In his essay ‘The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man’, Clifford Geertz asserts that contemporary social science must ‘look for systematic relationships among diverse phenomena’. Geertz credits his approach to developments in the field of cybernetics, which pioneered the study of modern information systems to understand everything from computer systems and biological networks to human organisation. Geertz’s early formulation of culture, as a set of publicly traded symbols and their meanings, relied on cybernetic theories of ‘control mechanisms’, as discreet, ordered instructions and operational codes. In locating Geertz and the notion of culture within the historical developments and transformation of cyborg science, this paper also seeks to understand the expansive transformation of American anthropology in the Cold War period, as it shifts from the study of primitive to complex societies in the context of America’s growing global ambitions. Repositioning Geertz in this way helps contemporary readers understand Geertzian ‘culture’ beyond the limits of the cultural turn. More crucially, it better situates current anthropological interest in contingency, ontology and emergence within a broader historical and intellectual genealogy.

克利福德·盖茨（Clifford Geertz）在他的论文“文化概念对人的概念的影响”中断言，当代社会科学必须“寻找各种现象之间的系统关系”。吉尔兹赞扬他在控制论领域的发展方法，该方法开创了现代信息系统的研究领域，以了解从计算机系统和生物网络到人类组织的一切知识。盖尔兹（Geertz）对文化的早期表述是一套公开交易的符号及其含义，它依赖于控制机制的控制论，如谨慎，有序的指令和操作规范。在将吉尔兹和文化概念定位在机器人科学的历史发展和变革中时，本文还试图了解冷战时期美国人类学的广泛变革，在美国日益增长的全球抱负背景下，它从原始研究转向复杂社会。通过这种方式重新定位Geertz，可以帮助当代读者超越文化转向的界限，了解Geertzian的“文化”。更关键的是，它更好地将当前人类学的兴趣放在偶然性，本体论和出现的范围内，并涉及更广泛的历史和知识谱系。