This article combines qualitative and quantitative methods to examine affectivity in discussions on Twitter about the first years of a pilot programme for medicinal cannabis in Denmark. Starting in 2018, the pilot programme has been the object of much public discussion, including on social media. Drawing on data from the platform Twitter and affect theory from Sara Ahmed (2010 , 2014 ), the article uses a combination of computational methods and close readings to locate and analyse which topics in the debate are particularly affectively charged and what the implications of this affectivity are. The article argues that the circulation of affect here is rooted in wider negotiations and hierarchies of knowledge as this relates to medicine and bodies. In particular, ideas and discourses relating to evidence are circulated in the debate as an object of varying articulations of hopes, dreams, and frustration.
{"title":"Sticky Biomedical Objects: Affective Circulations in Twitter Discussions about Medicinal Cannabis","authors":"K. Kjær","doi":"10.3366/soma.2023.0395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2023.0395","url":null,"abstract":"This article combines qualitative and quantitative methods to examine affectivity in discussions on Twitter about the first years of a pilot programme for medicinal cannabis in Denmark. Starting in 2018, the pilot programme has been the object of much public discussion, including on social media. Drawing on data from the platform Twitter and affect theory from Sara Ahmed (2010 , 2014 ), the article uses a combination of computational methods and close readings to locate and analyse which topics in the debate are particularly affectively charged and what the implications of this affectivity are. The article argues that the circulation of affect here is rooted in wider negotiations and hierarchies of knowledge as this relates to medicine and bodies. In particular, ideas and discourses relating to evidence are circulated in the debate as an object of varying articulations of hopes, dreams, and frustration.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44876424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debbie Bargallie, Unmasking the Racial Contract – Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service","authors":"Danelia Robinson","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0389","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48098538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Relying on the diffusion of innovations theory by Everett Rogers (1962 [2003]), the current paper traces the five steps of the innovation-decision process for adopting microchip implants in a workplace. Semi-structured individual interviews with microchipped employees (n=14) from six different organisations in Estonia were carried out to explore their opinions and experiences with adopting the use of microchip implants in their workplaces. Our analysis indicates that social reinforcement from their colleagues played an important role in the formation of the attitudes and beliefs of our interviewees about microchip implants. In fact, a strong element of homophily existed within the social system both on the organisational and interpersonal levels. Our findings suggest that the employees who decided to get microchip implants were considered to be more loyal and dedicated, as well as more in sync with the overall goals and values of the organisation; the employees who rejected the innovation were viewed as less motivated and not as invested in their organisations. All our interviewees stressed that they were voluntary adopters of the innovation and wholeheartedly believed in the value of trade-offs between convenience and privacy.
{"title":"Tracing the Innovation – Decision Process for Adopting Microchip Implants: Reflections and Experiences of Estonian Employees","authors":"A. Siibak, Marleen Otsus","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0388","url":null,"abstract":"Relying on the diffusion of innovations theory by Everett Rogers (1962 [2003]), the current paper traces the five steps of the innovation-decision process for adopting microchip implants in a workplace. Semi-structured individual interviews with microchipped employees (n=14) from six different organisations in Estonia were carried out to explore their opinions and experiences with adopting the use of microchip implants in their workplaces. Our analysis indicates that social reinforcement from their colleagues played an important role in the formation of the attitudes and beliefs of our interviewees about microchip implants. In fact, a strong element of homophily existed within the social system both on the organisational and interpersonal levels. Our findings suggest that the employees who decided to get microchip implants were considered to be more loyal and dedicated, as well as more in sync with the overall goals and values of the organisation; the employees who rejected the innovation were viewed as less motivated and not as invested in their organisations. All our interviewees stressed that they were voluntary adopters of the innovation and wholeheartedly believed in the value of trade-offs between convenience and privacy.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42602640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent years, sheltered by the so-called ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences, organisational analysis has paid special attention to artefacts. Nevertheless, there is still a dominant account grounded in a dichotomist view of the subject-object relationship either in teleological (mind-body) or in hylomorfic (form-matter) terms when analysing organising practices. On the contrary, our argument is based on non-dualistic approaches in an attempt to foreground relational aspects of practices. From a practice-based approach, the article addresses the role of three ‘prototypes’ aimed at the management of the ‘air’ by citizenship, in the re-configuration of bodies, technics and ethical-political engagement. Specifically, it focuses on the normative dimensions of organising by which knowledges, materials and values converge in the open-ended process of prototyping. The argument is deployed by relying on qualitative research based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, developed both at different workshops and by online ethnography. The main aim of the article is to show how bodies and artefacts are mutually in/trans/formed when negotiating the social implications for the ontological category of ‘air’. In doing so, the concept of ‘informal infrastructure’ is proposed to account for those practices (which appear somewhat contingent, mundane or, at best, taken for granted) by which agents do not only commit to a particular ethical implication embedded in the category of ‘air’, as a symbolic result, but also to distinctive ways of practicing organisation as a political process of performing materiality. To this end, adopting the analytical concept of ‘informal infrastructure’ allows to simultaneously consider both the formal and informal aspects that emerge in these collaboration-driven practices, as well as to address their effects on the maintenance within and expansion into other networks.
{"title":"‘Informal Infrastructure’ of Prototyping: Practicing Organisation by Performing Materiality","authors":"Sandra Fernández García, Francisco Sánchez Valle","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0386","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, sheltered by the so-called ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences, organisational analysis has paid special attention to artefacts. Nevertheless, there is still a dominant account grounded in a dichotomist view of the subject-object relationship either in teleological (mind-body) or in hylomorfic (form-matter) terms when analysing organising practices. On the contrary, our argument is based on non-dualistic approaches in an attempt to foreground relational aspects of practices. From a practice-based approach, the article addresses the role of three ‘prototypes’ aimed at the management of the ‘air’ by citizenship, in the re-configuration of bodies, technics and ethical-political engagement. Specifically, it focuses on the normative dimensions of organising by which knowledges, materials and values converge in the open-ended process of prototyping. The argument is deployed by relying on qualitative research based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, developed both at different workshops and by online ethnography. The main aim of the article is to show how bodies and artefacts are mutually in/trans/formed when negotiating the social implications for the ontological category of ‘air’. In doing so, the concept of ‘informal infrastructure’ is proposed to account for those practices (which appear somewhat contingent, mundane or, at best, taken for granted) by which agents do not only commit to a particular ethical implication embedded in the category of ‘air’, as a symbolic result, but also to distinctive ways of practicing organisation as a political process of performing materiality. To this end, adopting the analytical concept of ‘informal infrastructure’ allows to simultaneously consider both the formal and informal aspects that emerge in these collaboration-driven practices, as well as to address their effects on the maintenance within and expansion into other networks.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47691272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Liminality is an anthropological concept that has been influential in contemporary social studies. This article is written from an organisation culture and studies perspective wherein liminality has been seen: (i) as something that must be controlled, (ii) as a utopian call to creativity, and (iii) as a dystopian entrapment. Liminality has to do with whether the study of practice has been excessively cognitive whereby the human is reduced to concepts of control, efficiency and profit; and whereby the soma (Gr.) of the physical body is marginalised as mind, spirit, and ideation are prioritised. Thus, what of sarx (Gr.) or the flesh of existence (see Merleau-Ponty, Klossowski)? In this article we explore liminality evaluating its relationship to bodily-ness / bodyless-ness, affect and text. We start with a discussion of liminality as originated by the anthropologists van Gennep and Turner, and as pushed aside by Weick, but lionised as creativity by Kostera, and denounced as stagnation by Szakolczai. This is followed by an auto-ethnographic case study. The case study points to the unheimisch 2 of liminality which we examine via Pierre Klossowski’s manifoldness. Realising that text about liminality and its embodiment easily becomes paradoxical (unembodied and affectless), we present a non-textual (i.e., not written) visual reaction to the case; again, in the spirit of Klossowski; and we conclude with reflections co-inspired by Maurice Merlau-Ponty on the physical affectivity of liminality.
{"title":"Liminality Affect and Flesh","authors":"H. Letiche, Terrence Letiche, Jean-Luc Moriceau","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0385","url":null,"abstract":"Liminality is an anthropological concept that has been influential in contemporary social studies. This article is written from an organisation culture and studies perspective wherein liminality has been seen: (i) as something that must be controlled, (ii) as a utopian call to creativity, and (iii) as a dystopian entrapment. Liminality has to do with whether the study of practice has been excessively cognitive whereby the human is reduced to concepts of control, efficiency and profit; and whereby the soma (Gr.) of the physical body is marginalised as mind, spirit, and ideation are prioritised. Thus, what of sarx (Gr.) or the flesh of existence (see Merleau-Ponty, Klossowski)? In this article we explore liminality evaluating its relationship to bodily-ness / bodyless-ness, affect and text. We start with a discussion of liminality as originated by the anthropologists van Gennep and Turner, and as pushed aside by Weick, but lionised as creativity by Kostera, and denounced as stagnation by Szakolczai. This is followed by an auto-ethnographic case study. The case study points to the unheimisch 2 of liminality which we examine via Pierre Klossowski’s manifoldness. Realising that text about liminality and its embodiment easily becomes paradoxical (unembodied and affectless), we present a non-textual (i.e., not written) visual reaction to the case; again, in the spirit of Klossowski; and we conclude with reflections co-inspired by Maurice Merlau-Ponty on the physical affectivity of liminality.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44735300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
By attending to the disorganization, this article theorizes the entanglement of the technological disorder and the cosmological chaos from the case study of Japan’s Robot Theater Project (2008 to present), which stages the near-future human-robot cohabitation using social robots. Centered on the performativity of disorder, contingency, and dysfunction enacted by the robots, I examine how the Zen-Buddhist-inspired thinking of the chaos and the void is incorporated into prototyping dysfunctional social robots. I coin the term ‘chaosmo-technics’ as a conceptual tool to investigate the counter-performance of defective technology, decoding how prototyping technological disorder is situated in Japanese cosmological thinking and the disaster fallouts of the post-Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. The article’s approach to disorganization via the lenses of chaosmo-technics aims to examine the limitations of the technological organization, unveiling its relations to other alien forms of (dis)organization in the names of error, chaos, nullification, uncontrollability, and catastrophe in the context of Japan’s robot theater.
{"title":"Made to Fail: Chaosmo-Technics of Japan’s Robot Theater","authors":"Ruowen Xu","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0384","url":null,"abstract":"By attending to the disorganization, this article theorizes the entanglement of the technological disorder and the cosmological chaos from the case study of Japan’s Robot Theater Project (2008 to present), which stages the near-future human-robot cohabitation using social robots. Centered on the performativity of disorder, contingency, and dysfunction enacted by the robots, I examine how the Zen-Buddhist-inspired thinking of the chaos and the void is incorporated into prototyping dysfunctional social robots. I coin the term ‘chaosmo-technics’ as a conceptual tool to investigate the counter-performance of defective technology, decoding how prototyping technological disorder is situated in Japanese cosmological thinking and the disaster fallouts of the post-Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. The article’s approach to disorganization via the lenses of chaosmo-technics aims to examine the limitations of the technological organization, unveiling its relations to other alien forms of (dis)organization in the names of error, chaos, nullification, uncontrollability, and catastrophe in the context of Japan’s robot theater.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48071809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Through a correspondence between two scholars, this paper explores and critiques various ways in which scholars working in ethnography and cultural analysis frame and construct their methodology and object of study. Through the close reading of theoretical accounts of methodology in ethnography and cultural analysis, we examine how these accounts construct the relationship between the scholar and her object of study. We read these scholarly practices as protocols, referring to the ways in which accounts of methodology may be understood as rules/guidelines by which scholars in these fields conduct research. Protocol etymologically refers to protos (first) and kolla (glue). Through the figure of the protocol, we delineate how scholars in ethnography and cultural analysis themselves become implicated in giving accounts of their research methodologies.
{"title":"Stuck Together: A Correspondence on Protocols between Scholars and Objects","authors":"A. Hiskes, Ohad Ben Shimon","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0387","url":null,"abstract":"Through a correspondence between two scholars, this paper explores and critiques various ways in which scholars working in ethnography and cultural analysis frame and construct their methodology and object of study. Through the close reading of theoretical accounts of methodology in ethnography and cultural analysis, we examine how these accounts construct the relationship between the scholar and her object of study. We read these scholarly practices as protocols, referring to the ways in which accounts of methodology may be understood as rules/guidelines by which scholars in these fields conduct research. Protocol etymologically refers to protos (first) and kolla (glue). Through the figure of the protocol, we delineate how scholars in ethnography and cultural analysis themselves become implicated in giving accounts of their research methodologies.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43044430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Somatechnics of Organisations","authors":"O. B. Shimon","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0383","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44759274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Somatechnics of Research: Queering the Production of Knowledge","authors":"D. Bruining, S. Tack","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0374","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48562896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article draws on the paradigm of media operationalism to understand the somatechnical construction of bodies during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the concept of somatechnics, one’s experience with the social world is articulated through the available technologies and techniques required to and developed from using these technologies ( Sullivan and Murray 2016 ). By drawing on the case of the Service Victoria app, the digital COVID-19 contact tracing system launched by the Victoria State government in Australia, I focus on the transformative meaning of technologies and somatechnics and how subjectivity is being redefined through the lens of technological utilisation. I suggest that all human-related forms of relations (human-to-human and human-to-machine) have become secondary and give way to the synchronic data-to-data relation of the app. In the regime of operational media, the body is not just a historical and cultural construction but a techno-transactional object that supports the optimisation of automated-decision making. The recent operational-turn in media studies provides a useful pathway to rethink the changing meaning of body and the human/technologies entanglement.
{"title":"COVID-19 Contact Tracing and the Operationalisation of Somatechnics","authors":"Wilfred Yang Wang","doi":"10.3366/soma.2022.0379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2022.0379","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws on the paradigm of media operationalism to understand the somatechnical construction of bodies during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the concept of somatechnics, one’s experience with the social world is articulated through the available technologies and techniques required to and developed from using these technologies ( Sullivan and Murray 2016 ). By drawing on the case of the Service Victoria app, the digital COVID-19 contact tracing system launched by the Victoria State government in Australia, I focus on the transformative meaning of technologies and somatechnics and how subjectivity is being redefined through the lens of technological utilisation. I suggest that all human-related forms of relations (human-to-human and human-to-machine) have become secondary and give way to the synchronic data-to-data relation of the app. In the regime of operational media, the body is not just a historical and cultural construction but a techno-transactional object that supports the optimisation of automated-decision making. The recent operational-turn in media studies provides a useful pathway to rethink the changing meaning of body and the human/technologies entanglement.","PeriodicalId":43420,"journal":{"name":"Somatechnics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46338424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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