Technology as material culture

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Technology as material culture

• INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods
• 8 April 2008

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Outline

• Some theories about technology in society
• synchronizing theory / research questions /
  method
• Operationalizing theory translating from
  theory into methodological procedure

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Semiotic Analysis of Images
Operationalizing Semiotics (last week)
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Social Construction of Technology

• Bijker on bicycles

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Operationalizing SCOT

• Subject/Topic a new, unsettled technology under
  development (or from historical archives)
• Who are the relevant groups?
• Identify the divergent interpretations of the
  artifact held by these groups (interpretive
  flexibility)
• Look for evidence of closure

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What Use for Theory?

• An argument against a grounded theory analytical
  approach
• Theory can sensitize, suggest ways of studying,
  analyzing a case
• Challenge received wisdom, ordinary, habitual
  interpretations
• To transcend our own socialization

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The status of things in society

• In social theory - a new appreciation of the
  material world and the socializing effect of
  things (in contrast to fixation on language,
  discourse, and a dematerialized social structure)
• the performative and integrative capacity of
  things to help make what we call society.
  Pels, pg. 2

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The Medical Form

• Garfinkel
• Forms as the evidence of a social process (to
  explore further)
• Forms reflect

• Star
• Norms enforced through the form
• Form as infrastructure mundane, invisible (and
  therefore powerful)
• Forms act

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Attribution of Agency

• How do we attribute agency in ordinary language
• The computer who thinks?
• To humans only?
• To inanimate things?
• Research Question In what ways can each involved
  entity be thought of as acting?
• See Turkle, The Second Self

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Object boundaries

• The object hypothesis Wright
• Is this a world of discrete objects or a
  continuum?
• What characteristics are attributed to an object?
• Research Question what do different groups
  consider to be emanating (benefits, forces, etc)
  from the technology under study?

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Objects enforce the Normative Order

• Visible vs. invisible
• The Humility of Objects The less aware of
  things we are, the more powerfully they can
  determine our expectations by setting the scene
  and ensuring normative behavior Miller
• Research Question what mundane, seemingly
  neutral materials can we recover? What social
  order do they perpetuate?
• See Bowker and Star Sorting Things Out

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Source Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out
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Objects form a Semiotic System

• Function, exchange, symbolic, sign values
• Objects are Defined Relationally (i.e.
  Actor-Network Theory)
• Research Question what systems of objects exist?
  In a home? In an office? How are the qualities
  of an object produced through relations?
• See Baudrillard, The System of Objects

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Self constructed through possession of objects

• "artifacts as culture derivesfrom their active
  participation in a process of social
  self-creation in which they are directly
  constitutive of our understanding of ourselves
  and others... Miller, Material Culture and
  Mass Consumption
• Identity display, class distinctions
• Research question how is status or identity
  accomplished through possessions?
• see also Bourdieu, Distinction

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Ethnographic Writing

• Woolgar took a position within an IT company to
  study the development of a new technological
  object and a series of usability studies.
• What is his data?
• How does he references his subjective position?

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Usability vs. Ethnographic Research

• A usability trial vs. ethnographic study of a
  usability trial
• The broader institution within which research
  takes place

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Summary

• To what do we attribute agency?
• Shifting boundaries and characteristics of
  objects
• Objects enforce normative order
• The meaning of objects defined through relations
  (a semiotic system)
• Identity and social difference through things