scholarly journals Dis/Abling Practices: Rethinking Disability

Human Affairs ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schillmeier
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Multiple Processes

Dis/Abling Practices: Rethinking DisabilityThe paper discusses how ordinary acts of everyday life make up the complex and contingent scenarios of disabilities that create enabling and disabling (dis/abling) practices. Drawing on qualitative empirical data the societal visibility and relevance of dis/abling practices are analyzed by connecting disability studies and sociological ideas with insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS). The essay explores how (visual) dis/ability is the outcome of human and non-human configurations and suggests that dis/ability can be understood neither as an individual bodily impairment nor as a socially attributed disability. Rather, dis/ability refers to complex sets of heterogeneous practices that (re-)associate bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory practices. These practices, the paper concludes, draw attention to the multiple processes that (re-) concatenate the conduct of human affairs.

scholarly journals Dancing with Data: Introducing a Creative Interactional Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-548
Author(s):  
Darren J Reed
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Ballroom Dance ◽  
Interactional Analysis ◽  
Device Use ◽  
Interactional Features

In this article, a dance metaphor is developed to deepen our understanding of the material, sensual, processual, and experiential potential of digital data relations. Premised upon Blumer’s notion of a sensitising concept, ballroom dance theory is applied to everyday use of the Apple Watch so as to prompt investigation of subtle interactional features of device use. The aim is to engender an inclusive umbrella concept while simultaneously stimulating questions of analysis of and access to small-scale and intimate moments of embodied behaviours in future interactional analysis. In so doing, the article contributes to the sociology of data relationality in everyday life, as well as constituent approaches such as science and technology studies and the interactional study of bodies and machines.

scholarly journals Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myriam Dunn Cavelty
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Circulation Of Knowledge

This article sets out to show how different understandings of technology as suggested by Science and Technology Studies (STS) help reveal different political facets of cybersecurity. Using cybersecurity research as empirical site, it is shown that two separate ways of understanding cybertechnologies are prevalent in society. The primary one sees cybertechnologies as apolitical, flawed, material objects that need to be fixed in order to create more security; the other understands them as mere political tools in the hands of social actors without considering technological (im)possibilities. This article suggests a focus on a third understanding to bridge the uneasy gap between the two others: technology defined as an embodiment of societal knowledge. The article posits that in line with that, the study of cyberpolitics would benefit from two innovations: a focus on cybersecurity as social practice―enacted and stabilized through the circulation of knowledge about vulnerabilities―and a focus on the practices employed in the discovery, exploitation and removal of those vulnerabilities.

Dis/Abling Spaces of Calculation: Blindness and Money in Everyday Life

10.1068/d4173 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 594-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schillmeier
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Visually Disabled ◽  
Empirical Material

In this paper I attempt to explore how ‘ordinary acts’ of dealing with money and with money technologies fabricate enabling and disabling—dis/abling—spaces of calculation. Rather than referring to money merely as a general symbolic medium of exchange, I highlight the materiality and the sensory practices involved in handling money and shaping the practice of sociality. Drawing on empirical material, I explicate some of the ways in which everyday practices with money are distinctively important for visually disabled people. Combining sociological and social philosophical thoughts with insights from science and technology studies, I rethink the social understanding of money and disability. I explore how (visual) dis/ability is situated in everyday practices and suggest that it can be understood neither as an individual bodily impairment nor as a socially attributed disability. Both money and blindness become visible as complex sets of calculate practices, linking bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory practices. These practices, I conclude, draw attention to the heterogeneous fabrication of sociality and to the emerging dis/abling spaces of calculation that unfold in the course of everyday life.

scholarly journals ‘Assisted’ Facial Recognition and the Reinvention of Suspicion and Discretion in Digital Policing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Fussey ◽  
Bethan Davies ◽  
Martin Innes
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Facial Recognition ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Technological Capability ◽  
Police Discretion ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
Technology Studies

Abstract Automated facial recognition (AFR) has emerged as one of the most controversial policing innovations of recent years. Drawing on empirical data collected during the United Kingdom’s two major police trials of AFR deployments—and building on insights from the sociology of policing, surveillance studies and science and technology studies—this article advances several arguments. Tracing a lineage from early sociologies of policing that accented the importance of police discretion and suspicion formation, the analysis illuminates how technological capability is conditioned by police discretion, but police discretion itself is also contingent on affordances brought by the operational and technical environment. These, in turn, frame and ‘legitimate’ subjects of a reinvented and digitally mediated ‘bureaucratic suspicion’.

scholarly journals (The domestication of) Nordic domestication?

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
High Uptake ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Future State

AbstractThe domestication concept, originally developed in Britain in the context of media appropriation in households’ everyday life, has seen a relatively high uptake in the Nordic countries from early on. This was by far not only an application of the concept, but an alternative interpretation with different emphases. I introduce two major strands of this uptake in this article: the Norwegian science and technology studies interpretation, and the primarily Finnish consumer and design research interpretation. These case studies will help answer the question of the degree of Nordicness in these interpretations of the domestication approach. In a last instance, the article aims to address the question what the current – and hopefully future – state of domestication research in the Nordic countries could look like.

Neurological disorders, affective bioethics, and the nervous system: reconsidering the Schiavo case from a materialist perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 166-175
Author(s):  
Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
The People ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa

This article proposes a novel approach to bioethics, referred to as “affective bioethics”, which draws on traditions in anthropology, science and technology studies, disability studies, and Spinozist materialism. By focusing on the case of Michael and Terri Schiavo, in which Terri’s personhood and subjectivity are challenged by dominant forms of neurological reductivism in the USA, this article suggests that approaching her condition as a set of relations with the people in her life and her socio-technical environment may have helped to develop new ways to conceptualise personhood and subjectivity moving beyond the view of her as a non-person. Drawing on Michael Schiavo’s memoir of his legal battles, and Terri’s diagnosis and care, this article shows how Terri’s connections to the world disrupt American ideas about the isolatable individual as the basis for personhood and subjectivity. Attending to these interpersonal and socio-technical connections focuses bioethical attention on the worlds that individuals inhabit, and how those worlds might be designed to make more kinds of life livable and new forms of personhood and subjectivity possible.

scholarly journals Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Basile Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Interactional Expertise ◽  
General Argument ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Chinese Studies

Abstract Chinese studies are going through a period of reforms. This article appraises what could constitute the theoretical and methodological foundations of contemporary sinology today. The author suggests an approach of “Chinese culture” by drawing from recent frameworks of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The paper starts with current debates in Asian studies, followed by a historical overview of the concept of culture in anthropology. Then, two short case studies are presented with regard to two different STS approaches: studies of expertise and experience and the notion of interactional expertise, and the framework of waves and forms. A general argument is thereby sketched which suggests how “Chinese culture” can be understood from the perspective of materiality.

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