Leading research in technoscience institutttseminar-281010

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How Can Anthropology Lead

Research in Technoscience?

Prof.II Vidar HepsøNTNU and

Statoil Research and Development

Sosialantropologi Insituttseminar 28.10.2010

[email protected]

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How can anthropology lead research in Technoscience?

• Present main elements of the book • Describe the methodological approach based on

Phronesis– Insider and interdisciplinary approach to anthropology to lead

development work in Technoscience informed by Actor Network Theory

• What are the implications of phronesis for the practice of anthropology?

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1.Methodological intro: Technoscience and Phronesis

2-4 Cases: Norne,VISOK and crane operations• Actors and forces in the case

• Where are we going? (Q1)• Who wins and who loses, by which mechanism of power? (Q2)

• Is it desirable? (Q3)• What can we do with it? (Q4)

• How is the social researcher acting out techne/phronesis in the cases?

Philosophical pragmatism (foundation)

5. Actor network theory an introduction

6. The cases as development of actor networks

7. Stakeholder management

8. Phronesis as “Due Process”

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Presenting the case and the role of the

internal social researcher

Presenting the framework and concepts to understand practice

Applying the framework/ concepts to

understand/inform practice

Applying the framework to involvement in

development processes

Applying the framework as researcher to develop and

change practice

Background and point of departure

• Actor network• Translation• Inscription

•Tools * Amplification/reduction

• Boundary objects• Circulation

• Stakeholder• Key movers

• Perplexity• Consultation

• Irreversibility• Program-antiprogram

• Punctualization/surrogacy• Salience

• Hierarchy• Institution

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What is Technoscience?

• A concept widely used in the interdisciplinary community of science and technology studies to designate the technological and social context of science

• Scientific knowledge is not only socially coded and historically situated but sustained and made durable by material (non-human) networks– On a descriptive-analytic level, examination of the decisive role of

science and technology in developing knowledge

– On a deconstructive level, to address scientific practices and technology critically and de-mystify them

– On a visionary level, cross and integrate boundaries drawn between scientific disciplines as well as those commonly upheld for instance between research, technology, the arts and politics.

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Parallell threads in the book

Infrastructure development•Monteiro, E. and Hepsø, V. (2000) Infrastructure Strategy Formation: Seize the Day at Statoil, in C. Ciborra, (ed) From Control to Drift, Oxford: Oxford University Press: •Monteiro, E and Hepsø, V. (2002) Purity and Danger of Information Infrastructure. Systemic practice and action research (former Systems practice), 15(2)• Hepsø, V.; Monteiro, E.; and Rolland, K. H. (2009) "Ecologies of e-Infrastructures," Journal of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 10: Iss. 5.

Ethnography•Hepsø, V. (1990) ”Bedriften, individet og fellesskapet”. Trondheim Occasional Papers in Social Anthropology no. 7, Trondheim: University of Trondheim•Hepsø, V. (2000) ”Klovn, hoffnarr, guru og insiderantropolog ? noen tanker omkring et antropologisk insiderethos i industrien”, Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift, 11: 67-80, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget

Computer Supported Collaborative Work•Hepsø, V. (1997) The Social Construction and Visualization of a New Norwegian Oil installation, in J.Hughes, W.Prinz and T.Rodden(eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work •Hepsø, V, Borstad, A. and Midtlyng, J.O. (1997) CSCW-Design and Implementation Compromises: an example from the implementation of experience transfer in Statoil. Group Bulletin ACM SIGGROUP, 18/3:56 60 •Hepsø, V. (2009) The role of “common” information spaces in knowledge intensive work. Representation and negotiation of meaning among oil and gas subsurface specialists in computer supported collaboration rooms. In Jemielniak, D, Kozminski, L and Kociatkiewicz, J. (eds) Handbook of Research on Knowledge-Intensive Organizations, Pennsylvania: Idea Group Publ

Action Research•Gjersvik, R. and Hepsø, V. (1998) Using Models of Work Practice as Reflective and Communicative Devices, Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 98, New York: ACM-Press •Hepsø, V. and Botnevik, R. (2002) Competence Development in a Community of Practice, Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2002, New York: ACM-Press

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Bent FlyvbjergPhronesis

“At present, social science is locked in a fight it cannot hope to win, because it has accepted terms that are self-defeating. We will see that in their role as phronesis, the social sciences are strongest where the natural sciences are weakest: just as the social sciences have not contributed much to explanatory and predictive theory, neither have the natural sciences contributed to the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society, and which is at the core of phronesis. This should also be the core of social science if we want to transcend the current malaise of the Science Wars” Flyvbjerg (2001:3) Bent Flyvbjerg Rationalitet og Magt Det Konkretes

Vitenskab Bind 1, Akademisk Forlag 1991

Bent Flyvberg Making Social Science Matter : Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed AgainCambridge University Press 2001

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Episteme, Techne and PhronesisFlyvbjerg (2001: 57)

• Episteme: Scientific knowledge. Universal, invariable, context-independent. Based on general analytical rationality. The original concept is known today from the terms ”epistemology” and “epistemic.”

• Techne: Craft/Art. Pragmatic, variable, context-dependent. Oriented toward production. Based on practical instrumental rationality governed by a conscious goal. The original concept appears today in terms like ”technique”, “technical”, and “technology”.

• Phronesis: Ethics. Deliberation about values with reference to praxis. Pragmatic, variable, context dependent. Oriented toward action. Based on practical value-rationality. The original concept has no analogous contemporary term.

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Phronesis as practice

Flyvbjerg (Flyvbjerg 2001: 58) is clear on the fact that phronesis cannot be reduced to techne, or a higher form of episteme

“Even if both of these intellectual virtues involve skill and judgement, one type of intellectual virtue cannot be reduced to the other; phronesis is about value judgement, not about producing things… But insofar as phronesis operates via practical rationality based on judgement and experience, it can only be made scientific in an epistemic sense through the development of a theory of judgement and experience.”

“The objective is to balance instrumental rationality with value-rationality increasing the capacity of individuals, organizations, and society to think and act in value-rational terms…However, when combined with the element of phronesis, it will be a techne ”with a head on it”, that is, a techne governed by value rational deliberations.” (Flyvbjerg 2001: 130 and 167)

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A phronetic anthropology should stress the value-rational, and ask four basic questions

1. Where are we going?

2. Who gains and who loses, by which mechanisms of power?

3. Is it desirable?

4. What should be done?

Key issue to address is PRACTICE

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Three cases

Social construction of a new Norwegian Oil installation

New Forms of Collaboration in Exploration

Competence Development and Improved Health, Environment and Safety in crane operations

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Three cases

The Social Construction of a New Norwegian Oil installation

New Forms of Collaboration in Exploration

Competence Development and Improved Health, Environment and Safety in crane operations

Role-Project manager

- Facilitator

-Responsible for documenting the work

-Team member in a team of researchers, Norne and Statoil IT personnel

Techne-Facilitation in helping Norne create new work processes via work process modelling, search conferences and workshops

-Develop a groupware application that supported the work and documented the work processes

-Develop a method and process of continuous improvement in Norne

Phronesis (examples)-Facilitate a process that defines the core values of a new offshore organization

-Empower offshore operators to increase the quality of their working lives

-Ensure that those that do the work also describe their activities

Role-Ethnographer

-Facilitator

-Devils advocate in the project

-Bricolage IT systems developer

Techne-Describing work processes and information management in Statoil exploration and oil licence development activities

-Make available key business information in a web based system

-Development of a simple IT prototype-front page

Phronesis (examples)-Facilitate a process that shows what values are in place and what their consequences are

-Why are the work practices of earth scientists’ invisible and what can be done with it?

-Is VISOK a management information system and a panopticon?

Role-Facilitator in a team of operational personnel

-Ethnographer

-Friendly outsider

Bricolage IT systems developer

Techne-Facilitate in developing a “best practice” of crane and lifting operations

-Develop a groupware application to support the development of and implementation of the “best practice”

-Help to develop training scenarios for crane simulator training

Phronesis (examples)-Improved health, environment and safety in crane operations

-Competence development of a less privileged group

-Make crane operations important and visible

-What are the proper values of a safety culture?

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The relationship between technology and organisation

TECHNOLOGY ORGANISATIONTechnology determinism

TECHNOLOGY ORGANISATIONSocial shaping

TECHNOLOGY ORGANISATJONSocio-technical

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Translation

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• Transformation of a large work effort to less work efforts via delegation • Can take many different forms, from the displacing of something to acts of

substitution • Moving functions from humans to machines or artefacts

• Depends upon movement and transformation of some kind whether in the form of knowledge, persons or materials

• Not merely literary; a generalised operation, an act of practice • Fundamentally relational

•Form and meaning of things and people are defined in terms of their relation to each other •Translation connotes a special kind of work that creates associations or links between elements

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Inscription

• Is the result of a translation made into a lasting material form– A process of closing a space of possibilities– Any component in the network of humans and non humans can become the

material for such inscriptions.– They can go two ways:

• From human to machine• From machine to human

• IT Design is inscription:– Assume scenarios of use– Assumptions that designers have of their product

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Punctualization

• Punctualization develops when an actor has gained the privilege of representing an actor network.

• Order is seen instead of a complex network. • Makes it possible for social actors to serve as spokespersons for a

complex network of humans and non-humans • In the context described, participants in the cases speak on behalf of

the complex network of human and non-human actors comprising work practice.

– Statoil IT: IT-design, implementation and infrastructure in Statoil

• Who becomes the obligatory passage point? • Will the actor that represent the punctuated network really speak on

behalf of its many silenced voices? – What becomes invisible?

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Translation, inscription and punctualization: -Translate and delegate interests in concrete situations

Latour, B. (1995) A Door Must Be Either Open or Shut, A Little Philosophy of Techniques. In A. Feenberg and A. Hannay (eds.) Technology and the Politics of Knowledge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press

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Translation by aligning new heterogeneous elements

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All design processes are negotiation processes that involves discussions on what claims should be implemented or ignored:

•What are most critical things we must do?

•How do we handle things that pops up?

•Are the claims real and just?

•Can this actor represent this claim, if not who can?

•What is most important in relation to our values?

•How can the collective of humans and non humans come to an agreement?

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Why stakeholders?

• Stakeholder management is a practice where we try to get a grip on how human stakeholders develop dynamic alliances with technical or non-human forces in the ever changing landscape in which human stakeholders and non-human forces interact.

• Stakeholder management is about renegotiating the established working order

• Address the fundamental question; which groups deserve, require attention and how?

• Many development and change processes today involve the design of information systems and become a design of both work and organizations

• This makes stakeholder management more important because it has consequences for how we inform the design of information systems and involve diverse stakeholders in this effort

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What status should non-human stakeholders be given?

• Vidgen and Mc Master (1996: 255) have gone as far to include non-humans as stakeholders: “...any human or non-human organization unit that can affect as well as be affected by a human or non-human organization unit’s policy or policies”.

• The symmetric perspective of Latour is challenging and the inclusion of non-human stakeholders in a stakeholder analysis will lead to several problems (Pouloudi 1999:12-13). – It is not clear how non-human stakeholders will be identified. Can it be

treated as a black box or not? – Alexander (2005) also argues that it does not make sense to treat

human and non-human actors symmetrically because they are simply different.

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The status of non-humans?

• If both agency and intentionality is granted non-humans it becomes difficult to define who is culpable.

– Who kills, the gun or the person? (Latour (1999: 180-181) vs. Ihde and Sehlinger (2003)

• One way of avoiding this is to focus on the prime mover. The prime mover concept tries to describe the main source(s) of power in a heterogeneous network.

• Try to catch the prime mover in the association. Since the prime mover has the choice and the other actants are not able to make the choices about action in this association. (Aaron Smith 2003: 190)

• Smith finds it difficult to reject the centrality of the human centred perspective. He argues that prime movers will always involve human action and their decisions. Ethical culpability must be awarded prime movers (humans) only

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Due ProcessBruno Latour (2004) The Politics of Nature

• Treatment of stakeholders and claims • This conception of ‘due process’ can be used to involve

and exclude stakeholders/actants in a collective • Treat humans and non-humans as part of the same

collective and address salience and surrogacy • The question of choice and coexistence is important and

involves a process of wrapping up facts and values, and then wrap them together again into an integrated or aligned network.

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Two aspects of Due Process- A cyclic and not linear process

How many are we?

Can we live together?

Facts ValuesCandidate for existence

Excluded (the enemy)

Perplexity Consultation

HierarchyInstitution

1 2

4 3

FACTS:

Perplexity or determine if a phenomena or claim exist or is important. Once this question has been described as positive the institutionalisation of the ”facts to be” can start

VALUES:

Claims are often expressed in terms of values. The creation of values involves a consultation process

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Due Process-Separation of Powers

• “Taking into account” is the first power (Latour 2004: 109); these cover the processes of perplexity and consultation. It considers new propositions, which are not to be dismissed until they have undergone the scrutiny of adequate consultation.

• If the collective finds the proposition useful, the second power of “putting into order” is exercised. Here the new propositions are sorted through the processes of hierarchy and institution into the existing knowledge hierarchy and develop closure or stabilization. The propositions can now be considered as facts.

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Perplexity

• Perplexity: includes presenting candidates or claims, involves the proposal of possible entities and a discussion of which should be taken into consideration at that time and context.

• These are elements that need further research and design and are vital to create facts but they are still only ‘candidate’ facts.

• Various stakeholders can have claims or anecdotic evidence. A new claim could be a new technology. Perplexities are often not logically addressed so unrealistic expectations like magic silver bullets can create expectations that cannot be met later. The new technology has to be tested out to become more than a claim.

• To find out this we have to involve spokespersons that must be allowed to speak for the claim. The open informed debate via consultancy and hierarchy, actively encourages alternative perspectives and analysis

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Consultation-A process through which the suitability of the supplicant for inclusion in the network is assessed

• Consultation; takes the accepted entities from the first phase and proposes action based on them

• Values evolve through reflection on and in action, through discussions with others and embodied experience with the non-humans

• In the phase of consultation a broad appreciation of the issues associated with our decisions are taken

– Mobilising and negotiating with humans and non-humans to make them support the claim.

• Questions related to how many are we in the collective and can we live together are important questions to answer in relation to which actants will be considered in the consultation process

• During consultation the collective is forced to explicitly make choices and scrutinize trade-offs; what must be included now or can wait

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Hierarchy

• Hierarchy: is the process of understanding how the new actant or claim will be positioned within the network such that it will be acceptable to the current configuration of humans and non-humans.

• Creating a hierarchy of values • In this process some elements are found incompatible to

the configuration of the collective, these elements are rejected but can appeal their claim later.

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Institution

• Institution: When a new hierarchy in the collective is institutionalized, this collective becomes the new stabilized or provisional reality.

• There is an important process element in a ‘due process’ and a lack of control.

• In the "satisficing world", we look at what we believe is the best in the light of present and past situations, weigh options, and then we take our best guess.

• In the proceedings of a ‘due process’ the art of rhetoric and having the better argument will always be in place.

• The power associated with the better argument tend to be coupled to stakeholders that represent a collective or the punctualized network of humans and non-humans that make this stakeholder strong.

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Latour and Flyvbjerg together for a phronetic anthropology

1. Where are we going?2. Who wins and who loses, by which mechanisms of power?

4.What should be done?

3. Is it desirable?

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The anthropologist in the phase of perplexity

• Our role as researchers and change agents in the phase of perplexity is to try to develop an overall understanding of the new claims that comes up in the vicinity of the collectives we have presented in this book.

• We should ask: – Why is there uncertainty associated with this claim?

– Who are the prime movers?

– Who represents which claims?

– Are some claims and voices silenced?

– What claims are relevant?

– How are claims made known to the collective?

– How do we uncover main values and develop new values to be followed in the course of action?

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The anthropologist in the phase of consultation

• In the phase of consultation it is our obligation to get the different prime movers with claims to speak for their claims, plan and execute good processes in which humans are allowed to speak for their claims and find spokespersons for relevant claims not yet given a voice.

• In this consultation process it is our obligation to analyze: – Who is winning and losing, through which mechanisms of power?

– Involve relevant non-humans must also be involved and given a voice through some human spokesperson.

– How are actants considered for consultation and which are included or rejected?

– Will prime movers that represent punctuated networks of humans and non humans use their influence to shortcut the consultation process?

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The anthropologist in the phase of hierarchy and institution

• In the hierarchy phase it will be our task to help the collective settle value questions and making priorities, by challenging value rational issues and consequences related to the action of humans and non humans: is this desirable?

• Key issues are– Based on the values and resources, which should we prioritize? – How can we make sure that human and non-human claims are coloured

with values?– Speak out if prime movers try to shortcut the process by trying to go

directly from perplexity to institution. – Help the collective develop and institutionalise action plans and steps to

stabilize the new configuration of humans and non humans. – We must assist in helping them set up more instrumental plans to do

something with their situation.

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Practice in anthropology as Due Process

• What will happen when phronetic anthropology is conducted according to ‘Due process’ principles?

• Is it correct to assume that doing anthropology, from preparation, via fieldwork, data-collection and writing texts consist of the same four elements: perplexity, consultation, hierarchy and institution?

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Methodological principles for a phronetic anthropology

1. The whole person aspect: The phronetic anthropologist is increasingly becoming a whole person in the fieldwork setting.

2. The system representation aspect: the system you represent will colour the content of your practice.

3. The collaboration aspect: the anthropologist is in most cases a team member

4. The intervention aspect: The focus will move from descriptions and interpretations to interventions and acting on the results of the research

5. The co-learning aspect: The principle of co-learning

6. The actant aspect: science and technologies participate as agents in producing and reproducing the diverse features of social life, including modalities of subjectivity.

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Thank you… Questions?

Documents

Leading research in technoscience institutttseminar-281010