ESST

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

Analysing IT, Organisation and Agency

This course, which presupposes a thorough understanding of STS methods, theories and approaches, introduces participants to analyses of information infrastructures with an explicit focus on organisational practices.

The course looks into what computer-based information infrastructures do to organisational practices and everyday life, how such structurings can be analysed and how we can engage with them. The question of agency is addressed with emphasis on recent studies of sociotechnically mediated figuration of humans and users. The central themes of the course are information infrastructures in a historical and a postphenomenological perspective, design strategies, user involvement, construction of users, and how to study these ethnographically.

The goal of the course is to provide the participants with a sound, balanced knowledge of how the workings of IT systems and sociotechnical agencies may be approached from within a STS understanding.

Core Literature

Seminar 1. Introduction

Seminar 2. IT as Infrastructure

Bowker, Geoffrey & Susan Leigh Star (1999) Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 1-16; 31-50.

Mackenzie, A. (2003), "These Things Called Systems: Collective Imaginings and Infrastructural Software." Social Studies of Science 33: 365-387.

Mackenzie, Adrian. 2005. The performativity of code: software and cultures of circulation. Theory, Culture & Society 22 (1):71-92.

Button, Graham & Wes Sharrock (1996) ‘Project Work: The Organisation of Collaborative Design and Development in Software Engineering’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing 5: 369–86.

Seminar 3. IT in historical Perspective

Cambell-Kelly, Martin & William Asprey (1996) ‘Real Time – Reaping the Whirlwind’, Computer – A History of the Information Machine. (New York, BasicBooks): 157-180

Edwards, Paul (1996) ‘SAGE’, The Closed World – Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. MIT Press: 75-112

Pickering, Andy, 2006 The Science of the Unknowable: Stafford Beer’s Cybernetic Informatics. Working Paper, (Aarhus: STS Center)

Seminar 4. Material Hermeneutics

Ihde, Don (2002) “Perceptual Reasoning”. Bodies in Technology. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press): 50-63

Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2005), ”A Material hermeneutic”. What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency and Design. (Pennsylvania: Penn State Press): 121-145

Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2008), ‘Morality in Design: Design Ethics and the Morality of Technological Artifacts’. Pieter E. Vermaas, Peter Kroes, Andrew Light, Steven A. Moore (eds.), Philosophy and Design: from Engineering to Architecture. (Dordrecht: Springer): 91-103

Seminar 5. Mid-course Assignment

Seminar 6. Multi-sited Fieldwork

Jensen, Casper B. (2004) Researching Partially Existing Objects: What is an Electronic Patient Record? Where do you find it? How do you study it?, Working Paper, no. 4 (Aarhus: STS centre)

Henriksen, D. L. (2002). "Locating virtual field sites and a dispersed object of research." Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 14(2): 31-45

Hine, C. (2007). "Multi-sited Ethnography as a Middle Range Methodology for Contemporary STS." Science, Technology & Human Values 32(6): 652-671

Seminar 7. Configuring the User

Woolgar, S. (1991). Configuring the User: the Case of Usability Trials. A Sociology of Monsters. Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. J. Law. (New York & London, Routledge): 58-99.

Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of Technical Objects. Shaping Technology/Building Society. W. E. Bijker and J. Law. (Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press): 205-24

Mackay, H., C. Carne, et al. (2000). "Reconfiguring the User: Using Rapid Application Development." Social Studies of Science 30(5): 737-757

Oudshoorn, N. and T. J. Pinch (2003). How Users Matter. The Co-Construction of Users and Technologies. (Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press): 1-28

Oudshoorn, N et al (2004). “Configuring the User as Everybody: Gender and Design Cultures in Information and Communication Technologies”, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 29(1), pp. 30-63

Seminar 8. Participatory Design

Blomberg, J. & Kensing, F (1998), “Participatory Design: Issues and Concerns”. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, vol. 7, no. 3-4: 167-185

Berg, M. (1998), “The Politics of Technology: On Bringing Social Theory into Technological Design”. Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 23(4): 456-490

Asaro P.M (2000), “Transforming society by transforming technology: the science and politics of participatory design”. Accounting, Management and Information Technologies, Vol. 10(4): 257-290

Suchman, L. (2002), “Located accountabilities in technology production”, Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, vol. 14(2): 91-105

Seminar 9. Course Assignments

Language of instruction

English

Programme Coordinator

Finn Olesen: finno@imv.au.dk

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