Assemblage Theory Research Articles

E‘Ride on!’: The Zwift platform as a space for virtual leisure

ABSTRACT Virtual environments as spaces for leisure are rapidly emerging within the zeitgeist of 21st century leisure practices. One such environment is the Zwift cycling and running app which provides a series of virtual worlds where cyclists and runners can train, race, and socialise with a global community from their own home. As four authors, we are all in some way curious or engaged with Zwift as a platform for our own leisure. We therefore developed a ‘community of inquiry’ to provide an initial foray into Zwift as a virtual leisure space. We each produced a section of the paper which focused respectively on assemblage theory, micro-sociology, gender, and morality. Through critique and the spirit of collegiality, these texts were refined and are presented in the paper as separate yet interlinked narratives. Our community of inquiry then reconvened to consider the mechanics of game design and to present Zwift as exhibiting the components of an interreality. The paper concludes with implications for further research which includes considering Zwift as a third space and as a panopticon.

Assembling care: How nurses organise care in uncharted territory and in times of pandemic.

This article draws on ethnographic research to conceptualise how nurses mobilise assemblages of caring to organise and deliver COVID care; particularly so by reorganising organisational infrastructures and practices of safe and good care. Based on participatory observations, interviews and nurse diaries, all collected during the early phase of the pandemic, the research shows how the organising work of nurses unfolds at different health‐care layers: in the daily care for patients and their families, in the coordination of care in and between hospitals, and at the level of the health‐care system. These findings contrast with the dominant pandemic‐image of nurses as ‘heroes at the bedside’, which fosters the classic and microlevel view of nursing and leaves the broader contribution of nurses to the pandemic unaddressed. Theoretically, the study adds to the literature on translational mobilisation and assemblage theory by focussing on the layered and often invisible organising work of nurses in health care.

Place dialogue

AbstractThis paper argues for attention to place dialogue, rethinking how place meanings emerge through interactions between human agency and the nonhuman agency of place. To speak is to act, so what is in play here is acknowledging place not only as a ‘speaker’ and a ‘listener’ but also as an agent. In addition to developing posthumanist geographies, the article proposes a new direction for geographical studies of communication, building on the semiotic theory of C.S. Peirce and closely related research in philosophical pragmatism. Communication geography research on place‐in‐communication (representations) and communication‐in‐place (infrastructures) should be complemented by a third approach that recognises place as an interlocutor intervening in meaningful ways with human and nonhuman inhabitants' lives. In calling for this sort of recognition of place dialogue, we trace an ontological shift already prescribed by Indigenous geography, assemblage theory, philosophical pragmatism and posthumanism. The body of the article offers glimpses of three place dialogues: a research meeting taking place in an outdoor seating area of a bakery/cafe, a short viral video featuring a resourceful rat living in the New York subway, and a trip to a nature preserve to climb a mountain. In each example, we show how geographers can return to the non‐modern idea that place acts and speaks.

Human Security Psychology: A Linking Construct for an Eclectic Discipline

Since its inception as a modern and evolving discipline, psychology has been concerned with issues of human security. This think piece offers an initial conceptualisation of human security as a broad security concept that encompasses a range of interrelated dimensions that have been responded to by different sub-disciplinary domains within psychology. We advance an argument for a human security psychology as a connecting focal point for general psychology that enables us to bring knowledge from across our eclectic discipline into further dialogue. This is a necessary step in understanding better the state of current thinking on the psychology of security and as a basis for informing further theory, research and practice efforts to address issues of human (in)security. This initial effort is informed by Assemblage Theory, which offers a dynamic and contextually rich perspective on people as agentive beings entangled within evolving natural and social formations that can foster or undermine their experiences of [in]security. The article is completed with a brief agenda for advancing human security psychology.

Living on Digital Flatlands: Assemblies of Computer Vision

Drawing on radical media archeology and assemblage theory, this article investigates assemblages of computer vision as they construct new spatiotemporal relations and new capacities for seeing and acting.

Alfredian military reform: the materialization of ideology and the social practice of garrisoning

King Alfred could not coerce his elites into implementing his ambitious military reforms. Instead, he had to persuade them to participate. Ideology can induce action, but how did an ideology focused on Christian wisdom motivate military reform? Different theoretical frameworks can help to identify promising new lines of enquiry. Assemblage theory illuminates the materialization of ideology in the burhs, the instantiation of relationships of power in the landscape. Social practice theory elucidates the consolidation of ideology through the social practice of garrisoning the burhs. These theories offer a fresh perspective on the subtle connection between Alfredian ideology and military reform.

Variations in Police Performance in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Domestic Policing in Ghana

The Ghana Police Service is constantly criticised by the Ghanaian public for poor performance and an inability to deal effectively with rising crime rates. Media reports and scholarly research have corroborated these criticisms, citing instances of police brutality, corruption, negligence, ineffectiveness and complicity in crimes. However, with few exceptions, the same police are widely applauded in United Nations peacekeeping operations for their professionalism, outstanding performance, and contributions to restoring peace and the rule of law. This raises the question of why the police’s performance at home differs from its performance in peacekeeping contexts. This article analyses the factors that underpin the perceived variations in police performance at home and internationally. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with relevant stakeholders and the application of assemblage theory to the empirical evidence gathered, it argues that perceived variations in performance have nothing to do with the technical competencies and knowledge of police personnel. Rather, this discrepancy can be explained by factors including: the effects of the colonial legacy on the police; different mandates/tasks in mission and in Ghana; distinct socio-cultural and political dynamics that influence policing; different legal frameworks and principles that govern domestic and international policing; limited availability of human and logistical resources and funding for domestic policing; and different methods for dealing with indiscipline and corruption.

Abstract Machine

The last three decades have been a time of changes in filmmaking. Film editing as a part of it it’s not immune to this set of transformations. The driving force is the digital revolution, but the level of changes comes in different dimensions. The filmmaking process brought a change in technology and equipment that impacted technical and creative procedures. The emergence of the internet, social networks, streaming platforms, altered the relationship between the spectator and the medium. Film language acquired the capacity to absorb styles originated in television and in other media and keeps evolving. Access to the tools is democratized. Any young adult can use a phone or a computer to edit video content that feeds social networks. The next step will be artificial intelligence and this whole transformative process is far from ending. Throughout this evolutionary process, the montage theories have remained relatively stable because they are very robust, but the scale of contextual changes requires an update to this different technological and cultural setting. This paper aims to answer this question by proposing a conceptual framework for creative film editing. The framework design is based on the theory of assemblage (Deleuze, Guattari; DeLanda), it identifies the two minimal essential elements of the process: filmic elements and relations. Filmic elements are concrete, relations are abstract. Editing is creating relations between filmic elements and shaping those relations to produce meaning and aesthetics. In assemblage theory all assemblages share three characteristics, they all have concrete elements, an abstract machine, and agents. The abstract machine is a space of possibilities determined by the concrete elements in which all relations are possible. The editor is an agent acting on an abstract machine. From this perspective, we can identify two processes of interaction between concrete elements and relations and they occur along different dimensions. One dimension defines the variable roles that an assemblage component may play, from a purely material role to a purely expressive role. These roles are variable and may occur in mixtures. The other dimension defines variable processes in which these components become involved and are referred to as processes of territorialization or deterritorialization. These two specialized expressive media are viewed as the basis for a second synthetic process called coding. Coding supplies a second articulation, consolidating the effects of the first and stabilizing the identity of an assemblage. For coding methods, we use models from the theory of editing that define “rules” on how to connect shots together. Continuity editing, for instance, is a set of rules that can be viewed as a specific code. This framework includes a model for grid analysis to grasp how the relations being crafted can affect the film experience from different perspectives, namely narrative, aesthetic, and discursive. With this framework we provide a conceptual model to understand the film editing process from its most basic components, allowing the editor to have a clear understanding of how he can affect the cinematic experience, thus providing tools and methods for critical analysis.

Technology-enabled personalization: Impact of smart technology choice on consumer shopping behavior

Smart technologies promise to enhance customer experience to new levels in next-generation retail stores. Offline retailers increasingly employ technology-enabled personalization (TEP) strategies to digitally enhance in-store customer experience. To send personalized messages to in-store customers, retailers can choose from two types of smart devices: customer-owned smartphones or retailer-owned immersive screens. Although these smart devices may largely determine customers’ experiences in future retail, research rarely addresses device-related determinants of the effectiveness of personalized messages in stores. Building on assemblage theory, the authors consider the role of these devices in influencing customer experience and eventually consumer shopping behavior. Through two experiments and a mediated moderation analysis, they investigate the interplay of personalized content and device technology in customers’ response to TEP. The results illustrate that consumers react differently to message content depending on the device through which it is conveyed; that is, personalized (standardized) messages are more effective on customer-owned smartphones (retailer-owned screens) because they become integrated into (remain separate from) the customer's extended self. Relational customer experiences, or the extent to which a customer feels positively connected to store assemblages, mediate the effect on shopping behavior. To build TEP strategies, retailers should therefore use smart devices integrated into customers’ extended selves.

1996: the OECD policy-making assemblage

ABSTRACT Recent analyses of education policy have used the concept of the assemblage to explain how the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s education work contributes to global policy convergence and new forms of policy mobility. These analyses often use Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage to designate relations between things (as actors) and people (as actors). In this paper, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage thinking offers promising analytical insights that education policy studies have not fully explored. We propose that revisiting the problematics which animated Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory can broaden the conceptual apparatus at our disposal for analysing global education policy and the work of international policy actors.

The affective flows of the sublime in Martina Menegon's new machinic subjectivity

What can the use of emerging digital technologies for the creation of art exploring subjectivity offer up for research into new affective flows within the temporal structures created by machinic assemblages? An examination of the work by the artist Martina Menegon who explores the self to engage with the problematics of representation, cognition and sensation within machinic assemblages using photogrammetry, raises ontological issues. Menegon uses photogrammetry to capture her body as data, to experience her body and represent her body as art in the digital virtual space, link the ontological, with the material and corporeal. This recent virtual reality output ofMenegon's explores emerging post screen digital aesthetics and manifestations of digital subjectivity, where “affect” becomes central to the form, content and reception of the work.Menegon uses the virtual digital space to take pleasure is confusing the boundaries of the body via its digital capturing, re-presentation and plays with notions of the self and its limits. Menegon's explorations can be positioned as action research within a theoretical framework of Donna Haraway and the assemblage theory of Giles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri where a new “image” of the self can be mediated or remediated and where Menegon can take responsibility for production and dissemination within her networks of distribution to consider what this entails. The temporal and affective relationships of production become key to this new machinic subjectivity.

“Ask Google Assistant Where to Travel” Tourists’ Interactive Experiences With Smart Speakers: An Assemblage Theory Approach

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to reframe interactions among tourists, destinations, and service providers in multiple ways. Yet, there is scant empirical evidence on how individuals develop their relationships with IoT devices and how this technology can serve tourists in planning and deciding on particular destinations or services. Drawing on the assemblage theory, we investigated tourists’ interactive experiences when planning trips with and without smart speakers. Methodologically, we employed an interactionist/performative approach that included three qualitative studies to examine tourists’ information production, expressive roles, and information processing styles during interactions with smart speakers in the pre-visit stage. The analysis was driven by grounded theory and utilized computerized psycholinguistic techniques to enrich our research implications for theory, methodology, and tourism management.

Becoming-Data, Becoming-Mountain

This article explores our ecological relation to both information and information technologies as we "mediate mountains." Starting with a Gibsonian approach to affordances, and considering how an agent-specific account of action limits human access to "the digital," I suggest that the interface between human and device marks a double-coupling of two agents—one digital the other embodied—each of which draws out the other to alter potential action. The essay explores the affordances of agents and the environments in which they act, and how action seemingly occurs across the boundaries marked by the human-device interface. Drawing on actor network theory, assemblage theory, and Don Ihde's "inter-relational ontology," I examine how, within an ecology of humans and mobile devices, "agency" and "action" operate within a Deleuzean transversal, cutting across body-machine boundaries. As an application of this analysis, I examine the relationship between embodied and digital agents "in the wild" of the mountains, through AR and GPS-enabled smartphone apps, and how each agent, acting upon its own environment, gives rise to transversal events that alter the affordances offered to agents across a seemingly uncrossable divide.

Overcoming urban frontiers: Ordering Favela tourism actor-networks

This paper examines the multiple and heterogeneous, current and potential, relations between hybrid actors of tourism in Favela Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro. It seeks to elucidate the legitimizing potential of tourists acting as “connectors” that reach beyond formal politics’ hindrances. This work applies assemblage theory epistemological framework, and Actor-Network Theory ethnomethodological tools, to explore the issues and roles questioned, altered, made visible, or transformed through favela tourists’ practices and performances. Hence, avoiding the ethical dilemmas and representational concerns from slum tourism researchers in the past. Our fieldwork engages with two favela tours. We follow tourists as they stitch hybrid actor-networks that create multiple orderings in such assemblages, and their material and semiotic configurations. Our research reveals that such tours could be related to different shifts in the favela’s political, social, economic, cultural, and material dimensions.

Reconciling different approaches to conceptualizing the glocalization of the Belt and Road Initiative projects

ABSTRACT In response to the recently rising number of academic papers that empirically examine local variances in China’s Belt and Initiative (BRI) projects in various foreign lands, this paper points out the tension between attempts to theorize BRI projects. The Sino-localized approach and the assemblage theory were the two main attempts used by scholars from disparate academic disciplines to conceptualize local agency and to understand how local conditionalities, practices, and norms may affect the outcome of BRI projects. We need to examine their differences and similarities, and determine whether they are really irreconcilable. In addition, how their ontological differences lead to epistemological, methodological and analytical differences in studying BRI projects should be clarified as well.

Geographies of the event? Rethinking time and power through digital interfaces

This paper examines work in cultural and human geography that theorises temporality in terms of events. Moving from humanist phenomenology, to non-representational and assemblage theories and current geographies of encounter, it suggests these accounts of events tend to analyse the past and future through the lens of the present. Building upon these literatures and the work of Tristan Garcia, the paper argues for an expanded notion of the event, where past and future events can be considered as both distinct from, and linked to, the present moment. Here, time comes to be defined as the ordering and stacking of events, where events are understood as sites of comprehension, in which entities are differentiated. The paper suggests this position is useful in order to trace temporal causality across and between entities and events. Tracing the causality of entities and their ordering and stacking across events enables a closer analysis of what the paper terms the temporal power of non-human things. To illustrate this argument, examples from an ESRC project on digital gaming and in-game purchasing are analysed.

Automation Assemblages in the Internet of Things: Discovering Qualitative Practices at the Boundaries of Quantitative Change

Abstract We examine consumers’ interactions with smart objects using a novel mixed-method approach, guided by assemblage theory, to discover the emergence of automation practices. We use a unique text data set from the web service IFTTT, (“If This Then That”), representing hundreds of thousands of applets that represent “if–then” connections between pairs of Internet services. Consumers use these applets to automate events in their daily lives. We quantitatively identify and qualitatively interpret automation assemblages that emerge bottom-up as different consumers create similar applets within unique social contexts. Our data discovery approach combines word embeddings, density-based clustering, and nonlinear dimensionality reduction with an inductive approach to the thematic analysis. We uncover 127 nested automation assemblages that correspond to automation practices. Practices are interpreted in terms of four higher-order categories: social expression, social connectedness, extended mind, and relational AI. To investigate the future trajectories of automation practices, we use the concept of the possibility space, a fundamental theoretical idea from assemblage theory. Using our empirical approach, we translate this theoretical possibility space of automation assemblages into a data visualization to predict how existing practices can grow and new practices can emerge. Our new approach makes conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions with implications for consumer research and marketing strategy.

COVID-19 and the Planetary Crisis Multiplicity: From Marxist Crisis Theory to Planetary Assemblage Theory

The COVID-19 crisis gives us occasion to reflect on the insights and limitations of Marxist crisis theory. While ecological Marxists in particular have made incisive analyses of these crises, I argue that traditional Marxist frameworks are insufficient for conceptualizing twenty-first century global crises, which emerge from complex material entanglements across multiple socio-ecological systems and take on self-organizing dynamics that exceed human agency. I therefore suggest that an encounter between ecological Marxism and Deleuzian assemblage theory can provide a more productive theoretical foundation for understanding the COVID-19 crisis and mapping what I call the broader "planetary crisis multiplicity."

Facebook and the Surveillance Assemblage: Policing Black Lives Matter Activists & Suppressing Dissent

This article outlines the “social media surveillance assemblage” (Trottier 2011: 63) on Facebook, including its deployment against social activists. In particular, it traces intersecting, dynamic, and opaque data flows among Facebook, third parties, and law enforcement that undermine Black Lives Matter activists and suppress social dissent in the United States. Sources of data include interviews with academics, lawyers, and researchers as well as an in-depth examination of platform policies, Freedom of Information Act requests/lawsuits, and news articles. Theories of the surveillance assemblage (Trottier 2011), the surveillance-industrial complex (Hayes 2012), and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2015, 2019) frame the interviews and documents, demonstrating the multi-faceted nature of social media surveillance. Providing an interdisciplinary focus, this article engages with the fields of private policing, surveillance studies, and social movements literature. The article’s empirical data contribute to the existing literature by stressing the role of third parties and providing insights into the nontransparent system of surveillance on social media.

Multiple Entrepreneurial Intentions: An Individual Case Study

Contemporary research has shown that entrepreneurial intention (EI) has become an increasingly popular topic of investigation. That being said, whereas the parent field of entrepreneurship is acknowledging its inherent dynamic and processual nature, the same is not true of EI. The current article therefore seeks to apply an emerging meta-theoretical process framework in the form of Manuel Delanda’s assemblage theory (AT) in ambition to extend our knowledge of how EIs unfold over time. A single in-depth case study design was implemented to track changes in an individual’s entrepreneurial intending. Data were captured using semi-structured interviews and then analysed using NVivo coding software. Findings suggest that it is through the interaction of contextually defined factors and their unique capacities that an emergent intentional whole can be created. The current article provides a foundation to consider intent through a more socially situated outlook and can act as a platform to guide further research in the area. The concept of entrepreneurial process intentions is introduced to atone for the dynamic interplay between spatially and temporally bound factors that can lead to a specific form of EI emerging.