Anthropological Engagements with the Digital Fields

In the introduction to the second edition of the volume Digital Anthropology, Haidy Geismar and Hannah Knox (2021) present five areas of inquiry that, in their opinion, characterise the field of digital anthropology today. Although one can argue with such a classification, as it is easy to envision a single ethnographic study simultaneously engaging with several of the proposed – if not all five – areas, for the sake of simplicity we could place our study in what Geismar and Knox have designated the second area of inquiry comprising digital anthropology, which focuses on the distributed and structural nature of digital technologies. While this area of digital anthropology is very broad and includes investigations of the material conditions and the cultural logics underpinning sociotechnical systems, our interest is in the interplay between the digital technologies and sociality. Within this narrower field there are also different pathways of inquiry anthropologists take. Some focus on studying new forms of sociality that have emerged through digital technologies, as, for instance, Tom Boellstorff (2008) does in his study of a virtual world of Second Life or Gabriella Coleman (2015) in her work on the hacker group of Anonymous. Others study how digital technologies affect already existing social relations, and this is also what our article addresses.

Digital anthropology, however, is just one line of inquiry within the broader field of digital social sciences, so it is equally important to understand the place of anthropological contribution within the wider debates on digital sociality. Research in that field has converged under headings such as new media, media technologies, internet studies and platform studies, and as such, it provides a rich take on the ways in which digital technologies affect social life. Nonetheless, being centred on digital media, these mainstream debates about digital sociality often lack ethnographic specificity and sensitivity, which could open up new theoretical pathways. This is precisely what makes anthropological contributions to the field invaluable.

One broader debate in which anthropologists have been engaged pertains to the impact of digital technologies on the heterogeneity of social life. Even if the distinction between separate offline and online worlds was recognised as too simplistic early on (e.g., Slater 2002), a thesis about ‘context collapse’ has been widely circulated. Under the conditions of context collapse, Alice Marwick and danah boyd (2011) suggest, users need to simultaneously grapple with different social norms and expectations arising from the situation in which otherwise unrelated social groups come together as a result of the deployment of digital technologies. Ethnographic research, however, has shown that this is not necessarily the case. Drawing on her ethnographic fieldwork conducted in southeast Turkey, Elisabetta Costa (2018) argues that users keep unrelated social contexts apart by making use of the affordances of digital infrastructures and craft different online spaces for different social groups. Similarly, Karen Waltorp (2015) shows how young Muslim women in the Danish capital use their smartphones and social media to avoid rather than face clashes between moral norms of different social environments they inhabit.

At the same time, there is little ethnographic research about what happens to the already existing distinctions within the specific social practices with its movement from offline to online. While there is a general thesis that digital technologies exacerbate already existing social inequalities (Eubanks 2018; Van Dijk 2020), how digital technologies relate to the specific mechanisms of making the distinctions in the first place remains less clear. This is exactly what we will explore in the article by focusing on doctoral defences in Finland.

Configuring Proper Sociality of Rites of Passage

Doctoral defence is a symbolic as well as material ritualistic practice that marks a person's transition from a non-academic to an academic social group (Trifuljesko 2021). As such, we can conceptualise it as a ‘rite of passage’ (Van Gennep 1960). This type of ritual not only marks the individual's transition from one social group to another but also delimits the boundaries between social groups in question, consecrating the distinction between them (Bourdieu 1991). Thus, rites of passage have by default both public and private dimensions. This makes them a vantage point to studying reconfiguration of social relations with digital technologies across different social spheres. While research on the transformation of ritualistic practices through digital media during the COVID-19 pandemic has already engendered important insights in this respect (Lorea et al. 2022), the focus of the previous studies has mostly been on understanding mechanisms of social cohesion rather than differentiation. Concentrating on doctoral defences as instantiations of a rite of passage allows exactly that.

Namely, besides marking social distinctions rites of passage also contain hierarchical mechanisms for reproducing them. These mechanisms are not much addressed through the concept of the rite of passage. Since they are, nonetheless, at the centre of our interest, we introduce the concept of ‘proper sociality’ to examine them. This concept is developed by Maja Hojer Bruun, Gry Skrædderdal Jakobsen, and Stine Krøijer (2011) to designate the process of making distinctions among social relations in Denmark between the ones that are properly managed and the ones that are not. Proper sociality simultaneously creates differences among people regarding their capability of mastering it. Bruun, Jakobsen, and Krøijer show how the concern for properly managed social relations introduces hierarchies in the context that is governed by an egalitarian ideology, which makes it particularly valuable for studying doctoral defences in Finland. Moreover, Bruun, Jakobsen, and Krøijer note that the concern for proper sociality is most apparent in generational relations, which makes this concept very useful for examining a social practice focusing on the interaction between neophytes and elders, as is the case with doctoral defence as an academic rite of passage.

While the concept of proper sociality was developed to address ‘the everyday social relations through which these social codes become valuable’ (Bruun et al. 2011: 2), we deploy it to interrogate different forms that proper sociality itself takes and the ability to achieve such forms through digital technologies. This brings us to the last concept we need to introduce to complement our analytical framework: configuration. The concept of configuration is much less congruous compared to the rites of passage and proper sociality, as it is used across various academic fields and traditions. We deploy the concept of configuration to designate the ways in which different discursive and material practices that give an entity a particular shape come together (Castañeda 2002: 4). Being constituted through an interplay of knowledges, practices, and power, (con)figuration is a productive analytical tool for exploring forms of proper sociality of the Finnish doctoral defence as a rite of passage. Before moving to our analysis, we provide background information about our empirical case study as well as about our methods and material.

The Finnish Doctoral Defence

Doctoral defence in Finland is a social practice that in its existing form dates to the first half of the nineteenth century, when the only university operating in the territories comprising contemporary Finland – a forerunner of the present-day University of Helsinki – got new statutes (Tommila 2009). By the statutes of 1828, the doctorate became an actual demonstration of scholarship, being both written and defended in public by doctoral candidates; prior to it, theses were mostly written by professors and then given to students to publicly debate them (Klinge 1988). The theses and the defences were initially written and debated in Latin but from the mid-nineteenth century, Swedish and Finnish, nowadays official languages of Finland, started to play a prominent role too (Tommila 2009). Traces of the Latin origin, however, remain to this day: the defending candidate's introductory lecture is officially called lectio praecursoria; the candidate is occasionally designated as the respondent (Finnish, respondentti); the senior scholar debating with the candidate at the public examination is mostly referred to as the opponent (Finnish, opponentti); the person chairing the public examination is exclusively called the custos (Finnish, kustos).

Considering its common origin, it is not surprising that doctoral defences in Finland do not diverge much between different academic fields and higher education institutions. Defences consist of official and non-official proceedings. The official activities comprise the public examination of the thesis, open to members of the academic community, the defending candidate's family and friends, and the general public. The public examination usually takes place in a university auditorium and comprises of the following segments: the official opening by the custos, lectio praecursoria, the opponent's initial evaluative statement, the disputation between the candidate and the opponent, the opponent's final statement, the interaction with the audience, and the official closing by the custos.

Non-official proceedings are not strictly required for the defending candidate to obtain a doctoral degree, but they are integral part of the defence. Most notable of the non-official proceedings are the reception straight after the public examination and the postdoctoral dinner in the evening. The dinner is almost exclusively referred to with a Finnish word of karonkka, which is another remnant from the past, dating back to the nineteenth century when present-day Finnish territories belonged to the Russian Empire. Namely, karonkka derives from a diminutive of a Russian word for crown, korona, as it represents the crowning of the dissertation process. It is traditionally arranged in the honour of the opponent, to thank the opponent, the custos, and others who contributed to the doctoral defence taking place. The karonkka was initially an exclusive academic gathering but nowadays also the candidate's friends and family might be invited to participate. Likewise, the prescriptions about the shape karonkka would take became looser over time, nonetheless, it is not a free-form gathering. Some karonkkas stick to the hierarchical seating plan, separating people according to their academic degrees as well as significance in the candidate's doctoral journey. Likewise, the old tradition of prescribed speeches, which take place in a specific order, is rarely omitted.

The defending candidates have quite a good sense of what an appropriate doctoral defence consists of, as we will demonstrate. This is not surprising. Finnish universities provide explicit instructions about the defence proceedings on their webpages and some higher education institutions in Finland even arrange a specific course for doctoral candidates to prepare for their defence. Finally, doctoral candidates themselves end up attending quite a few doctoral defences, learning about their appropriateness from the practice, before their time finally comes.

Studying Doctoral Defences Online

While there were few cases of Finnish defences being arranged online prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, there were no developed institutional practices. In fact, the lockdown caught higher education institutions pretty much unprepared for such a situation and initially some university administrators were even proposing to doctoral candidates to postpone their doctoral defences from spring to autumn 2020, by when it was assumed the pandemic would be over and the regular doctoral defence would be able to take place. However, since postponing was not possible for all doctoral candidates whose defences were scheduled for the spring, either for professional or personal reasons, the university management also assigned a group of administrators – consisting mostly of technical professionals and event managers – with the task of producing online doctoral defences. Within a few days, they created an ad hoc modus operandi, which was over time repeatedly updated until it was settled as an established social practice.

There were three main sociotechnical setups of the online doctoral defences that were put forward. The first one had positioned the defending candidate, the opponent, and the custos at the university premises, and the audience joining the defence remotely, through the university's own streaming channel and a digital participation tool, which enabled them to pose questions. The second one was with the defending candidate and custos participating from the university auditorium, the opponent participating remotely through video-conferencing technologies, and the audience also participating remotely, either by accessing the same call through which the debate was arranged or using the above-mentioned streaming channel and participation tool. Finally, all participants might have joined the defence remotely using video-conferencing technologies.

To investigate the impact of digital technologies on the Finnish doctoral defence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted observations, over a video stream, of more than fifty online doctoral defences arranged at Finnish universities between mid-March and May 2020. Observations were primarily done by the first author. The observer employed a computer, a tablet, or a mobile device. At times, two or more defences that we followed would partially or completely overlap; in those cases, the observer would use different devices to access two or more different proceedings simultaneously.

We also interviewed eighteen doctoral candidates who – in the same period – defended their dissertations online. To do that we used a topic guideline partially based on material gathered during the observations. In addition, we had our own insights into doctoral defences, online or otherwise: the first author had conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork at the University of Helsinki and the second defended his thesis online prior to conducting the interviews. The interviews averaged about an hour each. They were conducted by both authors remotely, in either Finnish or English. Interviews were recorded and transcribed by the authors, who also translated Finnish quotations into English. All interlocutors were given pseudonyms that identify them below.

We aimed to interview primarily doctoral candidates whose defences we had observed. The interviewees were purposely sampled (Silverman 2006: 306–307) in order to capture a wide variety of online defence experiences. We paid attention to disciplinary distinctions as well as differences in age, gender, and nationality. We also attempted to capture different sociotechnical setups of the online defence space mentioned above. In addition to interviewing defending candidates, we interviewed a university IT professional who took part in the process of setting up online defences and had supported dozens of them by the time we spoke to him. The purpose of our interview with the IT professional was to gain insight into how the online doctoral defence was planned and carried out. We started our analysis by identifying in the collected material different configurations of doctoral defences as rites of passage. We then examined the manner in which the introduction of digital technologies impacted each of the identified configurations. Finally, we explored the ways in which our interlocutors evaluated such impact. Now that we provided background information, we can proceed to the analytical part of our article.

Appropriate Examination

One of the prevalent figurations of the Finnish doctoral defence is that of an examination. Although it is their work that is being assessed, many doctoral candidates feel that they themselves are also put on trial. This is why some of our interlocutors confessed that they were especially preparing for questions that are not their forte. More than subject matter, however, the doctoral defence is an assessment of the defending candidate's academic maturity. As Birgitta noted, the defence is both about presenting what a doctoral candidate did in their PhD and reflecting and taking responsibility for the decisions made. ‘I felt it's a test of me as a scientist, to show the scientific community that I'm actually able to hold the degree of a doctor’, Lucija concluded. Moreover, as Lucija's words might indicate, doctoral defence is primarily configured as a ‘public examination’. This is also how the university administration explicitly designates it.

Mechanisms of evaluating the appropriateness of doctoral defence as a public examination primarily relate to the doctoral dissertation and doctoral defence being publicly accessible. Both of these were to a degree challenged during the lockdown. Antti elaborated on difficulties of distributing printed copies of the dissertation, which made him very anxious. Although nowadays most doctoral theses are published in electronic form, the custom of sharing physical copies of the thesis with the members of grading committee, supervisors and professors in charge of the discipline, or displaying them in the library, is still important. Juho, in turn, discovered on his way to the university venue that information about his defence, along with the link enabling public participation, disappeared from the university's online calendar. Juho immediately contacted technical personnel, only to discover that after two o'clock in the afternoon the calendar automatically displayed only events occurring in the subsequent days. This was hitherto invisible since doctoral defences usually start before that time. Juho's online defence, however, was scheduled for five in the evening, to accommodate the time difference with the opponent calling in from California. There was no way to fix this problem right away, as, like most other technical glitches, it required software changes. Juho, nonetheless, ended up bearing the brunt of it, when he started receiving angry messages from his professors just before the defence, asking him for the link, and reminding him that doctoral defence in Finland is a public event.

A few other interlocutors faced technical issues affecting the appropriateness of the doctoral defence as the public examination. Sofia's camera failed during the defence, so we ended up following it as an audio-only transmission. Those of us attending Lucija's defence lost the audio signal at one point, but since the audio problem was caused by the streaming channel rather than the video-conferencing technology facilitating the defence, Lucija found out about the problem only afterwards. The occasional glitch aside, which technical staff took seriously and did their best to eliminate subsequently, our interlocutors felt that digital technologies affected doctoral defence as a public event in a positive manner: almost everyone noted that the defence became accessible to many people who would not be able to come to the university auditorium otherwise.

Besides being a public examination, the doctoral defence is also a private assessment of the defending candidate conducted by the opponent. Key to this configuration are exchanges between the two, which comprise the biggest part of the public examination. It does not come as a surprise, then, that prior to their online defences, most of our interlocutors were anxious about how digital technologies would affect these exchanges, and whether the debate would proceed uninhibited. These concerns materialised only rarely. Jianyu's internet connection, for example, kept breaking the conversation, but he said the breakages helped him better organise his answers.

Overall, the introduction of digital technologies into the space of the defence did not challenge the appropriateness of the doctoral defence as a private examination. In fact, the impact was mostly evaluated as positive by the defending candidates, primarily due to the obviation of the audience through the video-conferencing technology. ‘It might be even better for the discussion with the opponent this way – not so much hassle around you’, Juho said to us. When asked about whether the online format affected her exchanges with the opponent, Lucija said: ‘I really don't think so. I got the sense that he prepared thoroughly what he wanted to ask. He had set beforehand what he was going to discuss.’ As a result, Lucija experienced the examination she was dreading ‘as a really nice conversation between me and someone who was really interested and cared to read my research’.

(In)Appropriate Ceremony

In addition to being an examination, doctoral defence is also figured as a ceremony. ‘Defence is finally just the showtime’, Mei told us. It is ‘a grand ending of the whole project’, as Sofia put it. Tuulikki used the Finnish word pönötys, connoting pompousness of the occasion. Ingrid even went as far to designate the defence a circus, which for her meant ‘an unnecessary way of telling the people that you had already done the job’. Irrespective whether they were fond of this figuration or not, all our interlocutors have reflected upon it in one way or another.

Doctoral defence as a ceremony comprises a ritualistic entrance to and exit from the auditorium of the defending candidate, the custos, and the opponent, as well as other corporal acts during the examination, such as the defending candidate's, the opponent's, and the custos's standing up and sitting down, depending on whether they address the audience or each other, respectively. Likewise, the clothes that they wear play an important role as costumes and so do objects they bring to the defence as props, such as doctoral hats or other academic insignia of the custos or the opponent or a printed copy of the dissertation. Finally, speech acts that the custos, the defending candidate, and the opponent perform during the defence to mark the distinction between different segments of the public examination are also a constitutive part of the defence's proper forms of sociality.

To what degree different discursive and material practices figuring doctoral defence as a ceremony were incorporated in the online defence depended primarily on the custos. This is unsurprising, given the custos’ role as the chair of the public examination. Some custodes did not put forward any prescriptions, as was the one chairing Elias's defence. Tuomas, in turn, agreed with the custos to stick only to speech acts and costume and prop use. And some custodes, like Lucija's, insisted on having an exact replica of offline defence in the online setting.

Conversely, those who did not follow any such prescriptions, ended up not appreciating such a choice. When reflecting on the end of the defence, Elias noted that it became particularly awkward once the public examination was over. The opponent asked what he was to do, he and his supervisor did not know what to respond, so they started to chat a bit with the opponent.

The appropriateness of the doctoral defence as a public ceremony was even more affected by such mundane acts. While observing online defences via video streams, we ended up seeing similar post-defence conversations, in which the difference compared to the preceding scripted ceremony seemed uncanny. Also, the trivial exchanges between the defending candidate and the opponent before the start of the defence about the position of the camera and similar often left us with a strange feeling. Tuomas was quite explicit about inappropriateness of such acts: ‘For example, the fact that in the beginning, everyone could see that we were just casually chatting with the opponent, it could have been excluded. And to think better about the ending . . . the start and the end should be better thought out.’

Inappropriate Celebration

As Pinja's remarks closing the last section indicate, doctoral defence is also figured as a celebration. It is an opportunity to rejoice in a tremendous personal achievement, ‘the culmination of many years of work’ as Pinja has otherwise put it and ‘a really big and important and celebratory moment.’ ‘I personally feel it's one of the most important days of my life, maybe next to my wedding day’, she added.

More than the official debate, non-official proceedings are crucial to the configuration of doctoral defence as the celebration of an individual. This is again unsurprising, since the official proceedings are of solemn nature – for instance, it is not a custom to applaud at the end of public examination. Quite the opposite, such acts would engender disapproval at least of some members of the audience. All cheers and congratulations to the defending candidate are to be delivered only once they leave the auditorium in which the public examination takes place.

Since the focus of university management in the time of crisis was on facilitating only what is necessary for the defending candidate to obtain a doctoral degree, it is no wonder that the impact of online defences on its configuration as a private celebration was significant. Almost all our interlocutors remarked that the omission of post-examination festivities made their experience of the defence anticlimactic. Jouni described that after completing the public examination ‘it was a pretty uneventful occasion’. As Mei put it, ‘normally the afternoon is really busy and you talk with lots of people and rush home and then to the restaurant. Now I just came home and it was so quiet.’

Some interlocutors compensated for the lack of post-examination festivities by organising a small online gathering, straight after the defence or later in the day, where congratulations, otherwise given during the reception, and speeches, characteristic of karonkka, were exchanged. Some decided against organising anything like this. Elias made such a decision having previously participated in one such occasion and finding it to be a weird experience. Indeed, many of our interlocutors just went on about their day, with a few holding a small celebration with family, friends, or their supervisors in the evening. Exceptionally, Eero ordered two picnic baskets with champagne and snacks to be sent to his opponent in Germany and his supervisor in Finland, as a thank-you act that karonkka stands for. Ingrid even managed to organise what she called a ‘corona karonkka’ in her garden, as she lived in a detached house in a sparsely populated wooded area. She invited about thirty of her closest friends and colleagues and – although neither the custos (whose wife belonged to the risk group) nor the opponent (who was abroad) were present – Ingrid said that she went with the tradition to invite only people that had been involved in her PhD journey. ‘Just being my grandma was not enough to be there’, she remarked.

Despite the compensating efforts, it was clear that bringing forth the figuration of doctoral defence as celebration appropriately, either in its private or public form, became impossible through the online doctoral defence. Some of our interlocutors considered such an outcome as a catastrophe. ‘I was expecting it to have the “this is my day” kind of feel to it, but it didn't have it at all’, Anni remarked. Others had more mixed feelings. Jouni, for instance, told us that he was ‘not really a fan of festivities’ and, thus, on the one hand was quite happy that he did not have to bother with organising them, but, on the other hand, he felt ‘a real annoyance and regret that didn't get the same experience as he would normally have’. ‘Kind of a reason versus emotion way to describe it’, Jouni concluded. Similarly, Sofia was happy to save money and energy by not having karonkka, both of which were very important considering she was seven months pregnant when she defended her thesis, but, at the same time, she was sorry it turned out this way.

This is not to say that all our interlocutors were disappointed. In fact, Emma said she was relieved not having to organise anything. Now she could completely focus on preparing for the debate. ‘After the intense day it would be difficult not only to organise a party, but also to be present there’, Emma added. For Ingrid, whose husband died the previous year, which made her reluctant to celebrate in the traditional manner, it was even better this way, since she preferred to just have an evening with friends. Nonetheless, Ingrid noted that she understands the importance of academic traditions, and that karonkka is also an opportunity to thank the opponent, but that she tried to compensate for this by mentioning him in acknowledgements.

Irrespective of the interlocutors’ affective responses, we should note that not being able to realise the figuration of doctoral defence as a celebration in appropriate manner severely destabilised doctoral defence as a social practice. Perhaps the biggest evidence of this claim is that several of our interlocutors expressed that a few weeks following the defence, they were left with the feeling that the defence had not really happened. This is not surprising considering the figuration as a celebration is one of the three constitutive forms of sociality doctoral defence consist of. As Lucija summed it up: ‘There's a point to all the silly things like the coffee and the karonkka.’

From Spheres to Constellations

As the analysis above has demonstrated, digital technologies impact different configurations of proper sociality of which doctoral defence as a rite passage consists of in various ways. What we could observe from our material is that the configuration of doctoral defence as a private examination was perhaps the least challenged by radical shift from the offline to the online sphere, the configuration of the public celebration was affected the most, while the effect on others could be placed somewhere in between. Moreover, this impact of digital technologies on the Finnish doctoral defence was differently experienced by the doctoral candidates. While some were devastated by this, others were indifferent or even happy for the change.

Irrespective of differences in their affects, all of our interlocutors discussed their online doctoral defences in terms of how adequate or inadequate they were according to expectations brought up by each configuration. A sketchy summary is provided in Table 1. These evaluations of complex social processes are admittedly simplifications. They might, nonetheless, most clearly depict the reason why online doctoral defences in Finland produced a social space that is ambivalent in terms of its properness (Lehtiniemi and Trifuljesko 2023). Namely, half of the configurations are realised in a manner that our interlocutors considered appropriate, while another half was inappropriate. This might also suggest that the transgressions against appropriate forms of sociality in the online format were too big for the online doctoral defences to become a legitimate social practice, despite the obvious environmental and financial benefits. The digital technologies have continued to participate in the Finnish doctoral defences also once the COVID-19 lockdown was over, as the public examinations are being streamed to this day. Nonetheless, the digital technologies in the post-pandemic period were turned into an add-on of an offline sphere instead of becoming its constitutive part. We could even ask whether the transgressions over the proper figurations of the Finnish doctoral defence as a rite of passage during the pandemic prevented the creation of a genuine hybrid social sphere but answering such a question would require a separate study and is beyond the scope of this article.

What is of a particular interest here is how our findings contribute to the discussion about technological impact on sociality. While it would be tempting to draw broader conclusions on the implications of digitalisation on social life in general or on the rites of passage in particular from our ethnographic research on the online doctoral defences in Finland during the COVID-19 lockdown, that would lead us to the terrain of speculation. What we can confidently claim on the basis of a study conducted in extraordinary circumstances is how the effect of digital technologies on social practices is evaluated. The pandemic revealed proper discursive and material forms that social relations constituting a particular social practice should take. The forceful move from offline to online arguably made the undiscussed, taken-for-granted aspects of sociality observable and graspable – in other words, crisis revealed doxa (Bourdieu 1977).

Much of the previous debate about implications of digital technologies on social life has revolved around the relation between offline and online social spheres. While this is an important discussion, placing the main focus of understanding the social implications of digitalisation to the distinction between the offline and the online obviates differential relations that are inherent to specific social practices, irrespective in which format they are realised. Likewise, there are increasing discussions about how digital technologies affect processes of inclusion and exclusion along the public and private lines. And, again, there are significant questions we still have to answer when it comes to the distinction between the public and the private sphere and any effort to contribute to such a debate can be nothing but laudable. However, such a focus might also prevent us from addressing hierarchical mechanisms that are inherent to specific social practices, especially in contexts that are otherwise designated as egalitarian, such as the Nordic ones. Examining Finnish doctoral defence, an academic rite of passage that predates the Nordic welfare state but keeps its social relevance to this day – and using digital technologies to foreground differences it re(produces) – is our attempt to avoid precisely that. While in this article we promote the concept of configurations of proper sociality to examine such hierarchical mechanisms, what we are more generally advocating is to start paying attention to the valuing arrangements of social relations exposed through the move between offline and online both in the public and in the private – in other words to expand our discussion on the implications of digitalisation by shifting the focus from the distinctions between various social spheres to the differentiating constellations of sociality within the spheres.