Finally, the ‘neuro’ debate has been allowed to go beyond the ‘big brother’ / zombies/ brain in the vat simplicity demanded by the journalistic interview (mainly due to an impressive collective resistance by two scientists on the Today programme this morning). Despite the best efforts of my toddler to impose her own subjectivity onto proceedings ("what do you mean I am not the centre of the world for 20 seconds!?") the gist of the argument was that of ‘neural fingerprints’ – and the implication that, as demonstrated so brilliantly in the crowd scene of life of Brian, ‘We are all individuals’. If I am prepared to allow my brain to be fully scanned then, the theory is that it should be possible to predict my response to situations, based on a genome style analysis of my particular chemistry and wiring – such as my response to perceptions of fear or the communication of ‘sell’ / ‘buy’ messages by others. The step forward is that it moves us on from the overly reductive 'behaviourist' perspectives and allows the individual to exist beyond a purely subjective ontology. The implication for the current situation (perhaps as a throwaway line by one of the interviewees) was to remind us that efficient markets require independent thought and decisions, i.e. we need to stop behaving like ants sniffing the wind to see what to do but instead become rational thinkers. The interviewee seemed to think that the current generation were past saving (i.e. they are already too 'programmed' to follow signals like a herd), but that would go counter to many of the trends that can be observed concerning individuals and their use of money - particularly on the internet. It is the privilege of doing ethnographic research that you get about as close as you can get to experiencing the decision making (and attendant cultural world view) of an individual, in the actual act of decision making. In spite of the need ultimately to generalize, this has always been the touchstone of ethnography’s ability to change a perspective on a particular problem or issue. It is good to know that what has always been intuitively ‘true’ – that we are not reducible to a set of behaviours (I am not a ‘Clubcard’) but instead need to be looked at as ontologically unique ‘things’ whose nature and social life contribute to both an individual and collective set of meanings called ‘culture’ is also being asserted by the world of science. Vive la difference!
