Group
Properties vs Individual Properties
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
In
anthropology there is scarcely a more important concept than the division of
labor .
In terms of
the energy budget of a human group and the efficiency with which a group
exploits its physical environment , social organizational factors often produce
group properties that differ considerably from the properties of individuals .
For example
, Karl Wittfogel (1957, cited in Roberts 1964),
writing about the advent of hydraulic farming and Oriental despotism ,
says: A large quantity of water can be
channeled and kept within bounds only by the use of mass labor ; and this mass
labor must be coordinated , disciplined , and led.
Thus a number of farmers eager to conquer arid
lowlands and plains are forced to invoke the organizational devices which - on
the basis of premachine technology - offer the one chance of success; they must
work in cooperation with their fellows and subordinate themselves to a
directing authority .
This kind of
effect is ubiquitous in modem life , but it is largely invisible . All divisions of labor , whether the labor is
physical or cognitive in nature , require disbibuted cognition in order to
coordinate the activities of the participants .
When the
labor that is disbibuted is cognitive labor , the system involves the
disbibution of two kinds of cognitive labor : the cognition that is the task
and the cognition that governs the coordination
of the
elements of the task.
In such a
case, the group performing the cognitive task may have cognitive properties
that differ from the cognitive properties of any individual .
