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4 episodes with actor network theory
2 episodes with actor network theory
What do academics have to offer that practitioners do not already have? They have the data academics want. They can analyse it by themselves, sometimes better than academics. They are also not reading our articles. So why would academics bother engaging with them? Why should we even bridge that perceived or existing gap between theory and practice? Because academics need to dip their toes into practice, and they need to mingle with industry to stay relevant. So says Jonny Holmström, director and co-founder of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation. He has been at the forefront of doing academic research that blends theory and practice, rigor and relevance, and he knows a thing or two about how to do so successfully. His secret? Maximize the gap between academics and practitioners, don't close it. References Holmström, J., Magnusson, J., & Mähring, M. (2021). Orchestrating Digital Innovation: The Case of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 48(31), 248-264. Churchman, C. W. (1972). The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization. Basic Books. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford University Press. Holmström, J. (2022). From AI to Digital Transformation: The AI Readiness Framework. Business Horizons, 65(3), 329-339. Recker, J., Bockelmann, T., & Barthel, F. (2024). Growing Online-to-Offline Platform Businesses: How Vytal Became the World-Leading Provider of Smart Reusable Food Packaging. Information Systems Journal, 34(1), 179-200. Abbasi, A., Somanchi, S., & Kelley, K. (2025). The Critical Challenge of using Large-scale Digital Experiment Platforms for Scientific Discovery. MIS Quarterly, 49, . Sandberg, J., Holmström, J., & Lyytinen, K. (2020). Digitization and Phase Transitions in Platform Organizing Logics: Evidence from the Process Automation Industry. MIS Quarterly, 44(1), 129-153. Werder, K., Seidel, S., Recker, J., Berente, N., Kundert-Gibbs, J., Abboud, N., & Benzeghadi, Y. (2020). Data-Driven, Data-Informed, Data-Augmented: How Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Wildlands Live Unit Uses Data for Continuous Product Innovation. California Management Review, 62(3), 86-102. Sting, F. J., Tarakci, M., & Recker, J. (2024). Performance Implications of Digital Disruption in Strategic Competition. MIS Quarterly, 48(3), 1263-1278. Tarakci, M., Sting, F. J., Recker, J., & Kane, G. C. (2024). Three Questions to Ask About Your Digital Strategy. MIT Sloan Management Review, July, . Davenport, T. H. (1993). Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press. Davenport, T. H. (1998). Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System. Harvard Business Review, 76(4), 121-131. Schecter, A., Wowak, K. D., Berente, N., Ye, H., & Mukherjee, U. (2021). A Behavioral Perspective on Service Center Routing: The Role of Inertia. Journal of Operations Management, 67(8), 964-988. Sundberg, L., & Holmström, J. (2024). Innovating by Prompting: How to Facilitate Innovation in the Age of Generative AI. Business Horizons, 67(5), 561-570. Kronblad, C., Essén, A., & Mähring, M. (2024). When Justice is Blind to Algorithms: Multilayered Blackboxing of Algorithmic Decision Making in the Public Sector. MIS Quarterly, 48(4), 1637-1662.
Barry and Mike discuss Bruno Latour's essay, “On Actor-Network Theory: A few clarifications.” They work through his key terms in an attempt to better understand the new meanings he ascribes to actors and networks and what this theory allows us to do with media theory.
Are you interested in impact investing? Our summary today works with the article titled Invigorating impact investment networks: Actor-actant engagement in a smart city environment from 2023 by Joanna Vogeley and Paul Ryder, published in the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship. This is a great preparation to our next interview with Katarina Throssel in episode 236 talking about impact investing. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how impact investing can be connected to the future of cities. This article presents aspects for successful impact investing and the role of technologies, also revealing how network participants enhance distributed agency. As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects: Impact investing networks are complex ecosystems involving the interplay of human actors and technological actants, which can be effectively understood through the lens of General Systems Theory, Open Systems Theory, and Actor-Network Theory. Three key pillars - strategic networking, communication, and impact measurement - are crucial for creating dynamic and effective impact investing networks that accelerate positive outcomes while also being aware of potential negative consequences. Technology plays a vital role in facilitating actor-actant engagements within impact investing networks, enabling the flow of capital, knowledge, and resources towards social and environmental goals, but its influence must be critically examined. You can find the article through this link. Abstract: Impact investing seeks to generate measurable social and/or environmental impact alongside a financial return. Accordingly, assumed trade-off between financial return and social benefit is no longer a given, with Masdar City demonstrating that the mobilisation of dynamic networks facilitates the growth of impact investments. So as to better understand the complex dynamics of successful impact investing networks, we engage General Systems Theory, Open Systems Theory, and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a tripartite conceptual framework. Directly related to this, we show the role of technologies and reveal how network participants enhance distributed agency. We also identify three pillars crucial to the impact investing milieu: strategic innovation, communication, and impact measurement. The article finally observes a set of key outcomes, explores the implications for practice and considers directions for further research. Connecting episodes you might be interested in: No.203R - Too risky – The role of finance as a driver of sustainability transitions No.204 - Interview with Josh Dry about the financial sector's role in establishing better future for cities and humanity You can find the transcript through this link. What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available. I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Katerina Sperling (Linköping University) talks about her ongoing research into the realities of AI use in Swedish primary classrooms. Accompanying reference >> Katarina Sperling, Linnéa Stenliden, Jörgen Nissen, Fredrik Heintz (2022). Still w(AI)ting for the automation of teaching: An exploration of machine learning in Swedish primary education using Actor-Network Theory. European Journal of Education, 57(4):584-600 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12526
Actor-Network Theory is growing in popularity in education research. Helene Friis Ratner (Aarhus University) discusses the strengths and limitations of ANT, how this approach can be best applied to understand education, and the fascinating insights that can be gained from thinking about ‘things'.
Barry and Mike discuss Bruno Latour's essay, “On Actor-Network Theory: A few clarifications.” They work through his key terms in an attempt to better understand the new meanings he ascribes to actors and networks and what this theory allows us to do with media theory.
“Follow”? “Block”? “Accept”? Anthropologist Ilana Gershon joins us to reflect on breakups in both our intimate and working lives. She tells Alexis and Rosie how hearing her students' surprising stories of using new media – supposedly a tool for connection – to end romantic entanglements led to her 2010 book “The Breakup 2.0”. She also shares insights from studying hiring in corporate America and describes how, in the febrile “new economy”, the very nature of networking and how we understand our careers have been transformed.Ilana also celebrates Marilyn Strathern's influential article “Cutting the Network” for challenging our assumptions about endless and easy connection. She responds to the work of sociologists Richard Sennett and Mark Granovetter, and highlights Teri Silvio's theory of “animation” as a fruitful way of thinking about our online selves.Plus: Rosie, Alexis and Ilana share their pop culture picks on this month's theme, from the hit TV show “Severance” to the phenomenon of “shitposting” on Linkedin.Guest: Ilana GershonHosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu TruongExecutive Producer: Alice BlochSound Engineer: David CracklesMusic: Joe GardnerArtwork: Erin AnikerFind more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.Episode ResourcesIlana, Rosie, Alexis and our producer Alice recommendedDan Erickson's TV series “Severance”“shitposting” on Linkedin, as discussed by Bethan Kapur for VICEThe Quebec reality TV show “Occupation Double”Halle Butler's novel “The New Me”From The Sociological Review“A Sociological Playlist” – Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock“The Sociology of Love” – Julia Carter“Becoming Ourselves Online: Disabled Transgender Existence In/Through Digital Social Life” – Christian J. Harrison“The Politics of Digital Peace, Play, and Privacy during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Between Digital Engagement, Enclaves, and Entitlement” – Francesca SobandeFrom Uncommon Sense: “Intimacy, with Katherine Twamley”By Ilana Gershon“The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media”“The Breakup 2.1: The ten-year update”“Un-Friend My Heart: Facebook, Promiscuity, and Heartbreak in a Neoliberal Age”“Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don't Find) Work Today”“Neoliberal Agency”Further reading“Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan” – Teri Silvio“Forms of Talk” – Erving Goffman“The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism” – Richard Sennett“The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain” – Francesca Sobande“The Strength of Weak Ties” – Mark S. Granovetter“Cutting the Network” – Marilyn StrathernAnd have a look at the basics of Actor–Network Theory.
How can goth be consistently distinctive when it's so musically diverse? If goth is all about the music, how does that transform a group of people into a community based subculture? How do social spaces give rise to meaningful cultural substance? Can industrial, gothic metal and more be considered goth music? We'll look at these questions and more in our extensive discussion of the book ‘Goth Music: From Sound to Subculture'. We feature brand new music on All Goth Considered from Obscura Undead! To support the show please head over to our Patreon! Introduction 00:00 Goth is Organized Around Music 5:43 What the Hell is Goth Music 10:05 Quantifying Goth Music 51:22 Glocal 1:09:00 Actor Network Theory 1:24:10 SMASL 1:137:17 Hauntology 1:45:56 Sticky Nodes 1:54:00 Chronotopes 2:18:46 Lacan and Transcending Death 2:55:21 Semiotic Significance 3:20:40 Agential Realism and Social Chronotopes 3:25:32 Praxis 3:31:13 Ironic Imagination 3:37:08 Closing Thoughts 3:53:21 All Goth Considered 4:45:37 References: -On Interobjectivity -Sol Invictus -Ted Schatzki -Lacan -Lacan -Profilicity -Literary Chronotope -What is Goth Music -Goth, Genre, Subgenre or Style -Hauntology -Hyperdiegesis -Lacan's Real -Intra-action -Interview with Barad -The Living the Dead and the Immanent -Intermediaries, mediators and proximities -Socio-Material Approaches to ANT -Peeren on Cultural Analysis -The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory -The Music of the Goth Subculture: Postmodernism and Aesthetics -Social Phenomena via a Theory of Embodied Practice -Performativity
How can goth be consistently distinctive when it's so musically diverse? If goth is all about the music, how does that transform a group of people into a community based subculture? How do social spaces give rise to meaningful cultural substance? Can industrial, gothic metal and more be considered goth music? We'll look at these questions and more in our extensive discussion of the book ‘Goth Music: From Sound to Subculture'. We feature brand new music on All Goth Considered from Obscura Undead! To support the show please head over to our Patreon! Introduction 00:00 Goth is Organized Around Music 5:43 What the Hell is Goth Music 10:05 Quantifying Goth Music 51:22 Glocal 1:09:00 Actor Network Theory 1:24:10 SMASL 1:137:17 Hauntology 1:45:56 Sticky Nodes 1:54:00 Chronotopes 2:18:46 Lacan and Transcending Death 2:55:21 Semiotic Significance 3:20:40 Agential Realism and Social Chronotopes 3:25:32 Praxis 3:31:13 Ironic Imagination 3:37:08 Closing Thoughts 3:53:21 All Goth Considered 4:45:37 References: -On Interobjectivity -Sol Invictus -Ted Schatzki -Lacan -Lacan -Profilicity -Literary Chronotope -What is Goth Music -Goth, Genre, Subgenre or Style -Hauntology -Hyperdiegesis -Lacan's Real -Intra-action -Interview with Barad -The Living the Dead and the Immanent -Intermediaries, mediators and proximities -Socio-Material Approaches to ANT -Peeren on Cultural Analysis -The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory -The Music of the Goth Subculture: Postmodernism and Aesthetics -Social Phenomena via a Theory of Embodied Practice -Performativity
In episode 25 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Albena Yaneva, Professor of Architectural Theory at the Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester, about her new book, Latour for Architects, published by Routledge at the end of March. In it, we discuss Albena's reading and application of the work of the great sociologist, Bruno Latour's and in turn, his reading of society, particularly his important concept of Actor-Network Theory, and his work's application to the practice and production of architectural thinking. Latour's work has great influence on contemporary practice, even if often under-played, particularly as practice life waxes networked and complex. Albena's elegant and enlightening exposition is a timely interjection, then, perhaps helping architects understand themselves a wee bit better. I was introduced to Albena by Fran Ford, Senior Editor and Publisher (Architecture) for Routledge, who also sent me the book hot off the press. All thanks for that. Albena's research/ academic profile can be seen here, and she is also available via Twitter. Latour for Architects can be purchased here, and Albena's great lecture for McGill University - The New Ecology of Architectural Practice: An ANT Perspective on the Effects of Covid-19 – is definitely worth a butcher's. Enjoy! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com
Dr. Emily Philbrick is a wife, cat mom, teacher, researcher, writer, and sometimes crafty person. She currently teaches first-year and advanced composition at George Mason University, as well as literature, speech communication, and first-year writing courses at Carroll Community College. Her professional research focuses on the science of teaching and learning, equitable assessment practices, community building, Actor-Network Theory, Object-Oriented Ontology, and using maker-movement techniques in the classroom. She also geeks out about global folklore, folk horror, and cryptids. In this episode we explore how Emily navigates abundance within a professional context that is contingent and oftentimes overabundant in its demands on us. We chat about creativity in teaching, the important role of cats in our lives, and how to use social media in rebellious ways. Follow Emily on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eef_philbrick (@eef_philbrick) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tawnya-azar/message
Hello Interactors,Hints of loosening COVID restrictions are wafting through the air like a contagious air-born disease. Does this mean people will be heading back to work? Some can’t wait, some would rather not, and others would love to have such a luxury to consider. Is remote work here to stay? And if so, are we sure it’s healthy? As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…COMFORTABLE BUSINESSHe had just returned to the office for the first time in two years. I asked him what it was like. I wondered how many people were there with him. He responded, “Let me put it this way, when I pulled into the parking garage I counted maybe six cars.”I was having lunch with a couple Microsoft friends recently. Our conversation started there and then turned to the current hiring climate in the tech industry. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a dizzying array of startups are all vying for talent. They’re offering insane starting salaries, stock grants, and signing bonuses. But there seems to be one non-negotiable with tech workers – flexible working arrangements.Before we knew it, the three of us were talking about what cities would be best to live in knowing employers don’t really care where you live. But even among well-paid tech workers, cost of living became the most salient factor in choosing an ideal city. Rising real estate prices pose the biggest challenge, but optimal internet speeds were up there too.One friend, who had recently left Microsoft for a startup, mentioned the downsides of remote work. She said it’s really hard getting to know a team you’ve never met in person and even harder for them to get to know you. She senses judging and fields odd questions that aren’t about her, but about her role and what she’s being asked to do. And broad communication from their CEO seems to always fall flat. She said he comes across as disingenuous, less human, and overly focused on short term deadlines and quarterly results. Reflecting on our time working together she’s said she really valued the ‘non work’ interactions that happened on our team. We did feel more like a ‘family’ than a ‘squad.’Two years of disrupted work practice has led to a combination of ‘the great shuffle’ – people swapping companies in search of higher pay and benefits, ‘the great displacement’ – rising cost of living involuntarily pushing lower paid workers from their homes, or ‘the great resignation’ – cost cutting companies incenting early retirements or aging workers opting to retire early. It’s left companies wondering if this is a phase or if people have habituated to increased flexibility. The CEO for Stitch Fix, an personal apparel shopping service, said they’re seeing customers looking to replace a third of their wardrobe with what they call “Business Comfortable” clothes. She says their customers want to stay working in sweats, but want them to look more ‘professional’ when on Zoom calls.Cities and local businesses are impacted too. Can they count on workers coming back in droves to commercial districts buying breakfast, lunch, coffee, and drinks? Or even haircuts. Nikita Shimunov owns a barbershop in Manhattan where he once saw 50 to 60 men pass through his shop in a day. It’s trickled to 10 to 15 customers daily and he’s been forced to reduce staff by half. His financial future hinges on the empathy of his landlord.Many cities rely on these tax revenues to fill their coffers. But if masses of people stop going in to work, it has huge implications on urban planning. Microsoft is wrapping up the final touches on a massive new corporate campus in Redmond at a time when many, maybe even most, may remain working remotely. It’s next to a brand new light rail stop planned and designed to serve thousands that now may never come.Not all flexible work arrangements are the same or even desirable. Flexibility can introduce or amplify home and work conflicts for individuals, teams, companies, cities, and regions. Technology, especially mobile technology, has been blurring work and home boundaries for decades. What does it mean to achieve a work/life balance when the boundary disappears? And for those with young children, the burden of parenting, home schooling, and working can become overwhelming. And given our social norms, that burden largely, and unfairly, falls on women.Women are also unfairly expected to conform to certain traditional workplace ideals that focus on physical appearance and presence. For example, wrestling with a screaming toddler on a Zoom call with un-brushed hair, no makeup, and no sleep can make some people judge her as ‘not being professional’. And come review time, how might some managers reflect on these interactions when it comes time to hand out pay increases or offer new opportunities for growth? Meanwhile men get to poke fun at each other for wearing pajamas and having bed head. I had a remote employee years ago and my biggest fear was that she seemed to always be available. Remote workers can sometimes over communicate or stretch their availability. They can over compensate for not being physically present. But being always ‘on’, ‘available’, and ‘connected’ can lead to burnout. These pressures, self-inflicted or induced, can also lead to exhaustion and mental duress. Some anthropologists believe humans did not evolve as we did by working even eight hours a day, let alone 12 or more. It doesn’t necessarily lead to optimal team performance either.Individual suffering can spill over to co-workers which creates even more stress and burnout. Team members can become withdrawn which exasperates feelings of isolation and loneliness. Quiet, more subdued, colleagues can also feel excluded or overlooked. Some choose to turn their cameras off to combat feelings of personal intrusion or surveillance. Or maybe they’re hiding their bed head. This can ultimately lead to job dissatisfaction prompting them to seek another team or company.I know from experience how attrition can spread like an infectious infliction as those who leave prompt others to do the same. Perhaps ‘the great shuffle’ we’re experiencing isn’t just people running toward opportunity, but impunity.IS FLEXIBILITY THE FIX?Flexible working arrangements can take on a variety of flavors and can be called many things. Even before the pandemic, Microsoft had always had what they called ‘flex-time’. It simply means your manager doesn’t really care when you come and go so long as you get your work done. But these days flexible working arrangements can be called names like “remote work”, “tele-commuting”, “tele-work“, “mobile work”, or “virtual work”. There are also those who are “self-employed”, “on-call”, “on-demand”, or working in “shared spaces”.A group of business school researchers at the University of Reading in the UK just published a literature review on research focused on flexible work practices. They came up with a taxonomy that clumps arrangements into four categories:Remote, Spatiotemporal, On-demand, and Self-directed. Remote work is like the COVID caused ‘work from home’ many are experiencing today. Spatiotemporal work includes shared spaces, ‘touch down spaces’, ‘office clubs’, and even ‘job sharing’. On-demand work is for workers who are on-call like Uber or Grubhub drivers. Self-directed workers own their own companies, freelance, or contract.Each of these come with their own advantages and disadvantages. Working from home, or Remote work, is what most people think of when considering flexible working arrangements. Products like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and a growing list of alternatives, make it easy to ‘plug-in’ remotely. Like, for example, joining a meeting from wherever you may be.I was on a walk one summer morning before sunrise in some nearby woods when I had to join a meeting scheduled in another time zone. So I sat on the limb of a fallen tree over looking a wooded ravine and took part in the meeting as the sun rose. Halfway through, however, the limb snapped and down I went. Good thing the camera was off. And, yes, I was muted. But these remote work products, including Slack, Teams, Zoom and others, allow for both synchronous and asynchronous communication. This can lead to days and evenings filled with either a meeting, interruptions from notifications and alerts, or the dreaded FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out – a fear that addicts people to be constantly checking and dealing with email, channels, or text message threads. In other words, constantly working.This invariably infringes on time spent with family and friends. These prolonged stresses can drive some people to withdrawal and become isolated. And for those who seek control and domination over others, like manic micro-managers, it means they can wield these real-time, always on, communication tools like a weapon. And the quicker people respond to their seemingly psychopathic needs, the more fervent their interruptions become. It’s a cycle that can leave people anxious, depressed, and looking to get away. Those feeling violated in their own homes sometimes seek a shared workspace elsewhere.Sharing work spaces over different times and places is what researchers call Spatiotemporal work. This style of working hit the news a few years ago when the shared workspace company WeWork failed its initial public offering (IPO). Started in 2008 as GreenDesk – an “eco-friendly coworking space” – it became WeWork in 2010 with an infusion of cash from a wealthy real estate developer. By 2014 it was “the fastest-growing lessee of new office space in New York”. They grew too quickly and imploded in their 2019 IPO, refinanced and went public in 2021, and are now leveraging rising COVID driven real estate prices to recoup some of their losses. While their memberships still remain low, the pandemic has created a growing need for humans to come together physically to collaborate and bond. Especially as team members are scattered across regions, countries, and the globe.Microsoft, like many organizations, have long used ‘off sites’ as temporary ways to pull teams together for a day or more – a kind of spatio-socio-temporal team building field trip. Some I attended were more sashay to build cachet than work with a perk, but some companies are now using these excursions as more routine means of encouraging more physical collaboration. New software tools like Cloudfare make it easier for managers to schedule and arrange gatherings of geographically dispersed employees in places like AirBnb’s, employee’s homes, or even existing offices – an on-site off-site. Some companies are even allocating money to teams so they can book these off-sites themselves as a way to bring team members together physically – even if it’s just for a picnic, a walk in a park, or a bike ride. Some companies are even buying apartments or hotel suites as more permanent ‘off-site’ locations. The Wall Street Journal reports that one 26 person startup, Aidentified,“rents two corporate apartments, one in Boston and one near San Francisco, in lieu of offices, so employees can gather when needed. Each apartment is equipped with a conference table, seating areas, a kitchen and bedrooms where out-of-town employees can stay.” The 3,000-square-foot, three bedroom, multi-level Boston apartment has an outdoor terrace overlooking the Boston Public Library. If this sounds extravagant, it is. Companies rich with cash can often become embarrassments of riches. This competitive hiring climate exists within a grossly disproportionate wealth disparity that compounds these excesses as each company seeks to out do the other in attempts to lure and retain employees. But these off-sites need not always be entirely self-serving. The nonprofit Forté Foundation, a women’s business leadership advocacy group, took some time during their three-day off-site in Austin, Texas to build bikes for a local nonprofit…in between pamper parties, luxury lunches, and extravagant excursions of course.For those laboring behind the scenes to prop these posh parades of privilege, it’s hard to see any of this as actually being ‘work’. Many managers funding these fun fests often wonder the same thing. In order for managers to know whether these remote employees are actually working or not requires more software. Task management and planning tools like Confluence, Trello, Project, Planner, or Basecamp let managers keep an eye on task completion, deadlines, and engagement. But this can make some employees feel like they’re being watched, scheduled, and controlled. The opposite of flexible, but still far from indentured manual labor most of the employed world endures.AN ANT ANTEDOTEShared work, space, and calendars are sold and celebrated by the software industry as new cultures of openness and inclusion, but not everyone is equally comfortable sharing their locations and schedules. Others find the overhead required to fill out forms, schedule tasks, and report progress inhibits their ability to actually be productive. And when tasks are shared among team members, it’s not always clear who was responsible for doing what. Often times the bulk of the work falls on those most conscientious or those seeking glory and control. Managers are then stuck with no clear way of evaluating contributions fairly. That is if they can get employees to actually fill out their forms in the first place.In addition to rogue, power hungry, and individualistic workaholics dominating a team, sporadic sharing work practices centered around short-term deliverables can also lead to groupthink. In an effort to complete tasks, individuals can be prone, even encouraged, to taking the path of least resistance instead of finding more creative and effective solutions that may be out of the norm. These can all have financial implications for companies as product quality may suffer, or those less geared for these sharing cultures and workspaces could suffer a loss in compensation or opportunities.The results of that UK literature review revealed that researchers have been trying to tease apart the impacts of flexible work practices since the emergence of so-called ‘Smart Cities’ and ‘Sharing Culture’ around 2010. Within a year social science researchers were already looking into aspects of social isolation. By 2012 themes of gender inequality and work-family conflict entered the scene. Then came financial costs, lack of visibility, blurred spaces, and health impairment. And then, after COVID came to town in 2019, these topics blew up. And by last year, 2021, the themes of dispersed spaces and employer-employee tensions were added to the decade old list of concerns.These researchers observed that, “while almost all the studies have explored both the positive and negative consequences of technology use, none have examined the downsides of changes in (or to) technological platforms on employee behavior and work.” They were surprised to find that “researchers have not explicitly focused on the changes in traditional hierarchies and the dynamic nature of manager–employee relationships as a result of technology-enabled [Flexible Work Practice].” They say existing research aims to understand technology as a facilitator of flexible work “thus perpetuating the instrumental view of technology.”Given this finding, they call on a shift in perspective. Instead of just explaining the role technology is playing in enabling flexible work practices, seek to describe the social force it plays in shaping our behavior which in turn shapes our networks of relationships. They wrote, “Given the active role that technological platforms continue to play in organizational life, other conceptualizations of technology are required…” One theory they suggest leveraging is Actor-Network Theory (ANT).The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography describes Actor-Network Theory as a “unifying thread [that] constitutes the central line of connection to the field of human geography.” It’s an ever evolving social theory that argues “all manner of things (as many as you can imagine) are variously entangled together in specific formations or networks in the making of the world.”As I stand here in Kirkland, Washington on the 18th birthday of my son and daughter, I can look back over those nearly two decades and see the role technology has played in bringing that central line of connection in human geography into focus. The combination of the internet, mobile technologies, and geo-political globalization have connected an assortment of ever expanding networks of people and place. And then, in the final three years of my kid’s high school existence I can see how that technology has both granted them needed flexibility but also robbed them of social opportunities.But despite it all, they have flourished. And yet not all kids have – nor have adults. As affluent, mostly white, remote workers enjoy their ‘flexible working arrangements’ – like next day Amazon orders, late night GrubHub ice cream deliveries, and TaskRabbit handy man assignments – those ‘on-demand’ workers on which they rely suffer their own perplexing paradoxes. While ‘on-demand’ work has supplanted needed income for many struggling to make a living, it’s also taken a toll on their health.Because laws lag in defining and representing the rights of these workers, they’re prone to exploitation by corporate overlords and overly demanding and consuming customers. It can lead to job related and economic anxiety, stress, and uncertainty. And because they operate alone, without a tightknit team – a family – it leaves ample time to reflect on their plight. They can become preoccupied with how society, their government, their companies regard, treat, and abuse them.As I walked home from that lunch with my friends last Friday, I looked around my little town of Kirkland. It’s been shaped by nearly a century and a half of people – actors – enrolling, transforming, and interacting within nested networks of natural and engineered environments. Kirkland was intended to be a steel town. Peter Kirk’s vision was for it to be “The Pittsburgh of the Northwest.” The Peter Kirk building is now the Kirkland Arts Center. Ole Pete could never have imagined any of this. Just as we never imagined we’d be forever shaped by a measly virus. I looks like my next lunch with friends will likely be unmasked. Washington is currently planning for mask free restaurants at the end of March – more flexible eating arrangements will soon be meeting flexible working arrangements. I’ll be curious to see whether more Softies return to the Redmond campus over time or whether the future of their work remains primarily remote. It’s hard to tell without a string of caveats.This tiny microbe has disrupted an entire global actor-network. Just how much our behavior has been changed permanently is unknown, but there’s no going back to some semblance of ‘normal’. The future is as uncertain as predictions for how far into the future the global pandemic will continue to circulate. As Dr. Heidi Brown, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Arizona said recently, “Until the epidemiologists can tell you what’s going to happen in the future without massive uncertainty caveats, then we’re still in an epidemic-type situation.”Hold on to your hats, and your masks, we’re all about to learn there is not such thing as a free lunch. Subscribe at interplace.io
Terénem, který je třeba prozkoumat, je naše vlastní tělo a způsob, jak ho prožíváme. Džunglí našich identit nás v rozhovoru s Terezou Liškovou provede Markéta Jakešová, který se věnuje otázkám těla, francouzské fenomenologii a takzvané Actor-Network Theory.
How can we understand police communication with the public, when the main object of communication is invisible? On May 5, 2021 Megan O'Neill and Jonas Grutzpalk put their research project to debate on our digital colloquium by addressing the challenges of doing research on police communication during the current corona virus pandemic. Their research project aims to cross-nationally investigate police forces in Europe via the lenses of Bruno Latour's Actor-Network-Theory. Megan O'Neill is a reader at the University of Dundee in Scotland and an Associate Director for the Police Community Relations Network at the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. Jonas Grutzpalk is a professor of Sociology and Political Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
This week, we bring you an interview with Dr. Ashley Carruthers. Ashley is a lecturer of anthropology at the Australian National University's School of Archaeology and Anthropology. His research interests include migration, mobilities, rural-urban relationships, networks and infrastructures, farming, organic agriculture, bicycles, and he has conducted in-depth fieldwork in Vietnam. It's also Familiar Stranger Clair's first interview! We hope you enjoy it! In this interview we talked about an organic farming community called Thang Dong. It's located in a peri-urban region near Hoi An. We discussed what insights that WE, urban dwellers and subjects of modernization, could glean from the farmers' organic agriculture project, which prevented them from being displaced. The project can be seen as a hybrid of multiple temporalities, where the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern are entangled in a non-linear manner. It is also an assemblage or a network of various agents, including non-human actors like the land, or the chemical fertilizers. We talked a lot about Latour's Actor Network Theory, his book Down to Earth and We Have Never Been Modern. But don't worry about it being too theory heavy, Ashley has tons of fun stories along the way! We also talked about the emerging culture of cycling as a leisure activity in Vietnam, and how the elites may inadvertently bring about some public good while benefiting themselves. Head over to our website for a full list of links and citations! on't forget to head over to our Facebook group The Familiar Strange Chats. Let's keep talking strange, together! If you like what we do and are in a position to do so, you can help us to keep making content by supporting us through Patreon. Our Patreon can be found at https://www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU's College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association. Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com Shownotes by Clair Zhang Podcast edited by Clair Zhang and Matthew Phung
Kunst is volgens de meeste definities iets unieks voor mensen. Het is het maken van iets moois, schokkends of betekenisvols, een expressie van iets van binnen. Het is een middel om te kunnen communiceren met andere mensen, die het kunnen interpreteren, voelen of beoordelen. Kan technologie ooit kunst maken? Moderne technieken zijn in staat om de werkelijkheid vast te leggen zoals mensen dat niet zouden kunnen en kunstmatige intelligentie kan muziek, teksten en beeld creëren. Wat zijn de verbanden tussen maken, produceren, scheppen en creëren? Kunnen alleen mensen kunst maken? Te gast is Liselore, promovendus bij de universiteiten Leiden en Delft. Haar onderzoek gaat over ethische en morele aspecten van 3D-printen in de kunstwereld, zoals het gebruik van AI bij het reproduceren van werken of om verloren werken te maken in de lijn van een artiest. Ook te vinden op YouTube en Spotify. Verwijzingen Intro (twee voorbeelden van scheppende technologie) - Hier twee voorbeelden van OpenAI projecten die zelfstandig teksten schrijven https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/ en zelfstandig muziek maken: https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/ Liselore Bob Rob de schilderrobot. Zie https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2019/io/june/paintrobot-bob-rob/ en https://awesome-technologies.de/showcases/paintrobot.Turing test. Merel Altered Carbon. 2018. Gemaakt door Laeta Kalogridis. Scenario en regie wisselen per aflevering. Wessel Kurt Vonnegut. "EPICAC." 1950. Welcome to the Monkey House. Overige verwijzingen Actor Network Theory. Latour, B. 2007. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies. OUP Oxford. https://books.google.nl/books?id=7ZGknQEACAAJ.Blade Runner. 1973. Regie: Ridley Scott. Scenario: Hampton Fancher en David Peoples.Blader Runner 2049. 2017. Regie: Denis Villeneuve. Script: Hampton Fancher en Michael Green.Her. 2013. Regie en scenario: Spike Jonze.Poe, Edgar Allen - "Annabel Lee."Westworld. 2016. Jonathan Nolan en Lisa Joy.Mansoni, Pierre.Facebook begrijpt de eigen algoritmes ook niet meer:
About the guest:https://www.eur.nl/people/wytske-van-der-wagenPapers mentioned in this episode:Wytske van der Wagen, The Significance of ‘Things’ in Cybercrime: How to Apply Actor-network Theory in (Cyber)criminological Research and Why it Matters, Journal of Extreme Anthropology, Volume 3 Number 1, 2019Assistant Professor at Erasmus University, Department of CriminologyDOI: https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.6895Wytske van der Wagen, Wolter Pieters, From Cybercrime to Cyborg Crime: Botnets as Hybrid Criminal Actor-Networks, The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 55, Issue 3, May 2015, Pages 578–595,https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv009van der Wagen, W., & Pieters, W. (2018). The hybrid victim: Re-conceptualizing high-tech cyber victimization through actor-network theory. European Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818812016Wytske van der Wagen, From cybercrime to cyborg crimeAuthors Manuscript version:https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/61493330/Chapter_1.pdfExtract from:van der Wagen, W. (2018). From cybercrime to cyborg crime: An exploration of high-tech cybercrime,offenders and victims through the lens of Actor-Network Theory. [Groningen]: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/en/publications/from-cybercrime-to-cyborg-crime(f3a5c5e0-ff0f-4dad-ac6c-2bc91d96a1b4).htmlOther:The Samy Kamkar MySpace WormGreatest Moments in Hacking History: Samy Kamkar Takes Down Myspace5 minute Video from MotherBoard.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtnuaHl378M~~~~~That EternalBlue thing that became crimewareThe Leaked NSA Spy Tool That Hacked the World by Lily Hay Newman on Wired.com (03/07/2018)https://www.wired.com/story/eternalblue-leaked-nsa-spy-tool-hacked-world/WannaCry – Important lessons from the first NSA-powered ransomware cyberattackBy Pierluigi Paganini, May 16, 2017http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/59154/cyber-crime/wannacry-nsa-powered-ransomware-cyberattack.html~~~~The BredoLab BotnetBredolab: Jail for man who masterminded botnet of 30 million computersby Graham Cluley, 23 MAY 2012https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/05/23/bredolab-jail-botnet/ Wikipedia on the BedoLab botnethttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bredolab_botnet~~~~~Sorry for the Pronunciation of Kubernētēs, I tried, but I am not sure than I managed more than a "foreign word" accent.If all you have is a hammer, all you see is nails, but every tool's a hammer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrumenthttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43319933-every-tool-s-a-hammer
For this episode, Rick and Troy take on Actor-Network Theory. New to the theoretical framework, Rick dives in by describing debates around Actor-Network Theory, and uses it to describe how he plays the new Pokemon Shield (he's Team Sobble). On the other hand, Troy connects the performative relation between actors with his project’s examination of fashion branding and brand consumers (he’s Team Scorbunny).
Harissa in Musa Dagh – Anthropology Professor Jens Kreinath of Wichita State University discusses his research with Salpi Ghazarian, director of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies. Dr. Kreinath studies shared pilgrimage sites and Christian-Muslim relations in Hatay – historical Antioch, the southernmost province of Turkey, and home to Musa Dagh survivors in Vakifli, Turkey’s only remaining Armenian village. To learn more about the USC Institute of Armenian Studies, visit http://armenian.usc.edu. References: Kreinath, Jens. 2017. "Aesthetic Dimensions and Transformative Dynamics of Mimetic Acts: The Veneration of Habib-i Neccar among Muslims and Christians in Antakya, Turkey." In Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, edited by Alexandra Grieser and Jay Johnston, 271–299. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Kreinath, Jens. 2017. "Interrituality as a New Approach for Studying Interreligious Relations and Ritual Dynamics at Shared Pilgrimage Sites in Hatay." Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology 1 (2):257–284. Kreinath, Jens. 2019. "Aesthetic Sensations of Mary: The Miraculous Icon of Meryem Ana and the Dynamics of Interreligious Relations in Antakya." In Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Contested Desires, edited by Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen, 155–171, 288–290, 311-314. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Kreinath, Jens. 2019. "Tombs and Trees as Indexes of Agency in Saint Veneration Rituals: Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and the Hıdırellez Festival in Hatay, Turkey." Journal of Ritual Studies 33 (1):52–73. Kreinath, Jens. 2019. "Playing with Frames of Reference in Veneration Rituals: Random Fractals in Encounters with a Muslim Saint." Anthropological Theory 19 (2). [in press]. Kreinath, Jens. 2020. "What Happens when the Story is Told? Afterthoughts on Narrative Culture and the Aesthetics of Religion: The Case of Armenian Christians from Musa Dağı." In Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion, edited by Dirk Johannsen, Anja Kirsch and Jens Kreinath. Leiden/Boston: Brill. [forthcoming]
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.” Cloatre takes seriously the idea of TRIPS as a technology in Bruno Latour’s meaning of the word–as a material object that anticipates effects in specific settings. Cloatre follows the text from its consolidation in European meeting halls to its use in the former French and British colonies of Ghana and Djibouti. Pills for the Poorest is a significant ethnography of law and healthcare in Africa that shows precisely how this paper tool begat new buildings, relationships, experts, and, indeed, pills, but only in particular places, among certain people, and for particular kinds of pharmaceuticals. Cloatre is a broadly trained scholar and talented researcher who shows the power of Actor Network Theory as an analytic device, and yet does so with a spirit of critique in the best sense: that is, as an act of sympathetic, yet persistent, questioning. As a text itself, the book has potential to reshape the thinking of readers from a wide range of fields, from law, science studies, healthcare policy, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.” Cloatre takes seriously the idea of TRIPS as a technology in Bruno Latour’s meaning of the word–as a material object that anticipates effects in specific settings. Cloatre follows the text from its consolidation in European meeting halls to its use in the former French and British colonies of Ghana and Djibouti. Pills for the Poorest is a significant ethnography of law and healthcare in Africa that shows precisely how this paper tool begat new buildings, relationships, experts, and, indeed, pills, but only in particular places, among certain people, and for particular kinds of pharmaceuticals. Cloatre is a broadly trained scholar and talented researcher who shows the power of Actor Network Theory as an analytic device, and yet does so with a spirit of critique in the best sense: that is, as an act of sympathetic, yet persistent, questioning. As a text itself, the book has potential to reshape the thinking of readers from a wide range of fields, from law, science studies, healthcare policy, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World Trade Organization's “Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.” Cloatre takes seriously the idea of TRIPS as a technology in Bruno Latour's meaning of the word–as a material object that anticipates effects in specific settings. Cloatre follows the text from its consolidation in European meeting halls to its use in the former French and British colonies of Ghana and Djibouti. Pills for the Poorest is a significant ethnography of law and healthcare in Africa that shows precisely how this paper tool begat new buildings, relationships, experts, and, indeed, pills, but only in particular places, among certain people, and for particular kinds of pharmaceuticals. Cloatre is a broadly trained scholar and talented researcher who shows the power of Actor Network Theory as an analytic device, and yet does so with a spirit of critique in the best sense: that is, as an act of sympathetic, yet persistent, questioning. As a text itself, the book has potential to reshape the thinking of readers from a wide range of fields, from law, science studies, healthcare policy, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.” Cloatre takes seriously the idea of TRIPS as a technology in Bruno Latour’s meaning of the word–as a material object that anticipates effects in specific settings. Cloatre follows the text from its consolidation in European meeting halls to its use in the former French and British colonies of Ghana and Djibouti. Pills for the Poorest is a significant ethnography of law and healthcare in Africa that shows precisely how this paper tool begat new buildings, relationships, experts, and, indeed, pills, but only in particular places, among certain people, and for particular kinds of pharmaceuticals. Cloatre is a broadly trained scholar and talented researcher who shows the power of Actor Network Theory as an analytic device, and yet does so with a spirit of critique in the best sense: that is, as an act of sympathetic, yet persistent, questioning. As a text itself, the book has potential to reshape the thinking of readers from a wide range of fields, from law, science studies, healthcare policy, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.” Cloatre takes seriously the idea of TRIPS as a technology in Bruno Latour’s meaning of the word–as a material object that anticipates effects in specific settings. Cloatre follows the text from its consolidation in European meeting halls to its use in the former French and British colonies of Ghana and Djibouti. Pills for the Poorest is a significant ethnography of law and healthcare in Africa that shows precisely how this paper tool begat new buildings, relationships, experts, and, indeed, pills, but only in particular places, among certain people, and for particular kinds of pharmaceuticals. Cloatre is a broadly trained scholar and talented researcher who shows the power of Actor Network Theory as an analytic device, and yet does so with a spirit of critique in the best sense: that is, as an act of sympathetic, yet persistent, questioning. As a text itself, the book has potential to reshape the thinking of readers from a wide range of fields, from law, science studies, healthcare policy, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emilie Cloatre‘s award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects–and ineffectualness–of a landmark international agreement for healthcare: the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.” Cloatre takes seriously the idea of TRIPS as a technology in Bruno Latour’s meaning of the word–as a material object that anticipates effects in specific settings. Cloatre follows the text from its consolidation in European meeting halls to its use in the former French and British colonies of Ghana and Djibouti. Pills for the Poorest is a significant ethnography of law and healthcare in Africa that shows precisely how this paper tool begat new buildings, relationships, experts, and, indeed, pills, but only in particular places, among certain people, and for particular kinds of pharmaceuticals. Cloatre is a broadly trained scholar and talented researcher who shows the power of Actor Network Theory as an analytic device, and yet does so with a spirit of critique in the best sense: that is, as an act of sympathetic, yet persistent, questioning. As a text itself, the book has potential to reshape the thinking of readers from a wide range of fields, from law, science studies, healthcare policy, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Particle Man”, Charles Bukowski, Heidegger’s tool-analysis, Atari, Ace of Cakes, aliens, tiny ontology, Bruno Latour, ontography, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, the Bossa-Nova, Scribblenauts, Ben Marcus, “What is it like to be a bat?”, carpentry, cyborg homes, sugar granules, and The Wire. What you’ve just read (assuming that you’ve gotten here via the list above) is a very particular form of knowledge-making. It is a list, a catalogue, a community of things. It is also a kind of travelogue, a “Latour litany” that maps some of the objects populating Ian Bogost‘s beautifully written and wonderfully stimulating new book, Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Opening with a piece of a They Might Be Giants song and ending with a part of a poem by Charles Bukowski, Bogost’s book introduces readers to the field of object-oriented ontology by asking us to consider a fundamental question: why do we ignore “stuff” in scholarship, poetry, science, or business as anything more than a way to continue talking about humans? Is there a way to think and live with stuff in the world that doesn’t reduce it to that which concerns people, but instead considers and lives with it on its own terms? Alien Phenomenology helps us explore this question and understand the stakes of the problem in five chapters that each introduce a key concept informing a discussion of the being of objects in our world: “tiny ontology” as a model for thinking with things, ontography as a means of mapping them as parts and wholes, metaphorism as a way of getting at the experiences of nonhumans, carpentry as a philosophical practice, and wonder. Though it will be of special interest to readers with an interest in literature, philosophy, and the humanities, the book itself speaks beyond any single disciplinary frame. From the perspective of science studies or STS, it offers a way of moving with and beyond the language of Actor-Network Theory and “agency” of the non-human world, potentially helping us to reframe our questions about objects and the narratives of science, medicine, technology, and modernity in innovative ways. (At the very least, it has been transformative for this historian of science.) Not only is it thoughtfully argued and elegantly (at times, gorgeously) written, but it’s also a lot of fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Particle Man”, Charles Bukowski, Heidegger’s tool-analysis, Atari, Ace of Cakes, aliens, tiny ontology, Bruno Latour, ontography, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, the Bossa-Nova, Scribblenauts, Ben Marcus, “What is it like to be a bat?”, carpentry, cyborg homes, sugar granules, and The Wire. What you’ve just read (assuming that you’ve gotten here via the list above) is a very particular form of knowledge-making. It is a list, a catalogue, a community of things. It is also a kind of travelogue, a “Latour litany” that maps some of the objects populating Ian Bogost‘s beautifully written and wonderfully stimulating new book, Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Opening with a piece of a They Might Be Giants song and ending with a part of a poem by Charles Bukowski, Bogost’s book introduces readers to the field of object-oriented ontology by asking us to consider a fundamental question: why do we ignore “stuff” in scholarship, poetry, science, or business as anything more than a way to continue talking about humans? Is there a way to think and live with stuff in the world that doesn’t reduce it to that which concerns people, but instead considers and lives with it on its own terms? Alien Phenomenology helps us explore this question and understand the stakes of the problem in five chapters that each introduce a key concept informing a discussion of the being of objects in our world: “tiny ontology” as a model for thinking with things, ontography as a means of mapping them as parts and wholes, metaphorism as a way of getting at the experiences of nonhumans, carpentry as a philosophical practice, and wonder. Though it will be of special interest to readers with an interest in literature, philosophy, and the humanities, the book itself speaks beyond any single disciplinary frame. From the perspective of science studies or STS, it offers a way of moving with and beyond the language of Actor-Network Theory and “agency” of the non-human world, potentially helping us to reframe our questions about objects and the narratives of science, medicine, technology, and modernity in innovative ways. (At the very least, it has been transformative for this historian of science.) Not only is it thoughtfully argued and elegantly (at times, gorgeously) written, but it’s also a lot of fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“By error or by chance, I think I have discovered an angel.” First things first: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject (University of Chicago Press, 2012) is a masterful, inspiring book. Rather than producing a biography of Hawking, which this is decidedly not, Helene Mialet‘s book encourages us to question the very possibility of knowing who Hawking is without taking away the agency of the man himself, ultimately helping readers reconsider how we think about individuality, embodiment, and personhood in extremely productive ways. Taking a beautifully cinematic approach, Mialet guides us through a series of chapters that help us understand different aspects of the production of Hawking and HAWKING (the distinction becoming clear in the course of the book and the interview) by looking at the machines, bodies, inscriptions, images, and movements that constitute Stephen Hawking. Together, the chapters explore the productive tensions and co-creations of the collective and the individual. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory but pushing it into new territory, Mialet's study uses a thick description of Hawking's “extended body” to allow us a glimpse into the formation, movement, and circulation of identity in general, in the sciences and potentially well beyond. What does it mean to say “he thinks”? What's the difference between dealing with texts and people? How do we define what is “original” and how does that translate into the archive? Mialet's work explores these and other questions in a series of ethnographic accounts and stories that are both fascinating to read and extremely helpful to think with. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“By error or by chance, I think I have discovered an angel.” First things first: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject (University of Chicago Press, 2012) is a masterful, inspiring book. Rather than producing a biography of Hawking, which this is decidedly not, Helene Mialet‘s book encourages us to question the very possibility of knowing who Hawking is without taking away the agency of the man himself, ultimately helping readers reconsider how we think about individuality, embodiment, and personhood in extremely productive ways. Taking a beautifully cinematic approach, Mialet guides us through a series of chapters that help us understand different aspects of the production of Hawking and HAWKING (the distinction becoming clear in the course of the book and the interview) by looking at the machines, bodies, inscriptions, images, and movements that constitute Stephen Hawking. Together, the chapters explore the productive tensions and co-creations of the collective and the individual. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory but pushing it into new territory, Mialet’s study uses a thick description of Hawking’s “extended body” to allow us a glimpse into the formation, movement, and circulation of identity in general, in the sciences and potentially well beyond. What does it mean to say “he thinks”? What’s the difference between dealing with texts and people? How do we define what is “original” and how does that translate into the archive? Mialet’s work explores these and other questions in a series of ethnographic accounts and stories that are both fascinating to read and extremely helpful to think with. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“By error or by chance, I think I have discovered an angel.” First things first: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject (University of Chicago Press, 2012) is a masterful, inspiring book. Rather than producing a biography of Hawking, which this is decidedly not, Helene Mialet‘s book encourages us to question the very possibility of knowing who Hawking is without taking away the agency of the man himself, ultimately helping readers reconsider how we think about individuality, embodiment, and personhood in extremely productive ways. Taking a beautifully cinematic approach, Mialet guides us through a series of chapters that help us understand different aspects of the production of Hawking and HAWKING (the distinction becoming clear in the course of the book and the interview) by looking at the machines, bodies, inscriptions, images, and movements that constitute Stephen Hawking. Together, the chapters explore the productive tensions and co-creations of the collective and the individual. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory but pushing it into new territory, Mialet’s study uses a thick description of Hawking’s “extended body” to allow us a glimpse into the formation, movement, and circulation of identity in general, in the sciences and potentially well beyond. What does it mean to say “he thinks”? What’s the difference between dealing with texts and people? How do we define what is “original” and how does that translate into the archive? Mialet’s work explores these and other questions in a series of ethnographic accounts and stories that are both fascinating to read and extremely helpful to think with. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“By error or by chance, I think I have discovered an angel.” First things first: Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject (University of Chicago Press, 2012) is a masterful, inspiring book. Rather than producing a biography of Hawking, which this is decidedly not, Helene Mialet‘s book encourages us to question the very possibility of knowing who Hawking is without taking away the agency of the man himself, ultimately helping readers reconsider how we think about individuality, embodiment, and personhood in extremely productive ways. Taking a beautifully cinematic approach, Mialet guides us through a series of chapters that help us understand different aspects of the production of Hawking and HAWKING (the distinction becoming clear in the course of the book and the interview) by looking at the machines, bodies, inscriptions, images, and movements that constitute Stephen Hawking. Together, the chapters explore the productive tensions and co-creations of the collective and the individual. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory but pushing it into new territory, Mialet’s study uses a thick description of Hawking’s “extended body” to allow us a glimpse into the formation, movement, and circulation of identity in general, in the sciences and potentially well beyond. What does it mean to say “he thinks”? What’s the difference between dealing with texts and people? How do we define what is “original” and how does that translate into the archive? Mialet’s work explores these and other questions in a series of ethnographic accounts and stories that are both fascinating to read and extremely helpful to think with. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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