Does symmetry exist?

Gavin: Entanglement theory frames relations or entanglements in terms of dependencies, which does carry a strong connotation of asymmetry. But surely not all entanglements are asymmetric, are they?

Ian: If we just focus on human–thing relationships (putting aside for the moment the question of what is a human or a thing), I suppose an example of a symmetric entanglement between humans and things might be where humans harvest, forage, collect the wild fruits available in the landscape in a socially unconstrained way. But immediately there seems to be an asymmetry in that too much collection can lead to an inability of the landscape to reproduce its fruits. The human is constrained by the complex interconnections, the seasonalities, the symbiotic relationships that may only play out over time (unintended consequences). So humans have to be careful, knowledgeable, respectful. This respect may be perceived as a symmetry, a co-living, an exchange. But in the end the exchange is constrained by the material limits. It is also constrained by the social limits on what can and cannot be collected, what fruits are given value, significance or taste.

Or with domestication, the plant gives its food and in exchange the human helps it to reproduce. But is the amount given or exchanged by each side equal? And how would one measure the exchange as equal since different things are being exchanged? As long as both provide reproductive success to each other, is this a positive co-evolving symmetry (Rindos Reference Rindos2013)? Only if you ignore the labor and social investments that are needed – then there is asymmetry, as Fuller, Allaby and Stevens (Reference Fuller, Allaby and Stevens2010) and Fuller et al. (Reference Fuller, Stevens, Lucas, Murphy, Qin, Der and Fernandini2016) have shown.

Humans and all biological beings depend on material things. Many of these things, from stable isotopes to the amount of oxygen in the air to the amount of sunlight, remain relatively stable. But made things are relatively unstable. There is thus an asymmetry. If humans want to be dependent on things, they get drawn into their care – there is always the double bind. Animals such as beavers are dependent on unstable things, as birds are on nests, and they have to look after and mend and manage them. But humans went down an evolutionary pathway (homo faber) of investing a lot in the production of things, and indeed making that an important distinction from other animals. Things allowed humans to move up the food chain. They thus had to deal with and were drawn along by the asymmetries in the networks that were produced.

But there are also other ways that humans get drawn into, entangled in, things. Things extend the power of humans to do things. As social beings humans can both cooperate and compete. Things enhance cooperation and competition. They allow humans to cooperate together, work together, to increase food and survival. They allow greater productivity and so enhance sharing. They allow humans to communicate more effectively. They release energy for the social group. But they also cause problems of management and distribution. Things can be shared, but they can also be kept (Weiner Reference Weiner1992), restricted and secreted. In certain contexts, they can become the focus of violence, of rivalry. They can become instruments of violence. Dominant individuals can use things to enhance dominance and underpin violence. Things can be dangerous.

So I am not sure there is symmetry anywhere in human–thing relations/networks. Maybe there is symmetry in some TT relations with reference to material things? The pot depends on the hearth to cook, and the hearth depends on the pot to contain the food that is cooked. The food depends on the pot to be cooked and the cooking pot would not exist without the food to be cooked. So cooking pot, cooking hearth and cooking food are all symmetrical with respect to cooking. But even here the relations are asymmetrical in that there is an operational sequence – things have to be done in an order; there is a directional flow, even if recycling, reuse, repurposing are involved.

So my challenge to you is: where do you see symmetrical entanglements?

Gavin: My first thought when you asked about where a symmetrical entanglement might exist was to think about human relationships (HH), like friendship or love – of course these can be classically asymmetric, but they also reveal something of the issues at stake: how do you measure equality when different things are being compared? You posed the same question when asking about human relations with other living beings in the context of domestication and I am not sure you really answered it. Or rather, you implied that you can answer it, but the answer changes depending on the quality under comparison: reproductive success or labour/investment. In the one case there is symmetry, but in the other, not. So in the case of human relations to other organisms, it seems that there can be symmetry in some senses, but not in others. But let us stick to human relations to things, since the asymmetry you argue for here would appear to be less contingent – besides being a property shared also by other species, as in your examples of bird nests and beaver dams. In what does this asymmetry consist?

If we think of a tool such as a hammer, we could say that humans depend on it to do things, but also the hammer depends on humans for its existence. There is a kind of symmetry. But here the nature of dependence is very different, which therefore also raises a question over the nature of the symmetry. The hammer is reduced to sheer existence; it only depends on humans (as well as other things of course – iron, wood etc.) to bring it into being. This is what one might call an existential dependence. The human dependence on the hammer, however, is not existential – we don't need hammers to bring us into existence or guarantee our reproduction as a species. For us, the hammer relates to our social life, by which I mean our ability to enjoy a certain type of life. This is a social – or what you might even call an aesthetic – dependence. The hammer needs humans only in an existential sense – beyond that, it can lie in the workshop unused for centuries. In contrast, humans need the hammer in a social sense – humans can live/survive without hammers, but it does make their life easier!

So even with things, there are two kinds of dependence or symmetry to consider: existential and social, which perhaps corresponds with your earlier distinction between reproductive success and labour/investment. In the case of the first, things are more dependent on humans than vice versa (hammers need humans to come into being), whereas in the case of the second, the asymmetry is reversed (humans need hammers to obtain a certain quality of life). But the existential asymmetry is also fairly uncomplicated, since one is reducing it to a very simple quality: sheer existence. Social asymmetry, however, is rather less straightforward, because quality of life is a much more complex notion than sheer existence. For example, social life may be enhanced by a hammer, but in place of a hammer, a rock or brick will do, if needed – depending, of course, on what the hammer is needed for (hitting a nail requires different attributes of the ‘hammer’ than smashing glass). In other words, most things carry varying degrees of fungibility which will mitigate, if not even neutralize, the consequences of social dependence. Can we argue that humans are asymmetrically entangled with hammers if they can replace a hammer with something else which does the same job?

Social dependence or asymmetry is then much more context-specific, but also one possibly loses a universal measure of equality to even make generalizations of asymmetry. I guess my basic point is – how do you define asymmetry? My challenge to you.

Defining asymmetry

Ian: I have tried to respond to your challenge.

I do not see the hammer surviving in the workshop as a question of sheer existence. Whether it survives depends (for example) on what microorganisms are present in the workshop to attack the wooden handle, and that depends on whether anyone is living in the house and looking after the workshop. So the existence of the hammer is the result of heterogeneous entanglements. The human need for the hammer is also heterogeneous, and for many tasks a hammer with a rotten handle or a stone or brick will not suffice. So it would overall be very difficult to sort out what was existential and what was social dependence in these relationships between human and hammer. One has to look at the entanglements of the human–hammer relationship as a whole.

One could say that the exchange of two objects is the exchange of equivalents. If I give you an object and you give an equivalent one back to me, then one could say the matter is closed and a symmetric relationship has occurred. But that would only be true if everything else between us was equivalent. If I am vastly wealthier than you, then to give an equivalent gift may be seen as inadequate. How does one decide what is commensurable? So again it all depends on other links in the entanglements.

Having got to this point, I do, however, think that there are cases in which one might argue that you were right in your original statement that not all entanglements are asymmetric. For example, take the three to five bolts that hold a wheel onto a car. They are all equally dependent on each other to keep the wheel attached to the car. Or take the tiles on the floor or wall of a bathroom, or the bricks in a wall, or the two interior prongs in a four-pronged fork. Or identical beads in a necklace. These are all symmetrical dependences. And they are indeed fungible. What distinguishes these symmetrical dependences is that they all involve things that are more or less similarly placed in the entanglements. The tanglegram or ego-network of each would be more or less identical – unlike the case listed earlier of the hammer.

But even in these cases of symmetrical and fungible equivalents there is an asymmetry, especially if time is brought in. For example, in production one tile or brick may be put down first and the rest are placed in relation to that. Or one fork tine or necklace bead may wear down first or be broken first, so affecting the others asymmetrically. Or one brick, because of its location in the wall or in relation to the foundations, may experience more pressure/force than others, do more work than others, supporting others more. Some bricks may be over subsiding soil, leading to asymmetry in the process of collapse. So whether these cases are really symmetric depends – on other things in larger entanglements.

In all the examples above, asymmetry seems related to the positioning of a thing in relation to a larger entanglement. In other words, the entanglement defines the symmetry or asymmetry.

So, for example, human dependence on a hammer and the simple act of hammering in a nail lead to massive global trade, mining, industrial factories, the cutting down of trees etc. to make hammers. All this benefits humans (humans today need hammers), and it creates jobs and wealth, but it also draws humans into far-flung and complex entanglements (including trade agreements, bank loans, transport systems, bureaucracies) that are difficult to get out of. So there is a gross asymmetry between the human–hammer dependence and the entanglements that make that dependence possible.

The more that humans realize, make use of, create opportunities from the affordances of things, the more they get drawn into entanglements that channel the direction of change and set the future parameters for existence and being. The asymmetry occurs because any particular human–thing dependence also draws in thing dependence on humans, thing dependence on things and human dependence on humans. Or, more generally, asymmetry occurs between the human dependence on things and the vast entanglements that are drawn in to make that dependence possible. According to this perspective a symmetrical situation would be very rare in modern or historical times. It would only occur when a human dependence on things implicated very little else – going back to my earlier examples of picking berries from bushes, or very simple technologies using readily available materials. Asymmetry is not about culture/nature, subject/object; but cross-cutting these, it is about how entanglements increasingly entrap humans as a result of the human dependence on things.

It still seems to me that symmetry is very rare, especially nowadays.

Gavin: With the hammer, I don't think what you discuss changes this. Yes, the hammer is dependent on care of humans, on the absence of microorganisms etc. – all this is true; its existence is entangled in a web of different agents. But we are still just talking solely about existence. The hammer's dependence is still purely an existential issue. The hammer user's dependence is much more diverse – their existence, their very being, is not what is at stake, rather it is their quality of existence – how much better/easier their life is with the hammer, even if that means they are deeply entangled in a wide web of relations from mining to trade to factories etc.

But I think one thing you said really got to the core of the issue: ‘In all the examples above, asymmetry seems related to the positioning of a thing in relation to a larger entanglement. In other words, the entanglement defines the symmetry or asymmetry’ (p. 126).

My earlier comments above considered asymmetry purely as a dyadic relation between two entities; indeed, this is perhaps too obvious a way to look at it, like a mathematical equation. The same perspective also relates to the issue of commensurability: I give you x, you give me y – is it a fair trade? I have more of x, but you have more of y – does this make us even or does my x override your y? Et cetera. But clearly you are thinking of structures, systems, networks – call it what you like. And as you suggest, even the examples you gave of possible symmetrical structures like a tiled wall or necklace might not be, because of subtle differences or the order in which they were assembled. Now, I think I probably do agree with you that all structures are asymmetric in the sense you are arguing – but at the same time, is asymmetry really the right word? You can talk about hubs as they do in network theory, or directed and non-directed vertices, and power laws, but isn't asymmetry really a concept that presupposes a dyad? You might think I am just quibbling over words or definitions, but I wonder whether the word ‘asymmetry’ is not up for the job you want it to do. Is it just too simple to capture the complex web of dependencies you describe in entanglement?

I still think the problem lies in how we define asymmetry: first, what is it being applied to – a dyadic relation or a web of relations? Second, how do you measure it and how do you get round the problem of commensurability. My tentative answer would be: (a) asymmetry is only a dyadic relation and (b) either you measure it through the question whether existence is ultimately what is at stake for only one of the pair in this relationship, but then this becomes very limiting and reductive, or you measure it in terms of social dependence, as you are suggesting, but then this also becomes much harder and involves the problem of commensurability.

Different kinds of asymmetry

Ian: You ask if asymmetry presupposes a dyad and I agree that it does; I see that asymmetric dyad in the general relationship between humans and things. There is a link between human–thing asymmetries and power asymmetries as I try to discuss in the online book (Hodder Reference Hodder2016b), but I do not see them as the same thing at all.

I still don't see how it makes sense to say that the hammer is just about existence – one can, of course, talk about the sociopolitical life of a hammer, its cultural relevance and social standing. You say that it may be too restrictive to argue that existence or bare life is ultimately what is at stake for one of the pair in a relationship. And I think that is right. That sounds very reductive and very limiting – and surely not relevant to most human–thing dependency.

As an example, it is possible that in the original domestication of the dog in the Upper Palaeolithic there was a degree of symmetry in that dogs helped humans to hunt and in turn dogs were protected and fed. The symmetry is clear especially if we argue that dogs domesticated themselves and in so doing helped humans to domesticate themselves. But over millennia the HT dependence on dogs led to a proliferation of breeds. In recent centuries many of these breeds that have been produced have led to different shapes and forms in which the dogs themselves suffer considerable pain, often having difficulty breathing or running or holding their heads up. This is a power asymmetry – power over dogs causing pain and hardship. But it led to another type of asymmetry, what I call a double bind. By producing these new breeds humans both depended on dogs and had to put more labor into preserving those dogs. For example, some breeds (bulldog and chihuahua) often have to be birthed using C-sections. The breeds have become artificial creations that need a lot of surgical and veterinary intervention. So we see here the difference between power asymmetries and entanglement asymmetries.

Gavin: In many ways for me the most critical point is, how different/similar is power asymmetry from entanglement asymmetry? And indeed, are asymmetries different for different kinds of things?

If we take your example of dog breeds where you suggest there is a difference between power and entanglement asymmetry, I am not sure how clearly I see this difference in your example. You suggest the power is about pain and suffering felt by dogs because of human breeding – and yes, in a sense, humans control this breeding and thus affect the dogs. You could even say, if they stopped intervening, e.g. giving C-sections to some breeds, the dog breed would simply die out. But then you imply, because humans need to give this care to dogs, that they are entrapped or entangled, so there is a different asymmetry going on there.

Now my question would be, why are these two asymmetries different? Why is one about power and one about entanglement? And if they are different, can you compare power and entanglement asymmetry in any way, perhaps even to suggest which is more asymmetrical? I would argue they are both about entanglement – but still in different ways. One is existential, the other social. Humans are trapped into caring for dogs and dogs are trapped into being dependent on humans. But to me, here is the difference: one form of entrapment is reversible, the other is not (on reversibility see Lucas Reference Lucas2007). However much a human needs to care for the dog, they can – if they really make the effort – walk away. The dog, on the other hand, cannot – the breed will literally die out without human care. So in this particular dyad, one asymmetry is greater than the other. It comes down to reversibility.

Now, of course, the immediate objection is that, yes, humans may walk away, but if they give up the dog, don't they just turn their attention to something else? A cat, for example? And so the entanglement continues . . . probably yes, but that does not negate the basic difference in this particular dyad. You suggest that because things can run away from humans – they break down etc. – humans will always be worse off in this relation. But for me, the opposite is the case. Humans can always run away from things too, which relates to my earlier point about the fungibility of things. But the difference is, when humans run away, things’ very existence is threatened (not all things, of course, but a lot – especially material culture), but when things run away, humans can just find a substitute.

Now none of this is to suggest that it is easy for humans to walk away from dogs, or anything else for that matter. And certainly there would be an inbuilt inertia in such systems to make it very hard to change this. But here is the problem – if, as you have claimed (Hodder Reference Hodder2012), change happens more rapidly as entanglements become ever deeper and more widespread, then maybe such inertia also decreases, and thus reversibility. That is, paradoxically, the more entangled we become with things in general, the easier it is to become disentangled with any particular thing. Is that true? I don't know.

I think what is thus at stake here is perhaps the distinction between entanglement as a general condition of human existence and entanglement as a specific, concrete set of relations. I agree, over time, humans are more and more entangled and thus more and more dependent. But for any given entanglement, reversibility is – almost always, if not always – a possibility. For things entangled with humans, though, I am not so sure. After all, the archaeological record is living proof of all the things which humans disentangled themselves from and which ultimately died out – whether it is Beaker pottery or chambered tombs or whatever. Yet humans live on.

The double bind – and how to circumvent it

Ian: You say that ‘humans are trapped into caring for dogs and dogs are trapped into being dependent on humans’ (p. 129). In my view the basic difference between these two forms of entrapment is in the terms ‘caring for’ and ‘being’. It is true that these are two forms of entrapment but the important issue for me is that ‘caring for’ demands energy, resources, an attention to care for something other. This is the double bind. ‘Caring’ differs from ‘being’ in that it draws the carer, the human, into new forms of relationship. Of course, being involves dwelling in the world and its relations, it involves care (Heidegger Reference Heidegger1971; Reference Heidegger1973). So being leads to care. But I do not argue that material things have ‘being’ in this sense. For this reason the dog is perhaps a bad example since it has being. But a hammer does not have being that leads to it caring for the world around it.

You say that humans can walk away but things cannot. You say that when humans walk away the very existence of things is threatened. Am I wrong to sense a certain fetishization or anthropomorphization of things creeping into your argument? In your concern about the bare facts of existence in relation to things, can you be accused of treating things as if they matter in some existential sense? Does it really matter if things are left to decay, rot, disappear? Of course it matters to humans (and there is the care again), but things do not have rights (though I know that in some cases one can argue in law that they do), and I do not want to return to the old debates about whether things have intentional agency. Today I would argue that the ‘very existence’ of things is not something we should be concerned about, except for ourselves. I know this seems a difficult argument since we are, of course, concerned with the environment, with the Earth, the planet. But the point is that the environment is not concerned with us; it is blind in its workings. The care is not symmetrical.

Conversely I do not think that humans can walk away from things. I think we agree that humans cannot exist without words, things, sounds, smells etc. You are right that they can substitute one thing for another, but only to some degree. The entanglements very much constrain what can be done. It would be very difficult to switch from driving on the left to the right in the UK, and it would be very difficult to find a global deterrent as effective as an atomic or hydrogen bomb. We are very much trapped in our own entanglements. But nevertheless I agree that some substitution is possible. And yet you agree that anything substituted will draw in its own domain of care. So humans cannot escape.

It makes ethical sense to care about human entrapment in things (as that entrapment leads to global warming, the destruction of habitats and exploitation of other humans). And also to care about the existence of animals and perhaps all living things. But I do not see that it makes ethical sense to worry about material physical thing entrapment in humans. My conclusion on this returns me to the question of power. I do not think we need to worry about the bare facts of the existence of things. But I do think that we need to worry about the ways in which the asymmetries between humans and things can be linked to asymmetries between humans, to such an extent that some humans come to be treated as things that do not have rights.

If one takes a society (often conjured up by archaeologists) made up of elites and non-elites, one can say that elites are entangled in banks, loans, stock markets, trade deals, new technologies, higher education, good health and their costs. Non-elites are entangled in labor unions, the daily routines of work on the shop floor, and low levels of education, health and capital. And elites and non-elites are entangled with, dependent on, each other. But elites are more able to walk away; their entanglements are less entrapping. Non-elites are more entrapped; even if they walk away they are still caught in poverty traps, lack of education, poor health. It is not enough to attempt to resolve the unequal distribution of power and wealth because there are also all the entanglements that lie behind and within inequality. You can pass laws to give elites and non-elites the same opportunities, to level the playing field. But it rarely works – inequalities often seem to increase. This is at least partly because of all the entanglements that create lack of education, poor health, poor transport etc. for non-elites. Addressing poverty in the ‘global South’ involves more than aid and shifts of government; it also involves wholescale disentangling – that proves extremely difficult. This is the political reason why I think it is necessary to separate power (the control of and dependence on others) from entanglement (the dependence on things). It is not enough to deal with power asymmetries, because those asymmetries are themselves caught up in human–thing entanglements. The poverty trap has many dimensions beyond human exploitation and domination. It also involves education, health, transport etc.

To put it more directly, the human–thing asymmetry differs from the human–human power asymmetry because we should be concerned about the entrapment of slaves (their bare existence) but not about the bare existence of things. On the other hand, the bare existence of things is entangled with the bare existence of humans and the power asymmetries of humans. So we need to be concerned about the bare existence of things, but only because we care about humans. Are we getting to the point where we might agree?

Gavin: The first point I want to make concerns this issue of care and also your hint at my fetishization of things. I don't think I do fetishize things – though I admit one has to be careful when talking about things needing or depending on humans. Some of the differences between us may simply reside in the ambiguity around this word ‘dependence’ or ‘need’, which can be used in contexts where care is integral (as in the phrase ‘I depend on/need you’) and in others where only generic causation is implied (as in the phase ‘the car depends on/needs petrol to run’). Thus when we say that the hammer depends on humans for its existence, in no way is this necessarily the same kind of dependence as humans needing/depending on things through the idea of care. And I also agree that ethically and politically, there are deeply troublesome aspects when you start to treat things and sentient beings in the same way. But the question remains – why treat the asymmetry of care as more primordial or more asymmetrical than the asymmetry of existence or causation? Couldn't one turn things around and suggest that you are fetishizing humans? I am not sure how I even feel on this issue so I won't dwell on it further.

Regarding more generally the issue of care, though, I think this is vital. In many ways, the difference you highlight between beings who care and other things which simply exist can be mapped onto the point I was attempting to make in distinguishing existential dependence from social dependence. When I discussed earlier about the difference between the hammer and the hammer user, I believe I was trying to make a similar point about the asymmetry of care involved. The hammer's dependence is purely an existential issue – but only for the hammer itself. The hammer does not care about the hammer user (or microorganisms, or anything else). On the other hand, the hammer's dependence on humans for humans is a different matter (as is the human's dependence on the hammer) – that is about social existence, about care.

But let's now discuss this relation between care and power as a special kind of asymmetry. I was left a bit unsatisfied with the way you discussed this – for example in your last paragraph on elites and non-elites, while I can agree that the poor are more trapped than the rich, I am not sure why this is the case. Your suggestion that the elites can walk away more easily does not really say why they can – or indeed if this really is true. So I have been thinking a lot about this issue. How are HH asymmetries related to HT asymmetries?

Let me take a very simple, almost mythical, scenario. Two humans have an equal relationship; one of them ‘invents’ or acquires a knife. Now this human has an entanglement with a knife – and because they need to sharpen and care for that knife if they want to use it, the human is asymmetrically bound to the knife. But having a knife now gives this person an edge (forgive the pun) over a second human – they can make this second human do things because the knife gives them a power advantage. We can then say the HT entanglement/dependency of H1 enables H1 to create an asymmetry with H2. But it goes even further: because H1 can make H2 do things, H1 can make H2 spend time making whetstones so H1 can sharpen his knife. So H1 can force H2 into a dependency with another thing (whetstone), which does nothing for H2 but instead helps to sustain the power H1 has over H2! What this means in effect is that one human is moving some of the burden of care he/she has for his/her thing onto another human.

Now this is, of course, a bit contrived – it presupposes one human has no care for another human, but rather only for the knife. It also seems stretched because most power asymmetries do not seem to be based on this kind of violence (though one could argue, historically, that they will all boil down to primordial violence) – simply because we do care for fellow humans, even if this can be graded into more or less, depending on which human it is. So I will take another example. I make pots – I depend on them for my livelihood, so I am trapped into making them because I need the money I make to support myself and my family – and make those repairs to my house. But what if I hire another human to do this for me instead? Am I not simply replacing one dependency for another – HH for HT? Yes, so what is gained? Nothing – unless the care given to the employee is less than the care I would invest in making the pots myself. And why does that make the relationship asymmetrical? Because unlike the pots, humans care – including this second human I hire. In other words, substituting or inserting a human between myself and the thing allows me to shift the burden of my care for the thing onto the second human. Yes, in return I now have the extra care of another human, but this is a very calculated care and one which permits exploitation.

In a sense, this is all already covered in Marx, especially his important discussions on what he calls the organic composition of capital (OCC) and the ratio of living to dead labour (i.e. humans versus machines; Marx Reference Marx1976, Chapter 25). In a nutshell, as power asymmetries/inequalities grow, so does the ratio of living to dead labour. I find this link to Marx especially compelling, but for me it also gets to the heart of why elites seem to be less entangled than non-elites. I don't think they are – rather they have just delegated much more of the care for things to non-elites, or, put another way, substituted HH relations for HT relations.

Ian: I would like to clarify that I do not accept any distinction between being and care. All living beings, but especially one thinks of humans, have being in the sense of Dasein, being in the world. And this thereness necessitates a care, for other beings and for the world, the Earth, the air, all that makes being possible. Since inert things cannot care, they cannot therefore have being, though they have presence or existence. Such an approach denies the reality of animistic or perspectivist traditions without denigrating them or minimizing their importance and influence (de Castro Reference de Castro1998; Descola Reference Descola1994). One can say that a house cares for, shelters, its occupants, but this would be anthropomorphization.

I very much like your analysis of the different forms of asymmetry and your exploration of why elites appear to be less entangled than non-elites. I had rather assumed that the answer was simply that the more resources one has the more one can use those resources to get out of fixes. As a contemporary example, those people who can escape from Syria appear to be those who can pay middlemen to arrange extremely dangerous boat trips from Turkey to Greece; I presume that those who cannot pay have fewer choices and may have to stay behind to face the extreme dangers of war at home. Your analysis suggests that elites are not less entangled. Maybe that is right but anecdotally they seem to get away with a lot! The bankers of Wall Street walked away with generous fortunes after the 2008 crash they had instigated, whereas it was low-income households that were stranded with debt. (Though maybe it does not always work – your Iceland prime minister resigned in 2016 as a result of the disclosures in the Panama Papers.)

So I would like to work through your second example – the potter. Here a human male potter has a family and a house that depend on him and so he is dependent on his pots and the money he gets from them, and he is drawn into care for the pots. But if the human potter hires another human to make the pots for him then he would have to increase his income in some other way in order to pay this person, which he might do by increasing the numbers or quality of the pots sold. It therefore becomes in his interest to exploit the hired human as much as possible even while (in his own interests) caring for him. But he also comes to depend more on things in order to increase productivity or sales price, perhaps trucks to bring larger amounts of clay to the workshop, or a machine to mix the clay, or a better and more efficient kiln. So the HH entanglement involves a proliferation of the first human's dependence on yet more things. Never mind all the TT relations between all these things. So increased inequality is associated with increased entanglement. And you are right that both humans seem equally entangled; it is their joint relationship that gets caught up in a proliferation of things.

So I agree that it is difficult to argue that elites are less entangled. But I would still claim that they are more able to walk away; less entrapped for the reasons I gave above. The ‘walking away’ may not result in a disentangling, just a disentangling from one context and into another, as indeed in the case of the migrants who have little choice but to make dangerous sea crossings.

I would also like to use the pottery example to return to the question of the difference between power and entanglement asymmetries. The HH is clearly a dependence and a dependency in my terms, and there is a clear asymmetry because it becomes in the interest of H1 to exploit H2 and treat him/her as a thing even if it is also in his/her interest to care for H2. But the HT, TH and TT entanglements proliferate because of the fact that pots and clay cannot reproduce themselves. It is not possible for H2 to just produce pots for H1; in order for that to work and for the two to stay solvent, they get dragged into new machines, new technologies and new dependencies on other humans. So this relation has to be set within HT, TT and TH relations. The power asymmetries and the entanglement asymmetries fuel each other.

One might say that H1 invents a knife (or, better, a handaxe) so that H1 can dominate H2. But the dependence on the handaxe also draws H1 into its care. Caring for the handaxe also involves all the other things that are needed to care for it. But the asymmetry of this dependence means that it is in the interest of H1 to coopt H2 into that care. There is now a symmetry between H1 and H2 with respect to things, leading to the potential for violence and conflict over which human controls things. But in order for H1 and H2 to care for or compete with each other they need yet more things, which also increases the potential for cooperation or domination with respect to things.

The difference between asymmetries of power and asymmetries in entanglements can, as a result of our discussions, perhaps be encapsulated by saying that whereas power asymmetries deal with domination and exploitation of beings by beings, the asymmetries of entanglements result from the differences between human and non-human relations. The physical and chemical processes that produce the lives of non-human, inert things create messy and contradictory consequences into which humans get drawn. Or, more properly, these inert things cannot reproduce themselves; they decay, go wrong, die out, so that humans are caught up in their care. Types, categories, ideas, institutions are also inert, demanding humans to tend them. Credit default swaps are also things that entrap humans, creating double binds.

Gavin: But the key issue in all this is the relation between human power and thing entanglement, and of course your points about the thing entanglements proliferating are all true – I guess I wanted to keep my examples simple to underline the point about delegating care of things onto other humans. At the end of the day, I think elite power over non-elites is somehow linked to this question of thing entanglement. For me, this starts with a seeming paradox – why, if elites are less entangled with things, do they seem to have more things? You mention it yourself – the refugees who got away have more resources. What are resources, if not things (made liquid through cash)? And why, if the poor are more entangled, do they seem to have fewer things? (I know there are many assumptions here about the equivalence of greater quantity = greater entanglement, but as a generalization I think the paradox still holds). For me, this paradox can be solved if we accept that care for those things owned by the elites is shifted onto the non-elites. Thus non-elites care for more things than elites, but elites still enjoy or profit from those things.

If I own a house and I am wealthy enough, I can pay other humans to look after it – to clean it, to fix it and maintain it. My care for this house is transferred to other humans, although I am still the one to benefit from what it does for me. It has often been said that the 20th century ushered in a new form of the capitalist economy, one centred on services rather than manufacture (Mandel Reference Mandel1975). Of course this largely applies to wealthy Western nation states, but it is no coincidence that such a service economy has developed alongside the greatest proliferation of things ever seen in human history. Even if a consumer society was born in the 18th century, and even if the rich have always had servants, it is a different order of magnitude that characterizes our current situation. Yet it is not the differences that are important in the context of this discussion, but the deep continuities. Slaves, servants, cleaners, even tenants – these are cases of humans being coopted by other humans to shoulder the burden of care for their things. The origins of property could be said to have emerged by making a distinction between the negative and positive poles of thing entanglement – keep the positive, shift the negative onto another human. Land rent is a classic example. I own the land – but you (the tenant) care for it and we split the returns of that care. Something for nothing.

Ian: I think we were right to argue that both elites and non-elites can be equally entangled, but perhaps the nature of that entanglement differs. In my 2016 account of power and entanglement, I discuss the poverty trap in which non-elites get trapped by lack of education and a whole compounding set of factors so that they cannot leverage themselves out of poverty. But elites have more ability to use their privilege and positioning in entanglements in their own interests. This is thus a definition of inequality (through things). There is an overall spatiotemporal ‘tanglescape’ in which different people are differentially situated; some people can use this positioning to be powerful in relation to things and in relation to other humans.

So far this is neat but not particularly new. What I think is new derives from what you said about transferring or delegating care. Humans and things are caught in a double bind of humans depending on and having to care for things. But I think you are right that some humans can use their privileged position in relation to things to offload the burden of care onto others. I think this works well – that humans depend on things that depend on humans, but some humans do most of the dependence (an enabling relationship) while others do most of the dependency (the care that is associated with entrapment and constraint). This also explains why elites can have more things (in a reliance, dependence way) and non-elites fewer.

I think we have to be careful that, in arguing that elites shift the burden of care onto non-elites, we are not just reprising the old argument that elites focus on restricted and controllable resources (e.g. quarry sources, sources of water etc.) so that they can control others. Or in Schiffer's terms, that elites control aspects of the operational/behavioural chain that are key – such as procurement and production – while others deal with maintenance and discard. I understand our argument to be different because it deals with the double bind – that the bind means that both elites and non-elites are entrapped, but their different positioning results in making use of the bind differently. It is the context and politics of entanglement that add something new to the discussion.

Summary and conclusions

In many ways there appears to be a symmetry between humans and things. Humans need things to exist and made things need humans to exist. Humans need things (food to gain energy, tools to make the food etc.) to reproduce and things need humans (to be produced and maintained) to reproduce. Humans make things and things make humans (cognitively, sensorially, socially, economically, physically). One might even say that humans care for things and things care for humans (for example, in providing shelter). Similarly there is a symmetry between HH and TT relations. Humans need other humans and things need other things (a waterwheel generates energy but it needs the water). But these apparent symmetries are based on the false notion that things of different types (humans and things of varied sorts) are equivalent. In fact in the sentences above it is more correct to say that humans need things to reproduce and things need humans to be reproduced. Humans make things and the things made by humans make humans (‘man makes himself’). And, as already noted, to say that things care for humans is an anthropomorphization too far. And in the case of HH and TT relations, while it is true that many HH relations depend on things and many TT relations depend on humans, there is an asymmetry in that biological reproduction is not matched by physical, material reproduction and transmission.

We began this discussion by affirming the importance that, while all things equally exist, they do not exist equally: things are irreducibly different. This difference is what results in the asymmetrical relations that form between things or entities. It is worth repeating that our discussion of asymmetry is about the relations between entities, not an ontological commitment to privileging the status of some things over others, i.e. humans. Our concern here has been to look at a central difference which surrounds the relationship between those entities whose being involves care – humans, but also other living and especially sentient beings – and those which don't – material, especially humanly produced, things. While we acknowledge the danger that such a position entails in terms of returning us to a world of binaries, one could argue that there is nothing wrong with binaries per se – they inevitably emerge from any positional contrast. Rather the danger lies in ossifying strategic binaries into fixed essentialist categories. If one were to take another quality than care, doubtless the lines between entities might be drawn in very different ways, resulting in a different set of binaries.

Given that our concern has been with care, much of our dialogue explores how HH asymmetries can be linked up with HT asymmetries. Humans care for hammers; this care is not reciprocated, and this results in a double bind. On its own, this results in an overall asymmetry between these two entities. All the apparent symmetries identified at the start of this conclusion actually draw humans asymmetrically into the management and production of things. The more humans become entangled with things, the more asymmetrical this relation becomes. One way to quantify this asymmetry is in terms of reversibility – the ease with which humans can disentangle their relationship from things. The greater the entanglement, the greater the irreversibility. Yet there is a way to soften or partially circumvent this double bind and its amplifying effects.

For humans, animals and plants are differently situated in the entanglements such that some humans, animals and plants manage to offload care onto other humans, animals or plants. As a result, asymmetrical human–thing relations are bound up with asymmetrical relations of power. Elites may often be more entangled than non-elites in that they accumulate more things and more relations between things; at the same time, their entanglements are more enabling and less entrapping than those associated with non-elites because they can delegate the care for those things onto other beings. This observation enables us to show how the HT asymmetry can lie at the basis of HH asymmetry, or, more importantly, how the two forms of asymmetry are inextricably connected. Moreover, it explains the apparent paradox that those humans with more power appear also to have more entanglements.