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The Invisible Technologies of Goffman's Sociology From the Merry-Go-Round to the Internet
Abstract
Erving Goffman is not usually thought of as sociologist of technology. In this paper I argue that Goffman's early studies are replete with materiality and technologies. By paying more attention to mundane and invisible technologies, such as merry-go-rounds, surgical instruments, and doors, I argue that Goffman's interaction order can be shown to be materially and technologically framed, staged, and mediated. Important notions such as "role distance," "front stage," and "backstage" turn out to depend crucially upon materiality and technologies. When it comes to studying the internet there is thus, in principle, no fundamental distinction to be drawn between online and off-line interaction; both are forms of performed, staged, and mediated interaction. I show how Goffman's notion of copresence can be extended to the study of the internet and speculate as to what a sociology of material performativity, which combines interactional sociology with the insights of Social Construction of Technology, might look like.
... There are few empirical studies on DTOs use of digital platforms and this research heeds the call of STS scholars to carry out online studies that account for the interactions that digital platforms enable, and not only the semiotic properties of online contents (Pinch 2007). I also aim to contribute to the debate about the appropriateness of Erving Goffman's theory for the study of online interactions (Knorr-Cetina 2005Pinch 2007Pinch , 2010. This paper supports Trevor Pinch's argument that Goffman was implicitly aware that social interactions could be mediated by "invisible" technologies (2010,412). ...
... Considering that YouTube is a collaborative-content platform and that its users can activate its interactional affordances, an interactional approach seems more suitable than a propagandistic approach for the study of DTOs on YouTube. The analytical framework that STS scholars, such as Pinch (2007Pinch ( , 2010 and Knorr-Cetina (2005) have suggested and applied for the analysis of online interactions is Erving Goffman's microsociology (1969Goffman's microsociology ( , 1970Goffman's microsociology ( , 1972. I will discuss this perspective next. ...
... The debate among STS scholars revolves around whether the internet has changed social interaction to the extent that classic sociological theories are not helpful anymore to understand online interactions (Hogan 2010;Knorr-Cetina 2005Miller 1995;Pinch 2007Pinch , 2010Preda 2009;Rettie 2009). Pinch and Knorr-Cetina have emphasized the potential of Erving Goffman's concepts for the study of online interactions. ...
This paper advances the discussion about the interactions enabled through communication technologies by articulating Goffman’s theory of strategic interactions and Trevor Pinch’s concept of co-presence, and applying them to analyze the way a Mafia’s armed wing posted videos on YouTube during the turf war developed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, from 2008 to 2011. I analyzed the videos and the comments set up below them. Science and Technology Studies scholars have been engaged in a debate about how to study online contents. They agree that STS should advance approaches that only give an account of the semiotic properties of the contents, in order to explore the interactions they enable. However, they don’t agree on how this should be done. This study lends support to perspectives arguing that Goffman’s theory is still relevant to analyze online interactions, in spite of having written his theory before the expansion of the Internet. I provide examples to argue that, in fact, Goffman was fully aware that interactions could be technologically mediated. I suggest that members of the armed wing shaped YouTube’s technological affordances to make themselves accountable to other parties in the war, and available for interaction.
... Studying mundane technologies, he argues, allows us to examine how they shape and reflect everyday experiences, reinforcing local techno-social arrangements. Trevor Pinch (2010) and David Edgerton (2011) advocate shifting focus from studies centered on technological innovation to those on mundane technologies, as these have become so central to daily life that their sociological and anthropological significance is often overlooked. Similarly, Payal Arora (2019) encourages a focus on technologies that empower marginalized communities by enabling leisure, self-expression, safer political engagement, and more-rather than seeking novelty and innovation from Silicon Valley. ...
In this short paper, I explore how my academic journey through Social Informatics (SI) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) has guided me toward the field of Community Informatics (CI), emphasizing the critical distinctions among these disciplines. While SI and STS primarily address the theoretical dimensions of science and technology within various institutional and cultural contexts, CI centers on the practical applications of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) within specific communities. Bringing this interdisciplinary foundation and drawing on a decade of critical ethnographic research, I present the framework of "Mundane Technology," which investigates how marginalized individuals appropriate everyday technologies to navigate and resist systemic oppression. This framework, which was originally introduced in my book “Technology of the Oppressed” (2022, MIT Press), is grounded in a decolonial perspective and enhances our understanding of how ordinary artifacts, processes, and spaces contribute to the agency and aspirations of oppressed communities. This framework also critiques traditional utilitarian approaches in Information Systems and ICT for Development, advocating for a shift towards recognizing the intangible benefits of technology in marginalized contexts. Ultimately, it underscores the importance of incorporating these narratives into CI research, reinforcing democratic values and expanding the scope of technology studies to include the voices and experiences of those historically excluded from power and representation.
... For example, in Ramsey et al's exploration of patient experiences on the front stage, they define the organizational back stage in terms of scripting (preparatory activities that determine the roles actors are to play), setting (the physical environment in which the play occurs), staging (the deliberate attempts at organizing interactions including the use of props), and performance (referring to the activities that actors are willing to perform) [21]. These backstage activities, which can include processes like dynamic teamwork [22] and supportive technologies [23], are argued to be critical to ensure a "believable performance" (e.g. one that is perceived as genuine by the audience) which is, in turn, important to building trust and demonstrating compassion in care delivery [24]. This example shows how backstage actions can be directly related to the practices that patients witness and experience in care delivery. ...
Among the challenges in delivering integrated health and social care services is the need to attend to the coordination of tasks, roles, activities, and operations, while considering how these efforts are experienced by patients, carers and communities. The literature has noted an important disconnect between how providers and leaders view their efforts to coordinate service delivery, and how patients perceive these efforts on the receiving end. Our team has provided guidance to integrated care efforts in Ontario, Canada by drawing on Goffman’s theory of Dramaturgy to help classify the actions of integrated care delivery as linked to the roles individuals play in the delivery of care. Using this framing helps to uncover how “backstage” processes (such as team-functioning, funding models, and digital infrastructures) create a necessary foundation on which “frontstage” actions (or performances) can be effectively delivered.
... In order to be accepted, the informants had to act according to the upheld values in their community. Role playing like this can overcome social problems that individuals face in their social life, for example, to a person who adheres to values that are different from those upheld in the surrounding community (Pinch, 2010). ...
Being an Atheist is always an unpopular choice in the middle of high religious context society. The stigma and pressure from religious groups forced Atheists in Indonesia to hide their identity in public generally and when taking care of the affairs of state administration. This research utilized Communication Privacy Management and Dramaturgy Theory alongside the phenomenology perspective to reveal how Atheists in Indonesia live their "beliefs" in their not-so-friendly environment. The results showed that they generally presented themselves as religious in front of their family by pretending to practice religious rituals, contributing to their special personal branding for the families. Meanwhile, in other social environments, such as friendship, they could be freer to present themselves as they were, although they still had to manage private information about their Atheist identity.
... Digital mediation is the process of interweaving technologies into human daily life to tackle constraints on time and cognitive resources. An overview of social theories explored within studies of technologies mediating interactions within health care [21], [22] suggests when technologies are introduced to mediate a human interaction, new frames for comprehending and responding to situations in time and space are created, which imply new ways of organising and making sense of experience, and require effort by the participants in the interaction [23], [24]. Others have argued that the experiences in a mediated interaction is shaped both by normative framing expectation of interaction and the affordance offered by the new medium [25], [26]. ...
The profound intertwining of digital interactions with traditional human interactions has spawned a novel mode of human interactions at both individual and population levels, carrying substantial ramifications for health. Digital mediation refers to the process by which digital interactions influence and facilitate human interactions. While digital mediations can bring benefits, they also pose potential health risks. We identify four levels where problems may arise: the medium itself, mediation architects, end users, and mediation orchestrators. Addressing the challenges associated with shaping digital mediation of human interactions for health requires strategies and future research. Shifting focus towards understanding the impact of digitally mediated interactions on health is crucial for advancing research, policy, and practice in this field.
... Previously, dramaturgy (Goffman, 1959) has been used to explore enacted dimensions of the governance of patient safety (Freeman et al., 2016), dynamic teamwork in the clinical backstage (Ellingson, 2003) and conceptualise the role that technology plays in determining how social spaces are bounded and connected, how interactions are mediated and the sorts of social interaction permitted frontstage (Pinch, 2010). But to the authors' knowledge, it has not been considered in relation to online patient feedback. ...
Healthcare staff are encouraged to use feedback from their patients to inform service and quality improvement. Receiving patient feedback via online channels is a relatively new phenomenon that has rarely been conceptualised. Further, the implications of a wide, varied and unknown(able) audience being able to view and interact with online patient feedback are yet to be understood. We applied a theoretical lens of dramaturgy to a large ethnographic dataset, collected across three NHS Trusts during 2019/2020. We found that organisations demonstrated varying levels of ‘preparedness to perform’ online, from invisibility through to engaging in public conversation with patients within a wider mission for transparency. Restrictive ‘cast lists’ of staff able to respond to patients was the hallmark of one organisation, whereas another devolved responding responsibility amongst a wide array of multidisciplinary staff. The visibility of patient‐staff interactions had the potential to be culturally disruptive, dichotomously invoking either apprehensions of reputational threat or providing windows of opportunity. We surmise that a transparent and conversational feedback response frontstage aligns with the ability to better prioritise backstage improvement. Legitimising the autonomous frontstage activity of diverse staff groups may help shift organisational culture, and gradually ripple outwards a shared responsibility for transparent improvement.
... Their conversations and sometimes laughter should not be heard by the user. In this sense, the test apartment works as a "mundane technology" (Pinch 2010) to create the sense of robotic autonomy by rendering invisible (and inaudible) the constitutive human and technical labor that goes into maintaining it (Shapin 1989). This is what I call a theater of autonomy. ...
Roboticists are faced with a striking discrepancy between vision and demonstration of care with robots. On the one hand, research funders, policy makers, and entrepreneurs expect robots to become a panacea to impending demographic change. On the other hand, efforts to demonstrate that vision in care practice have largely remained unfulfilled. In this article, I investigate how roboticists manage and deal with this discrepancy between high expectations toward robotics research and what robots are capable of doing in practice. I will offer an extensive analysis of the efforts by roboticists and others to install, repair, stage, and, surprisingly, suspend robot dramas. Robot dramas comprise an ambivalent mix of experimental practices that seek to stage visions of care robotics while at the same time testing precarious phenomena of human–robot interaction. This relates two prominent but still largely disconnected strands of research in Science and Technology Studies: works on techno-scientific demonstrations, and on high and low expectations. Here, robot dramas are a crucial site for studying the conflicting interrelation between the theatrical performativity of demonstrations and the interplay of high and low expectations.
... Goffman analysiert facettenreich die kulturellen Normen der Theatralik auf Vorder-und Hinterbühnen. Die Rollen, die Materialien, Medien und Technologien dabei spielen, bleiben bei ihm aber ein Randthema (Pinch 2010 ...
... This active role of the user (social factors) in technology adoption implies that understanding the technology is being used is key for recognising how it influences organizations and the process of organizing work. Since the way people interact with technology and tools influences how they organize their micro-level relations (Garfinkel, 1967), and also impacts the definition of their roles (Goffman, 1956;Pinch, 2010). Furthermore, the increasing digitalization of organizations pushed scholars to investigate how the technologies used at the workplace are vital to the enablement of new forms of organizing work and practice (Bélanger and Watson-Manheim, 2006;Chudoba et al., 2005). ...
Background: Mobile health (mHealth) have shown promise for their potential to enhance clinical workflows, improve patient access to care, and the quality of that care. However, there remain persistent barriers to adoption, and some users continue to resist the use of these new tools.
Objectives: This research investigated factors influencing clinicians’ mHealth adoption, and expounded these and the potential implications for their workflow and quality of patient care.
Methods: A multiple-case study of three mHealth tools was conducted. Data were collected via 41 in-depth interviews with clinicians, technology providers, and medical informatics experts in 9 countries from April 2017 to March 2020. The case studies were examined in the context of relevant literature, identified by a systematic review that included171 studies published between 2008 and 2018.
Results: Findings confirmed that the use of mHealth can provide numerous benefits such as efficacy and time-saving, improved safety and quality of patient care, improved accessibility, and better data security and validation. They can also positively impact workflow through better transparency and collaboration, empowerment, and efficiency. However, the factors impacting adoption go beyond material features such as usefulness, ease of use, privacy and security, interoperability and costs. Social factors like clinicians’ attitudes, awareness, experience, or culture are key. Organizational and policy factors are also vital and include user engagement, infrastructure, training, existing workload and resources, decision making, in addition to absence or ambiguity of regulations.
Conclusions: Factors impacting clinicians’ adoption go beyond the material aspects of mHealth to also encompass substantial social and organizational elements. Therefore, from a practical perspective, mHealth providers should work together with clinicians and decision makers to address potential barriers and improve adoption. From a theoretical perspective, the study proposes an expansion of Leonardi’s methodological guidance to better account for user engagement; and a consolidated framework that better factors in the complexity of healthcare’s sociotechnical structure, and the interaction between the technical, social and organizational factors.
... Goffman analysiert facettenreich die kulturellen Normen der Theatralik auf Vorder-und Hinterbühnen. Die Rollen, die Materialien, Medien und Technologien dabei spielen, bleiben bei ihm aber ein Randthema (Pinch 2010 ...
Die programmatische Konstitution einer praxeologischen Theoriebewegung - der sogenannte »Practice Turn« - wurde in der deutschsprachigen Soziologie in den letzten Jahren intensiv rezipiert und weiterentwickelt. Dieser Band zieht eine Zwischenbilanz und stellt die Praxistheorie als ein Forschungsprogramm vor, das die Soziologie in theoretischer und analytischer Hinsicht bereichert und neu ausgerichtet hat. Er markiert unterschiedliche Positionen innerhalb der Debatte und behandelt Desiderata der Praxistheorie, die sich aus konzeptuellen Überlegungen und empirischen Analysen ergeben. Mit Beiträgen von Frank Hillebrandt, Stefan Hirschauer, Herbert Kalthoff, Andreas Reckwitz, Theodore Schatzki, Robert Schmidt, Elizabeth Shove u.a.
... Moreover, we use a symbolic interactionist perspective (Goffman 1961) that focuses on how individuals actively participate in their online and offline environments. We turn our attention to people's social interactions with others and digital artefacts, things and spaces assembled (Pinch 2010). This necessarily means looking at the tightly entangled relationships between the material (places and things) and the symbolic. ...
... Drawing upon ANT and the concepts of generalized symmetry also implies that objects and collectives have agency in line with humans, which implies that even an object like a prototype or technology might stage design and innovation if placed in a situation where it makes a difference. This perception of objects, technologies and networks as doing something, even staging particular interactions such as in the case of the internet (Pinch 2010), is essential. So, who is staging? ...
This chapter reviews the different origins and theoretical foundations of collaborative staging of design and innovation. It outlines staging as a sensitizing concept and a repertoire of ways to configure and facilitate interactions across actors and objects that is illustrated in different ways throughout this volume.
With a starting point in participatory design, shaping of technology and theory of organizing the chapter draws up a metaphorically inspired picture of how to understand the staging of design and innovation, the vocabulary and the process. The key concepts and understandings of staging include the development and circulation of objects to translate knowledge and frame negotiations as well as the shaping of discursive spaces to inform a repertoire of approaches of how to make staging actionable for diverse professions.
Keywords: Staging, collaborative, objects, spaces, action-oriented, Actor-Network Theory
... CMC complicates impression management both by making communication potentially visible to far more individuals than those present at the time of an interaction, and by offering individuals ways to materially manipulate communicative performances (Gibbs et al., 2013;Oostervink et al., 2016). Thus, efforts at impression management must be understood as intertwined with the sociomaterial affordances of the CMC technologies used to produce the communication, and the sociomaterial conditions under which performances are viewed (Pinch, 2010). ...
This article argues that a distinctive aspect of computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the way it can make communication visible to others in ways that were previously impractical. We propose a theory of communication visibility that recognizes its multidimensional nature: resulting from activities that make communication visible, efforts by actors to see communication, and a sociomaterial context that influences possibilities for visibility. The different dimensions of communication visibility are explored as they relate to possibilities for action with CMC, and the ability of third-parties to view communication between others. Centering communication visibility in the study of CMC compels scholars to ask new questions regarding the interdependence of active, strategic efforts to make communication more or less visible to others, and the ways in which communication is assessed by observers. To facilitate ongoing research we offer an agenda for incorporating communication visibility into the study of contemporary and future forms of CMC.
... The individuals' own interpretations of the frame of interaction may, in this case, occasionally lead to error or frame disputes, as suggested by Goffman [39]. It is how the smartphone is a part of the conversation, and how it is arranged, that impacts how the frame is interupted [51]. ...
Abstract: The smartphone has become the most ubiquitous piece of personal technology, giving it significant social importance and sociological relevance. In this article, we explore how the smartphone interacts with and impacts social interaction in the setting of the urban café. Through analyzing 52 spontaneous in-depth interviews related to social interaction in cafés, we identify three categories of smartphone use in social settings: interaction suspension, deliberately shielding interaction, and accessing shareables. These categories comprise the constitutive smartphone practices that define the social order of public smartphone use within an interactionist sociological framework.
Keywords: ethnomethodology; interaction suspension; smartphone; social interaction; goffman
... However, it is obviously a far greater challenge to make the invisible city more visible in decision-making and to the public. Pinch (2010) refers to invisible technologies and points out that the sociology of technology has much to offer to historians. He notes that technology is so all-pervasive in our everyday world that we scarcely notice it. ...
This is an Open Access book distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits copying and redistribution for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). This does not affect the rights licensed or assigned from any third party in this book.
... However, it is obviously a far greater challenge to make the invisible city more visible in decision-making and to the public. Pinch (2010) refers to invisible technologies and points out that the sociology of technology has much to offer to historians. He notes that technology is so all-pervasive in our everyday world that we scarcely notice it. ...
On the whole, the use of lead pipes is an example of path dependence that the old cities of developed and developing societies still seem to have a hard time eliminating.
... However, it is obviously a far greater challenge to make the invisible city more visible in decision-making and to the public. Pinch (2010) refers to invisible technologies and points out that the sociology of technology has much to offer to historians. He notes that technology is so all-pervasive in our everyday world that we scarcely notice it. ...
Our examples of the various theories on history of technology and of water and sanitation reveal some more general governance principles that we find valid and important:
(i) plurality: we have various options, only seldom just one
(ii) diversity: we have several institutional options concerning various political, economic, social, technological, ecological and legislative dimensions
(iii) locality: particularly in water supply and sanitation, the local actors and conditions are most important for sustainable systems and stakeholders
(iv) globality: there is clear need for more general global principles that we can agree on and implement
(v) politicality: many of the decisions related to water policy and management are political by nature, which should not be forgotten when exploring history of technology and its development
(vi) environmentality: the environment is a key requirement for sustainability, but we must remember that it is not our property, but on loan from future generations
(vii) humanity: technology as shown by the examples is largely human by nature.
(viii) visionarity: taking history into account, we should not base our decisions on short-sighted thinking but consider the longer term.
... The other thinkers we considered in our proposed synthesis of interactionism and atmosphere theory via the sonic included Vannini and Waskul (2006), Tacchi (1998), Ingold (2015), and Mason (2018). Vannini et al. (2012:45-46) propose the "[m]anipulation of sound plays a very important role in ritualization" and silence or "the abolition of sounds" often serves to transform the everyday and to shift our embodied awareness of it (e.g., the function of silence in meditation). ...
In this article, we synthesize Goffman's microsociology with recent developments in fields such as aesthetics, geography, and urban studies labeled “atmosphere theory.” Our central rationale is if microsociology is to deepen its account of embodiment and the noncognitive it needs a theory of spatialized moods. In the second half, we develop our synthesis with respect to musical atmospheres and conclude by drawing on our own research regarding how social actors use music to shape “involvements” and “disinvolvements” in the spatial ambiances of public transportation, the street, the workplace, and the home.
... We were guided in our review by the field of social studies of technology that views individuals and technological artifacts as entangled and interacting elements in any organizational or social setting [24][25][26][27], bearing in mind that such interactions may trigger or enable new forms of organizing work, new roles, or new hierarchies [28,29]. This ontological approach enabled us to widen our scope and identify potential shortcomings in the most frequently used frameworks. ...
Background: Although there is a push toward encouraging mobile health (mHealth) adoption to harness its potential, there are many challenges that sometimes go beyond the technology to involve other elements such as social, cultural, and organizational factors.
Objective: This review aimed to explore which frameworks are used the most, to understand clinicians’ adoption of mHealth as well as to identify potential shortcomings in these frameworks. Highlighting these gaps and the main factors that were not specifically covered in the most frequently used frameworks will assist future researchers to include all relevant key factors.
Methods: This review was an in-depth subanalysis of a larger systematic review that included research papers published between 2008 and 2018 and focused on the social, organizational, and technical factors impacting clinicians’ adoption of mHealth. The initial systematic review included 171 studies, of which 50 studies used a theoretical framework. These 50 studies are the subject of this qualitative review, reflecting further on the frameworks used and how these can help future researchers design studies that investigate the topic of mHealth adoption more robustly.
Results: The most commonly used frameworks were different forms of extensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; 17/50, 34%), the diffusion of innovation theory (DOI; 8/50, 16%), and different forms of extensions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (6/50, 12%). Some studies used a combination of the TAM and DOI frameworks (3/50, 6%), whereas others used the consolidated framework for implementation research (3/50, 6%) and sociotechnical systems (STS) theory (2/50, 4%). The factors cited by more than 20% of the studies were usefulness, output quality, ease of use, technical support, data privacy, self-efficacy, attitude, organizational inner setting, training, leadership engagement, workload, and workflow fit. Most factors could be linked to one framework or another, but there was no single framework that could adequately cover all relevant and specific factors without some expansion.
Conclusions: Health care technologies are generally more complex than tools that address individual user needs as they usually support patients with comorbidities who are typically treated by multidisciplinary teams who might even work in different health care organizations. This special nature of how the health care sector operates and its highly regulated nature, the usual budget deficits, and the interdependence between health care organizations necessitate some crucial expansions to existing theoretical frameworks usually used when studying adoption. We propose a shift toward theoretical frameworks that take into account implementation challenges that factor in the complexity of the sociotechnical structure of health care organizations and the interplay between the technical, social, and organizational aspects. Our consolidated framework offers recommendations on which factors to include when investigating clinicians’ adoption of mHealth, taking into account all three aspects.
... Although Goffman developed his analysis of backstage before information and communications technology (ICT) became omnipresent in society, younger scholars have incorporated the concept in studies related to its use (Pinch, 2010). Using social networking sites (SNSs), smart phones, laptops, computers, and similar does not bring actors into the same region, as defined above, but gives them the impression of sharing a particular region. ...
For many years, the concept “backstage” referred to the part of the theater behind the stage, and then gained a place in sociology and other social sciences. Erving Goffman uses the concept to describe a social environment where people, after leaving a situation involving visible and audible communication, can act free of the standards regulating that situation. What Goffman presents as a frame to describe some sections of societal life has been used by other researchers to elucidate the specific behavior of actors in backstage situations.
... We were guided in our review by the field of social studies of technology that views individuals and technological artifacts as entangled and interacting elements in any organizational or social setting [24][25][26][27], bearing in mind that such interactions may trigger or enable new forms of organizing work, new roles, or new hierarchies [28,29]. This ontological approach enabled us to widen our scope and identify potential shortcomings in the most frequently used frameworks. ...
Background: Although there is a push toward encouraging mobile health (mHealth) adoption to harness its potential, there are many challenges that sometimes go beyond the technology to involve other elements such as social, cultural, and organizational factors.
Objective: This review aimed to explore which frameworks are used the most, to understand clinicians’ adoption of mHealth as well as to identify potential shortcomings in these frameworks. Highlighting these gaps and the main factors that were not specifically covered in the most frequently used frameworks will assist future researchers to include all relevant key factors.
Methods: This review was an in-depth subanalysis of a larger systematic review that included research papers published between 2008 and 2018 and focused on the social, organizational, and technical factors impacting clinicians’ adoption of mHealth. The initial systematic review included 171 studies, of which 50 studies used a theoretical framework. These 50 studies are the subject of this qualitative review, reflecting further on the frameworks used and how these can help future researchers design studies that investigate the topic of mHealth adoption more robustly.
Results: The most commonly used frameworks were different forms of extensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; 17/50, 34%), the diffusion of innovation theory (DOI; 8/50, 16%), and different forms of extensions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (6/50, 12%). Some studies used a combination of the TAM and DOI frameworks (3/50, 6%), whereas others used the consolidated framework for implementation research (3/50, 6%) and sociotechnical systems (STS) theory (2/50, 4%). The factors cited by more than 20% of the studies were usefulness, output quality, ease of use, technical support, data privacy, self-efficacy, attitude, organizational inner setting, training, leadership engagement, workload, and workflow fit. Most factors could be linked to one framework or another, but there was no single framework that could adequately cover all relevant and specific factors without some expansion.
Conclusions: Health care technologies are generally more complex than tools that address individual user needs as they usually support patients with comorbidities who are typically treated by multidisciplinary teams who might even work in different health care organizations. This special nature of how the health care sector operates and its highly regulated nature, the usual budget deficits, and the interdependence between health care organizations necessitate some crucial expansions to existing theoretical frameworks usually used when studying adoption. We propose a shift toward theoretical frameworks that take into account implementation challenges that factor in the complexity of the sociotechnical structure of health care organizations and the interplay between the technical, social, and organizational aspects. Our consolidated framework offers recommendations on which factors to include when investigating clinicians’ adoption of mHealth, taking into account all three aspects.
The place of work in organization studies and management has waxed and waned. Yet, today, social and technological developments have raised again interest in the study of work and this curated discussion brings together experts in key approaches to this topic. Seven contributions have been selected to provide a panorama of what we know about work while pointing to some uncharted territories worthy of future exploration. The contributions outline the principles behind and value of systemic, contextualized, or holistic view of work and report insights on how changes in some work components reverberate in its broader ecology. We hope this curated discussion will make us more aware of the collective journey scholars have charted so far while posing new questions and opening or re-directing new avenues of inquiry.
In Hyderabad, India, the growing information technology (IT) sector relies on ensuring safe and efficient movements of people and objects, and the city government and private actors have embraced the promise of digital surveillance to reach these goals. The new Telangana State, created in 2014, has built a new city-wide network of smart cameras, and at ‘hackathons’ programmers develop new digital tools, often connected to this network, that will technologically ‘solve’ social problems. In this article, I examine the system of CCTV cameras and programmers’ investments in these systems, and explore how migrant Vaddera stonecutters use cellphones to evade patrolling officers monitoring the streets where they carry the granite stones that they cut and load to construct the city’s buildings. Expanding on what Gilbert Simondon calls ‘the margin of indeterminacy’, this article reveals gaps in the digital infrastructure of surveillance—
even as its integration and completion combine human and technical elements.
Articles in this special issue compare and contrast how secondary roads and wireless communication devices shape mobility and connectivity for four communities affected by economic, political, and ethnic marginalisation in socialist Vietnam and democratic India. Drawing on the concept of ‘infrastructural lives’, two urban case studies explore the ways by which marginalised migrant communities in India’s Hyderabad and Vietnam’s Hanoi use, adapt, or resist their states’ desires for all residents to embrace secondary roads, greater internet and cellphone interconnectivity, and digital monitoring. In parallel, and by comparing the realities
of the Sino-Indian and Sino-Vietnamese borderlands, two rural case studies explore
whether upland ethnic minority groups similarly modify or adapt their livelihoods to
the expanding secondary roads and wireless communication technologies across the
rural highlands of northern India and Vietnam. Taken together, this issue asks: How
do the creative engagements of marginalised communities with these infrastructures
shape infrastructural lives?
This article formulates the concept of digital ritual to characterize the continuum of symbolic encounters enabled by social media affordances, and to explain their solidarity-enhancing potential. Applying digital ritual to police uses of social media confirms this promise but also reveals risks of mediated authenticity. The article cautions against influencer styles of engagement that risk privileging popularity over probity in ways dangerous for police legitimacy. It is argued that insights from conceptualizing online encounters as digital rituals can instead be marshalled to support an alternative ‘working personality of the digital cop’; one reflecting principles of candour and democratic policing that provide a sounder basis for establishing what ‘authentic’ online police–public interactions ought to look like.
In a time when music streaming has become the dominant mode of consuming music recordings, this book interrogates how users go about listening to music in their everyday lives in a context where streaming services are focused on not only the circulation of music for users but also the circulation of user data and attention. Drawing insights directly from interviews with users, music streaming is explained as never merely a neutral technology but rather one that seeks to actively shape user engagement. Users respond to streaming platforms with some relishing these aspects that provide music to be drawn into daily activities while others show signs of resistance. It is this tension that this book explores. This unique and accessible study will be ideal reading for both scholars and students of popular music studies, communication studies, sociology, media and cultural studies.
This article explores the phenomenon of elections as a political chronotope, a spatio-temporal realm where the mechanisms of democracy unfold. Its aim is to elucidate the unique socio-political nature of elections. The author establishes that the spatial and temporal characteristics define the format and regulations governing electoral interactions. The term «chronotope» is understood as an interdisciplinary concept that captures the essential connections between temporal and spatial features within a specific order of phenomena. Although extensive research has focused on the social, technical, and psychological aspects of expressing one›s will, the ontology of elections, which encompasses the comprehension of the «unity of time and place of action» and the involvement of political actors in the electoral scenario, has been largely overlooked. Additionally, this study concentrates on the concept of the electoral situation, which delineates the synchronous and diachronic connections wherein citizens’ political choices are positioned, realized, and interpreted. The notion of the electoral situation can be correlated with the term «political landscape», which is only partially related to actual geography but predominantly pertains to the comprehensive conditions of an electoral competition (the coordinate system) and the participants involved in this process. The article’s author illustrates how the electoral situation constructs synchronous and diachronic connections at various levels of political interaction. Notably, these connections are facilitated by political mythologems, which serve as unifying and integrative factors within the electoral chronotope. By examining these mythologems, the author highlights their role in shaping the narrative and symbolism surrounding elections, ultimately influencing the dynamics and outcomes of the electoral process. Overall, this article delves into the intricate relationship between elections and the spatio-temporal framework in which they occur. By emphasizing the significance of the electoral situation and its connection to the broader political landscape, the author sheds light on the multifaceted nature of electoral processes, enriching our understanding of democracy’s fundamental mechanisms.
This article explores the phenomenon of elections as a political chronotope, a spatio-temporal realm where the mechanisms of democracy unfold. Its aim is to elucidate the unique socio-political nature of elections. The author establishes that the spatial and temporal characteristics define the format and regulations governing electoral interactions. The term «chronotope» is understood as an interdisciplinary concept that captures the essential connections between temporal and spatial features within a specific order of phenomena. Although extensive research has focused on the social, technical, and psychological aspects of expressing one›s will, the ontology of elections, which encompasses the comprehension of the «unity of time and place of action» and the involvement of political actors in the electoral scenario, has been largely overlooked. Additionally, this study concentrates on the concept of the electoral situation, which delineates the synchronous and diachronic connections wherein citizens’ political choices are positioned, realized, and interpreted. The notion of the electoral situation can be correlated with the term «political landscape», which is only partially related to actual geography but predominantly pertains to the comprehensive conditions of an electoral competition (the coordinate system) and the participants involved in this process. The article’s author illustrates how the electoral situation constructs synchronous and diachronic connections at various levels of political interaction. Notably, these connections are facilitated by political mythologems, which serve as unifying and integrative factors within the electoral chronotope. By examining these mythologems, the author highlights their role in shaping the narrative and symbolism surrounding elections, ultimately influencing the dynamics and outcomes of the electoral process. Overall, this article delves into the intricate relationship between elections and the spatio-temporal framework in which they occur. By emphasizing the significance of the electoral situation and its connection to the broader political landscape, the author sheds light on the multifaceted nature of electoral processes, enriching our understanding of democracy’s fundamental mechanisms.
Thinking cooperation through materiality addresses questions of production and impact of both media and social order, and, most importantly, their interconnections. It also points, and this is the central claim of this book, towards the situation as an important methodological concept for social order and its spatio-temporal organisation—a concept which needs updating if we want to deal with the relation between media and sociality adequately. For us, both materiality and cooperation can only be grasped through their situated temporalisations and can only be historicised on this basis. This allows us to include media in this picture: materiality of cooperation deals with the socio-material and cultural-technical reciprocal fabrication and production of media and social order beyond communication and semiotic practices. As we will establish in this introduction, methodologically, in order to access the materiality of cooperation through situations it is necessary to update the influential micro-sociological concept of the situation: a ‘methodological situationalism’ (Knorr Cetina, 1981) based on the centrality of the local situation created in situ by physically co-present actors (Goffman, 1964, 1981). We suggest the notion of a post-situationalism: by starting off from situated practices—rather than an individual situation formed by practices—and by including media practices. The present volume—like the Siegen Collaborative Research Centre ‘Media of Cooperation’ in which it originated—takes these questions on the situated, cooperative and material constitution of media practices as its starting point for different theoretical, historical and empirical endeavours presented in the chapters.
In our project, we explore interactional challenges experienced by students and teachers in higher education digital learning due to the COVID-19 crisis. For this purpose, we conducted qualitative interviews with Styrian university students, teachers and administrative staff. Our participants encountered five main interactional challenges in synthetic learning situations: Limited perception, reduced participation, a lack of appropriate technical equipment/infrastructure as well as necessary competencies and struggles related to different academic fields. Students, teachers and administrative staff may counteract these challenges by configuring the synthetic learning situation on three interrelated dimensions: The learning scenario, the underlying digital infrastructure and the interaction situation may be transformed by the different actors in alignment with their specific communicative needs. Therefore, programs aimed at improving techno-didactic competencies may be beneficial to both faculty and students. We conclude that negotiation processes among and between these groups will be crucial for the (future) success of interaction in digital learning.
While Erving Goffman’s renown stems from his pioneering efforts legitimising the study of the interaction order and everyday life, an appreciation for his conceptual contributions to the study of social media remains less understood. This could be due to the way Goffman articulated his ideas through the use of metaphor, a general reticence to systematize ideas in consistent fashion, and perhaps most crucially because by the time of his passing the Internet was merely in its infancy. In this chapter, my aim is to outline Goffman’s contribution to the sociological understanding of social media by tracing several concepts that illuminate vital ideas about the interaction order with respect to social media. By adapting several Goffmanian concepts such as facework, framing and gender display, I seek to demonstrate how Goffman’s ideas pertaining to social interaction remain at the heart of many social media practices that are fundamentally ordered and maintained via the visual dimensions of social media. I argue that while Goffman never explicitly provides an analysis of social media his ideas provide fertile grounding for explorations of the digital, offering sociologists insights into the way social interactions remains at the centre of life online.
Ausgehend von Goffmans Aufsatz The Neglected Situation behandelt der Beitrag denDurkheim, Émile Situationsbegriff Goffmans, seine Quellen und seine breite Rezeption, die insbesondere im Rahmen der gegenwärtigen digitalen Mediatisierung eine besondere Bedeutung erlangt hat.
Misinformation is a social problem increasingly, and routinely, commanding significant political and public attention. Less well known is that Erving Goffman was writing about misinformation as early as 1953 in his PhD thesis. Subsequent to which, he wrote repeatedly about the social organization and conduct of “information control” across several of his most influential publications. This article distils his ideas about these concepts to explore how they illuminate the contemporary phenomena of misinformation. To do this, empirical data are introduced from a large‐scale research program exploring the causes, communication, and consequences of digital information operations and campaigns, with a particular focus upon the Internet Research Agency and Instagram. The analysis attends in particular to sequences of “revealing moves” and “concealing moves” performed by the social media account operators. The dialogue between the data and Goffman's concepts outlines the precepts of a sociologically inflected, interactionist position on misinformation.
Work and the division of labour have been central issues to the study of gender disparities and inequalities historically and worldwide. In Nepal, the changing modes of production and living under the urban-development paradigm have provoked a rapidly transformation of social structures and hierarchies, including gender.
Through a multi-sited ethnography in rural and urban settings of Nepal, this paper explores the constant (re)shaping of the meanings and patterns of work for Sherpa women.
This paper reveals at least three important factors to look at. First, the hegemonic development discourses symbolically situate ‘modern’ jobs as desirable, particularly for women, who are usually considered independent or empowered if they participate in the productive economy and bring a monetary income to the household. Consequently, government and international organization’s promote them as preferable over other traditional activities. Secondly, as far as those kinds of jobs are mostly accessible in urban settings, a particular mobility regime exists in Nepal, which promotes the dislocation of rural population to the main cities or abroad, especially young people. Finally, education is seen as a strategic access door to paid jobs and modern lifestyles, particularly for young women. To study further they need to move to Kathmandu or abroad, adapting therefore their livelihoods and job expectations.
Findings show how femininity is negotiated between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’, the public and the private, the rural and the urban, the ‘hard’ and the ‘easy’ work and lifestyles. A negotiation where their desires and expectations clash with the reality: poor quality of education, precarious jobs and an increasingly individualistic city-lifestyle. Their experiences reveal the opening of an intersectional dialogue where not only gender but also age becomes relevant to the valuation of women’s roles, capacities and values in a Nepal worshipping modern and ‘developed’ lifestyles.
This qualitative exploratory study focuses on understanding meat-eating practices in urban Australia and urban India, with a view towards encouraging a reduced-meat diet in both countries.
Drawing on the ethnographic work conducted inside the digital platform WeChat, this article contributes to the ongoing discussion about the multi-sited ethnographic tools and the digital methods available for investigating virtual worlds and online practices. It analyses the communications, interactions, sociality, and economic activities produced on the application WeChat by Chinese migrant women, together with the same practices constructed offline in Taiwan. Taking a close look at the offline context from which these digital practices are generated, the article shows that when studying online practices, it is essential to understand what corresponds to them in the offline worlds. By updating the four Goffmanian interactionist fieldwork sequences, this research provides some reflections on the necessity to mix and merge online and offline ethnographic techniques in order to apprehend the new practices and scales of interaction at the crossroads where online and offline social spaces intersect. Virtual ethnography cannot be exclusive. Rather, it needs to be designed and performed in dialogue with ‘physical’ observations.
In a context where Twitter has come under criticism for enabling and encouraging hostile communication , this article explores how users adopt a 'Twitter face' when navigating interactions on the platform. Extending Goffman's observation that face-work is applicable to both immediate and mediated interaction, this article provides a novel application of face-work on Twitter. Reporting on data from an online questionnaire completed by general Twitter users, we explore how uncivil interaction is experienced on the platform and the interaction strategies users employ to protect their face. We examine how interactions on the platform can lead to a ritual breakdown that generate forms of alienation arising from aggressive uses of face-work. We contend that attempts to enhance Twitter as a medium by limiting and restricting particular interactions are ultimately attempts at shaping Twitter's affordances. In analysing user experience, our discussion considers how incivility is responded to and how the platform encourages users to engage in the avoidance components of face-work, while simultaneously inhibiting the easy adoption of its restorative dimensions. While both dimensions of face-work are vital, the downplaying of restorative aspects of face-work arguably undermines Twitter's efforts to encourage inclusive interactions across the platform.
he Future of Digital Surveillance
Why Digital Monitoring Will Never Lose Its Appeal in a World of Algorithm-Driven AI
Yong Jin Park
We are willing participants in our own surveillance
Description
Are humans hard-wired to make good decisions about managing their privacy in an increasingly public world? Or are we helpless victims of surveillance through our use of invasive digital media? Exploring the chasm between the tyranny of surveillance and the ideal of privacy, this book traces the origins of personal data collection in digital technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) embedded in social network sites, search engines, mobile apps, the web, and email. The Future of Digital Surveillance argues against a technologically deterministic view—digital technologies by nature do not cause surveillance. Instead, the shaping of surveillance technologies is embedded in a complex set of individual psychology, institutional behaviors, and policy principles.
Yong Jin Park is Professor at Howard University.
Praise / Awards
“With deep insight and conceptual clarity, Professor Park constructs a rich map of the modern privacy terrain. Resisting caricature and simplistic diagnoses, he teases out the complex interplay between individual agency and institutional drivers within the modern political, economic, social, and technological ecosystems. This book is an illuminating read for all who care about the future of privacy in an increasingly algorithmic world.”
—Jerry Kang, Distinguished Professor of Law and (by courtesy) Asian American Studies, UCLA
"Yong Jin Park has produced a remarkably nuanced, balanced, and engaging analysis of the polarized debate about privacy in the digital age. This isn’t a rhetorical collection of anecdotes. It is thoughtfully crafted social science. Park’s explanation of how artificial intelligence and algorithms enter the mix make the book unique."
—W. Russell Neuman, New York University
“Professor Park has produced a comprehensive and quite timely engagement with the technological, social, economic, and political influences in the current status and likely future of the privacy that individuals and collectives can hope to enjoy. His presentation of critical issues, concerns, and potential responses deserves wide readership.”
—Oscar Gandy, University of Pennsylvania
“While the end of privacy as we know it is a certainty, privacy is not doomed. In this analytically strong book, Yong Jin Park shows that regulatory solutions are available, at least in the US and the EU. The strongest achievement of this book is the full integration of the individual perspective of privacy and the institutional drive of surveillance enabled by AI and Big Data.”
—Jan A.G.M. van Dijk, Professor of Communication Science and the Information Society at the University of Twente and author of The Network Society (1999/2020)
This chapter reports on the first empirical criminological research on the Tor Project, the organisation which develops the Tor anonymity network. There has been little focus as yet by cybercrime researchers on the human factors shaping the platforms and infrastructures on which the Internet depends. These are emerging as powerful technologies of control and profound sites of resistance in contemporary societies, increasingly taking on responsibility for enormous user communities and the crime and abuse which come with them. Of these, I focus on Tor, an international anonymity infrastructure which offers its users extremely strong protections against online surveillance and censorship. Tor has become a particularly important subject of criminological research on online crime. However, there is as yet no criminological research which deals with how the people who develop and maintain Tor understand these issues. Through interviews and archival research, I study how this community perceive Tor’s use for crime and harm and how they navigate these issues in practice, identifying three distinct sites at which Tor deals with crime, and three concomitant ways of making sense of Tor’s crime problem (conceptualised as ‘social worlds’ of Tor). I explore how Tor has developed from a disruptive character to an increasingly governmental one and the implications of this for understanding the role of platforms and infrastructures in the governance of online crime more broadly.
Dieser Text ist gewissermaßen die Fortsetzung der „Kleinen Galerie neuer Dingbegriffe“. Denn er ist das 2. Kapitel eines Buchs, dessen erstes ebenfalls mit „Kleine Galerie neuer Dingbegriffe“ überschrieben ist (es handelt sich um eine bearbeitete und etwas umfangreichere Version dieses Artikels).
Das Buch ist „Der Anteil der Dinge an der Gesellschaft. Sozialität – Kognition – Netzwerke“, erschienen 2016 im Transcript-Verlag.
Dieses zweite Kapitel ist das zentrale des Buchs, das dem Gedanken einer Gesellschaftlichkeit der Dinge nachgeht. Die Frage lautet, ob und wie sich Dinge mittels einiger soziologischer Grundbegriffe in die Gesellschaft (oder das Soziale oder die Soziologie) einbeziehen lassen.
(Angehängt ist das Literaturverzeichnis des Buchs, das für eine informierte Lektüre natürlich erforderlich ist.)
The digitization, digitalization, and datafication of work and communication, coupled with social and technical infrastructures that enable connectivity, are making it increasingly easy for the behaviors of people, collectives, and technological devices to see and be seen. Such digital connectivity gives rise to the important phenomenon of behavioral visibility. We argue that studying the antecedents, processes, and consequences of behavioral visibility should be a central concern for scholars of organizing. We attempt to set the cornerstones for the study of behavioral visibility by considering the social and technological contexts that are enabling behavioral visibility, developing the concept of behavioral visibility by defining its various components, considering the conditions through which it is commonly produced, and outlining potential consequences of behavioral visibility in the form of three paradoxes. We conclude with some conjectures about the kinds of research questions, empirical foci, and methodological strategies that scholars will need to embrace in order to understand how behavioral visibility shapes and is shaped by the process of organizing as we catapult, swiftly, into an era where artificial intelligence, learning algorithms, and social tools are changing the way people work.
Despite the promise of social media to bring the world closer together, large segments of local communities, globally, remain misunderstood by or invisible to mainstream society. This problem is attributed, in large part, to digital media’s ascendancy over physical, public space as the locus for civic discourse—the loss of informal and structured encounters between members of communities there. This chapter presents our development and early evaluation of a novel cyber-physical platform, communIT, for community building across diverse local community groups. Deployed in underused public spaces, communIT is an origami-like, folding, robotic surface of billboard scale, with embedded peripherals, that changes form in response to group needs for group co-creation and sharing of media. By collaboratively making and sharing media with communIT, local groups can tell stories, share experiences and aspirations, and advocate within the larger community. Such civic discourse promises the potential to transform personal identity and self-representation, community awareness and responsibility, and wider social relationships with policy-makers.
Food cultures are shaped by the ubiquity of digital photography. Embedded in social media sites, such as Instagram, images of food are used in photographic exchanges to perform identity and interact with community. In a context of proliferating food media, an ethics of "clean eating"- dietary practice adhering to consuming "healthy" foods deemed to be "pure"- is presented as a form of moral food consumption that embraces particular foods while eschewing others. In this article we explore the symbolic dimensions of top post clean eating food images associated with the hashtags #eatclean and #cleaneating and consider how they mobilize photographic practices to present and encourage this lifestyle. Drawing on Mary Douglas and Erving Goffman as our theoretical foundation, we argue that the photographic capturing of food plays a symbolic role in extolling purity through the presentation of idealized images of "clean" foods that are contrasted with foods perceived as defiled. Clean eating posts draw on forms of idealization that aims to garner esteem and attention, while also generating a sense of community through food media. These practices are also configured around an ethics of food that encourage responsible consumption for the individual as a healthy subject.
Basándose en los desarrollos recientes en la intersección entre los estudios sobre el sonido y los estudios sobre ciencia y tecnología, este trabajo analiza los procesos de conformación mutua de la industria musical digital y las identidades de consumo en entornos urbanos dominados por la incertidumbre, el miedo y la individualización creciente. El concepto de audiotopía de Kun (2015) es utilizado para analizar los espacios sonoros privados que generan las prácticas de escucha musical mediadas por las tecnologías digitales. Sin embargo, mientras que para Kun las audiotopías son espacios abiertos para imaginar nuevas posibilidades, se defiende que, en el marco del capitalismo digital, resultan en conflictos y contradicciones. Finalmente, se identifican tres paradojas de estas audiotopías urbanas relacionadas, respectivamente, con los sistemas de vigilancia y control del consumo digital, la desarticulación de activismos y la oferta prediseñada de identidades. La multiestabilidad o flexibilidad de los ensamblajes sociotécnicos en la que se dan estas paradojas hace que sea posible explorar nuevos caminos y visibilizar nuevas audiotopías urbanas alternativas.
Je länger man über Situationen nachdenkt, umso befremdlicher erscheinen sie. Das gilt für ihre Praxis ebenso sehr wie für alle Begriffe, die versuchen, der Medialität situierter Produktionsweisen gerecht zu werden. Marshall McLuhan hat in einem frühen und unbekannten Text – Notes on the Media as Art Forms – Kommunikation als etwas verstanden, das Teilhabe an gemeinsamen Situationen erzeugt: „[C]ommunication as participation in a common situation“ (McLuhan 1954, S. 6). Damit ist nach den Regeln der transatlantischen Nachkriegsdiskurse zu ‚Medien‘ und ‚Kommunikation‘ weniger ein alltägliches Kommunikationsverständnis adressiert, sondern viel eher die Frage, was Medien generell ausmacht (Schüttpelz 2005).
This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution.
The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical
things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up
the black box of technology. Recent work in science and technology studies (S&TS) and in particular the sociology of technology
is reviewed as another route into dealing with technology and materiality. The recent ideas in sociology of technology are
exemplified with the author’s study of the development of the electronic music synthesizer.
Systems for computer-mediated interaction provide unprecedented research opportunities for social scientists. The scale and complexity of these data also pose practical and theoretical challenges regarding data management, aggregation, analysis, and inference. This chapter discusses these challenges and describes a series of techniques that help researchers move from repositories of interaction logs, through large-scale databases, to visual and quantitative answers to theoretically motivated questions. We describe an integrated framework for generating theoretically motivated research based on the traditions of collective action, social networks, and interactionist sociologies. At the practical level of data collection, processing, and presentation, we describe the use of relational databases, standard data structures, and strategies that facilitate moving data across different research platforms and tools. Drawing on data from the Netscan project, we illustrate techniques for measuring and visualizing hierarchies, distributions, and relationships extracted from Usenet, a large-scale social software system that supports the exchange of messages among ...
This article asks methodological questions about studying infrastructure with some of the tools and perspectives of ethnography. infrastructure is both relational and ecological-it means different things to different groups and it is part of the balance of action tools, and the built environment, inseparable from them. It also is frequently mundane to the point of boredom, involving things such as plugs, standards, and bureaucratic forms. Some of the difficulties of studying infrastructure are how to scale up from traditional ethnographic sites, how to manage large quantities of data such as those produced by transaction logs and how to understand the interplay of online and offline behavior: Some of the tricks of the trade involved in meeting these challenges include studying the design of infrastructure, understanding the paradoxes of infrastructure as both transparent and opaque, including invisible work in the ecological analysis, and pinpointing the epistemological status of indictors.
An institutionally independent organic online learning community (OOLC) founded and populated by London cabbies-in-training, more commonly known to the world and to themselves as 'Knowledge Boys and Girls', is described here. Qualitative discourse analysis of message board transcripts and interviews with members was undertaken in an effort to elucidate benefits that accrue to OOLC members. Goffman's theory of region behaviour is enlisted to explain why frank, collegial and sometimes confessional interactions with peers might take place in such an online venue. This article suggests that through such candid interactions among peers, learners create a back-region that allows participants to compare themselves with one another, cultivate friendships and practise for high-stakes assessments. OOLC members take advantage of the pseudonymity provided by their electronic social space to engage in bchaviours that, if they occurred in a front-region, might invite damage to a learner's reputation as a pre-service cabbie. The online community BR becomes a sanctuary of sorts for taking social and academic risks, one where potential adverse consequences are few and benefits are legion.
This paper presents an ethnographic account of surgical operations as encounters of two disciplined bodies — a parcelled `patient-body', and an aggregated `surgeon-body'. It describes the practices of making bodies operable, of cooperating and of creating anatomical visibility by means of highly skilled manipulations and optical technology. The discussion relates features of surgical practice to two issues raised in science studies: (1) Ritual aspects of scientific work; how does a medical science deal with the life-world esteem for its object?; and (2) The relation of experience and representation; how do patients' bodies come to embody the properties of anatomical pictures? A constructivist interpretation is offered: the anatomical body is an accomplishment of the sculptural practice of operations.
Michel Foucault's ‘archaeology’ and Erving Goffman's interpersonal sociology are complementary. Both are essential for understanding how classifications of people interact with the people classified, and hence for the author's studies of ‘making up people’. The paper begins by explaining how that project is rooted in an ‘existentialist’ conception of the person. It then uses Goffman's Asylums and Foucault's Folie et déraison - both published in 1961 - to illustrate how these methodologies reinforce each other.
This paper is intended as a contribution to the sociology of skill. Research which suggests that skills and their transmission are the properties of communities leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. Second-order studies of skill accept that skill acquisition occurs within a culture, but then go on to examine in detail which aspects of skills can be explicated and which cannot. Such a second-order study is presented here. Observations of veterinary surgery are used to identify a quasi-quantitative measure of skill acquisition – hardness. This measure is useful in understanding how task uncertainty is resolved in practice and how new skills are learnt.
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Using the author's own experiences in local politics, the paper examines several cases in which pieces of mundane infrastructure
are contested. The cases include eruvs, traffic-calming technologies, and invisible dog fences. The argument is that in contra distinction to abstract philosophical
approaches to technology, the social construction of technology (SCOT) needs to return to the examination of the mundane embeddedness
of technologies in everyday life. It is argued that an adequate approach to the role of the human and the non-human should
not buy into a distinction between ontology and epistemology but instead should focus upon the contested interaction of humans
and non-humans in everyday life and thereby restore the analysis of intentionality and meaning to its rightful place at the
core of the sociology of technology.
Calculation has been recently discussed in relationship to market transactions as: (1) a set of operations, including classifications and computations, which support decision-making processes by economic actors; (2) action plans or strategies which can be evaluated against efficacy criteria; (3) broader social processes which induce behavioral modifications and transformations along (1) and (2). Calculations would appear as situated plans or strategies, bounded by institutional constraints, and anchored in classifications, computations, and evaluations, strategies which are implemented within trading interactions. Such plans make use of available resources and adapt to constraints, but are prior with respect to live trading interactions. Using a conceptual apparatus anchored in the work of Erving Goffman, I argue that calculation is situational action. Its features are shaped by the interaction order of trading, and it can be conceptualized as emerging from gaming encounters--i.e., competitive displays of the participants' socially relevant attributes. These arguments are supported with empirical data from online, anonymous financial trading. In these markets, gaming encounters make anonymous strangers present in the trader's situation, as a basis for assessing the relevance of displays on the trading screen and for reacting to these displays. At the same time, traders engage in repeated self-displays as a means for defining their own situation and for projecting subsequent action sequences.
Presented as the Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 1, 2008, this article rethinks central assumptions of the interaction order as conceptualized by Goffman and others with respect to global domains of activity. It proposes two new concepts, that of the synthetic situation and that of time transactions. Synthetic situations are situations that include electronically transmitted on-screen projections that add informational depth and new response requirements to the "ecological huddle" (Goffman 1964:135) of the natural situation. Global situations invariably include such components; we also find that temporal forms of integration may substitute for joint territoriality of copresence in the natural situation. Based on research on global currency trading and other empirical examples, I identify four types of synthetic situations and describe the synthetic situation's informational character, its ontological fluidity, and the phenomenon that synthetic situations may become role-others for participants. I outline the response system of synthetic situations, sketching out the concepts of response presence and its implications in this context as well as the importance of embodiment I also discuss time transactions and the idea of fatefulness as a symbolic charge linked to the synthetic components of the situation.