“The Near and the Elsewhere”: Surmodernity in the Age of Intelligent Algorithms

Introduction

When Marc Augé published Non-Lieux in the early 1990s, he did more than introduce the concept of the non-place. He also articulated a methodological repositioning of anthropology itself. In the section titled “The Near and the Elsewhere,” Augé argued that anthropology must confront the contemporary world directly, abandoning the illusion that its privileged object lies exclusively in distant or disappearing societies. Three decades later, this intervention remains influential. Yet the present that anthropology now encounters is no longer the one Augé described. This article revisits “The Near and the Elsewhere” from today’s perspective, asking whether the conditions that justified Augé’s anthropology of the present have themselves undergone a transformation that calls for renewed scrutiny.

Anthropology and the Question of the Present

Augé’s starting point is deceptively simple: anthropology has always dealt with the present. Even when it appears oriented toward tradition, myth, or memory, it encounters these materials as living practices articulated in specific situations. The difference between anthropology and history, therefore, does not lie in temporal focus but in mode of access. As Augé puts it, anthropology “deals with the present, even when it claims to be concerned with the past” (Augé, 1995). Its object is not a bygone world but a contemporary configuration of meaning.

From this premise follows a rejection of the classical opposition between “here” and “elsewhere.” For Augé, anthropology is not defined by geographical distance but by its engagement with otherness as it emerges within social relations. Processes such as globalization, migration, mass media, and standardized institutions had already blurred the boundaries that once sustained the anthropological imagination of distance. Alterity could no longer be comfortably located outside Europe or the West. Anthropology, Augé insists, must therefore turn toward the near without apology.

The Changing Status of the Near

While Augé’s critique of exoticism remains compelling, the configuration of nearness has shifted. In the early 1990s, the near was still largely defined through co-presence: shared spaces, observable routines, and institutions accessible through direct interaction. Even as mediation increased, social experience retained a primarily relational and spatial character.

Today, this framework has become less stable. Everyday interaction is increasingly organized through interfaces, platforms, and automated systems that operate locally while being designed, maintained, or governed elsewhere. Nearness is no longer primarily spatial or interpersonal; it is operational. One is “near” to a system insofar as one is processed by it, addressed by it, or anticipated through it. Conversely, the elsewhere is no longer simply distant. It is embedded within ordinary routines through infrastructures that remain largely invisible.

This transformation raises a question implicit but undeveloped in Augé’s account: can anthropology still define its object in terms of social proximity when mediation increasingly structures experience?

Otherness Beyond the Human Encounter

In “The Near and the Elsewhere,” Augé defines anthropology as the study of otherness in the present. This otherness may be cultural, social, or even internal, since individual identity is always formed through relations. Crucially, Augé refuses to oppose the individual to society. Even under conditions of increased individualization, meaning remains socially produced.

Contemporary experience, however, complicates this relational model. Encounters with alterity now often occur through systems that neither represent a culture nor embody a recognizable social role. Algorithmic classifications, recommendation engines, and recognition software confront individuals with decisions and judgments that are difficult to locate within familiar anthropological categories. Otherness here is not symbolic or interpersonal but procedural. It appears as an opaque logic that acts upon individuals without fully presenting itself as an interlocutor.

This does not invalidate Augé’s framework, but it does strain it. Anthropology increasingly encounters forms of alterity that do not manifest as cultural difference but as technical mediation. The question becomes whether the discipline’s conceptual vocabulary can adequately grasp an “other” embedded in infrastructures rather than embodied in social figures.

The Figures of Excess Reconsidered

Augé’s diagnosis of surmodernity rests on three figures of excess: time, space, and individuality. Each remains recognizable today, yet each has shifted in form.

The excess of time no longer appears primarily as acceleration or event saturation. It increasingly takes the form of anticipation. Systems organize the present around predicted futures, shaping action before it unfolds. Experience is not only compressed but pre-structured.

The excess of space, once associated with mobility and the proliferation of images, now involves layered environments in which physical movement is supplemented by digital navigation. Space is traversed through interfaces that personalize access and modulate visibility, rendering movement responsive rather than merely directional.

The excess of individuality persists, but it has acquired a new dimension. While individuals remain responsible for producing meaning, they are simultaneously subjected to continuous interpretation. Profiles, scores, and behavioral predictions accompany everyday action. Individuality thus unfolds under conditions of permanent evaluation.

These shifts suggest not a rupture with surmodernity, but an aging of its initial configuration. Excess has not disappeared; it has become interactive.

Conclusion

Revisiting “The Near and the Elsewhere” today confirms both the enduring relevance and the historical situatedness of Augé’s anthropological gesture. Augé taught anthropology to take the contemporary seriously, resisting nostalgia and exoticism alike. The task now is to repeat that gesture under altered conditions. Intelligent systems, pervasive interfaces, and algorithmic mediation have transformed the texture of everyday life in ways that exceed the empirical horizon of the early 1990s. Recognizing this does not replace Augé’s framework; it extends it. It suggests that the anthropology of the present must now also become an anthropology of mediation—attentive to how the near itself has quietly changed.

References

Augé, M. (1995). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (J. Howe, Trans.). Verso.