1 Introduction

The swift pace of technological progress has rekindled interest in anthropology, meaning that, in light of new technologies, we reflect on what it means to be human. Technological advancement gives rise to several questions in society: What sets humans apart from technology? What capabilities are unique to humans? Will technology replace humans? Can robots possess consciousness or intelligence that were previously attributed only to humans? And how will humans and technology differ in the future? Particularly, humanoid robots prompt us to revisit the foundational question of what it means to be human [1].

Moreover, in AI research and the ethics of technology, many anthropological themes are addressed, such as anthropomorphism, human or computer metaphors, the relationship between humans and technology, the differences between them, and their collaboration in various areas of life [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Additionally, many anthropological statements serve as the basis for ethical reflections. For example, claims about how we should morally interact with new human-like technologies, such as social robots, are derived from definitions of what constitutes human consciousness or intelligence [1]. That is, what it means to be human today plays a significant role in the philosophy and ethics of technology.

Even though there is a fundamental need for anthropological orientation in society and research, the philosophical anthropology of technology does not exist as an established discipline, at least not in relation to emerging technologies. Anthropological concepts from famous thinkers like Plessner [11, 12], Scheler [13] or Gehlen [14] were developed many years ago, referring to different societal situations and entirely different technologies. Therefore, in this paper, I will develop a contemporary approach to the anthropology of technology that considers current conceptions of the human and present-day technologies. To this end, I will apply a New Materialist approach, referring especially to the theories of Haraway and Barad, and will demonstrate how New Materialism can contribute to a contemporary philosophical anthropology of technology.

Why New Materialism? When I entered the Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford, I encountered an abundance of books about non-human entities. Even though not all explicitly relate to New Materialism, they share its language and thoughts: titles discussing “Entangled Life. How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures” [15], “Other Minds” [16] of octopuses, “The Mind of a Bee” [17], “The Inner Life of Animals” [18], “Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness” [19], “When Animals Dream” [20], “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us” [21], and “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate” [22]. Studies on the non-human are on the rise, and there is a growing accumulation of insights that environmental studies, animal studies, and many other fields have long highlighted: we need to think and speak differently about the non-human, its capabilities, its place in the world, and our relationships with it than we are used to do. To reflect on the human being, it is crucial to reflect on the non-human. New Materialism does precisely this by reconsidering the relationship between humans and non-humans, bringing the non-human and our relationship with it into focus. I will thus propose an anthropology of technology with New Materialism at its core, where paradoxically, the focus is not solely on humans but equally on non-human entities and their entanglement with the human.

Another reason why New Materialism is suitable for a contemporary anthropology of technology is that it draws attention to power relations, discrimination, and the diversity of humans and bodies, which is highly relevant for today’s philosophy of technology as well as contemporary society.

Given how well New Materialism aligns with certain social movements and the current philosophy of technology, it is not surprising that it is gaining increasing popularity. There are already several introductions to New Materialism [23,24,25,26,27], and New Materialism has been received by a wide variety of disciplines, such as political science, psychology, theology, gender studies, health research, sociology, education studies, environmental studies, animal studies, social work, and science and technology studies (e.g., [28,29,30,31,32,33,34]). The engagement with New Materialism is fundamentally interdisciplinary. Moreover, a New Materialist perspective has already been applied to specific technologies and several technological ethical questions [35,36,37,38,39,40]. Haraway has played an important role in feminist approaches to the philosophy of technology and robot ethics [41,42,43,44].

What is still missing from the discourse so far is the application of New Materialism to the philosophical anthropology of technology.Footnote 1 Although New Materialism itself does not offer a fully developed anthropology, it reflects extensively on the human being and traditional concepts of the human, the human body, and the relationship between humans and the co-world. Additionally, New Materialism is highly theoretical and abstract, resulting in few concrete practical applications. Like other relational approaches, it faces the criticism of being too vague for applied ethics and concrete practice. For example, in robot ethics, it has been debated whether relational approaches should be applied at all or remain subjects of theoretical philosophical discussions [47, 48]. Therefore, this article not only aims to provide an anthropological approach informed by New Materialism but also to offer guiding perspectives on how this approach could be concretely applied.

First, in Sect. 2, I introduce the anthropology of technology and New Materialism, explaining their origins, intellectual traditions, themes, and tasks. In Sect. 3, I elaborate on and explain key concepts and insights of New Materialism that are particularly relevant to anthropological questions. Based on this, in Sect. 4, I develop a New Materialist approach to the anthropology of technology, demonstrating what an anthropology of technology informed by New Materialism might look like. To make the highly theoretical New Materialism as applied as possible, I develop a methodological compass for orientation and guidance in anthropological questions, illustrating this with examples of contemporary technologies. Finally, I summarize my findings in the conclusion in Sect. 5 and identify questions for future research.

2 Introducing Anthropology of Technology and New Materialism

2.1 Anthropology of Technology

Philosophical anthropology of technology reflects on the human being within the context of technology. A look at the history of technology reveals that the understanding of what it means to be human is related to the technologies of the time and changes in relation to and interaction with them. The respective inventions of the time, such as the clock, the steam engine, or the computer, have always influenced how humans understand themselves and their bodies. For example, Descartes understood the human body as a clockwork mechanism, and later, computer models gained significance in understanding the human mind [49,50,51,52, 53, 54]. Today, it is human brain interfaces, generative AI, large language models, self-tracking technologies and humanoid robots that pose new challenges to our understanding of what it means to be human.

Therefore, a task of anthropology is to investigate how our understanding of humans and the human body is being transformed due to technology. How are robots, the metaverse, self-tracking, generative AI, digital twin technology, and advanced medical technologies changing how we understand the human and the body? And moving into the field of ethics: What futures for human beings do we want? How we understand humans influences how we perceive ourselves and our fellow human beings, how we act, how we make decisions, and how we shape society [55, 56, referencing 57].

Moreover, in the ethics of technology, certain anthropological assumptions are often explicitly or implicitly presupposed. Ethical concepts like autonomy and agency frequently rely on our understanding of human traits, such as specific notions of human intelligence and social behavior. These anthropological assumptions need to be identified, made explicit, and critically examined [1]. This reveals that anthropology and ethics are closely linked: ethical reflections often contain implicit assumptions about the human being, and anthropology also encompasses normative aspects. This article primarily focuses on anthropology, but the close connection to ethics will become evident, especially in New Materialism, which closely ties ethics to ontology and epistemology.

Furthermore, conceptions of the human being are present not only in ethics but also in technology. Technologies such as humanoid robots embed and embody our interpretations of human appearance and behavior. AI conveys a particular notion of intelligence, and emotional AI reflects a specific perception of emotions. In this way, discriminatory, ableist, sexist, and racist assumptions can be identified and critically scrutinized within technology, for example, when certain technologies are not designed for people with disabilities because an idealized notion of the human was taken as the standard. This engagement with conceptions of the human also includes those implicitly present in science fiction [58, 59] and in technological movements like transhumanism and posthumanism. For instance, consider the reductionist view of humanity in transhumanism, which reduces humans to mere information and contains ideological elements [53, 60].

Even though anthropology is clearly important for ethics and technology, philosophical anthropology or the philosophical anthropology of technology does not yet exist as a fully established discipline with a distinct set of theories and methods. The beginnings of anthropological reflections date back to antiquity, for example with Plato and Aristotle, and even earlier to the earliest sources of human history. In 1798, Immanuel Kant’s “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht” (“Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”) [61] was published. Particularly influential were the approaches called “Philosophical Anthropology”, which were notably shaped in the 1920s by Helmuth Plessner [11, 12], Arnold Gehlen [14], and Max Scheler [13]. During this period, anthropology took on a more defined form with theories and concepts [62]. The handbook “Technikanthropologie” (“Anthropology of Technology”) [63] refers to “anthropologies of technology” as early as the 17th and 18th centuries with Descartes and La Mettrie and continues to discuss the approaches of Ernst Kapp, André Leroi-Gourhan, Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Günther Anders, Hans Blumenberg, Gilbert Simondon, Gotthard Günther, and Marshall McLuhan in the 19th and 20th centuries.Footnote 2  

Today, the concepts of these thinkers are often applied to new technologies and questions. For example, concepts introduced by Plessner, auch as “eccentric positionality”, and his three “anthropological laws” are applied to contemporary technologies [65,66,67,68,69].Footnote 3 This article, however, takes a different approach, arguing that new contexts require new philosophical concepts and new ways of thinking. Authors from earlier periods, such as Plessner, were not acquainted with modern technologies such as smartphones or brain-computer interfaces. Therefore, they conducted their reflections and developed their concepts in a socio-technological context that was significantly different from today’s. A New Materialist approach, as I will argue, can provide better answers to today’s technological challenges, offering insights into considerations regarding the role of humans in interaction with contemporary technology and the impact of technology on human existence. Hence, in this article, I will set aside the wealth of anthropological reflections in history, even though much can be learned from them, and instead focus on a New Materialist approach.

2.2 New Materialism

New Materialism is an interdisciplinary and heterogeneous current of thought that emerged in the 1990s, intersecting philosophy, social sciences, cultural studies, natural sciences, and technology studies. Key themes in New Materialism include a re-conceptualization of matter, viewing it as active, effective, and dynamic, rather than passive and stable [24]. Additionally, it involves reflections on ontology, knowledge production, and the subject-object relationship. Its thinkers criticize anthropocentrism, humanism, and focus on non-human entities, and rethink the relationship between nature and culture. New Materialism draws on various theories and intellectual traditions, notably posthumanist, feminist, and poststructuralist approaches from thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault.Footnote 4 Proponents of New Materialism include Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Lucy Suchman, and Jane Bennett. New Materialism is closely related to intellectual currents such as (Critical) PosthumanismFootnote 5, Ecofeminism, Cyberfeminism, and Technofeminism, with the boundaries between them often blurring [42, 74,75,76]. Haraway [77] distances herself from the term “posthumanism”, while Barad [78] aligns themselves with posthumanism. Haraway [77] (p. 97) says: “We are compost, not posthuman; we inhabit the humusities, not the humanities. Philosophically and materially, I am a compostist, not a posthumanist.”

Additionally, New Materialism is also closely related to relational approaches in ethics of technology, for example post-phenomenology [79,80,81,82], actor-network-theory [83, 84] and more-than-human approaches [36, 85], which have long been integrated into the philosophy of technology. New Materialism shares with other relational approaches an interest in embodiment, human-technology relations, technological agency, and the impacts of technology on the human being.

Since New Materialism represents a diverse line of thought and its stances on various aspects of technology, anthropology and ethics differ greatly, this paper will focus on the theories of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad. Haraway and Barad are among the most popular proponents of New Materialism and have significantly influenced its conceptual framework.

Donna Haraway is particularly known for her interdisciplinary approach as a biologist, philosopher of science, literary scholar, and technology researcher, which is evident in her writings. In her research, she combines various methods and types of texts (e.g., narratives and mythological elements). Characteristic of her thought is the questioning of boundaries, dualisms, and anthropological categories. These blurring of boundaries is illustrated in the figure of the cyborg, which she developed in her famous “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) [86]. There, she states: “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.“ [86] (p. 7) The cyborg represents both an epistemological and ontological position, and serves as an “ethical and political figure” [45] (p. 37).

Karen Barad adopts an approach different from Haraway’s, yet it exhibits many similarities. They also work interdisciplinarily, intertwining philosophy with quantum physics, particularly that of Niels Bohr. Barad advocates for a radical “relational ontology”Footnote 6, meaning that for them, there are no prior entities with fixed properties, nor are there pre-existing subjects and objects [88]. Humans, bodies, and non-human entities do not pre-exist but instead come into being “only in and through relationships” [24] (p. 128). They emerge from what are called “intra-actions” and “agential cuts”. While the familiar term “interaction” presupposes pre-existing, independent entities that interact with each other [88], the concept of “intra-action” emphasizes that these entities only arise from the multitude of relationships and actions. Agential cuts refer to the way in which boundaries and distinctions between different entities are created and how phenomena in the world are categorized [88]. “[I]n contrast to the Cartesian cut”, which Barad describes as “an inherent distinction […] between subject and object”, “the agential cut enacts a resolution within the phenomenon of the inherent ontological (and semantic) indeterminacy” [89] (p. 333f). Barad refers to their “ontoepistemological framework” as “agential realism” [90] (p. 44). Barad’s radical relational ontology is not framed individualistically, but rather, “phenomena” form the fundamental ontological unit. “Phenomena”, as relations, precede relata such as entities, things, humans, non-humans, and bodies [87, 88].

3 Key Concepts and Insights of New Materialism: Haraway and Barad

New Materialism offers various insights for anthropology, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, ontology, political philosophy, and more. Additionally, both theories, by Haraway and Barad, are complex, challenge many traditional assumptions in philosophy (such as those concerning responsibility, the subject-object dichotomy, and causality), and raise various questions in research due to their often vague nature. Therefore, this exploration is limited to 5 key concepts and insights that can be derived from Haraway’s and Barad’s New Materialist approach, which have particular relevance for questions of what it means to be human. However, as will become clear, in New Materialism, questions concerning humans and technology are always closely tied to ontology, epistemology, and politics.

3.1 Hybrid, dynamic human identity: the cyborg and a relational ontology

Human identity in New Materialism can be well described through Haraway’s cyborg figure and Barad’s relational ontology. The cyborg figure has been widely received and utilized by researchers across various disciplines (e.g., 45, 91, 92, 93). The hybridity of the cyborg rejects a fixed, definitive identity [59] and opposes essentialisms and universalisms [45]. Instead, herFootnote 7 identity is “fragmented, partial, and incomplete” [94] (p. 30). In addition to the cyborg, Haraway introduces many other figures of resistance in her work, such as domestic pets like her dog Cayenne, coyotes, and the laboratory mouse OncoMouse.

Haraway [86] demonstrates how, at the end of the 20th century, the boundaries between human and animal, organism and machine, physical and non-physical have become fragile. She criticizes dualisms such as self and other, woman and man, mind and body, reality and appearance, nature and culture. She demonstrates, including historically, how “certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of color, nature, workers, animals– in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self.“ [86] She critiques the aforementioned boundaries and encourages the questioning of existing borders while responsibly redefining them [86] The hybrid cyborg questions “ontological hygiene” [59] (p. 203). On the one hand, the cyborg can serve as a “critical tool” to expose structures, hierarchies, and dichotomies [50, p. 242, referencing 95, p. 326]. On the other hand, she is part of societal reality; for example, numerous cyborgs, which are connections between the human organism and machines, can be identified in today’s medicine. Due to the multiple linkages between humans and technology, Haraway concludes: “we are cyborgs” [86] (p. 8).

Barad proposes a relational ontology, assuming that what constitutes the human being– and also non-human entities– emerges from relations. Thus, human existence is not inherently present beforehand, is not universally given over the years, but is dynamic and continuously reconfigured:Footnote 8

“[H]umans are part of the configuration or ongoing reconfiguring of the world— that is, they/we too are phenomena. In other words, humans (like other parts of nature) are of the world, not in the world, and surely not outside of it looking in. Humans are intra-actively (re)constituted as part of the world’s becoming. Which is not to say that humans are the mere effect, but neither are they/we the sole cause, of the world’s becoming.” [96] (p. 206).

What it means to be human is constituted through relationships and otherness, not derived from the humans themselves, yet the human is also not “the mere effect” of the world [97]. Barad argues that “the boundaries and properties of the components of phenomena become determinate” “through specific agential intra-actions” [88] (p. 139), meaning that humans, as phenomena, do not possess a fixed set of characteristics or determinable boundaries; rather, these emerge in a second step from intra-actions. This indeterminacy of the human also means that what it means to be human remains open to change and diversity: “Holding the category ‘human’ (‘nonhuman’) fixed (or at least presuming that one can) excludes an entire range of possibilities in advance […].” [88] (p. 178) Furthermore, in Barad’s work, as in Haraway’s, the non-human comes to the forefront. The relations are not limited to human relations; rather, human and non-human entities mutually constitute each other [88]. What it means to be human is thus also brought forth by the non-human.

3.2 Non-human entities und relationality

It becomes apparent that in Haraway and Barad’s work, being human cannot be separated from relations and the non-human. In Haraway’s conception, the identity of the cyborg is fundamentally relational: The cyborg requires connectivity and relationships– she is “needy for connection” [86] (p. 9f). Haraway particularly emphasizes the interconnectedness with non-human actors. This can include (laboratory) animals, viruses and bacteria, machines, and other objects. Laboratory animals play a significant role for Haraway. Animal experiments reveal that, on one hand, we acknowledge a kinship between humans and animals, yet on the other hand, we negate this connection to justify the freedom to treat animals as we wish: “They are us insofar as we can learn from them and their bodies; they are not us, so we can do what’s necessary to their bodies in order to learn from them.” [45] (p. 39) Haraway expresses her connection and kinship by referring to the OncoMouse as her sibling: “OncoMouse™Footnote 9 is my sibling, and more properly, male or female, s/he is my sister.” [97] (p. 79)

For Barad, being human is also fundamentally relational, as has already been made clear by Barad’s relational ontology. This relationality is captured by Barad in the term “entanglement”, which for them signifies more than just a “connection”. It is much deeper, involving ontology, materiality, and causality [88] (p. 160). Both Haraway and Barad aim to question and critically reflect on the boundary between human and non-human. They demonstrate how, through biological insights, this boundary has long become fluid, since properties considered typically human can also be found in non-humans.Footnote 10 However, both explicitly argue not for erasing all boundaries and distinctions but rather for taking responsibility for these boundaries and renegotiating them responsibly.Footnote 11 [86, 99]

Both critique anthropocentrism and speciesm. Barad views humans simply as phenomena akin to non-human entities [89], placing humans back into nature and the world [89]. Consequently, human exceptionalism is also criticized [88, 99].

3.3 Non-human agency and active matter

With the revaluation of the non-human also comes the attribution of “agency” to non-human entities. Haraway’s and Barad’s conception of “agency” diverges from those in traditional philosophical interpretations. Haraway broadens the concept of agency to include non-human entities and actors like animals and machines, emphasizing their performative nature and ability to produce meanings [94]. For Barad, “agency is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has” [96] (p. 214). Agency is not tied to subjectivity and intentionality. Thus, agency is distributed over both human and non-human entities [96]. In this context, Barad addresses an objection to actor-network theory, which is criticized for uncritically assuming a dichotomy between human and non-human [96]. It is important to note that non-human agency does not come at the expense of human accountability; rather, Barad is concerned with being accountable for previously hidden power structures [96].

Both turn away from the inert understanding of nature inherent in Cartesian tradition and conceptualize matter as dynamic: it is not a fixed, passive, and unchangeable substance or characteristic but is active and productive [88, 89, 94]. The material and the discursive are not set against each other, cannot be reduced to one another, or are not antecedent but imply each other mutually [88]. Barad [96] highlights the power relations in materialization processes, reflects on “what matters and what is excluded from mattering” (p. 220) and notes that humans are also constituted differently through material-discursive practices.

For anthropology and ethics of technology, Barad’s concept of the “apparatus” is particularly interesting, as it allows for a better understanding of technologies. Apparatuses are “material-discursive practices” [89] (p. 335) that can encompass both human and non-human intra-actions [88, 90]. Barad rejects the notion that apparatuses and machines are observing instruments and measuring devices [88], which influence humans or others or have a “‘mediating’ role” for us [100] (p. 231). Instead, they constitute phenomena such as human, non-human, and body [100]. However, Barad’s concept of the apparatus remains relatively vague; the boundaries of the apparatus and what is included or excluded remain blurred [88].

3.4 Bodies and their diversity

The body plays a significant role in New Materialism. The identity illustrated by the cyborg figure is embodied. The hybridity of the cyborg is specifically a material and multiply embodied one. Through her hybridity, she addresses the “multiple possibilities of embodiment” [45] (p. 80f). She highlights the “ontologically confusing bodies” [101] (p. 186). Haraway’s New Materialism also considers the differences between bodies. For example, women are embodied differently than men, and among women themselves, there are differences in embodiment [45]. “The cyborg’s hybrid embodiment is not a generic universality, but a specificity, and a multiplicity.” [45] (p. 81).

In Haraway’s view, cells, organisms, and bodies are not pre-existing entities merely to be discovered by the natural sciences; rather, they are made and produced [94, 102, 103]. Technologies, (natural) sciences, culture, society, commercial strategies, capitalism, along with metaphors (such as those of machines and computers), and narratives, together produce the body and define what a body is [86, 53]. While Foucault [104], with his concept of “biopower”, highlighted the influence of politics on the body, Haraway [105] adds the technological discourse: “techno-biopower” refers to the power over the body exercised through technologies, companies, and the economy (pp. 2, 9, 12).

In Barad’s [88] framework, (human and non-human) bodies “are not objects with inherent boundaries and properties; they are material-discursive phenomena” that acquire their boundaries and properties through intra-activity (p. 153). Drawing on disciplines such as physics and neurophysiology, as well as disability studies, science studies, postcolonial, and feminist research, Barad [88] questions the boundaries of the body, as has been done in phenomenology by scholars like Maurice Merleau-Ponty [106, 107]. Barad [88] points out that the boundary of the body, the inside and outside of the body, where the body ends and the prosthetic begins, are not as clearly delineable from a scientific perspective as one might think. They [88] emphasize that how these body boundaries are established is not just a matter of experience but is ontological.

In Barad’s work, queerness plays a significant role, which they identify in nature and then apply to our anthropological conceptions and ideas of embodiment, challenging ontological and epistemological assumptions [99, 108]. Barad [99] presents many examples from nature, viewing nature as inherently queer. For instance, they illustrate how traditional assumptions are questioned through the example of the Brittlestar: it lacks eyes and a brain but perceives through its nervous system, and it exhibits “diversity in sexual behavior and reproduction” [99] (p. 377). They describe various phenomena of nature and showcase the diversity regarding gender, sexual orientation, and bodies. For Barad [89, 99], queerness also encompasses humans, academics, quanta, atoms, and much more. The term “queerness” for Barad does not only refer to gender identity and sexual orientation but signifies a queering that “cut[s] across the cuts that define these terms” [99] (p. 33), a “radical openness […] [and] differentiating multiplicity” [99] (p. 29), “the un/doing of identity”Footnote 12 [89] (p. 247).

3.5 Knowledge production: situated knowledge and ethico-onto-epistem-ology

Haraway [111] speaks of “situated knowledge”, emphasizing the contextuality of knowledge and one’s own position and arguing against purportedly objective viewpoints, such as those represented in the natural sciences. Haraway demonstrates that knowledge and scientific research are always embedded in a context, dependent on a specific position, and within this, questions of power play a significant role. In Haraway’s view, knowledge is contingent, historically formed, bound to contexts, and interpretative [94]. According to her, humans, bodies, and non-human entities are not pre-existing; rather, the knowledge about them is discursively produced. Just as cells and viruses in biology are not simply discovered, but are constructed, so are they [102].

Barad posits a close, necessary connection between ethics, epistemology, and ontology, which they call “ethico-onto-epistem-ology” [88]. What being is, is always dependent on our explorations of it [112] and thereby on power relations and politics. Therefore, for Barad, “being […] is political” [78] (p. 207). Scientific findings are not discoveries of something that pre-exists; rather, scientific knowledge is contextualized, akin to Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges”. This knowledge is not produced independently but is shaped by gender, politics, history, racism, and more [112]. In this way, “knowledge is not […] innocent” [112] (p. 188). With the previously mentioned shifts in boundaries that Barad addresses, hidden power dynamics can be revealed. For Barad, these “[b]oundaries have real material consequences” [112] (p.187). The boundary between human and non-human plays a significant role in Barad’s work: They argue that determining what is human or non-human always involves exclusions and is “open to contestation” [88] (p. 183). Who do we even attribute the ability to die to? Who can live and die? [78] Barad also presents their famous example that biting into a California raisin is not just biting into sunshine and grapes but also into laws, colonialism, racism, bacteria, labor conditions of the workers, advertising, capitalism, and climate change [78].

For Barad, epistemology and ethics are inseparably linked, and responsible scientific practice is always connected to justice [99]: “Questions of natural science are questions of justice.” [78] (p. 205) Through this close intertwining of being, knowledge, and ethics [88], Barad also transforms the understanding of ethics. Instead of ethics being something that is added afterwards, ethics starts much earlier, not only in a second step. It is a more practicing “ethics of worlding” [108] (p. 392): “Ethics is an essential part of the sedimenting patterns of world-making, not an (super)imposition of human values onto the fabric of the world.” [78] (p. 183).

4 Developing a New Materialist Approach to Anthropology of Technology

4.1 An Anthropology of Technology Informed by New Materialism

Based on the key insights and concepts of New Materialism, I will develop a New Materialist approach to the anthropology of technology in the following sections. Weaknesses and criticisms of New Materialism have already been pointed out in the research [87, 113,114,115,116,117,118,119], which is why a comprehensive evaluation of the approach is not conducted here. Instead, the main contribution of this article to research lies in concretely exploring how the concepts of New Materialism can be applied to the anthropology of technology.

The approaches of New Materialism should not be understood as a systematic, unequivocal theory of anthropology, as New Materialism does not formulate a unified position and resists fixed theories and labels [75, 86]. Nonetheless, New Materialism offers many starting points for the further development of anthropological and ethical thinking. These points are not elaborated in New Materialism itself; rather, I attempt to derive them from the previous analysis.

In Sect. 4.1, I will organize the results around 4 key insights and perspectives from New Materialism for the anthropology of technology and at the end of each, develop a methodological compass in the form of guiding questions that can guide the anthropology of technology. In Sect. 4.2, I will present examples to concretize the New Materialist approach.

(1) Human identity is open, dynamic, embodied and diverse.

For Barad and Haraway, what constitutes the human being is open and dynamic. This contains two important aspects for the anthropology of technology. First, the openness of the cyborg lends itself well to advocating for a “radical indeterminacy” [120] (p. 285) of humans and supporting an open, not once-and-for-all defined understanding of the human being. The cyborg can “harbor subversive potential” by advocating for resistance against “any reontologization of the human being” in technologies [120] (p. 286).

This entails that the understanding of humanity advocated by New Materialism pleads for diversity. The cyborg and her body, which cannot be universalized, stand for a plurality of understandings of humans and bodies. The figure of the cyborg broadens the perspective for many genders, for queer bodies, various skin colors, or people with disabilities [45]. This means that technology must also be open to diversity, designed for diversity, and not define and reduce humans. However, this suggests not merely a criticism of technology but also its potential to actively promote inclusiveness and more effectively embrace diversity. With New Materialism, it can be said that we need queer-feminist approaches in the anthropology and ethics of technology– with a focus on gender but also in the broader sense of Barad’s queering– that constantly question traditional assumptions.

As observed, for New Materialism, being human is fundamentally embodied. In the development of AI, there is a particular focus on intelligence, thereby viewing significant cognitive achievements as separated from the body. However, intelligence always encompasses social, emotional, and bodily intelligence. With New Materialism, it can be emphasized that all our perceptions, achievements, relationships, and being are always tied to the body.

Alongside the open understanding of humanity advocated by New Materialism, there is another important aspect: the concept of the human is undergoing change, and New Materialism remains open to the human capacity for change. In this way, New Materialism also counters arguments that claim certain technologies are against “human nature” [99], which have been extensively challenged in research [53, 121, 122]. Especially, in the case of brain technologies and reproductive technologies, it is likely that arguments will be made in favor of this perspective [123]. Technologies can change humans, and the future of humanity is open.

Methodological Compass:

The New Materialist approach therefore resists an understanding of the human being that is defined and reduced by technologies or by opponents of technological change, who do exactly the same by wishing to maintain a certain, fixed understanding of humanity. It instead offers a critical toolkit. The cyborg (or also Barad’s approach) can serve as a crucial tool in the anthropology and ethics of technology. For the methodological compass of the anthropology of technology, the following questions arise:

  1. a)

    What assumptions about the human do we presuppose? Where do we fix the definition of the human, and what exclusions do we thereby produce? Who gets overlooked?

  2. b)

    Turning to a positive angle and practical implementation: How can we design in a more fluid and dynamic way?

  3. c)

    Recognizing that there is no one universal human being, how do we embrace the diversity of human beings in technologies?

  4. d)

    What role does the body play in human-technology interaction, and how does technology affect bodily well-being? Is the body sufficiently considered in technology development?

(2) Anthropology of technology needs a relational and more-than-human approach.

Anthropology of technology can be enriched through reflection on (1) the boundary between human and non-human, (2) the relationship to and entanglement with the non-human, and (3) the agency of the non-human:

With ever-improving technologies, we find ourselves questioning what could still distinguish humans from technology, often striving to draw a strict boundary. New Materialism points out that the boundary between human and non-human is not pre-existing, always in flux and will change. Thus, the boundary between humans and technology is likely to be different in the future. This becomes most evident where technology is integrated into the body, for example, with pacemakers, prostheses, brain-computer interfaces, where humans need technology for interaction or even survival. Where does the boundary between body and technology lie? Can technology be perceived as part of the human body? Disability studies demonstrate that users view prostheses as parts of their bodies [124]. Scholars like Thweatt-Bates [45] and Graham [125] seize the concept of the cyborg as an opportunity to argue for a broad conception of “embodiment” that also encompasses wheelchairs, prostheses, and physical abilities and sensations. This illustrates how modern technological developments can be an opportunity to broaden the current understanding of the body towards a more inclusive concept. Another example is the virtual body of my avatar, which is not completely separated from me but part of my body insofar as I experience feelings and violence in the virtual space as a bodily experience. The examples of contagion in gaming, i.e., that our perceptions and actions change after leaving the digital space, also serve as evidence for this [126].

Haraway [86] presents the blurring of boundaries between animals, technology and humans as “pleasure” and thus positions herself against the usual “border war” and the associated fears that exist in the demarcation between humans and the non-human (p. 8). Haraway [86] appeals to us to not be “afraid of […] [their] joint kinship with animals and machines” (p. 13). Promoted by media and science fiction, a distinction between humans and technology is made, imagining technology as an independent, powerful counterpart, for example, as an undefined superintelligence that could replace us, take away our jobs, and potentially annihilate us. The same strategy is also employed by technology enthusiasts, for example in transhumanism, when they refer to “existential risks” [127, 128] and a “control problem” [129] of technologies, from which they alone can protect us.Footnote 13 Instead, New Materialism appeals to us to view technology as something with which we have always been fundamentally connected.

In these attempts at demarcation and the search for human specificity, we also find that, especially with humanoid robots, we tend to develop catalogs of characteristics– such as consciousness, intelligence, and sentience– and decide on that basis how to morally engage with them.Footnote 14 In the past, we distinguished ourselves from animals by attributing to them too strong, uncontrolled emotions and instincts; today, we differentiate ourselves from technology by saying that it lacks emotions [133]. This so-called “properties-approach” [132] has been widely criticized in research, and various relational approaches have been proposed instead [1, 131], which show that we form close bonds with technology, we even grieve for social robots [134], and that our properties and actions are fundamentally interwoven with the non-human. How do these relationships change our ethical concepts like autonomy, agency, and responsibility?

In the discourse on technology, human-centered approaches are emphasized, for example, the notion that technology should serve humans. Instead, the New Materialist perspective emphasizes interconnectedness with the non-human: with bacteria, viruses, animals, plants, microchips, the internet, tubes, and cables, computers. The New Materialist perspective calls for taking relationships with non-humans seriously and considering how they co-constitute us and our actions. Without many non-human entities, such as bacteria, insects, and plants, we cannot survive, and technologies form a fundamental condition for our food production, safety measures, water supply, and energy provisions. In the medical field, we are largely dependent on technology, also for life-saving measures. This means that it is their data, algorithms, design, structures, and logics that fundamentally shape our human existence and ourselves.

In New Materialism, we are not merely entangled with the non-human, but there is also non-human agency, and matter is active. This means that technology is not just a mere object or tool for our actions. In human-robot interaction, for example in robot-assisted surgery, we see how the robot and the surgeon and the rest of the surgical team collaborate, enabling interventions that would not have been possible without the robot and transforming the whole actions of the surgery into a co-action of human and non-human, or more aptly, a hybrid action [1]. Lupton [36, 135] also views various self-tracking apps as new “human–nonhuman agencies” or “assemblages” because understanding of humans, actions, and decisions here are produced through both human and technology.

For guiding the methodology in the anthropology of technology, the following questions emerge:

  1. a)

    What assumptions do we make about the boundary between human and non-human, and what constitutes the non-human? The goal is to question traditional boundary demarcations, as has long been done in disability studies and environmental ethics.

  2. b)

    Instead of focusing solely on individual actions, we should ask: In what relationships do we find ourselves? How do the non-human and our relationships with it shape us and our actions?

  3. c)

    Which non-human agents are involved, and what human/non-human assemblages occur? This involves first considering the plethora of agents involved and then analyzing which of these are relevant in the specific situation or interaction.

(3) The anthropology of technology requires a critical reflection on knowledge production, ontology, and materialization, identifying power discourses.

New Materialism shifts the focus to understanding that knowledge about humans, bodies, and the non-human is not pre-existing but is produced. By not viewing the human and non-human (and the boundary between them) as given, it becomes possible to analyze how they are produced, to detect discriminations, and to identify power relations [88]. Definitions of humans and non-humans are also about power. They change over the years, for example, slaves and women were previously not attributed personhood. Technologies (and the actors associated with them such as designers, developers, tech companies, Big Tech, regulatory laws, and politics) also produce a version of the human, body, and non-human. In this way, an ethics of technology from a New Materialism perspective does not start only at the development or use of a technology but already at the production of knowledge about what being human and non-human means, at historical, medical, and political developments, social and cultural influences, constraints, and structures that are reflected upon.

New Materialism draws attention to the materializations and power relations that are already deeply embedded in ontological and epistemological structures: Barad addresses the materialization of both human and non-human bodies: While Foucault has investigated “the materialization of human bodies”, Barad criticizes him for neglecting “the processes of materialization through which nonhuman bodies are materialized” [96] (p. 204) [88, 90].

Furthermore, New Materialism can serve as a starting point to highlight the “plurality of ontologies”Footnote 15 and to integrate non-Western ontologies. Consider Ubuntu and sub-Saharan African approaches [137, 138], many of which argue that personhood can also apply to robots and that personhood is not possessed but rather achieved, with relationships (including those with non-humans) playing a significant role [138]. For Japanese approaches, consider, for example, Shinto-inspired techno-animism, which does not separate matter and spirit and has much potential to recognize non-human agencies and to view robots as animated [139,140,141].

For the methodological compass, the following questions arise:

  1. a)

    Which “human”, “body”, and “non-human” are produced by technologies? What knowledge is generated?

  2. b)

    Who and what produce this knowledge? Where can power structures be identified?

  3. c)

    Where do ontological and epistemological injustices occur, and what forms of discrimination arise?

  4. d)

    How can we do justice to the plurality of ontologies in technology and the anthropology of technology?

(4) Technology anthropology must work in an inter- and transdisciplinary manner and can benefit from new methodological approaches.

In a New Materialist-inspired anthropology and ethics of technology, inter- and transdisciplinary work is indispensable. It is not just about a mere dialogue between disciplines, but rather that ethics cannot be conducted without the natural sciences. An ethicist must also be able to work scientifically, and questions of natural science always also concern justice [78], because colonialist, racist, and sexist histories are present in scientific work, for example. In consideration of the non-human, collaboration between environmental ethics and ethics of technology would be beneficial and necessary, as exemplified by Gellers in his book “Rights for Robots” [142], where he refers to relational approaches.

An anthropology of technology inspired by New Materialism can also venture into new forms of storytelling, creating new narrations and figures such as the cyborg. In the discourse on technology, certain narratives are particularly prominent; for example, in the context of the aforementioned “border war”, technology is depicted in Western societies as a threat,Footnote 16 a powerful counterpart to humans, whereas New Materialism emphasizes kinship and “making kin” [77].

The anthropology of technology must fundamentally rely on empirical studies, and New Materialism can also be fruitfully applied to empirical research [143, 144]. Lupton [36, 135], for instance, utilizes New Materialism to enrich empirical health research. Lupton highlights the importance of examining people’s personal experiences with and their relationships to technology, such as in self-tracking (what motivates them, what experiences they have, emotions, why they use it, etc.).

Methodological compass:

  1. a)

    The anthropology of technology must develop inter- and transdisciplinary approaches and experiment with new methods.

  2. b)

    Consider the power of the story: Which narratives and stories dominate the discourse on technology, and what new narratives and resistant figures can be introduced? [93, 145]

  3. c)

    The anthropology of technology must rely on empirical work and research into people’s experiences with technology and their relationships to it.

4.2 Examples

In the final step, I present some examples from various technologies to illustrate how the New Materialism approach can be fruitfully applied:

4.2.1 Open conception of the human being: body scanners and medical technology

An example of a non-dynamic conception of the human being hidden in technology is body scanners. Even though they seem harmless because they only scan the body, a certain image of the body is embedded in them. They classify transgender individuals as dangerous because their bodies do “not fit the pre-programmed algorithmically-identified male or female gender shapes” [146] (p. 518). The same applies to facial recognition technologies, which fail to recognize black faces [146,147,148]. Similarly, body scanners exclude people who rely on medical technology, such as the elderly and people with disabilities.

Ultimately, every technology produces a specific image of a human and can never provide a holistic representation of humans. This does not mean that technology should not be used, but rather that this critical perspective must always be made clear, and technology can be improved. Especially imaging techniques and visualization technologies in medicine suggest that they offer an insight into a pre-existing body. However, they are based only on specific statistical calculations, medical values, and only represent certain aspects of humanity [149, 150]. With New Materialism, the question arises: what does medical technology not capture here? Which bodily or non-bodily parameters are ignored? Similarly, self-tracking designs an image of the human, body, and health that tracks only certain parameters (e.g., counting steps) and assigns no value to others. Similarly, digital twin technology, which aims to provide a digital representation of the patient in their digital twin in the future, from the perspective of New Materialism, must always consider what is reduced in the patient and what is not represented in the digital twin.Footnote 17 Just as twins are not identical, digital twins are not either.

A positive development would be steps towards personalized medicine, which can individually consider the various peculiarities of individuals– even though this would also come with limitations. Other approaches would include the co-design of technology by diverse user groups, using diverse data sets, and enabling more autonomy for users in the technology.

Another promising approach is queering data. Since technology is fundamentally based on data, which is binary, there arises the task of making the data, its collection, analysis, and use more diverse. There are already promising approaches inspired by a rhizome to decentralize data (“RhizomeDB”), including a “BYOA (Bring Your Own Algorithm) approach” [151, 152].Footnote 18 And there are various attempts to queer data [153], for example, “the queering of collection methods” [154]. Consequently, a New Materialist approach to data is needed.

4.2.2 Non-human agency and hybrid agency

A good example of hybrid agency is brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which can be used by people with neurological disorders such as Locked-in syndrome. People can envision the act of flipping a light switch; the BCI analyses and sends their brain signals, thereby activating the light switch. Similarly, concentrating on particular letters or phrases displayed on a monitor allows the BCI (and the human) to navigate a cursor for selection [155, 156]. BCIs facilitate movement and speech; the interaction has to be learned, and both parties have to adapt to each other. Consequently, communication and interaction are enabled and changed, thinking and behaviour are restructured. So the action is not just human, and the action is not just technologically mediated. Here, one can speak of a hybrid action of human and non-human: The actions of both are not just added together but create a new action. When these brain-computer interfaces become bidirectional, they can provide somatosensory feedback, including perceptions of pressure or warmth, or even disable fear, and could also be used for the enhancement of non-disabled individuals [155, 156].

To reflect on non-human agency, one does not even need advanced neurological technology; generative AI already shows us how non-human and hybrid agency are effective in all our lives. Furthermore, generative AI is being explored for the creation of visual and performance art, as well as for multiple medical fields (especially radiology, mental health, and drug development) [157,158,159,160]. We are even more familiar with the “agency of the algorithmic feed”Footnote 19 in social media. Through the algorithmic feed, which itself is entangled with human agency, data, and algorithms, something new emerges that shapes our decisions, purchases, fashion, diet, trends, knowledge, our self- and body image, and our understanding of our health [161].

4.2.3 Knowledge production: reproductive technologies

The most illustrative example of how knowledge about the boundary between human and non-human, what it means to be human, and where life begins is produced can be found in reproductive technologies. The ultrasound image once constituted the fetus as an entity, making it a patient with rights [149, 162, 163]. In ectogestative technology (also known as artificial womb technology), where part or the entire maturation process of the fetus is supposed to occur ectogestatively, outside the uterus, the question becomes pressing again as to when the ectogestative entity is human and alive [164]. A New Materialism-inspired anthropology of technology emphasizes that this is not pre-given and does not just need to be discovered by the natural sciences, but that this knowledge is produced. Laws, historical developments, technologies, political structures, capitalism, feminist and racist structures, and much more will determine what is life and non-life, what is human and non-human.Footnote 20

5 Conclusion

In this paper, I have developed a techno-anthropological approach informed by New Materialism. This New Materialism-inspired anthropology of technology assumes an open, dynamic, and changing identity, accommodates diversity, is relational, and considers humans as fundamentally entangled with the non-human. Furthermore, it highlights the formation and power structures of ontologies, materializations, and epistemologies, as well as non-human and hybrid agency, and underscores that technology produces humans and bodies. Through examples and a methodological compass, I have concretized the approach for application and developed questions to guide the anthropology of technology.

Although it became clear that a New Materialist approach is well-suited for a contemporary anthropology of technology and offers many advantages, several limitations of a New Materialist approach remain. Among these limitations are the vagueness of many New Materialist concepts and the challenge of their application to ethics and politics [113,114,115]. For example, Buhr argues that in New Materialism, there exists a “gap” “between the ontological subject and the ethical and political subject” [87] (p. 87). This affects questions such as how responsibility [169] or autonomy can be understood. Much of this translation work still needs to be done in the future.

This also extends beyond ethics and philosophy. For example, Frauenberger explores what New Materialism means for human-computer interaction and design.Footnote 21 Frauenberger argues that with the design of technology, we are designing “configurations” in which humans and technology are in a relationship and interacting, and we should consider “how to design meaningful relations” [170] (p. 19).

Nevertheless, this paper has also identified the strength of New Materialism for the anthropology of technology precisely in the vagueness and indeterminacy of New Materialist concepts, as this approach keeps the concept of the human open and never definitively determines it. Or, in other words, the task of anthropology can be described in Haraway’s [77] words as: “staying with the trouble”. This means that the task of anthropology is to bear the complexity of human beings without fixing or unifying this complexity into a specific image of humans. In this regard, the very openly formulated concepts of New Materialism are well-suited for an anthropology of technology.

Another important limitation or question for future research is the understanding of relations or relationships used by New Materialism. According to a certain understanding of relationships, everything can be relational. It needs to be examined what kind of relationship New Materialism refers to in different contexts and which relationships are valuable or normatively significant. To what extent can normative statements be derived from relationships at all? More empirical research is needed to explore the relationships we enter into with the non-human and how these differ from human-human relationships. Empirical studies that explore people’s lived experiences with technology are central to a New Materialism-inspired anthropology of technology.

A key aspect of this techno-anthropological approach informed by New Materialism is that the non-human and the human entanglement with the non-human come into the focus of anthropology: an anthropology (from ancient Greek: ἄνθρωπος, human) that deals with humans but focuses on the non-human– isn’t that paradoxical? A paradox is not a contradiction but consists of contradictory elements that together form a statement, which, upon closer inspection, is not absurd but makes sense or points to a deeper truth [171,172,173].Footnote 22 The assertion of this New Materialist approach to the anthropology of technology is that it does not require a focus on humans, or rather, can only succeed if the human entanglement and co-shaping with the non-human are considered. We cannot think of humans without considering the non-human. Haraway [77], possessing a deep ecological awareness, views human existence as fundamentally earthly: “Remembering that humanity meant humus, and not Anthropos or Homo.“

Furthermore, the question arises as to how anthropology as a discipline or field of study changes with the deeply transformative assumptions of New Materialism. Researchers have critically asked whether such relational approaches mean a departure from anthropology, as it is replaced by relations and the non-human [64, 75]. I argue that it is not a departure from anthropology, and as was made clear at the beginning, an anthropology of technology is of high relevance. It remains important to reflect on what it means to be human, how the human being changes through technology, and what statements about humans we make in ethics, science fiction, or movements like transhumanism. However, it must be an anthropology that acknowledges the role of the non-human while reflecting on the human. Against the backdrop of changing conditions, developments in technology, and the environment, relational approaches such as New Materialism mark a caesura in anthropological thinking.