Automation interrupted: How autonomous vehicle accidents transform the material politics of automation

Abstract

This paper develops our geographical understanding of the material politics of automation. Through the empirical site of the autonomous vehicle, the paper argues that dominant understandings of the politics of contemporary automation draw on a restricted understanding of materiality where political agency is concentrated in the hands of powerful individuals or institutions. However, this focus potentially obscures the complex material agencies of the systems of automation themselves. In response, this paper develops the conceptual potentials of the accident to bring these overlooked interruptive material agencies to the fore. This provides us with an opportunity to appreciate how the sites of power in systems of contemporary digital automation are more multiple and dispersed than is often assumed. In making this argument, this paper seeks to contribute to political geographical research that has turned to questions of ontology to pluralise the sites of politics and diversify the agents of political change.