Socio-technical Configurations Research Articles

THE EMERGENT QUALITIES OF DIGITAL SPECIMEN IMAGES IN BIOLOGY

Whilst digital technologies are often popularly portrayed as inherently different from their material counterparts, recent research has accentuated continuities between the two. Research on the material aspects of digital technologies has emphasized that both material and digital technologies are embedded in practice and acquire their meaning in context. This is particularly so in science, where research in science and technology studies has illuminated the contextual interpretation of representations and their contingent manifestation through embedding in specific sociotechnical configurations. This article explores how digital technologies are experienced in a specific field of science, biological systematics. Email accounts were solicited from biologists who have been working with digital images of the biological specimens conventionally used in work on the classification and naming of organisms. Thematic analysis of the interviews shows that qualities of digital images were highly contextual, often defined in dialogue with their material counterparts which are also defined in fluid and contextual fashion. Discussing the use of digital specimen images involved distinctions between different forms of work and different organisms being studied and referenced the varied institutional and geographic positioning of respondents. The introduction of digital images offered the possibility of new sociotechnical configurations emerging and to some extent realized the aspirations of digitization projects to enable new forms of distributed working. This was, however, a qualified success restricted to only some aspects of the systematists’ work.

How Heritage’s Debate on Values Fuels Its Valorization Engine: The Side Effects of Controversy from Alois Riegl to Richard Moe

Discussions of values and valuation constitute a substantial portion of the recent theoretical and policy discourse of heritage conservation. The contrast between many preservationists’ proclivity for broad inclusiveness and economists’ quest for specifiable and parsimonious models has now been explored through a number of heritage conferences and publications. This article moves the debate in a new direction. The argument begins with a discussion of the embedded and inevitable entanglements of assigning value, valuation, and the changeable process by which value is ascribed to an object, valorization. Although alluded to in a few other heritage publications, the discussion here turns to actor network theory (ANT), and specifically the work on the sociotechnical configuration of markets by Michel Callon, for direction. The heritage specific sections of the article focus on historical changes in the policy environment of preservation, and a discussion of how heritage stakeholders, even those as self-consciously detached as academic economists, must be considered to be actors embedded in those activities, including markets, which they propose to critique.

Folksonomia: a linguagem das tags

A radicalização do potencial colaborativo da web atual aponta uma tendência de personalização da recuperação da informação através de ferramentas que exploram a linguagem natural na representação e no compartilhamento de conteúdos ao longo das redes sociais. Tal configuração sócio-técnica traz desafios aos profissionais da informação tanto para a descrição e compreensão dos fenômenos informacionais que ocorrem neste âmbito, quanto para a elaboração de produtos e serviços voltados para um usuário que se apresenta cada vez mais como sujeito informacional ao assumir um papel ativo diante da complexidade que caracteriza a organização da informação em contextos digitais. Este artigo apresenta conclusões de pesquisa, relacionadas às analises da linguagem utilizada em três ambientes colaborativos que utilizam a folksonomia (Social Tagging Systems). A partir de uma perspectiva fundamentada na Semiótica e na Análise de Redes Sociais, são identificadas e descritas as principais manifestações da linguagem gerada e compartilhada pelas redes sociais através destes ambientes.

Bio-objects’ political capacity: a research agenda

This article explores the merits of foregrounding the dichotomy of politicization vs de-politicization for our understanding of bio-objects in order to study their production, circulation, and governance in European societies. By asking how bio-objects are configured in science, policy, public, and media discourses and practices, we focus on the role of socio-technical configurations in generating political relations. The bio-object thereby serves as an entry point to approach and conceptualize “the political” in an innovative way.

Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field

The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’; but recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation – the international field of community currencies – which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external ‘landscape’ pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context.

Argentina: Dissemination of genetically modified cotton and its impact on the profitability of small-scale farmers in the Chaco province

This article analyses the adoption of genetically modified cotton by small-scale farmers in the Chaco region of Argentina. It uses the socio-technical configuration of the technology as a conceptual framework, which postulates the existence of a set of factors that significantly affect the way in which technologies operate. Based on this framework, the article describes the conditions under which small-scale farmers in the Chaco region adopt gm cotton; and it identifies the differences between them and large-scale farmers, on which most of the literature focuses. Qualitative methodologies are used to analyse the breaks and continuities in productive practices affecting the profitability of small-scale farmers since the introduction of gm cotton. It is found that the productive difficulties they face have remained essentially unchanged, and, in some cases, have become more accentuated.

Local Demonstrations for Global Transitions—Dynamics across Governance Levels Fostering Socio-Technical Regime Change Towards Sustainability

Which role do spatial dimensions play in the transformation of socio-technical regimes, in particular the energy system, towards more sustainable configurations? Concepts such as the multi-level perspective on socio-technical change have not given sufficient attention to space and place so far. We develop our considerations around the case of an “Energy Region” in Austria where people try to bring about a substantive shift in their “local” energy supply structure and have the ambition to contribute to a “general” transition towards sustainable energy systems. However, if this ambition is to stand the test of reality, what are the mechanisms and processes through which regional governance can have a broader impact on the transition of the energy system? What are the resources it can draw upon? What are the linkages with other governance levels? We investigate in detail how one regional showcase for the feasibility of a non-fossil, sustainable energy system was set up in Murau, a remote, alpine district of Austria. Starting from the multi-level framework for the modelling of niche-regime interaction, we put particular emphasis on the formation of discourse coalitions and dynamics of multi-level governance. Our findings support the view to pay considerably more attention to the interplay of local and non-local discourses and the dynamic relations between local initiatives and non-local networks which can provide specific opportunities for the legitimization and entrenchment of alternative socio-technical configurations.

Inoculations, processions religieuses et quarantaines

Cet article analyse comment la circulation des connaissances hétérogènes en matière de diagnostic et traitement des varioles entre l’Amérique, l’Europe et l’Afrique a forgé l’ensemble des pratiques implantées, développées et utilisées en Amérique latine au XVIIIe siècle. Il démontre comment les procédés mis en place pour faire face aux épidémies de varioles – l’inoculation, la procession religieuse, l’isolement et la mise en quarantaine – ont été différemment compris par les acteurs sociaux et que ces interprétations dépendaient, à leur tour, du type de problème pour lequel les procédés étaient considérés comme une solution. Les pratiques d’inoculation avec des varioles humaines, dans le but de générer une immunité ultérieure, ont façonné des ensembles complexes d’acteurs aux intérêts particuliers (parfois contradictoires), de connaissances variées (savoirs traditionnels et savoirs académiques), d’institutions politiques, médicales, religieuses, commerciales, de controverses et de luttes micropolitiques.Ce travail contribue à la sociologie de la science et à l’anthropologie des connaissances, tout en empruntant une approche théorique et méthodologique issue de la sociologie constructiviste de la technologie. Il permet de dépasser les visions évolutionnistes linéaires, déconstruisant ainsi l’unicité des procédés socio-techniques, et, en même temps, il rend possible l’identification des nouvelles explications, la reconstruction de procédés socio‑cognitifs pour le dialogue des savoirs et la visibilisation des phénomènes complexes de transculturalité.

Pluralising progress: From integrative transitions to transformative diversity

This paper examines key issues raised by consideration of diversity in the study of environmental innovation and societal transitions. In different ways and degrees, these implicate many contrasting perspectives, including innovation studies, evolutionary economics and transitions research. The paper therefore attends equally to the implications of plurality among disciplines as observing subjects and varieties of sociotechnical configurations as observed objects. Inspired by recent literatures in these fields, the argument focuses in turn on: contending social normativities concerning alternative directions for innovation; divergent disciplinary understandings of societal transitions; and disparate conceptualisations of sociotechnical diversity itself. In each area, the paper identifies some persistent forms of ‘misplaced concreteness’. Recommendations are made as to how the implications of diversity might be addressed in more rigorous and reflective ways. In conclusion, it is shown how rigour and reflexivity themselves depend on plural analytical communities paying greater regard to diversity and striking their own balance between pluralism and concreteness. This highlights a series of specific, but hitherto unresolved, research questions.

Pathways to power: Policy transitions and the reappearance of the nuclear power option in Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan, a Canadian prairie province, has recently begun to restructure the provincial energy system. The institutional, technological and social bases of the Saskatchewan power regime have been disrupted by both exogenous pressures and endogenous problems, providing an opportunity for alternative energy options to be considered as possible power alternatives. As the province addresses the long-term socio-technical transition (STR) associated with a regime change in the power sector a number of alternative energy options have been identified. Using a transition management approach, this paper argues that the path taken will depend very much on whether these alternatives can be adopted as modifications of the existing STR – leaving the key actors, institutions and relationships essentially untouched – or whether they will necessitate a wholesale reconstruction of the regime itself. In this paper we analyze how, over time, the socio-technical configurations of the energy system became very durable as existing technologies become embedded in regulatory frameworks, infrastructure, users practices and expert communities. We then consider the potential of several alternative technological trajectories and the likelihood of one of these socio technical regimes emerging in Saskatchewan.

Feminist HCI meets facebook: Performativity and social networking sites

In this paper, I reflect on a specific product of interaction design, social networking sites. The goals of this paper are twofold. One is to bring a feminist reflexivity, to HCI, drawing on the work of Judith Butler and her concepts of peformativity, citationality, and interpellation. Her approach is, I argue, highly relevant to issues of identity and self-representation on social networking sites; and to the co-constitution of the subject and technology. A critical, feminist HCI must ask how social media and other HCI institutions, practices, and discourses are part of the processes by which sociotechnical configurations are constructed. My second goal is to examine the implications of such an approach by applying it to social networking sites (SNSs) drawing the empirical research literature on SNSs, to show how SNS structures and policies help shape the subject and hide the contingency of subject categories.

Auf der Suche nach der Politik in der Wissensproduktion: Plädoyer für eine historisch‐politische Epistemologie

Knowledge production has an intrinsic political dimension. Starting from this presupposition, it is argued that the systematic integration of and reflection on the political dimension is necessary for an adequate understanding of historical processes of knowledge production in the sciences. The consecutive plea for a historical-political epistemology proceeds in two steps: First, it is illustrated that in a number of recent historical science study cases, the political dimension is frequently marginal, or even absent. After a short discussion of previous theoretical concepts to describe the impact of politics for the production of scientific knowledge, an approach is sketched which builds on Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's historical epistemology and Bruno Latour's symmetrical anthropology. It is argued that in addition to Rheinberger's program to describe epistemic systems, the political dimension is intrinsic to three stages of the process of data production: First to an initial phase which consists in the arrangement socio-technical configurations to produce new evidence. Here, factors such as the culturally shaped perception and evaluation of "relevant" problems, as well as the perception of career resources have to be taken into account. Second, the political dimension is relevant in view of the continuous re-adjustments of the configuration of epistemic systems, e.g., towards newly available financial, technical, or intellectual resources and "relevant" challenges from outside the system. Thirdly, the data produced and represented by epistemic systems--"evidence"--are yet in need of interpretation. This process is in itself imbued with continuously shifting mechanisms of selecting and creating hierarchies amongst the pool of available data.

BECOMING PEOPLES

While the census is sometimes understood to be an objectifying practice that constructs and makes up a population, in this paper I am concerned with how it is necessary to produce census subjects in order to construct population. By drawing on formulations by Latour, Deleuze and Law, I conceive of census taking as a practice performed by heterogeneous socio-technical arrangements of actors – humans, paper forms, categories, concepts, definitions, topography, geography – whose mediations, interactions and encounters produce census subjects. It is through the relays and interactions between varying and never fixed technological, natural and cultural actors that census taking is performed. I analyse these arrangements as constituting agencements, which focuses our attention on how agency and action are configured by and contingent upon the socio-technical arrangements that make them up. Agencements assume different socio-technical configurations and thus construct different social realities and populations that cannot be captured in a single account. The argument is advanced through an account of the taking of what was declared the first ‘scientific’ enumeration of ‘Indians’ and ‘Eskimos,’ the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Canadian Far North in 1911. I argue that the agencements were not able to bring forth the subjectivities necessary to construct population in the Far North. Not able to find subjects then, census taking could not produce nor construct a population in the Far North and the practice of census taking ended up creating a record of a census ‘other’ – an indeterminate multitude that could not identify and could not be identified as part of the population.

Decentralised systems and fuel poverty: Are there any links or risks?

This paper considers the possible links between the development of decentralised or distributed energy systems and the problem of fuel poverty in the UK. The discussion takes on board that decentralised energy systems can take many different forms, in the range of potential technologies that can be used for the local microgeneration of electricity and heat and in the range of ways in which the installation, ownership, operation, networking and maintenance of these technologies can be organised [Walker, G., Cass, N., 2007. Carbon reduction, ‘the public’ and renewable energy: engaging with sociotechnical configurations. Area 39(4), 458–469; Watson, J., Sauter, R., Bahaj, B., James, A., Myers, L., Wing, R., 2006. Unlocking the Power House: Policy and System Change for Domestic Microgeneration in the UK. SPRU, Brighton]. The focus is on housing and, in particular, on those forms of housing occupied by social groups vulnerable to fuel poverty. Both potential negative links (or risks) and positive links between decentralised generation and fuel poverty are considered. As this is a new area, there is comparatively little literature to draw on and there are significant gaps in knowledge, so some of the discussion is necessarily rather speculative.

The duality of health technology in chronic illness: how designers envision our future

This essay critically explores the role of technological innovation in the constitution of chronic states and illness. Drawing on the co-construction of technology and society perspective, it focuses more specifically on the way in which innovation designers envisage the enhancement of the chronically ill and build certain kinds of socio-technical configuration to deal with chronic illness. Using the case of ;intelligent distance patient monitoring' as an illustration, the paper argues that technology creates as much as it solves the problem of chronic illness. Technology is recursively embedded in chronic illness and it generates dual effects: it constrains and sustains users' daily practices. Only by recognizing technology's duality and eventually transcending it will research and policy initiatives be able to deal creatively and responsibly with the design of our future health experiences.

Society, Technology, and Region: Contributions from the Social Study of Technology to Economic Geography

Recent debates in economic geography have emphasized the need for a more explicit analysis of innovation processes at a sectoral or technological level. A great deal of attention has furthermore been devoted to connect the internal disciplinary debate with the wider discourse of the social sciences that deal with economic development in general and with the role of innovation in particular. In the present paper I argue that the field of the social study of technology (SST) can inspire research in economic geography in important respects: SST research has an explicit focus on the genesis of sociotechnical configurations; it has developed sector-related and technology-related multilevel theories of sociotechnical change; it has a strong emphasis on innovation dynamics and sector transformations; and finally, it has a focus on strategic planning in multiactor settings and thus favors foresight and participatory planning approaches in science, technology, and innovation policy. SST-inspired research could thus be an interesting partner for those approaches within economic geography that share some ontological starting positions with regard to actors, the role of institutions, and a revolutionary and multilevel analysis of sociotechnical transformation processes.

Information Literacy as a Sociotechnical Practice

Information literacy has thus far been mostly a practical and strategic concept guiding the library field’s efforts in teaching information seeking and using skills. Texts on information literacy rarely attempt to account for how individuals interact with other people and technical artifacts in their information environments. This article contributes to the literature on information literacy by introducing a definition of information literacy as a sociotechnical practice. Information literacy evolves in the course of realizing specific work‐related tasks and mundane activities, which usually involve a complex system of social relationships, sociotechnical configurations, and work organization. From the perspective of a situated understanding of learning and learning requirements, information skills cannot be taught independently of the knowledge domains, organizations, and practical tasks in which these skills are used. The article suggests that studying and understanding the interplay between information technologies, workplace learning, and domain‐specific knowledge formation processes is necessary for the advancement of information literacy initiatives.

Ecologies of Value in a Wall Street Trading Room

Our task in this paper is to analyze the organization of trading in the era of quantitative finance. To do so, we conduct an ethnography of arbitrage, the trading strategy that best exemplifies finance in the wake of the quantitative revolution. In contrast to value and momentum investing, we argue, arbitrage involves an art of association - the construction of equivalence (comparability) of properties across different assets. In place of essential or relational characteristics, the peculiar valuation that takes place in arbitrage is based on an operation that makes something the measure of something else - associating securities to each other. The process of recognizing opportunities and the practices of making novel associations are shaped by the specific socio-spatial and socio-technical configurations of the trading room. Calculation is distributed across persons and instruments as the trading room organizes interaction among diverse principles of valuation.

Tools of the trade: the socio-technology of arbitrage in a Wall Street trading room

To analyze the organization of trading in the era of quantitative finance we conduct an ethnography of arbitrage, the trading strategy that best exemplifies finance in the wake of the quantitative revolution. In contrast to value and momentum investing, we argue, arbitrage involves an art of association—the construction of comparability across different assets. In place of essential or relational characteristics, the peculiar valuation that takes place in arbitrage is based on an operation that makes something the measure of something else—associating securities to each other. The process of recognizing opportunities and the practices of making novel associations are shaped by the specific socio-spatial and socio-technical configurations of the trading room. Calculation is distributed across persons and instruments as the trading room organizes interaction among diverse principles of valuation.

Patents, Travel, Space: Ethnographic Encounters with Objects in Transit

In this paper, an ethnographical take on objects in motion, I follow the travel of patents from their places of origin in the Western world of technoscience to newly developing worlds. I argue that not only does the influx of patents and patent systems change the sociotechnical configurations in which they emerge; the patent itself—or so I claim—changes with its travel as well, and so it is a different thing in different places. I thus link the nature of things with the places in which they operate, and frame the patent as both a changeable object and an agent of change.