Abstract
Social coordination and affordance perception always take part in concrete situations in real life. Nonetheless, the different fields of ecological psychology studying these phenomena do not seem to make this situated nature an object of study. To integrate both fields and extend the reach of the ecological approach, we introduce the Skilled Intentionality Framework that situates both social coordination and affordance perception within the human form of life and its rich landscape of affordances. We argue that in the human form of life the social and the material are intertwined and best understood as sociomateriality. Taking the form of life as our starting point foregrounds sociomateriality in each perspective we take on engaging with affordances. Using ethnographical examples we show how sociomateriality shows up from three different perspectives we take on affordances in a real-life situation. One perspective shows us a landscape of affordances that the sociomaterial environment offers. Zooming in on this landscape to the perspective of a local observer, we can focus on an individual coordinating with affordances offered by things and other people situated in this landscape. Finally, viewed from within this unfolding activity, we arrive at the person’s lived perspective: a field of relevant affordances solicits activity. The Skilled Intentionality Framework offers a way of integrating social coordination and affordance theory by drawing attention to these complementary perspectives. We end by showing a real-life example from the practice of architecture that suggests how this situated view that foregrounds sociomateriality can extend the scope of ecological psychology to forms of so-called “higher” cognition.
Highlights
In order to understand human social coordination in a Gibsonian framework it is important to understand in what sense affordances – possibilities for action provided to us by the environment (Gibson, 1979) – are always already situated in the sociomaterial practices that make up our human form of life; i.e., in what sense it is an affordance-in-sociomaterial-practice
By making the human form of life the starting point for ecological psychology, and foregrounding sociomateriality in each situation, this paper showed how the Skilled Intentionality Framework integrates affordances with social coordination
By showing how the sociomaterial entanglement re-appears when taking three different perspectives on (i) the whole form of life – and the persistent landscape of affordances it implies, and (ii) the zoomed in perspective of an observing behavioral scientist or dynamicist observing an actor located at a particular place in the landscape of affordances and (iii) the lived perspective of person engaged in action – we showed what a situated, integrated take on engagement with affordances looks like
Summary
In order to understand human social coordination in a Gibsonian framework it is important to understand in what sense affordances – possibilities for action provided to us by the environment (Gibson, 1979) – are always already situated in the sociomaterial practices that make up our human form of life; i.e., in what sense it is an affordance-in-sociomaterial-practice. Affordances-in-Sociomaterial-Practice combine such theoretical work on affordances with concrete reallife situations of social interaction as described in ethnography. As such this paper is targeted to anyone with an interest in affordances and skilled action, including skilled social action as we encounter that for example in ecological psychology, philosophy and various domains within the social sciences. Affordances are aspects of the ecological niche of a kind of animal. They always figure in a “setting of environmental features” They always figure in a “setting of environmental features” (Gibson, 1979, p. 129), or of multiple affordances (p. 128)
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