Unit outline_

ANTH3608: Becoming Cyborgs: Technology and Society

Semester 2, 2025 [Normal day] - Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney

Humans, technology, and science are fundamentally entangled, the boundaries of one spilling directly into the other. This unit considers how science and technology reconfigure human and non-human existences, the speculative futures that these reconfigurations invite, and the forms of responsibility, ethics, and accountability that cyborg existence demands. The unit further invites students to reflect critically on the origins and histories of science and technology as dominant epistemological paradigms, and their uneven effects across place, time, and community. It invites attention to the new forms of enchantment and uncertainty that cyborg worlds foster.

Unit details and rules

Academic unit Anthropology
Credit points 6
Prerequisites
? 
12 credit points at 2000 level in Anthropology
Corequisites
? 
None
Prohibitions
? 
None
Assumed knowledge
? 

None

Available to study abroad and exchange students

Yes

Teaching staff

Coordinator Ryan Schram, ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
The census date for this unit availability is 1 September 2025
Type Description Weight Due Length Use of AI
In-person written or creative task Research process assignments
In-class and class-linked assignments
35% Multiple weeks 3 x 600 words AI limited - refer to Canvas
Outcomes assessed: LO2 LO3 LO4 LO1
Portfolio or journal Early Feedback Task Autoethnographic reflection
Take an inventory and analyze your daily contact with technology
5% Week 03
Due date: 21 Aug 2025 at 17:00

Closing date: 04 Sep 2025
300 words AI allowed
Outcomes assessed: LO2
Portfolio or journal hurdle task Essay, exhibit, and presentation (Research essay)
Make an argument about a paradigm shift to networks in anthropology in an essay, exhibit, and presentation
45% Week 13
Due date: 06 Nov 2025 at 23:59

Closing date: 21 Nov 2025
3000 words AI allowed
Outcomes assessed: LO2 LO3 LO4
Portfolio or journal Weekly writing assignments
Prepare for class with a short response to a specific point in the assigned reading
15% Weekly
Closing date: 21 Nov 2025
900 AI allowed
Outcomes assessed: LO1 LO3
hurdle task = hurdle task ?
early feedback task = early feedback task ?

Assessment summary

See the class Canvas site for full details on all of the assignments and assessments in this class. 

Assessment criteria

Result code

Result name

Mark range

Description

HD

High distinction

85 - 100

Awarded when you demonstrate the learning outcomes for the unit at an exceptional standard, as defined by grade descriptors or exemplars outlined by your faculty or school.

DI

Distinction

75 - 84

Awarded when you demonstrate the learning outcomes for the unit at a very high standard, as defined by grade descriptors or exemplars outlined by your faculty or school.

CR

Credit

65 - 74

Awarded when you demonstrate the learning outcomes for the unit at a good standard, as defined by grade descriptors or exemplars outlined by your faculty or school.

PS

Pass

50 - 64

Awarded when you demonstrate the learning outcomes for the unit at an acceptable standard, as defined by grade descriptors or exemplars outlined by your faculty or school.

FA

Fail

0 - 49

When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

AF

Absent fail

0 - 49

When you haven’t completed all assessment tasks or met the attendance requirements.

For more information see guide to grades.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)

You can use generative AI tools for open assessments. Restrictions on AI use apply to secure, supervised assessments used to confirm if students have met specific learning outcomes.

Refer to the assessment table above to see if AI is allowed, for assessments in this unit and check Canvas for full instructions on assessment tasks and AI use.

If you use AI, you must always acknowledge it. Misusing AI may lead to a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy.

Visit the Current Students website for more information on AI in assessments, including details on how to acknowledge its use.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

  • Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
  • After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

This unit has an exception to the standard University policy or supplementary information has been provided by the unit coordinator. This information is displayed below:

Stay in touch with your instructor throughout the semester, especially if you get behind. You can always catch up and I want give students an opportunity to do their best work. Late penalties are per FASS policy, and discretion can be applied.

Academic integrity

The University expects students to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

Our website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. This includes advice on how to avoid common breaches of academic integrity. Ensure that you have completed the Academic Honesty Education Module (AHEM) which is mandatory for all commencing coursework students

Penalties for serious breaches can significantly impact your studies and your career after graduation. It is important that you speak with your unit coordinator if you need help with completing assessments.

Visit the Current Students website for more information on AI in assessments, including details on how to acknowledge its use.

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Support for students

The Support for Students Policy reflects the University’s commitment to supporting students in their academic journey and making the University safe for students. It is important that you read and understand this policy so that you are familiar with the range of support services available to you and understand how to engage with them.

The University uses email as its primary source of communication with students who need support under the Support for Students Policy. Make sure you check your University email regularly and respond to any communications received from the University.

Learning resources and detailed information about weekly assessment and learning activities can be accessed via Canvas. It is essential that you visit your unit of study Canvas site to ensure you are up to date with all of your tasks.

If you are having difficulties completing your studies, or are feeling unsure about your progress, we are here to help. You can access the support services offered by the University at any time:

Support and Services (including health and wellbeing services, financial support and learning support)
Course planning and administration
Meet with an Academic Adviser

WK Topic Learning activity Learning outcomes
Week 01 Fear of a cyborg planet / Shapin (2023) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 02 A woman without qualities, or We are all cyborgs now / Haraway ([1991b] 2013) / Haraway ([1991a] 2013) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 03 How the nature gets made / Latour (1987a); Latour (1994) / Latour (1996); Latour (1987b); Latour (2004); Latour (2005) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 04 The body is in the eye of the doctor / Mol (2003b); Mol (2003a) / Law and Mol (1995); Mol (2008) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 05 Our ecologies, ourselves: Food, nutrition, and health as hybrid objects / Yates-Doerr (2020); Hardin (2021); Roberts (2017) / Hardin and Kwauk (2015); Gugganig (2017) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 06 Two-way streets: Physical infrastructures, public services, liberal and democratic technocultures / Anand (2011) / Larkin (2013); Larkin (2008); Star (1999) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 07 The smart city is watching you, or These walls have ears / Kang and Hudson (2024); Stucky (2025) / Brayne (2021) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 08 Tying the net / Star and Griesemer (1989); Star (2010); Star and Ruhleder (1996); Star (1989) / Knox (2021); Seaver (2021) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 09 What counts: Ubiquitous communication networks, behavioral data, and value / Walford (2021) / Bowker and Star (1999) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 10 Top of the charts: Measuring publics / Kusimba (2018) / Fourcade (2021); Fourcade and Healy (2024) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 11 In the loop: Humanity as a network effect / Reno (2012); Rutherford (2021) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 12 Among many others / Pickering (2024) / Pickering (2025) Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  
Week 13 Student presentations Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)  

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

All of the required and recommended readings for each week are available through Fisher Library and its catalogue, and can be found using the Leganto Reading List interface on the class Canvas site. 

Anand, Nikhil. 2011. “Pressure: The PoliTechnics of Water Supply in Mumbai.” Cultural Anthropology 26 (4): 542–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01111.x.

Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 1999. “Categorical Work and Boundary Infrastructures: Enriching Theories of Classification.” In Sorting things out: classification and its consequences, 285–317. Inside technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Brayne, Sarah. 2021. Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fourcade, Marion. 2021. “Ordinal Citizenship.” The British Journal of Sociology 72 (2): 154–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12839.

Fourcade, Marion, and Kieran Joseph Healy. 2024. The Ordinal Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Gugganig, Mascha. 2017. “The Ethics of Patenting and Genetically Engineering the Relative Hāloa.” Ethnos 82 (1): 44–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1028564.

Haraway, Donna J. (1991a) 2013. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 149–81. New York: Routledge.

———. (1991b) 2013. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 183–201. New York: Routledge.

Hardin, Jessica. 2021. “Life Before Vegetables: Nutrition, Cash, and Subjunctive Health in Samoa.” Cultural Anthropology 36 (3): 428–57. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca36.3.08.

Hardin, Jessica, and Christina Ting Kwauk. 2015. “Producing Markets, Producing People: Local Food, Financial Prosperity and Health in Samoa.” Food, Culture & Society 18 (3): 519–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2015.1043113.

Kang, Edward B., and Simogne Hudson. 2024. “Audible Crime Scenes: ShotSpotter as Diagnostic, Policing, and Space-Making Infrastructure.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 49 (3): 646–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439221143217.

Knox, Hannah. 2021. “Hacking Anthropology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (S1): 108–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13483.

Kusimba, Sibel. 2018. ““It Is Easy for Women to Ask!”: Gender and Digital Finance in Kenya.” Economic Anthropology 5 (2): 247–60. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12121.

Larkin, Brian. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

———. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (Volume 42, 2013): 327–43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522.

Latour, Bruno. 1987a. “Introduction: Opening Pandora’s Black Box.” In Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, 1–16. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

———. 1987b. “Laboratories.” In Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, 63–100. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

———. 1994. “On Technical Mediation.” Common Knowledge 3 (2): 29–64. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/234.html.

———. 1996. “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47 (4): 369–81. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40878163.

———. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter): 225–48.

———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Law, John, and Annemarie Mol. 1995. “Notes on Materiality and Sociality.” The Sociological Review 43 (2): 274–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1995.tb00604.x.

Mol, Annemarie. 2003a. “Different Atheroscleroses.” In The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, 29–51. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384151.

———. 2003b. “Doing Disease.” In The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, 1–27. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384151.

———. 2008. “I Eat an Apple. On Theorizing Subjectivities.” Subjectivity 22 (1): 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2008.2.

Pickering, Andrew. 2024. “What Is Agency? A View from Science Studies and Cybernetics.” Biological Theory 19 (1): 16–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-023-00437-1.

———. 2025. Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Reno, Joshua. 2012. “Technically Speaking: On Equipping and Evaluating “Unnatural” Language Learners.” American Anthropologist 114 (3): 406–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01442.x.

Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. 2017. “What Gets Inside: Violent Entanglements and Toxic Boundaries in Mexico City.” Cultural Anthropology 32 (4): 592–619. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.07.

Rutherford, Danilyn. 2021. “Becoming an Operating System.” American Ethnologist 48 (2): 139–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13013.

Seaver, Nick. 2021. “Everything Lies in a Space: Cultural Data and Spatial Reality.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (S1): 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13479.

Shapin, Steven. 2023. “Paradigms Gone Wild.” Review of The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science, by Bojana Mladenović. London Review of Books, March 30, 2023. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n07/steven-shapin/paradigms-gone-wild.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1989. “The Structure of Ill-Structured Solutions: Boundary Objects and Heterogenous Distributed Problem Solving.” In Distributed Artificial Intelligence, edited by Michael N. Huhns and Les Gasser, 2:37–54. San Mateo, Calif.: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=94079.94081.

———. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (3): 377–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.

———. 2010. “This Is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 35 (5): 601–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243910377624.

Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (3): 387–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001.

Star, Susan Leigh, and Karen Ruhleder. 1996. “Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces.” Information Systems Research 7 (1): 111–34. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.7.1.111.

Stucky, Rami Toubia. 2025. “The Sound of Fourth Amendment Violations: Open Data DC’s ShotSpotter Map.” Sound Studies 11 (1): 184–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2024.2439209.

Walford, Antonia. 2021. “Data – Ova – Gene – Data.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27 (S1): 127–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13484.

Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2020. “Reworking the Social Determinants of Health: Responding to Material-Semiotic Indeterminacy in Public Health Interventions.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 34 (3): 378–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12586.

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. understand the scope and aims of science and technology studies as an interdisciplinary field as well as anthropology's distinctive contributions and its influence on other interdisciplinary problems in
  • LO2. describe and analyze technical systems and technology as social and cultural products through the interpretation of ethnographic description and primary sources
  • LO3. identify scholarly literature from a range of interrelated yet distinct fields that contribute to questions in anthropology
  • LO4. apply concepts and theories developed through interdisciplinary dialogues to an argument based on qualitative description and primary sources

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1 Depth of disciplinary expertise

Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.

GQ2 Critical thinking and problem solving

Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.

GQ3 Oral and written communication

Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.

GQ4 Information and digital literacy

Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.

GQ5 Inventiveness

Generating novel ideas and solutions.

GQ6 Cultural competence

Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.

GQ7 Interdisciplinary effectiveness

Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.

GQ8 Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity

An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.

GQ9 Influence

Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes Graduate qualities
GQ1 GQ2 GQ3 GQ4 GQ5 GQ6 GQ7 GQ8 GQ9

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

This class is offered for the first time this year. We welcome student feedback.

Disclaimer

The University reserves the right to amend units of study or no longer offer certain units, including where there are low enrolment numbers.

To help you understand common terms that we use at the University, we offer an online glossary.