to characterise the experience of religious conviction.     

A periodic table for ecology? A chemist's view of plant functional types

Abstract. A functional type approach, in which the complexity found in nature is reduced by grouping organisms that are functionally similar into a single classification, is being promoted in global change research. This paper examines a proposed analogy between this functional type approach in global change ecology and the periodic table of the elements in chemistry. When applied to a ‘bottom-up’ approach for defining functional types in ecology, in which large numbers of organisms are classified into smaller groups based on similarity of certain functions, the analogy fails. Ecological functions are not simple attributes of a biological entity, as electronic structure is for a chemical element, but are themselves complex chemical and physical systems that often interact strongly with the environment. The analogy to the periodic table may be of some use as an organizing tool in a ‘top-down’ approach in which a modelling context is used to define the number of ‘elements’ and their properties. This will be elaborated for plant functional types. Each PFT is assigned characteristics that allow its response to the driving forces of change, e.g. temperature, precipitation, soil nutrients, disturbance, to be predicted. ‘Rules of combination’ determine how the mix of PFTs in a particular ecosystem changes to form different ecosystems, which would correspond in the analogy to chemical compounds. However, these requirements present significant challenges to the usefulness of the analogy, even as an organizing tool in the ‘top-down’ approach.     

What do human economies,large islands and forest fragments reveal about the factors limiting ecosystem evolution?

What factors limit ecosystem evolution? Like human economies, ecosystems are arenas where agents compete for locally limiting resources. Like economies, but unlike genes, ecosystems are not units of selection. In both economies and ecosystems, productivity, diversity of occupations or species and intensity of competition presuppose interdependence among many different agents. In both, competitive dominants need abundant, varied resources, and many agents’ products or services, to support the activity and responsiveness needed to maintain dominance. Comparing different‐sized land masses suggests that productivity is lower on islands whose area is too small to maintain some of the interdependences that maintain diversity, productivity and competitiveness in mainland ecosystems. Islands lacking the rare, metabolically active dominants that make competition so intense in mainland ecosystems are more easily invaded by introduced exotics. Studies of islets in reservoirs identify mechanisms generating these phenomena. These phenomena suggest how continued fragmentation will affect future ‘natural’ ecosystems.     

Absorption and metabolism of flavonoids

The benefits of flavonoids as chemopreventive dietary or dietary supplemental agents are still only "potential." Much has been learned about possible mechanisms of action of these agents, but whether they can reach their multiple intended sites of action, particularly in humans, is largely unknown. The biological fate of the flavonoids, including their dietary glycoside forms, is highly complex, dependent on a large number of processes. This review is intended to bring some order into this complex area and deals with the fate of the naturally occurring glycosides, their enzymatic hydrolysis, as well as the resulting aglycones. The impact of membrane transporters as well as metabolic enzymes on the cellular availability of these phytochemicals is examined. A reevaluation of the concept of oral bioavailability applied to the dietary flavonoids is presented.     

Cytokine synergy: An underappreciated contributor to innate anti-viral immunity

Inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor and the members of the interferon family, are potent mediators of the innate anti-viral immune response. The intracellular anti-viral states resulting from treatment of cultured cells with each of these molecules independently has been well studied; but, within complex tissues, the early inflammatory response is likely mediated by simultaneously expressed mixtures of these, and other, protective anti-viral cytokines. Such cytokine mixtures have been shown to induce potently synergistic anti-viral responses in vitro which are more complex than the simple summation of the individual cytokine response profiles. The physiological role of this ‘cytokine synergy’, however, remains largely unappreciated in vivo. This brief commentary will attempt to summarize the potential effects and mechanisms of anti-viral cytokine synergy as well as present several ‘real-world’ applications where this phenomenon might play an important role.     

Niche construction,adaptive preferences,and the differences between fitness and utility

A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible.     

Roditis Leaf Discoloration - A New Virus Disease of Grapevine: Symptomatology and Transmission to Indicator Plants

The symptoms and some characteristics of an unreported disease of grapevine, which was observed during the last years on the cv. ‘Roditis’ in central Greece, are described. The disease is transmissible to V. vinifera‘Mission’ and to some herbaceous test plants. The constant association of a virus to naturally infected plants cv. ‘Roditis’ and chip-budding infected indicator plants cv. ‘Mission’ supports the evidence that the disease is caused by a virus.     

Emerging roles for orphan G-protein-coupled receptors in the cardiovascular system

Despite current drug therapies, including those that target enzymes, channels and known G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), cardiovascular disease remains the major cause of ill health, which suggests that other transmitter systems might be involved in this disease. In humans, ∼175 genes have been predicted to encode ‘orphan’ GPCRs, where the endogenous ligand is not yet known. As a result of intensive screening using ‘reverse pharmacology’, an increasing number of orphan receptors are being paired with their cognate ligands, many of which are peptides. The existence of some of these peptides such as urotensin-II and relaxin had been known for some time but others, including ghrelin and apelin, represent novel sequences. The pharmacological characterization of these emerging peptide–receptor systems is a tantalising area of cardiovascular research, with the prospect of identifying new therapeutic targets.     

Effective stomatal and boundary-layer resistances of heterogeneous surfaces

In nature surfaces are rarely uniform, so terms such as ‘surface’, ‘stomatal’ or ‘canopy’ resistance usually indicate some kind of average over a population of sub-areas, each with its own separate resistance. Questions then arise as to how gross measurements of these resistances should be interpreted in terms of the components, or how components should be aggregated into representative single values. Aggregation schemes have been published by Raupach (1991, Vegetatio 91, 105–120) and Lhomme (1992, Agriculture and Forest Meteorology 61, 11–21), but these are different for reasons that were not explained. This paper develops the idea that averaging schemes should be designed to serve particular purposes, and that they can be varied to suit these purposes. It is shown that the ‘effective’ resistances defined by Raupach and Lhomme preserve different quantities. A further averaging scheme is developed which preserves both correct transpiration rate and CO₂ flux when used in the Penman-Monteith equation and an equation describing assimilation. All of these schemes are fairly complex, so the work provides a warning against naive use of effective variables.     

High avidity cytokine autoantibodies in health and disease: Pathogenesis and mechanisms

Numerous reports have documented the presence of autoantibodies working against naturally occurring cytokines in humans in health and disease. In most instances, their physiological and pathophysiological significance remains unknown. However, recent advances in the methodologies for detecting cytokine autoantibodies and their application in research focused on specific disorders have shown that some cytokine autoantibodies play an important role in the pathogenesis of disease. Additionally, levels of cytokine autoantibodies may also correlate with disease severity and progression in certain infectious and autoimmune diseases but not in others. This suggests that cytokine-specific pathogenic differences exist. While multiple lines of evidence support the notion that high avidity cytokine autoantibodies are present and likely to be ubiquitous in healthy individuals, their potential physiological role, if any, is less clear. It is believed that they may function by scavenging pro-inflammatory cytokines and thereby inhibiting deleterious ‘endocrine’ effects, or by serving as carrier proteins, providing a ‘reservoir’ of inactive cytokines and thus modulating cytokine bioactivity. A central hypothesis is that sustained or repeated high-level exposure to cytokines triggers defects in T-cell tolerance, resulting in the expansion of existing cytokine autoantibody-producing B cells.     

The costs of sex due to deleterious intracellular parasites

A major problem in evolutionary theory is to explain the widespread occurrence of sexual recombination. This is particularly difficult in anisogamous species where the familiar ‘two-fold cost of sex’ is encountered. Another cost has recently been identified: that fusion of gametes allows intracellular parasites or deleterious ‘selfish’ genomes to invade a population. These costs of anisogamy and the ability of cytoplasmic agents to invade a sexual population are quantified, allowing the costs and consequences of different modes of reproduction to be compared. It is found that the costs of selfish elements are likely to be very high and, in particular, that isogamous sexual reproduction (the putative ‘primitive’ form) is not cost-free, but incurs a fitness reduction of the order of 90%; thus a large selective disadvantage occurs in the initial evolution of sex which is ignored in standard analysis. Even once anisogamy has evolved, the low levels of ‘paternal leakage’ observed in many extant organisms may allow selfish cytoplasmic elements to spread, resulting in moderate to large decreases in host population fitness. However, much of the cost of selfish elements is avoided in sexual lifecycles with a large number of asexual cellular divisions between sexual reproduction: this greatly impedes the spread of selfish agents and reduces the fitness loss attributable to selfish elements.     

‘Bridges to cash’: channelling agency in mobile money

Encountered by mobile money professionals – industry and philanthropic actors seeking to bring mobile phone‐enabled financial products to poor people in the ‘developing world’ – the authors move together with new collaborators to inquire into a problem they had been grappling with for some time. This is the problem of agency; specifically, the agency of ‘mobile money agents’, the people ‘on the ground’ or ‘in the field’ who form a crucial function in permitting others to put cash into an electronic money transfer system and pull cash out of it. These ‘human ATMs’ or ‘bridges to cash’ become the object of analytical scrutiny for mobile money experts and anthropologists. This article takes that analytical scrutiny – and not mobile money agents themselves – as its object. It seeks to understand how ‘agency’ inflects debates over money, its meaning and its pragmatics, and its transformation in new communicative infrastructures, and how it might inform anthropology and political struggles over money and payment.     

The reaggregation of adult rat liver cells maintained in vitro

The reaggregation of dissociated adult rat liver cells maintained in vitro for up to 96 h is described. Cultures were examined by dark-ground fluorescence and electron microscopy. Spaces resembling bile canaliculi were formed between reaggregated hepatocytes. Desmosomes and ‘tight’ junctions were formed between hepatocytes but ‘gap’ junctions were not detected. In older cultures structural damage was observed in many hepatocytes and some of them ingested cell debris by phagocytosis. Structures resembling bile ducts and sinusoids were also formed but complex association between all three types of cell aggregate was not observed.     

Physiological ageing of potato tubers: A Review

Numerous theories have been proposed to describe the complex process of ageing in biological systems. Two general groups of ageing theories currently exist: 1) stochastic where the accumulation of random molecular damage leads to loss of information vital to the cell; and, 2) systemic where an organised, genetically based sequence of metabolic activities leads to programmed ageing. Whether these are acceptable models of ageing in potato tubers is unknown although the tuber could provide a useful experimental system for studying ageing. An initial requirement for advancing the concept of ageing in potato tubers must centre on the development of a suitable ageing index. A review of the literature suggests that a modified approach to ‘sprouting capacity’ and ‘incubation period’ may allow tuber ageing to be described in mathematical terms that would, in turn, facilitate the development of a physiological ageing index as well as temperature sensitive predictive models. Although a number of biochemical studies of ageing have been pursued, the development of adequate biomarkers has yet to achieve a coordinated level of development as found in a range of organisms. For example, ageing in other biological systems may be viewed as an outcome of an accumulation of random molecular damage and may be primarily caused by a changing balance between reactive oxygen species and diminishing levels of protective agents such as superoxide dismutase, alpha‐tocopherol or vitamin C. The exploration of these and similar problems in the context of appropriate modelling approaches should allow a better understanding of physiological ageing in potato tubers.     

Is invasion success explained by the enemy release hypothesis?

A recent trend in invasion ecology relates the success of non‐indigenous species (NIS) to reduced control by enemies such as pathogens, parasites and predators (i.e. the enemy release hypothesis, ERH). Despite the demonstrated importance of enemies to host population dynamics, studies of the ERH are split – biogeographical analyses primarily show a reduction in the diversity of enemies in the introduced range compared with the native range, while community studies imply that NIS are no less affected by enemies than native species in the invaded community. A broad review of the invasion literature implies at least eight non‐exclusive explanations for this enigma. In addition, we argue that the ERH has often been accepted uncritically wherever (i) NIS often appear larger, more fecund, or somehow ‘better’ than either congeners in the introduced region, or conspecifics in the native range; and (ii) known enemies are conspicuously absent from the introduced range. However, all NIS, regardless of their abundance or impact, will lose natural enemies at a biogeographical scale. Given the complexity of processes that underlie biological invasions, we argue against a simple relationship between enemy ‘release’ and the vigour, abundance or impact of NIS.