Sociomaterial Practices Research Articles

A practice-based approach to understanding learning on placement: identifying handholds and knowing how to go on

ABSTRACT One of the key challenges in work-integrated learning (WIL) courses is how to account for learning that takes place away from campus, where the work space, daily routines and emergent actions within an organisation shape the possibilities for student learning. What do students do on placement to open the possibilities of working and learning in temporary sites of work? Using a practice-based approach, this paper outlines an ethnographic study of learning on placement. The paper draws on Gherardi’s ([2019]. How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods. 2nd ed. Cheltnham: Edward Elgar Publishing) work on learning and knowing in practice to demonstrate how students learn to participate in situated practices to accomplish work tasks. It employs a rock-climbing metaphor to illuminate what students do in order to continue on with work when they encounter something surprising, make an error or have a question. The findings suggest student learning relies on the sociomaterial practices that produce and are produced by each unique workplace situation. The paper shows how learning on placement comprises the identification and use of distinct ‘handhold’ activities performed through simultaneous processes of knowing, doing and inventing.

Evidence use as sociomaterial practice? A qualitative study of decision-making on introducing service innovations in health care

ABSTRACT A policy aspiration is that evidence should inform decision-making on introducing health service innovations. Internationally, innovation adoption has historically been slow and patchy. Three innovations in the English and Scottish National Health Service were analysed qualitatively: stroke service reconfiguration; revised national guidance on cancer referral; and ‘virtual’ glaucoma outpatient clinics. The authors identify three sociomaterial mechanisms through which evidence and context shape each other in decision-making: connecting, ordering, resisting. Shared preferences for research evidence enabled the medical profession to exert influence on decision-making, while other professions used alternative evidence. Implications for promoting inclusive public management around service innovations are discussed.

Empty Minds: Innovating Audience Participation in Symphonic Practice

ABSTRACT Symphony orchestras today acknowledge the need to make their art relevant again in today's societies and innovate their practices. When these innovations regard audience participation, they challenge the ritualised formats of classical music performance and disrupt normative, social, and artistic traditions. The orchestra therefore presents an interesting case to develop a better understanding of the value-laden dynamics of innovation in public participation. Implicit notions of an ‘ideal public’ and its desirable behaviour often structure the design, set-up, and assessment of participatory innovations. Fieldwork during the Empty Minds concerts, that the South Netherlands Philharmonic organised in 2018 to innovate participation, supports this claim. The organisers aimed to assign new participatory roles to the audience. Throughout the organisational process, three forms of frictions developed. The hierarchical pattern of symphonic concerts conflicted with the plan for new audience participation, material routines were challenged, and during the actual concerts, audience members did not participate in new ways. The observed frictions show that what matters artistically cannot be separated from how the performance is organised: artistic qualities emerge in and through socio-material practice. What comes to count as desirable public participation is thus not a given, but needs to be continuously articulated, negotiated and constructed.

Understanding the Practice of School Management through the Perspective of Sociomateriality

Abstract The objective of this study was to analyze the practice of school management in light of sociomateriality in a public school of a capital in the northeast of Brazil. When studying school management from the perspective of sociomateriality, it is understood that this practice does not occur exclusively through the “hands” of the principal, but is a dynamic, situated phenomenon that develops different nuances through the interaction of various actors (human and non-human). A qualitative research method was employed, through shadowing and interview to the double. Data analysis relied on the framework prepared by Bispo (2015). Three fragments of practices that make up the texture of school management were identified: pedagogical practice, administrative support practice, and social interest practice. We found that the practice of school management does not happen in isolation, but is interconnected within the greater texture of sociomaterial practices.

Understanding the Practice of School Management through the Perspective of Sociomateriality

Abstract The objective of this study was to analyze the practice of school management in light of sociomateriality in a public school of a capital in the northeast of Brazil. When studying school management from the perspective of sociomateriality, it is understood that this practice does not occur exclusively through the “hands” of the principal, but is a dynamic, situated phenomenon that develops different nuances through the interaction of various actors (human and non-human). A qualitative research method was employed, through shadowing and interview to the double. Data analysis relied on the framework prepared by Bispo (2015). Three fragments of practices that make up the texture of school management were identified: pedagogical practice, administrative support practice, and social interest practice. We found that the practice of school management does not happen in isolation, but is interconnected within the greater texture of sociomaterial practices.

Belonging as situated practice

ABSTRACT This article offers a rethinking of a fundamental area of higher education research and practice: the concept of belonging. Extending the considerable international research attending to belonging, we suggest that normative narratives often contain a number of omissions. Such omissions include a consideration of the experiences of those students who may not wish to, or who cannot, belong, as well as a questioning of the very boundaries of belonging. Crucially, our reconceptualisation occurs within the context of the post-Covid-19 times in which we now live. Such times have seen a rapid move to emergency remote teaching, and, we suggest, offer an opening in which belonging can no longer be taken-for-granted as uniform and, as located within fixed times and spaces. Engaging generative concepts from the work of Massey, and Braidotti, and drawing upon Adam’s notion of timescapes, we propose a reframing of belonging as situated, relational and processual. Within this lens, belonging can be understood as a sociomaterial practice that shifts within, across and beyond online and face to face timespaces. At the end of this article, we examine the implications of such a reframing for educators seeking to develop belonging, and we also offer suggestions for further research.

Prioritising the mobilisation of emergency medical services: patient making at the healthcare gateway

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the socio-material practices through which organisational understanding of patients is accomplished in order to prioritise calls and mobilise emergency medical services at the gateway of the healthcare system.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology of this paper is an ethnographic study of the co-ordination of collective action in an emergency services control room in the Welsh NHS, with data generation and analysis informed by Translational Mobilisation Theory.FindingsMobilisation of emergency medical services entails the translation of callers' undifferentiated problems into response priority categories, which are used by dispatch operators to mobilise crews. A central actor in these processes is the computerised Medical Priority Dispatch System. While designed to enable non-clinically qualified call handlers to triage calls in a standardised way, the system constrains caller–call handler interaction, which negatively impacts the categorisation process. Analysis of these interactional difficulties and associated mitigation strategies highlights opportunities for intervening to support co-ordination at this healthcare boundary.Originality/valueOrthodox approaches to improving interface management are founded on a conceptualisation of “patients” as immutable actors in care transfer processes. Translational Mobilisation Theory brings into view the multiple versions of the “patient” produced by healthcare systems and offers a framework for analysing the mechanisms of action necessary to create organisational understandings of patients at boundary crossings. While the ambulance control centre is a singular case, the paper illustrates the value of attending to these processes in interface organisation.

The balancing act of social enterprise: An IT emergence perspective

The significance of IT in the context of non-digital social enterprises (SEs) and its influence on the viability of such SEs have been less studied themes in information systems research. In the era of ubiquitous IT, SEs have increasing pressures to cope with the ever-dynamic technological domain while balancing their dual objectives. Data from a single revelatory case of Jaipur Rugs (JR), an SE situated in a developing country context (India), is used to fathom the peculiarities of the SE context with a focus on the sociomaterial phenomena of IT emergence. Using the three fundamental notions of sociomateriality theory (relationality, performativity, and practice) this interpretive study understands the mechanisms underlying the SE’s attempt to balance its financial and social sustainability objectives. Through the innovative use of IT, the SE establishes and maintains shared value, yielding stability and efficiency to the business (financial viability) while simultaneously ensuring scalability and effectiveness of their social impact. This study strengthens the perspective of IT as an emergent phenomenon situated in sociomaterial practices and fills a gap in organizational literature by examining such phenomenon in the rich context of SEs where achieving the balance between dual goals is increasingly dependent on non-human (IT) agents.

Autonomous technologies in human ecologies: enlanguaged cognition, practices and technology

Advanced technologies such as drones, intelligent algorithms and androids have grave implications for human existence. With the purpose of exploring their basis for doing so, the paper proposes a framework for investigating the complex relationship between such devices and human practices and language-mediated cognition. Specifically, it centers on the importance of the typically neglected intermediate layer of culture which not only drives both technophobia and philia but also, more fundamentally, connects pre-reflective experience and socio-material practices by placing advanced technologies in the loop. Theoretically, the paper draws on contributions from performativist Science and Technology Studies and Radically Embodied Cognitive Science and pushes new grounds by stressing their compatibility. Yet, it also emphasizes the importance of the enlanguaged side of cognition which is a requirement for human-style socio-material practices and, hence, the emergence of cultures that fetishizes certain technologies.

Curating Spaces of Hope: Exploring the Potential for Intra-Communities’ Dialogue (ICD) and Faith-Based Organisations, in a Post-COVID Society

During this paper I will consider the role of Faith-Based Organisations (FBOs) in connecting and resourcing communities through partnerships with the public sector, and the potential for partnerships of these kinds to inform curation of new spaces of hope, engagement, and practice, in a post-COVID society, using intra-communities dialogue. First, I will explore intra-communities dialogue (ICD). I will present ICD as the process of mapping and listening to shared matters of concern and socio-material practices that emerge from secular and religious actants who share and shape the same postsecular public spaces. Second, I will argue that to use ICD a new understanding of FBOs is required. Therefore, I will consider the deficit of understanding of FBOs within the literatures and propose a synthesis of different typologies of FBOs through the production of a new paradigm of FBOs, called Spaces of Hope. Third, I will use Spaces of Hope to open up the socio-material nuances of space within three FBOs, Mustard Seed, Beacon Community and Old Town Church (OTC) and address four matters of concern for FBOs: different practices, different spheres, different scales and different beliefs. This will show how Spaces of Hope can resource and support ICD within and between FBOs. Finally, in light of the capacity of Spaces of Hope to engage in ICD and map postsecular spaces, I will conclude by questioning how Spaces of Hope might support postsecular partnerships through ICD within a post-COVID society.

“This is where we do it!”. Materiality, family, and musealization in second homes

The materiality of family-inherited second homes offers a rich example of musealization in the private sphere. Presuming that relational socio-material practices that enact family culture and history take place at these houses, we conducted an observation and interview study by visiting ten family-inherited second homes in Denmark. In our analysis of these visits, we examine various practices by which musealization takes place in the second homes. We emphasize that the inherited second homes set scenes for musealization practices concerning a wide collective and temporally elongated family member circle. We also claim that unstable and undecided musealization practices can sometimes be useful for balancing past, present, and future claims of the second home’s materiality. We finally suggest that musealization practices in family-inherited second homes present vibrant and negotiable ways of relating to the past that might inspire cultural historical museums.

Are they playing? Analysing “play” in playful learning in occupational therapy education

Playful learning has become a common practice in Denmark, across primary and secondary education, however, the phrase playful learning might sound like a paradox, because learning and play suggest opposite values. In playful learning, play is approached as a learning resource, able to foster understanding and critical thinking. In the Occupational Therapy (OT) education, there has been a rich exploration of different forms of digitally mediated role-play, to enable students to prepare beforehand to engage with patients, enacting clinical scenarios with each other. Current studies in OT education focus on the learning impact of digital media and role-play, not investigating how students experience their play, which is an essential pre-condition to learning. Starting from these premises, I conducted a design-oriented research study, involving students and teachers in OT in Denmark, to investigate how students experience their play during mediated role-play activities. Results show that playful learning is a complex sociomaterial practice, framed by power relationships embodied by the provided digital media, the relationships among the participants, and the institutional context. Within this framing, play is continually negotiated among the teachers and the students, who manage to gain room for self-expression through observable changes in play moods and practices.

Listed Buildings as Socio-material Hybrids: Assessing Tangible and Intangible Heritage Using Social Network Analysis

Immaterial manifestations of culture have received increasing attention over the past two decades. This is of particular relevance to the contemporary built heritage professional who must not only consider intangible heritage within assessments but attempt to understand its relationship with the physical building fabric. Underpinned by a ‘Practice Theory’ ontology, this research explores how social network analysis (SNA) can reveal entanglements between tangible and intangible heritage by focussing on practices and relationships. Using the Grade II* Long Street Methodist Church and Sunday School, Greater Manchester, UK, the study demonstrates how the basic use of SNA for built heritage assessment can offer a deeper insight into the significance of a listed building. The study demonstrates how SNA can support: an equality of visibility across heritage domains, a better understanding of tangible–intangible relationships and the illumination of underlying practices that sustains these relationships. Perhaps most importantly, it emphasizes the dynamic and unpredictable nature of heritage by de-emphasizing the centrality of the building within heritage assessment processes and reconceptualizing it as an inherent part of social phenomena. In doing so, it suggests one must accept the notion that socio-material practices should be considered for conservation and safeguarding, alongside the physical building itself.

Quarantined, Sequestered, Closed: Theorising Academic Bodies Under Covid-19 Lockdown

The term ‘quarantine’ is derived from the Italian quarantena, from quaranta, referring to the forty days of isolation traditionally imposed during the era of the Black Death in Europe. This paper examines this and related contemporary terms, in order to consider the complex and contradictory nature of enforced sites of isolation, with reference to the historical literature. The centrality of spatial practices in the current pandemic is emphasised, with a focus on the normally unobserved, micro practices of individuals under ‘lockdown’. The paper reports on an interview study conducted at a large UK Higher Education institution during the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’, and analyses the accounts of six academics, focusing particularly on their embodied and sociomaterial practices, with reference to the etymological analysis. The paper considers the extent to which their reported experiences reflect the various meanings of the term sequestrato, going on to propose that their working practices, particularly focused on screens and video calls, are characterised by a need to ‘perform the university’. I speculate on how the ontological nature of the university itself has been fundamentally altered by the closure of the campus and lockdown, proposing that the site of the university is now radically dispersed across these sequestered bodies. I conclude by calling into the question the accuracy of the term ‘online teaching and learning’, instead suggesting that in a fundamental sense, none of these practices is in fact ‘online’ or digital.

Creating family-friendly pub experiences: A composite data study

Abstract Pubs have traditionally been important social and community spaces, hosting multiple consumer segments. Successful pubs have broadened their appeal, for example by expanding their food provision and targeting family segments. However, little is known about the features and practices that make pubs appealing to families. Drawing on a ‘composite’ data set, consisting of 40 qualitative interviews and 387 responses to a directed online discussion thread, this paper examines what contributes to making pubs family-friendly. Data show how parental consumption intersects with parenting work, highlighting how physical and symbolic design features, tailored services, social interactions, and socio-material practices of the food offerings can shape consumption experiences positively and negatively. The paper thus contributes to practical knowledge by identifying how pubs can create family-friendly experiences. It also contributes to theoretical knowledge by conceptualising how ‘framing’ processes or effects, shaped by personal, situational and socio-cultural ‘imperatives’, influence consumer perceptions, behaviours and experiences.

Negotiating the practical ethics of 'self-tracking' in intimate relationships: Looking for care in healthy living.

In this paper, we offer insights into practices of tracking as part of healthy living through talk about home blood pressure and weight from adults living in the UK. Drawing on theoretical resources from feminist ethics of care and Science and Technology Studies on care as socio-material practice, we build on interest in the relational dimensions of tracking and the potential for intimate surveillance and care using monitoring technologies. Our cases offer not only new perspectives in a field that has often focused on fitness tracking but also help go beyond a narrow focus on surveillance, showing how surveillance and care may be intertwined in the everyday negotiation of health-related tracking and other 'health practices' in family life. Using the diversity in our relatively large sample, and reflecting on the different types of interview completed, we highlight the varied ways in which adults engage with tracking blood pressure and weight (or body mass index) in the context of established relationships. The combination of attentiveness and appeals to responsibility for maintaining health as something owed to a partner can make tracking a very ethically sensitive area. In this paper we emphasise that reciprocity is one important way in which couples make tracking feel more like care. Tracking together or discussing it can take couples in this direction even if the actual practice remains somewhat difficult. On the other hand, responsiveness to someone else's feelings, including a desire to avoid the topic altogether, or avoid weight as a specific parameter, might all help move towards more caring tracking. We therefore develop a more sustained account of care in relation to tracking than in previous work, and a novel account of tracking as a (potential) care practice between adult partners.

Automation and the imbrication of human and material agency: A sociomaterial perspective

• An ethnographic workplace study onboard ships was conducted to analyze human-automation interactions. • Introduces new theory into the field of human-automation interaction. • Analyzes human-automation interactions as a socio-material process generating new skills, practices and adaptations. • Emphasizes the role of workplace learning for the introduction of technology/automation in complex sociotechnical settings. • Contributes to the field of human-automation interaction by offering a contextual understanding of ‘automation in the wild’. Automation is projected to transform many industries and work domains and enable both increased levels of safety and efficiency by reallocating many of the functions traditionally performed by operators. However, research on the relation between automation and work practice is lagging and needs to be further explored in order to ground the debate and design of automated work on a sound empirical basis reflecting work in actual organizational settings. In particular, research is needed that offers rich naturalistic representations of human automation interaction that accounts for the mutual shaping of human and material agency over time. The ethnographic workplace study reported in this paper draws on the sociomaterial practice perspective and on the theory of imbrication to analyze a case in which an automatic speed regulation system was installed onboard five large passenger ferries in order to improve the energy efficiency of the execution of voyages. The results show how the adoption, appropriation and use of automated technologies is inextricable from the local patterns of social interaction and collaboration. The study contributes with a deeper understanding of the relation and entanglement of the social and technological elements in human automation interaction.

Knowledge ‘transfer’ as sociocultural and sociomaterial practice

Research on migration and knowledge transfer predominantly focuses on expatriate and return migrants, who are acclaimed for transferring knowledge from the west to the rest of the world. Not only does the literature reinforce the west as the epistemic centre, but it conjures a realist image of knowledge as an objective thing. To interrupt these images, this paper examines the knowledge transfer experiences of 22 immigrant engineers in Canada. Theoretically, it posits knowledge transfer as an effect of immigrants’ enrolment in sociocultural and sociomaterial practices within professions. Empirically, it pinpoints three ways in which immigrants help expand engineering practices, i.e., assembling knowledge, mobilizing the capacity of learning to learn, and negotiating being and becoming. The process of transfer, as accounted by research respondents, is enabled through access to epistemic and boundary objects, reception of peer professionals, and the rise of (niche) needs. The paper draws on a narrative case study.

Unraveling the Theoretical Traditions in the Field of Strategy-as- Practice

Strategy-as-practice (SAP) has become one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary strategy research in the past two decades. As the field has grown significantly, we have witnessed an emergence of various streams of research within the SAP research community. The present study uses data from 311 SAP articles to conduct a bibliometric analysis and a systematic review for the identified clusters. This study contributes to the SAP literature by recognizing its constitutive streams of research (clusters) and their characteristic features, identifying the various tensions emerging between them, as well as elucidating the research opportunities evolving from these tensions as well as from within the clusters themselves. By clustering studies cited in SAP research, we identify five clusters of SAP research and additionally a set of connections of SAP research: 1) social practice, 2) the sensemaking approach, 3) discursive perspectives, 4) sociomaterial practices 5) practice- driven institutionalism, and 6) connections of SAP with other fields of research. Building on our review of the identified clusters, we observe four key tensions between them, process vs. practice, practical vs. critical, micro vs. macro, and sociomaterial vs. discursive. We propose that addressing these four tensions provides a fertile agenda for future research in the field.

Institutional Change and Sociomaterial Practices: Healthcare Reform in the Turkish Healthcare Field

Institutions are changed and maintained through practices that encompass interactions between humans and materials. However, we know less about what kind of mechanisms take part in shaping these practices. In this paper, we seek the answer to this question through a qualitative inductive study. We reveal power-based mechanisms that have both social and material foundations, the latter of which are mostly underexamined in the extant research. We make use of the sociomateriality concept that helps us capture sources of power without privileging the social over the material. We analyzed sociomaterial practices in two emergency departments after the emergence of managerialist approaches in the healthcare services of Turkey. We show what kind of power-based mechanisms participate in changing or maintaining institutions through the model developed in this study. Accordingly, we have substantial contributions to three broad literature streams - institutional theory, power, and materiality - and also facilitate to cross-fertilize them.