5 ms·

The semiotics of barbed wire fence

56 points by ano-ther 2y ago

ortusdux 2y ago
Very interesting! Makes me think of the barbed wire telephone networks - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-lines-homesteaders-prairie-america-history https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-...
- throwway120385 2y ago
  Yeah -- if you knew whose fence you were connected to then you could identify the line and to whom you would be ringing when you connected your phone to it.
keiferski 2y ago
I don't think Deleuze and Guattari actually talk about it directly, but barbed wire seems like a perfect example of a technology that turns smooth space into striated space. Basically smooth spaces are vast and open, like the sea or the great plains, whereas striated spaces are ones organized, put under a grid, etc. https://www.christianhubert.com/writing/smoothstriated https://www.christianhubert.com/writing/smoothstriated
- ortusdux 2y ago
  This is a big deal with fish passage restoration. Rectangular farmland led to dykes that straitened out streams and rivers. Straight waterways flow faster and wash away sediment. This makes it harder for fish to swim upstream while leaving fewer places to rest and spawn. There is a fair amount of restoration work going on in the PNW to try and undo this, and the results I've seen have been promising.
kens 2y ago
The article shows an interesting collection of different types of barbed wire with a name on each one. The article claims that different types of barbed wire allowed ranchers to tell at a glance if the land and animals belonged to them. Unfortunately, that theory is completely made up and wrong. The names on the barbed wire are the manufacturers not the ranchers. Different manufacturers produced different styles of wires due to patents and functionality reasons. For instance, the first wire in the article is labeled "Kelly loose barb". That corresponds to the Michael Kelly patent [1]. The next name is Scutt, describing the improved barbed wire invented by H. B. Scutt [2]. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US283614A https://patents.google.com/patent/US283614A [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US195239A https://patents.google.com/patent/US195239A
- Animats 2y ago
  Yes. The history of barbed wire is well known, and this article misses it. For cattle operations, barbed wire is somewhat obsolete, anyway. There's a wire mesh called "King Ranch fencing".[1] No barbs, but strong enough to contain cattle. With fewer scrape marks, the leather is more valuable. No risk of animals caught in barbed wire. Less sagging wire. "We don't fix fence, we build fence" - King Ranch slogan. [1] https://redbrandstore.com/products/king-ranch-field-fence-660-949-12-9 https://redbrandstore.com/products/king-ranch-field-fence-66...
  - doodlebugging 2y ago
    Wow! I have two 330' rolls of a similar Red Brand field fence I bought about 20 years ago, 660' total of it like the roll in the listing. I paid $75 for each 330' roll. I think mine is the Monarch Field Fence roll with the graduated spacing beginning with 3" at the bottom. The same rolls sell for more than $300 each today according to that site. Time to build a cheap fence with my old wire.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      Welcome to the effects of two decades of ZIRP with a Trumpflation cherry on top. Farm stuff, or really anything that isn't plastic consumer crap, has shot through the roof. Steel has practically become a precious metal. Imagine if all that monetary creation had at least been spent on infrastructure, rather than being mostly squandered on the Manhattan welfare program.
      - sbierwagen 2y ago
        >Trumpflation The CARES Act passed the Senate unanimously. If Trump caused inflation due to profligate spending, he did so with plenty of help from Democrats. He couldn't have stopped it even if he wanted to, that's far past the veto proof majority.
        mindslight 2y ago
vessenes 2y ago
This was interesting but I don't know if semiotics is a large part of the essay. I was hoping to get a deconstruction of barbed wire fence as a security measure in different parts of the world. My experience living in South Africa for a while was that to an American eye, barbed wire on top of a wall codes as "this neighborhood is unsafe". To a South African it codes as "this home is protected and safe" -- very different reactions. There were a few houses in my neighborhood in Cape Town that refused barbed wire, and I always respected them immensely and thought of them as sort of hold-overs from a less violent period in the country's history.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Yeah, to me the headline is just completely wrong and misleading. None of this has anything to do with semiotics. I was expecting the exact same thing as you -- semiotics would be about what does seeing barbed wire in specific spaces/contexts mean to different groups of people? What are its associations with prisons, compounds, neighborhoods, safety, security, the state, private security, militarization, crime, farming, cattle, trespassing, the American West, freedom to roam, and so forth? When you see barbed wire, does it make you feel safe or nervous or scared? How does that change if it's in a residential neighborhood vs. around a military base? Your experience in South Africa is a perfect example -- thanks for sharing.
- matharmin 2y ago
  In my experience around Cape Town, it's both: High security (or more commonly electric fencing in affluent neighbourhoods) on a single house means the house is safe (or the owners are paranoid). High security on every house in the neighborhood means high crime rate in the neighborhood. It also don't think crime stats went up much over the last decades in general (may be different in specific neighborhoods), but there is definitely more fear of safety that leads to more security.
  - vessenes 2y ago
    I agree that the perception, (and implied acknowledgment) of violence is a very interesting factor — and I would not be surprised if the very act of building a lot of visible security features near a building overall increases the rate of some sorts of crime. That said, you’re a little out of date on SA - violent crime across the country was relatively stable for a decade or two, but since 2021, violent crimes across SA have spiked, and now even Cape Town is in the 20 most dangerous towns in the world, and in the top 10 murder / capita towns in the world.
sdsd 2y ago
Not related to TFA but the word "semiotics" to me is very evocative of this set of academic subjects in the 70s that were just kind of shelved. Right along with cybernetics or women's lib. Here in Guatemala there was a used book fair and in the English section they had a book for 80 cents about cybernetics, which I've neglected to read, but now think I ought to read soon :)
- complaintdept 2y ago
  Also networks, Bucky Fullerism, Eastern philosophy, mind maps, UNIX and chaos theory gaining momentum, etc. They seem somewhat dated now, but in a way they've diffused through our culture so extensively that they're just part of the background and nobody raises an eyebrow at them anymore. The 70s had a zeal for cool ideas that we just don't have anymore.
  - Animats 2y ago
    After the USSR went down, the Stanford bookstore had a sign: "All communism 70% off".
    - kjellsbells 2y ago
      In the early 00s I lived in the Washington DC suburbs, and saw first hand how all the old Kremlinologists and Russia specialists were being pensioned off and retired. I'd attend yard sales and there'd be stacks of books about Russian culture, politics, literature, everything. Pashto was hot, and Pushkin was not. Today, they need Kremlinologists and Russian speakers all over again. What goes around, comes around...
    - janfoeh 2y ago
      This is the most amused I have been in days. Thank you!
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > or women's lib Unlike certain jurisdictions we didn't shelve that one; we actually put it into our constitution (if slightly after the 70s).
chanandler_bong 2y ago
I read an article a long time ago that drew a direct correlation between the need to contain/separate livestock in the American West and the battlefields of World War I. Basically, as settlers moved westward, they needed to contain their livestock as well as separate sheep and cows. Sheep apparently eat grass down to the ground whereas cows don't, thus sheep would deprive cows of food. So, barbed wire was developed for this purpose and the military saw the utility of it as well. Fast-forward to WWI and the vast battlefields there and needing an inexpensive way to slow enemy advances on foot. This led to the development of tanks to overcome the barbed wire obstacles. Machine guns also became more useful as a way to spray large areas when attacking troops were held up by the obstacles.
banga 2y ago
Interesting collection, but this statement gave me pause: "there was nothing out here but millions of buffalo and some scattered Indians"
alamortsubite 2y ago
If the author is reading this, you really should check out the barbed wire exhibits at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City [1] and the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum in LaCrosse, KS [2]. Next-level. 1: https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/explore/barbed-wire/ https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/explore/barbed-wire/ 2: https://www.rushcounty.org/BarbedWireMuseum/BWexhibits.html https://www.rushcounty.org/BarbedWireMuseum/BWexhibits.html
underlipton 2y ago
Barbed wire fence is a great example of technology that was originally meant for capitalist ends - specifically, to allow for the slicing up of a commons for private use - eventually employed to literally rip apart people.
- almog 2y ago
  Not just people but wildlife and plenty of them. Since the American Cheetah went extinct ~10,000 years ago, Pronghorns ("American Antelope") have probably not known a worse enemy than barbed wire across the American West which is rarely laid out in such way that allow Pronghorns to duck under safely. To better put it, I'll just quote from The Monkey Wrench Gang by Eddward Abbey: “Who invented barbed wire anyhow?” Hayduke asked. “It was a man named J. F. Glidden done it; took out his patent back in 1874.” An immediate success, that barbwire. Now the antelope die by the thousands, the bighorn sheep perish by the hundreds every winter from Alberta down to Arizona, because fencing cuts off their escape from blizzard and drought. And coyotes too, and golden eagles, and peasant soldiers on the coils of concertina wire, victims of the same fat evil the wide world over, hang dead on the barbed and tetanous steel"

56 points by ano-ther 2y ago

Very interesting! Makes me think of the barbed wire telephone networks - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-lines-homesteaders-prairie-america-history https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/barbed-wire-telephone-...

throwway120385 2y ago
Yeah -- if you knew whose fence you were connected to then you could identify the line and to whom you would be ringing when you connected your phone to it.

keiferski 2y ago

I don't think Deleuze and Guattari actually talk about it directly, but barbed wire seems like a perfect example of a technology that turns smooth space into striated space. Basically smooth spaces are vast and open, like the sea or the great plains, whereas striated spaces are ones organized, put under a grid, etc. https://www.christianhubert.com/writing/smoothstriated https://www.christianhubert.com/writing/smoothstriated

ortusdux 2y ago
This is a big deal with fish passage restoration. Rectangular farmland led to dykes that straitened out streams and rivers. Straight waterways flow faster and wash away sediment. This makes it harder for fish to swim upstream while leaving fewer places to rest and spawn. There is a fair amount of restoration work going on in the PNW to try and undo this, and the results I've seen have been promising.

kens 2y ago

The article shows an interesting collection of different types of barbed wire with a name on each one. The article claims that different types of barbed wire allowed ranchers to tell at a glance if the land and animals belonged to them. Unfortunately, that theory is completely made up and wrong. The names on the barbed wire are the manufacturers not the ranchers. Different manufacturers produced different styles of wires due to patents and functionality reasons. For instance, the first wire in the article is labeled "Kelly loose barb". That corresponds to the Michael Kelly patent [1]. The next name is Scutt, describing the improved barbed wire invented by H. B. Scutt [2]. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US283614A https://patents.google.com/patent/US283614A [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US195239A https://patents.google.com/patent/US195239A

Animats 2y ago
Yes. The history of barbed wire is well known, and this article misses it. For cattle operations, barbed wire is somewhat obsolete, anyway. There's a wire mesh called "King Ranch fencing".[1] No barbs, but strong enough to contain cattle. With fewer scrape marks, the leather is more valuable. No risk of animals caught in barbed wire. Less sagging wire. "We don't fix fence, we build fence" - King Ranch slogan. [1] https://redbrandstore.com/products/king-ranch-field-fence-660-949-12-9 https://redbrandstore.com/products/king-ranch-field-fence-66...
- doodlebugging 2y ago
  Wow! I have two 330' rolls of a similar Red Brand field fence I bought about 20 years ago, 660' total of it like the roll in the listing. I paid $75 for each 330' roll. I think mine is the Monarch Field Fence roll with the graduated spacing beginning with 3" at the bottom. The same rolls sell for more than $300 each today according to that site. Time to build a cheap fence with my old wire.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Welcome to the effects of two decades of ZIRP with a Trumpflation cherry on top. Farm stuff, or really anything that isn't plastic consumer crap, has shot through the roof. Steel has practically become a precious metal. Imagine if all that monetary creation had at least been spent on infrastructure, rather than being mostly squandered on the Manhattan welfare program.
    - sbierwagen 2y ago
      >Trumpflation The CARES Act passed the Senate unanimously. If Trump caused inflation due to profligate spending, he did so with plenty of help from Democrats. He couldn't have stopped it even if he wanted to, that's far past the veto proof majority.
      - mindslight 2y ago

vessenes 2y ago

This was interesting but I don't know if semiotics is a large part of the essay. I was hoping to get a deconstruction of barbed wire fence as a security measure in different parts of the world. My experience living in South Africa for a while was that to an American eye, barbed wire on top of a wall codes as "this neighborhood is unsafe". To a South African it codes as "this home is protected and safe" -- very different reactions. There were a few houses in my neighborhood in Cape Town that refused barbed wire, and I always respected them immensely and thought of them as sort of hold-overs from a less violent period in the country's history.

crazygringo 2y ago
Yeah, to me the headline is just completely wrong and misleading. None of this has anything to do with semiotics. I was expecting the exact same thing as you -- semiotics would be about what does seeing barbed wire in specific spaces/contexts mean to different groups of people? What are its associations with prisons, compounds, neighborhoods, safety, security, the state, private security, militarization, crime, farming, cattle, trespassing, the American West, freedom to roam, and so forth? When you see barbed wire, does it make you feel safe or nervous or scared? How does that change if it's in a residential neighborhood vs. around a military base? Your experience in South Africa is a perfect example -- thanks for sharing.
matharmin 2y ago
In my experience around Cape Town, it's both: High security (or more commonly electric fencing in affluent neighbourhoods) on a single house means the house is safe (or the owners are paranoid). High security on every house in the neighborhood means high crime rate in the neighborhood. It also don't think crime stats went up much over the last decades in general (may be different in specific neighborhoods), but there is definitely more fear of safety that leads to more security.
- vessenes 2y ago
  I agree that the perception, (and implied acknowledgment) of violence is a very interesting factor — and I would not be surprised if the very act of building a lot of visible security features near a building overall increases the rate of some sorts of crime. That said, you’re a little out of date on SA - violent crime across the country was relatively stable for a decade or two, but since 2021, violent crimes across SA have spiked, and now even Cape Town is in the 20 most dangerous towns in the world, and in the top 10 murder / capita towns in the world.

sdsd 2y ago

Not related to TFA but the word "semiotics" to me is very evocative of this set of academic subjects in the 70s that were just kind of shelved. Right along with cybernetics or women's lib. Here in Guatemala there was a used book fair and in the English section they had a book for 80 cents about cybernetics, which I've neglected to read, but now think I ought to read soon :)

complaintdept 2y ago
Also networks, Bucky Fullerism, Eastern philosophy, mind maps, UNIX and chaos theory gaining momentum, etc. They seem somewhat dated now, but in a way they've diffused through our culture so extensively that they're just part of the background and nobody raises an eyebrow at them anymore. The 70s had a zeal for cool ideas that we just don't have anymore.
- Animats 2y ago
  After the USSR went down, the Stanford bookstore had a sign: "All communism 70% off".
  - kjellsbells 2y ago
    In the early 00s I lived in the Washington DC suburbs, and saw first hand how all the old Kremlinologists and Russia specialists were being pensioned off and retired. I'd attend yard sales and there'd be stacks of books about Russian culture, politics, literature, everything. Pashto was hot, and Pushkin was not. Today, they need Kremlinologists and Russian speakers all over again. What goes around, comes around...
  - janfoeh 2y ago
    This is the most amused I have been in days. Thank you!
082349872349872 2y ago
> or women's lib Unlike certain jurisdictions we didn't shelve that one; we actually put it into our constitution (if slightly after the 70s).

chanandler_bong 2y ago

I read an article a long time ago that drew a direct correlation between the need to contain/separate livestock in the American West and the battlefields of World War I. Basically, as settlers moved westward, they needed to contain their livestock as well as separate sheep and cows. Sheep apparently eat grass down to the ground whereas cows don't, thus sheep would deprive cows of food. So, barbed wire was developed for this purpose and the military saw the utility of it as well. Fast-forward to WWI and the vast battlefields there and needing an inexpensive way to slow enemy advances on foot. This led to the development of tanks to overcome the barbed wire obstacles. Machine guns also became more useful as a way to spray large areas when attacking troops were held up by the obstacles.

banga 2y ago

Interesting collection, but this statement gave me pause: "there was nothing out here but millions of buffalo and some scattered Indians"

alamortsubite 2y ago

If the author is reading this, you really should check out the barbed wire exhibits at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City [1] and the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum in LaCrosse, KS [2]. Next-level. 1: https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/explore/barbed-wire/ https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/explore/barbed-wire/ 2: https://www.rushcounty.org/BarbedWireMuseum/BWexhibits.html https://www.rushcounty.org/BarbedWireMuseum/BWexhibits.html

underlipton 2y ago

Barbed wire fence is a great example of technology that was originally meant for capitalist ends - specifically, to allow for the slicing up of a commons for private use - eventually employed to literally rip apart people.

almog 2y ago
Not just people but wildlife and plenty of them. Since the American Cheetah went extinct ~10,000 years ago, Pronghorns ("American Antelope") have probably not known a worse enemy than barbed wire across the American West which is rarely laid out in such way that allow Pronghorns to duck under safely. To better put it, I'll just quote from The Monkey Wrench Gang by Eddward Abbey: “Who invented barbed wire anyhow?” Hayduke asked. “It was a man named J. F. Glidden done it; took out his patent back in 1874.” An immediate success, that barbwire. Now the antelope die by the thousands, the bighorn sheep perish by the hundreds every winter from Alberta down to Arizona, because fencing cuts off their escape from blizzard and drought. And coyotes too, and golden eagles, and peasant soldiers on the coils of concertina wire, victims of the same fat evil the wide world over, hang dead on the barbed and tetanous steel"