Aarhus University – Specialization

Analysing IT, Organisation and Agency

The second semester specialisation course presupposes a thorough understandings of STS methods, theories and approaches. The students are introduced to analyses of information infrastructures with explicit focus on organisational practices.

The course looks into what computer-based information infrastructures do to organisational practices and everydaylife, 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 sociotechnical mediations between embodied humans and technical systems in situated practices. The central themes of the course are information infrastructures in historical and postphenomenological perspectives, design strategies, user involvement, participatory surveillance, construction of users, and how to study them.

The general 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 STS positions.

Core Literature

Seminar 1. General introduction + IT in historical perspective

Cambell-Kelly, M. & W. Asprey (1996) Inventing the Computer, in Computer – A History of the Information Machine. (New York, BasicBooks): 78-104.

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

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

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

Seminar 2. IT as Infrastructure

S. L. Star and G. C. Bowker, How To Infrastructure, in L.A. Lievrouw and S.L. Livingston (eds), The Handbook of New Media, London: SAGE Publications, pp. 151-62, 2002.

Bowker, G. C. and S. L. Star (1999), “Classification and Large-Scale Infrastructures”. I : Bowker, G. C. and S. L. Star (1999): Sorting Things Out. Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge (Mass) & London: MIT Press, s33-50.

Hanseth, O. and E. Monteiro Inscribing behaviour in information infrastructure standards. Accounting, Management and Information Technologies, vol. (7), no.(4), pp. 183-211.

Karasti, H and Syrjänen, A-L (2004), “Artful Infrastructuring in Two Cases of Community PD”. Proceedings of the Conference on Participatory Design 2004, p20-30.

Hughes, T. P. (1987): The Evolution of Large Technological Systems. W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes and T. J. Pinch: The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge (Mass) & London: MIT Press, pp. 51-82

Seminar 3. Material agency

Pickering. A (1999): The mangle of Practice: Agency and emergence in the sociology of science in Mario Biagioli, ed. 1999. The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. pp. 372-393

Latour, B (1999): Pandora’s hope, Harvard University Press, chp. 6, 174-215

Barad, K. (2007): Meeting the Universe halfways, Duke University Press, chp. 5, 189-222

Seminar 4. Postphenomenology

Ihde, D. (1996) Philosophy of Technology as Hermeneutic Task, in Expanding Hermeneutics – Visualism in Science. Northwestern University Press: 39-49

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

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

Verbeek, P.-P. (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. Springer: 91-103

Seminar 5. 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 6. 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 7. Surveillance and IT

Albrechtslund, A. and L. Dubbeld (2005). “The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying

Surveillance as Entertainment. .” Surveillance & Society 3(2/3): 216-221.

Boyne, R. (2000). “Post-Panopticism.” Economy and Society 29(2): 285-307.

Gad, C. and P. Lauritsen (2009). “Situated Surveillance. An ethnographic study of fisheries inspection in Denmark.” Surveillance and Society 7(1): 49-57.

Haggerty, K. “Tear down the walls: on demolishing the panopticon”. In Lyon, D., Ed. Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Portland, Willan Publishing.

Lyon, D. (2006) “Introduction.” In Lyon, D., Ed. Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Portland, Willan Publishing.

Seminar 8. Multi-sited Fieldwork

Jensen, C. 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 9. Course Assignments

Examples of previous theses
Users and MyOpera – Opera’s use of social media as tools in technology development
Kaja Christine Boska
Abstract
I focus on the role of users in the development of Opera’s technology. The communication and interaction happen through various social media, and they are centered within the MyOpera community. Social media arenas have opened up to new ways of interacting, and I look at how this can tighten the relations between the users and Opera, and that the boundaries between their roles as users and developers might change. MyOpera has evolved from a technical community to become more like a social media arena. This has also opened up for new types of users joining MyOpera. This social aspect of MyOpera might influence Opera’s representation of the user. Further, I investigate whether the users’ contributions can lead to innovation, and how feedback and contributions can be seen as incremental innovations. I use theorists such as Akrich, Oudshoorn and Latour. I use von Hippel’s theories around lead users, and other theories on user involvement in technology development. I use ethnographic methodology, and I made participant observations in the MyOpera online community, as well as Opera’s site on Facebook and Twitter. I have also interviewed the community manager and a community moderator in Opera, as well as users in MyOpera.

On evaluation systems as Actor-Networks
Jacob Martin Barlach & Christian Fischer
Abstract
This thesis is concerned with the processes around reconstructing and optimizing teaching evaluation systems and how to get the desired data from such systems. Several institutions throughout the Danish society have tried to construct such a system, without any conspicuous successful examples. This thesis is concerned with the development process, of such a system, at VIA University College in Denmark. The development process runs from spring 2010 to the fall of the same year. Through the Actor-Network Theory based translation and detour processes, the paper examines how such a process unfolds over time, including the shifting interests and positions of identified actor groups, redefinitions of the core problems related to development, implementation, securing support from user-groups, and testing possible solution models. Our qualitative research reveals and exemplifies how many different areas and issues influence the currently very low answer rates, and how different cultural divides between actor groups, organizational conflicts and politics, ICT infrastructure and outside forces all affect the problems related to teaching evaluation. Through theories such as User Configuration, Participatory design, and points about standardization and boundary objects, we aim at solutions focused on incremental adjustments in many different areas, ranging from the concrete ICT platform that is the basis of a digital evaluation system, and the methods involved in construction question that makes sense for both the managements need to formally document results of teaching evaluation, and the teachers’ need for valid information to guide didactic adjustments. Points from our research, including discussions regarding ownership, resource efficiency and workload for administrative personal, and useable and comparable datasets derived from teaching evaluation all influence the system that represent development process. These subjects include actions aimed at democratizing the survey content, choosing the ICT platform the caters to the needs of all relevant actors, ensuring construction and use of an effective communication infrastructure related to evaluation, and they are all aimed at the aforementioned multifaceted incremental adjustments, that will hopefully aid in addressing the initial core question: Raising low teaching evaluation answer rates, and creating a maintainable system that produces valid and relevant data. Our paper will exemplify how this process is quite rich in reconfigurations of central problems, redefinitions of the roles and positions of central actors and groups of actors, conflicts and power struggles, detours and workarounds. Letting the aforementioned theories inhabiting the STS field guide our work, we have in co- operation with the good people at VIA University College tried (with moderate success) to address the challenges and problem areas that have risen throughout the process that represents the focal point of this paper

Further exaples of theses

Eating Processes – Jon Meisner Jensen

Robotising dementia care? A qualitative analysis on technological mediations of a therapeutic robot entering the lifeworld of Danish nursing homes – Sarah Weingartz

Users and MyOpera – Opera’s use of social media as tools in technology development – Kaja Christine Boska

On evaluation systems as Actor-Networks – Jacob Martin Barlach & Christian Fischer

Caring for ‘good’?: Reflections on how good care practice can be identified in contemporary technological culture – Alexander Feldhaus

Language of instruction:: English

Programme Coordinator
Peter Danholt: pdanholt@hum.au.dk