Similar to Karen Ho, in her article Anthropology and the Cultural Study of Science, Emily Martin investigates a domain not traditionally associated with anthropology. A similar approach is taken by both anthropologists in their attempts to ‘study up/sideways’ and I believe they might have had similar struggles. Martin asks, “If science is the ground of nature, as well as the ground of my thought about it, then how can I think about science outside of itself” (Martin 25: 1998)? Some version of this question must exist in the minds of many contemporary anthropologists seeking to study ‘up’.
Although Ho is very careful to explain the difference between Wall Street’s ‘strategy of no strategy’ versus corporate America’s tendency to “design ‘strategic plans for the future’” Ho also recognizes that corporate America is bound to Wall Street’s frenetic business style as it is a “corporate culture that values eagerness for change and expediency” (Ho 2009:280,281). One of Martin’s concepts in particular, I found very useful for understanding Ho’s assertion that the institutional values and culture of Wall Street move to corporate America and come to shape the values of American society and beyond. This is the concept of citadels and rhizomes. Drawing on Webster’s notion of citadels as “‘a fortress that commands a city, both for control and defense’” Martin explains that the sciences claim be “ensconced within their citadels apart and above the rest of society” (Martin 1998:26).
In the sense that Wall Street exists in tune with the abstract notion of ‘the market’ to the point that it is the market it exists in a similar abstract realm as science, above (or at least inaccessible to) the rest of society. These institutions explain their actions through reference to themselves. Take for example the references that Ho’s informants made to ‘the market’ as responsible for economic booms and busts as well as lay-offs and upswings. Various obvious barriers to entry exist, such as the culture of smartness which allows for recruitment from only Ivy League schools, (Chapter 1) as well as covert boundaries like race and gender (Chapter 2).
Martin in her explanation of the citadel is careful to note that “the walls of the citadel are porous and leaky” allowing for a trickle of information which influences the citadel and the citizens alike (Martin 1998:30). Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari, Martin invokes the metaphor of the rhizome, plants “that can be broken entirely apart into segments and still grow up again as complete organisms” (Martin 1998:30). A rhizome in this Deleuzian sense is something that can plug into anything else and spread.
In the sense that investment bankers are bred to be liquid, they can be said to be rhizomic. Ho notes that the fluidity of an investment banker is essential in a high risk/high reward culture which ironically for how secretive it must be does not value employee loyalty (Chapter 6). Further to this point the knowledge that Wall Street investment bankers impart to corporate America “become[s] concrete inside the castle and extend[s] outward, as what Latour calls ‘immutable and combinable mobiles’” (Martin 1998:32). Through its investment bankers, Wall Street disseminates its values to the rest of America and in turn reproduces its own culture where its values make sense. As Ho suggests:
“Wall Street approaches to compensation not only solidify job insecurity but also engender a relentless deal-making frenzy with no future orientation, which in turn sets in motion not only financial booms and busts but also the transfer and imposition of investment banking models ofemployees liquidity onto corporate America” (Ho 2009:252).
Another aspect of Ho’s book that I found intriguing was her treatment of the culture of smartness which ultimately leads investment banks to focus on having a ‘Harvard guy’ rather than a specific person. Through this ideology “investment banking identities cohere around their commitments to employees’ pedigrees and university affiliations, not individual employees” (Ho 2009:256).
This led me to question what role universities and higher education play in our culture of consumption and capitalism. It is from here that I was led to ask to what extent might we be able to view the university as a citadel? One of the most common concerns I heard throughout this course was that contemporary anthropologists (particularly the more experimental) were participating in a fair amount of mystification rendering their work inaccessible to those it has been written about. Do you think that the technique of ‘studying sideways’ helps to remedy this problem? To what extent can the lessons of history, context, feedback loops, fluidity, reproduction and political economy travel to more ‘traditional’ sites of inquiry? In the face of a more global world, penetrated by the far reaching arm of capital do these sites as ‘traditional’ even exist? What steps might we take towards an anthropology of academic institutions – reflecting back on Martin’s question, how can we think about anthropology “outside of itself?”
Martin, Emily. 1998. Anthropology and the Cultural Study of Science. Science, Technology & Human Values. 23(1):22-44.
Ho, Karen. 2009. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Durham: Duke University Press.
