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The
Communication Review
Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, Apr 2008: pp. 00
G. Mathur
P.
Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication
Piyush Mathur
Department of Communications & Multimedia Design,
American University of Nigeria
Cognizant of the evolving academic discipline of ecological communication (EC), I offer this essay as a follow-up to my previous publicationa
critical exegesis of Niklas Luhmanns Ecological Communication
(1989)in this journal. Hoping to throw more light on Luhmanns
formulations, I introduce and interpret those writings of Gregory Bateson
that apparently influenced the formerand/or attempted to link ecology
with communication. While I do not necessarily advocate either of these
two thinkers overall philosophical frameworks, I believe that they
deserve attentionat the least insofar as they provide a measure of
contrast to the contemporary academic discourse of EC (which remains
shallow, intellectually parochial, and nonrigorous). That aside, many
specific ideas developed by these two thinkers will interest a wide range
of constituenciesespecially those devoted to the study of information,
communication, and ecology.
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one system (Ruesch & Bateson, p. vii). It is such a theory that they
sought to provide in the given treatise.
On the broadest level, Ruesch and Bateson refuse to reduce communication
to the verbal or written exchange among humans. Instead, deeming [the
psychiatrist] and the communication engineer, of all scientists . . . to be
most aware of the laws of communication, Ruesch looks toward cybernetics and communication engineering for their key conceptual definitions (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 13). The reliance on the above fields has
partly to do with the assumption that they bridge the gap between human
and nonhuman domains by focusing not upon the person or the group,
but upon the message and the circuit as units of study (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. vi). In sync with the above, Ruesch defines communication as
a social matrix in which human beings are exposed to
repetitive and consistent bombardment with stimuli [originating,] on
the one hand, in the social behavior of other people and, on the other
hand, in the objects, plants, and animals with which people surround
themselves. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 8)
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Perhaps the most important facet to keep in mind about the psychiatric
system here involves the norms of circularity and self-preservation (the
latter being closely related to self-correction or self-organization): They
both point up the requirement for psychiatry and psychiatric discourse to
be able to explain consistently, rationally, and fully (at least) the most
important concepts and events typically involved in the praxisin the
terms that they themselves proffer. That is because circularity is to be
expected not just from the operational reality of an actual psychiatric or
communicative system in society, but also from the mechanism employed
to explain it. In other words, circularity is also to be expected from the
theory of psychiatry (or communication), whereas a theory of psychiatryjust like a psychiatric or social systemwould attempt to preserve
itself by virtue of being self-reflexive.
That a communicative system can preserve itself by relying entirely
upon itselfi.e., upon communicationis consistent with Rueschs idea
that the perception of perception or communications about communication constitutes a prerequisite for any operative psychiatric/communicative system (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 23 & p. 24, respectively). However,
this prerequisite of a self-perpetuating self-reliance (or self-reflexivity) is
at once the central theoretical problematic (of circularity) within the
clinic: This is because this prerequisite apparently leaves no outsideor
perfectly objectiveposition from which to ascertain the success of a
communication or treatment. Ruesch details the problematic as under:
As a result of participation in the systemand non-participation is
impossiblethe patients behavior is going to be influenced by the
psychiatrist, and vice versa. Not only may the patient get better or
worse while we explore him for the first time, but our own disturbances of communication may obscure our assessment of the patient.
We are never quite secure in what we are doing, and only a check by
another person, either an outsider or the patient himself, will enable us
to gauge the effect of our own actions. The ability to mutually correct
the meaning of messages and to mutually influence each others behavior to each others satisfaction is the result of successful communication.
This is the only criterion we possess, and if we possess, and if we achieve
such a state, it indicates mental health. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 87)
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and communication, it is not meant to deny the importance of the individual to the communicative system.12 The primary unit of Ruesch and
Batesons analysis (and hence of their view of the communicative system
called society) remains the human individual insofar as the ideal of a
completely objective, all-observant superhuman observer is ruled out as
a fallacious fantasy (pp. 273274). In other words, metacommunication
shows the way out of the circularity through a reaffirmation of observational
relativism at the expense of the hope for the ideal superhuman observer.
Wherefore, according to Ruesch and Bateson, the following holds:
At the intrapersonal level, the focus of the observer is limited by the
self, and the various functions of communication are found within the
self. At the interpersonal level the perceptual field is occupied by two
people, at the group level by many people, and at the cultural level by
many groups. (p. 274)
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Ecology
In the foregoing section, I discussed how Bateson (and Ruesch) viewed psychiatry as a mightily useful subsetand the handiest exemplarof
communication, which in turn was the general epistemological framework of
his choice.14 However, Batesons subsequent writings suggest that ecology
ended up replacing communication as his chosen general epistemological
framework. Keeping in mind his philosophical nomadism and mutability,
I personally consider this development a matter of chronology rather than
a decisive evidence that ecology finally superceded all else in his thought
on the whole. Hence, I shall view ecology as only one of Batesons major
concerns;15 of interest would be its shape and character within his writings.
The significance of discussing ecology in the context of Bateson lies
primarily in the fact that it did not mean to him just what it commonly
doeslet us say, (the study of) the relationships and interactions among
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Though it may seem from the above that the older Bateson turned out
to be a New Age guru expounding the virtues of obscure oriental spiritual
cults, the fact of the matter is that the man remained heavily invested in
figuring out a neutral way to speak about how this system called the
world works! The thrust in the above passage, therefore, is on
networkthough it is true that Bateson also wrote, cursorily, about
Occidental and Oriental systems of thinking and doing (critiquing modern
science and technology of the West for their belief in control of nature). In
any case, he did not consider (his) spiritualism to be opposed to verifiable
or rationalistic truth; quite the contrary, he believed that the real reality,
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Thus, cybernetic explanation allowed Bateson to think of happenstances or events in terms of negatives that presumably prevented alternative
events from taking place: More technically, it made him focus on
restraints that make a positive a probability. This comes out clearly in the
following passage:
In cybernetic language, the course of events is said to be subject to
restraints, and it is assumed that, apart from such restraints, the pathways
of change would be governed only by equality of probability. In fact,
the restraints upon which cybernetic explanation depends can in all
cases be regarded as factors which determine inequality of probability.
(Bateson, 1972, pp. 405406)
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For the staunch relativist that Bateson was, he considered both restraints
and the resultant patterns integral to the overall communicational dynamics
called existence or reality or truth. The fourth reason, then, why Bateson
preferred the cybernetic approach was that it could capably explain the
logical only in relation to the nonlogical, thereby making it unavoidable
to include both as equally central and germane to the process of explanation and to communication as a whole.
Bateson introduced the concept of redundancy in elaborating his
cybernetic approachand as part of his conviction that any production or
even existence of meaningful(ness) requires the inclusion of absolute
context. Used generally, and in simpler terms, redundancy refers to the
collectivebut partialoverlap of all observers and everything observed
through, and onto, the production of meaning. In some specific situations,
such as those exemplified by the passages below, redundancy exposes the
mechanism behind the substitution of message for reality:
If . . . we say that a message has meaning or is about some referent, what we mean is that there is a larger universe of relevance
consisting of message-plus-referent, and that redundancy or pattern
or predictability is introduced into this universe by the message.
(Bateson, 1972, p. 413)
If I say to you It is raining, this message introduces redundancy into
the universe, message-plus-raindrops, so that from the message alone
you could have guessedwith better than random success
something of what you would see if you looked out of the window.
(Bateson, 1972, p. 414)
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another group of fellow organisms called humansas a package of information about the environment presumably developed in response to the
same over a period of time:
[T]here is the matter of phylogenetic learning and phylogeny in general. There is redundancy in the system, organism-plus-environment,
such that from the morphology and behavior of the organism a human
observer can guess with better than random success at the nature of
the environment. This information about the environment has
become lodged in the organism through a long phylogenetic process,
and its coding is of a very special kind. (Bateson, 1972, p. 422)
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P. Mathur
(2006). Outside EC, the treatise has been discussed in some detail by Blhdorn
(within the European context of socio-political theory). Indeed, the environmentalist neglect of Luhmanns overall theoretical ideas led Blhdorn to state the
following:
[Luhmanns model of contemporary society] is fundamentally incompatible
with ecologist thinking, which is probably why ecological theorists and
environmental sociologists, in particular, have so far refused to engage in a
serious exploration of this work. (p. xv)
2.
3.
4.
5.
That said, Luhmanns ideasas expressed in his publications other than Ecological Communicationhave since been discussed, applied, or mentioned in a few
publications belonging to the following environmentally oriented fields: ecological history (Simmons, 2000); ecological modeling (Grant, Peterson, & Peterson,
2002); wildlife management (Cvetkovich & Winter, 2003); sustainability (Jamal,
T., M. Borges, M. Peterson, T. Peterson, and R. S. Figueiredo, 2004; Becker,
2005); cultural-literary critique concerning the environment (Economides, 2005);
bioprospecting (Pottage, 2006); and long-term socio-ecological research (Haberl
et al., 2006).
See Mathur (2005).
See Peterson, Peterson, and Peterson (2007), especially their following statements: We concur with Coxs claim that environmental communication (EC),
like conservation biology, is a crisis discipline, and We wholeheartedly support
Cox, and take his essay as provocation to radically challenge magical notions of
scientific objectivity . . . (p. 74, p. 75, respectively).
In pointing out that a principal ethical duty of environmental communication
[is] the obligation to enhance the ability of society to respond appropriately to
environmental signals relevant to the well-being of both human communities and
natural biological systems, the essays abstract inadvertently highlights the
banality and vacuity of Coxs articulation (Cox, p. 5). This statement is far too
vague to be of any useexcept that it does accurately capture that of which it is
partially an abstract.
Coxs statements lacking logical coherence are far too many to be listed here; so
let me quote just one statement below as a representative sample:
I want . . . to pose a . . . question for those scholars, teachers, and practitioners loosely allied in an emerging field of environmental communication:
Should such a field have an ethical duty? That is, should environmental
communication be considered a crisis discipline? (2007, p. 6)
Even within the context of what precedes the above statement, it is not clear how
a question concerning a fields ethical duty necessarily translates into whether
that field is a crisis discipline.
6. Accordingly, Harries-Jones candidly admits that [m]odern environmentalists
have generally ignored Bateson (1995, p. 4).
7. Please see the following: Brockman (1977), Harries-Jones (1995), Donaldson
(1991), and Bateson and Bateson (1987).
8. Ruesch declares it the needand the objectivefor his contemporary psychiatry
to design epistemological systems which would embrace both events confined to
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the individual and events encompassing several people and larger groups
(Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 62). He attaches a universalistic significance to the
proposed frameworkbecause the connections between the internal and external
world form the crux of the generic psychiatric conundrum. Evidently, the focus
within the treatise on valuation or choice assists in the atriculation of such a
framework as it points to the connection that the individualobserverseeks to
establish between his internal mental world and the larger external system of
communication. This is because [t]hrough statements of preference, the inner
workings of the mind of a person are revealed (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 45).
9. Claiming that the brain is predominantly digital in its functioning, and that
codification must . . . be systematic, Ruesch and Bateson go on to detail the
functional system of codification. This is significant to their framework because
[t]o describe codification [at the intrapersonal level] is to specify the relation between the neural, chemical, and other signals and the internal or
external events to which they refer . . . At the interpersonal level, [on the
other hand,] the description of codification will define the symbolization
processes of language together with the more tenuous symbolisms present
in nonverbal communication. (1968, p. 283)
For all that, Bateson considers codification the central conceptual bridge
between the so-called mentalist and organicist approaches within psychiatrythe former focusing on the individual (mind), the latter on the larger context (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 169).
10. Whereas
[t]he condition which the psychiatrist labels psychosis is essentially the result
of the patients misinterpretation of messages received; and the condition
which we commonly label neurosis is the result of unfortunate attempts of a
patient to manipulate social situations with the purpose of creating a stage to
convey messages to others more effectively. (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 88)
11. Ruesch argues the following:
The central problem of psychotherapy may . . . be restated as follows: How
does it happen that in the interchange of messages between two persons
with differing systems of codification and evaluation, a change occurs
in the system of codification and evaluation of either or both persons?
(Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 82)
12. As Bateson concludes, [T]he introduction of consciousness as a concept will
not profoundly modify the type of question which is here studied (Ruesch &
Bateson, 1968, p. 183).
13. See Bateson (especially in Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 186).
14. Ruesch and Bateson did not intend their findings to serve as a mere reworking
of psychiatry, but also as a general epistemological framework for the social
sciences at large. In this regard, consider what Ruesch notes:
The present book has been dedicated to the task of stating and illustrating
at length the premises which underlie the various approaches to social
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P. Mathur
science. We have chosen psychiatry as the focus of our attention because
the psychiatrist in his daily practice is concerned with disturbances of
communication; he and the communication engineer, of all scientists,
seem to be most aware of the laws of communication. The essence of our
message to the reader is that communication is the matrix in which all
human activities are embedded. In practice, communication links object
to person and person; and scientifically speaking, this interrelatedness is
understood best in terms of systems of communication. (Ruesch & Bateson,
1968, p. 13)
15. I want to stress this point keeping in mind the otherwise outstanding account of
Batesons overall philosophy that Harries-Jones (1995) provides. His account
erroneously in my viewcentralizes ecology, making it appear to be Batesons
representative concern.
16. A clear hint of Batesons resolute truth-centered objective is found, ironically, in
one of those elusive literary genres called poetry. Bateson wrote the following
(referring to the manuscript of what his daughter further developed posthumously and published as Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred
(1987):
The Manuscript
So there it is in words
Precise
You will find nothing there
For that is the discipline I ask
Not more, not less
Not the world as it is
Nor ought to be
Only the precision
The skeleton of truth
I do not dabble in emotion
Hint at implications
Evoke the ghosts of old forgotten creeds
All that is for the preacher
The hypnotist, therapist and missionary
They will come after me
And use the little that I said
To bait more traps
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