Skateboarders’ Representations of Materiality: A Case Study of Rodney Mullen and Spike Jonze

Somatechnics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-375
Author(s):  
Bethany Geckle
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Spike Jonze

Physical activity is commonly conceived of in terms of its human involvement – as a test of, and testament to, human ability. However, physical activity does not exist without the contributions of countless non-human agencies, such as equipment and environments, with which the athletes work closely and form relationships. As such, athletes have a unique understanding of non-human agency. In this article I analyse the power of non-human agency in skateboarding through the representations of the professional skateboarder Rodney Mullen and filmmaker Spike Jonze. I examine their lectures, interviews, and films to show the ways in which skateboarders experience, practice, and represent the principles of actor-network theory (ANT). Skateboarders utilise and manipulate the often-unanticipated potential of non-human tools and urban landscapes and translate them into a collaborative result. Skateboarding is a trial-and-error experiment of testing, innovating, and adapting possibilities and limitations set by a network of mediators including people and ‘things’. Mullen and Jonze commonly depict skateboarding as the product of networks rather than independent human action. Their representations reveal how skateboarders perceive and act out their role as humans within networks alongside non-human agencies such as skateboards and obstacles, and which combine to produce skateboarding.

Institutionalized Education: Journalism and Mass Communication Education in Pakistan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1326365X2110096
Author(s):  
David Bockino ◽  
Amir Ilyas
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Communication Education ◽  
Organizational Field ◽  
The World ◽  
Mass Communication Education

This article uses an examination of journalism and mass communication (JMC) education in Pakistan as a case study to explore the consequences of increased homogenization of JMC education around the world. Anchored by a qualitative method that relies heavily on actor-network theory, the study identifies key moments and people in the trajectory of five Pakistani programmes and explores the connection between these programmes and the larger JMC organizational field. The study concludes by questioning the efficacy of the current power structures within the supranational JMC organizational field before discussing how these influences could potentially be mitigated moving forward.

Mobilizing a fast policy fix: Exploring the translation of 10-year plans to end homelessness in Alberta, Canada

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-521
Author(s):  
Joshua Evans ◽  
Jeffrey R Masuda
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Housing First ◽  
Adaptive Governance ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Dense Network ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

The management of homelessness has taken various forms over time. In 2003, the U.S. federal government significantly shifted its approach, ambitiously committing to end homelessness within 10 years by targeting the chronically homeless using the Housing First model. This approach to homelessness has rapidly spread across North America and beyond. This article is concerned with how the mobility of these 10-year plans has been realized. Drawing on Peck and Theodore’s concept of “fast policy,” and borrowing perspectives developed in actor-network theory, the article develops a case study of Alberta, Canada, to chronicle how 10-year plans were translated through a dense network of political alignments, socio-technical expertise, and statistical inscriptions. A close examination of these translations invites us to problematize this socio-technical infrastructure as a powerful mode of adaptive governance closely associated with the dynamism of neoliberalism itself.

The Iranian Wheat Growers’ Climate Information Use

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Sharifzadeh ◽  
Gholam Zamani ◽  
Ezatollah Hossein Karami ◽  
Davar Khalili ◽  
Arthur Tatnall
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Information Access ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Fars Province ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
Processing Factors

This research project employed an interdisciplinary attempt to study agricultural climate information use, linking sociology of translation (actor-network theory) and actor analysis premises in a qualitative research design. The research method used case study approaches and purposively selected a sample consisting of wheat growers of the Fars province of Iran, who are known as contact farmers. Concepts from actor-network theory (ANT) have been found to provide a useful perspective on the description and analysis of the cases. The data were analyzed using a combination of an actor-network theory (ANT) framework and the dynamic actor-network analysis (DANA) model. The findings revealed socio political (farmers’ awareness, motivation, and trust), and information processing factors (accuracy of information, access to information, and correspondence of information to farmers’ condition) as the key elements in facilitating climate information use in farming practices.

scholarly journals The Extraordinary Statelessness of Deepan Budlakoti: The Erosion of Canadian Citizenship Through Citizenship Deprivation

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daiva Stasiulis
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Assisted Reproduction ◽  
Heterogeneous Networks ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Birth Certificate ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Country Of Birth ◽  
Legal Decision ◽  
Canadian Citizenship

As part of the larger trend towards “securitization” of citizenship, citizenship deprivation in Canada is becoming increasingly normalized, resulting in some cases in statelessness. In this article, I pursue a sociology of statelessness by examining its localized production and connections to a broader network of social and material relations. I do this through a case study of Canadian-born Deepan Budlakoti, who at age 22 was informed that he was in fact not Canadian, and lacking any other citizenship, was rendered stateless. Actor-Network Theory is employed to trace how it is that legal documental and heterogeneous networks of humans and things (e.g., a “legal technicality”) have been enrolled to produce a legal decision declaring that Budlakoti, despite his Canadian birth certificate and passports, was never a Canadian citizen. Yet because he has not exhausted all avenues to acquisition of some citizenship (e.g., in India or Canada), he also has failed to secure recognition of his statelessness. A particular innovation in this analysis is the exploration of the exemption in the Canadian Citizenship Act from jus soli citizenship for children born to foreign diplomatic staff. Networks of immigration tribunal and court judgements, and documents treated as evidence have connected and translated into establishing Budlakoti’s fit with this exemption, despite countervailing evidence and a lifetime of documented and state-assisted reproduction of his Canadianness. While robbed of his legal and social identity, and suffering the egregious consequences of statelessness, Budlakoti continues to campaign for restoration of his right to have rights within his country of birth.

scholarly journals Duše předmětu a tělo modlitby aneb zkoumání sociologických nejistot na případu Sóka Gakkai International

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Petra Tlčimuková
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
The Relationship

This case study presents the results of long-term original ethnographic research on the international Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI). It focuses on the relationship between the material and immaterial and deals with the question of how to study them in the sociology of religion. The analysis builds upon the critique of the modernist paradigm and related research of religion in the social sciences as presented by Harman, Law and Latour. The methodology draws on the approach of Actor-Network Theory as presented by Bruno Latour, and pursues object-oriented ethnography, for the sake of which the concept of iconoclash is borrowed. This approach is applied to the research which focused on the key counterparts in the Buddhist praxis of SGI ‒ the phrase daimoku and the scroll called Gohonzon. The analysis deals mainly with the sources of sociological uncertainties related to the agency of the scroll. It looks at the processes concerning the establishing and dissolving of connections among involved elements, it opens up the black-boxes and proposes answers to the question of new conceptions of the physical as seen through Gohonzon.

Nonhuman Actors, Hybrid Networks, and Conflicts Over Municipal Waste Incinerators

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Municipal Waste ◽  
Waste To Energy ◽  
Natural Material ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Waste Incinerators

This article seeks to make an original contribution to the study of environmental conflicts on waste management infrastructures by applying concepts derived from actor-network theory in an empirical case study. The article is organized into three main parts. The first highlights how the bulk of the literature on the subject has systematically ignored the role of natural/material factors. The second part analyzes the theoretical and methodological contribution of actor-network theory to the analysis of environmental conflicts. Finally, the third part focuses on a case study from northern Italy concerning a conflict over a project for a large-scale municipal waste-to-energy incinerator. The author shows how the outcome of the conflict, namely the failure of the project notwithstanding a convergence of powerful interests, can only be fully understood by adopting a relational definition of agency that sees it as the effect of the process of building associations between humans and nonhumans.

scholarly journals Still ‘the human thing’? Technology, human agency and the future of war

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Coker
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Human Control ◽  
The Future

Is war beginning to escape human control? Thucydides tells us the war is one of the things that makes us definitively human; but how long will this continue to be the case as our relationship with technology continues to develop? Kenneth Waltz’s book Man, the State and War affords one way of answering that question. So too does Nikolaas Tinbergen’s framework for understanding human behaviour and Bruno Latour’s Actor–Network Theory (ANT). The main focus of this article is the extent to which we will diminish or enhance our own agency as human beings, especially when we come to share the planet with an intelligence higher than our own.

The Use of Structuration Theory and Actor Network Theory for Analysis

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Tiko Iyamu ◽  
Dewald Roode
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Structuration Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
It Strategy ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Actor Networks

In the current climate of global competitiveness, many organisations are increasingly dependent on their IT strategy – either to increase their competitiveness, or often just to survive. Yet little is known about the non-technical influencing factors (such as people) and their impact on the development and implementation of IT strategy. There would therefore seem to be prima facie evidence that there is a need for a new approach to examining the relationships between social factors, technology and the organisation with respect to the development and implementation of IT strategy. This article seeks to make a contribution in this regard. Structuration Theory and Actor-Network Theory were employed to analyse how non-technical factors influence IT strategy. Structuration Theory holds that human actions are enabled and constrained by structures. Structures are rules and resources that do not exist independently of human action, nor are they material entities. Giddens describes them as ‘traces in the mind’ and argues that they exist only through the action of human beings. Actor Network Theory (ANT) provides a fresh perspective on the importance of relationships between actors that are both human and non-human. By their very presence, actors work to establish, maintain and revise the construction of organisational networks of aligned interests and gradually form stable actor-networks. ANT emphasises the heterogeneous nature of actor-networks which consist of and link together both technical and non-technical elements.

Emerging Standardization

2013 ◽  
pp. 221-237
Author(s):  
Antonio Cordella
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Information Infrastructure ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Local Characteristics ◽  
Organizational Procedures ◽  
Computerized System ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

This paper discusses the dynamics associated with the implementation and deployment of an information infrastructure designed to standardize work practices. The analysis is based on a case study conducted in a pharmaceutical R&D organization. The infrastructure in use, comprising a computerized system and surrounding organizational procedures, seems to support work practices not always as originally planned. The paper discusses the role played by local characteristics, contingencies, and practices in shaping a standardization protocol implemented to standardize work practices. Building on actor-network theory, the paper concludes that the standardization of work practices is the result of the dynamic interplay between technology and its users, rather than the consequence of a planned and well-defined design project.

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