In our work as social scientists, as well as in common discourse, the word toxic is applied to a wide variety of phenomena from chemicals and venoms, to viruses and bacteria, to affects, relationships, and forms of masculinity, etc. If we are seeking a clearer understanding of toxicity, it makes sense to me to ask what each of these applications have in common. That is, what is the "transcontextual syndrome," to borrow Bateson's term, that enables the analytic purchase of this widely applicable metaphor?
Although Gregory Bateson was not thinking in terms of toxics when he developed his theory of schismogenesis, this framework is helpful for understanding some of the more stubborn and bewildering qualities of toxicity. In his essay "Cultural Contact and Schismogenesis" Bateson identifies his goal as "to cover the conditions of differentiation inside a single culture [and] to use our knowledge of these quiescent states to throw light upon the factors which are at work in states of disequilibrium" (1973, 74).
Bateson begins by qualifying the terms "culture" and "contact." Rather than focus on cultural bounded wholes, he approaches them as composed of internal subgroups. Thus, "contact" happens across cultures as well as within them "between the sexes, between old and young, between aristocracy and plebs, between clans, etc., groups which live together in approximate equilibrium. I would even extend the idea of 'contact' so widely as to include those processes whereby a child is molded and trained to fit the culture into which he was born" (Bateson 1973, 74). These groups or units of analysis are identified by sets of relations that Bateson describes as 5 types of unity: structural, affective, economic, chronological and spatial, and sociological.
Having these terms defined, Bateson then proceeds to identify two types of differentiation (Symmetrical and Complementary) that, if left unchecked, become progressive in ways that result in system breakdown or reconstruction. Note his examples of these two forms:
Symmetrical: we shall see that there is a Iikelihood, if boasting is the reply to boasting, that each group will drive the other into excessive emphasis of the pattern, a process which if not restrained can only lead to more and more extreme rivalry and ultimately to hostility and the breakdown of the whole system.
Complementary: If, for example, the series, O,P,Q includes patterns culturally regarded as assertive, while U,V,W includes cultural submissiveness, it is likely that submissiveness will promote further assertiveness which in turn will promote further submissiveness. This schismogenesis, unless it is restrained, leads to a progressive unilateral distortion of the personalities of the members of both groups, which results in mutual hostility between them and must end in the break-down of the system.
To bring this conversation back to our terms, I believe it is safe to say that the term "toxicity" implies a certain set of assumptions that are explicated here by Bateson.
Number one, "toxicity" implies a given system of relations of unity or, at the very least, the potential for such a system to form that is, shall we say, "healthy" or ontogenetic. Bateson uses the term equilibrium, but this implies a level of closure that I am uncomfortable with. Thus, I prefer the concept of "ontogenesis," which signifies differentiation with continuity, or simply "growth." This concept is much more amenable to ethnography as it enables thinking in terms of "open systems" (See Ethnography In/As/Of Open Systems (Fortun 2002)). Secondly, it also necessarily implies contact, or a relation between this system and an agent that is defined as external to the system. Or, in other words, an agent that does not share these relations of unity. It need not matter whether this external agent be one or many, inorganic or organic. Third, this relation between the external agent and the system must be progressively disruptive to the unifying relations of that system in a way that resembles complementary or symmetrical schismogenesis. Or, alternatively, it must serve as an obstruction to the development of a unified system.
