Track 1

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
Track 1
Open track
Information salvage
Stephen Herring (Edgecombe Community College)
These are the lessons we have learned in efforts to salvage neglected information in the form of narrative
fragments salvaged from the waste stream. Information is yet another asset which is routinely lost in our wastedriven culture. This paper examines the attitudes and beliefs we need in order to salvage wasted information. Our
working laboratory is a comprehensive community waste reduction center. Our working material consists of
numerous fragments of personal information, photographs, correspondence, and other narrative material which
has come to be deposited for disposal at this center. Within this context we seek to recover lost personal
narratives, to "recycle" information, and to preserve trivialized information as a meaningful resource. Along the way
we need a critical re-assessment of traditional models of materialism and narrative preservation in order to
develop a new model which transcends the limits of social, economic, and gender bias.
Designing for humans and objects in domestic everyday life
Daniel Dobrogorsky (Monash University)
This practice-led design work aims to establish an all-inclusive attitude for the design of human and non-human
interactions in a domestic dwelling. Specific focus is applied to objects that support our survival, sustenance,
comfort, cleanliness and convenience: kitchen, laundry, bedroom, bathroom and media appliances. The ecological
impacts of human and non-human consumption provide a background for this contribution. The results help
designers in the field develop a comprehensive methodology for actor-network design that represents both the
needs and wants of the human and designed object.
With today’s technical innovations (autonomy, sensor feedback, AI, communications, internet-of-things, etc),
objects are capable of embodying their own competence (‘know how’), meaning and raison d'être. Object agency
can afford control over our everyday life practice. Likewise, settings and modes of operation still allow the human
to customise and control these objects. A series of storyboards present a human-control bias and then an objectcontrol bias to show scenario difference and similarity.
The results of this investigation argue that human-object causality is reciprocal and reflexive. The human and
object cannot just be defined by only their external relations but must incorporate their internal motivations. The
key attitude here is for the designer to promote the human and non-human’s ability to understanding each other, to
empathise with each other and ultimately unmask each other’s true intentions, what they want and what they
need. What the object wants is ultimately the designer’s decision and must be embodied by the object. In this
work, ecological values are used to guide the object’s intent and meaning generation. The designer cannot control
these interactions precisely but can only set up the open conditions so that both the human and object are able to
live interdependently.
Emotions behind a sphere. Experimentations for an interactive object communicating brand values and
encouraging behavioural changes (or reactions)
Francesco Ermanno Guida (Politecnico di Milano); Ernesto Voltaggio (DotDotDot Community); Camilla Ferrari
(Politecnico di Milano); Serena Liistro (Politecnico di Milano); Mauro Vitali (Politecnico di Milano)
In the last 20 years the role of the visual designer has changed. The line between “designer” and “developer” is
apparently blurred, and this is not limited to screen or projected image (Reas et al., 2010). It also affects the
design of physical spaces and the empiric field. The increasing accessibility of open technologies (both codes and
hardware) allows visual designers to represent values of an organization and design points of contact in a way that
affects the process as well as final results. If we accept the idea that objects, like human subjects, have agency
(Gell, 1998), can we measure this agency? Can we record the user’s reactions and the empathy he or she
develops with an object? Are all users’ reactions and feedbacks predictable by a designer? Should the designer
accept the idea that some design issues can be unpredictables?
An experimental project, developed in the context of Visual Communication Design Final Synthesis Studio of the
Communication Design Bachelor at Politecnico di Milano, allows to discuss actual changes in the fields of
Communication, Interaction and Experience Design. The brief was to design visual identities, programming and
using open source codes and, when possible, hardware like Arduino, in order to communicate intangible brand
values through an interactive and multisensorial experience in a physical space. This brief lead some students’
groups to design objects that act. Ones of those results is a communicative machine named “Phos Light
Experience”, a luminous sphere which responds to the users’ movements thanks to sensors.
#2#
In order to comprehend the actual interaction with the object persona (Cila et al, 2015), the prototype has been
tested by real potential users, employing specific sensor to collect biometric data. In addition to the predicted
results, unexpected forms of relationship and use emerged, generating new levels of discussion.
Assembling mindfulness: silence, emergence, neurons and biopolitics
António Carvalho (Universidade de Coimbra)
Over the past three decades mindfulness research and practice has flourished in the West. Psychologists,
neuroscientists, phenomenologists and educators have displayed a growing interest in this contemplative practice
which aims at enhancing the experience of the present moment, supposedly triggering a number of health
benefits.
Medical applications of mindfulness have been implemented in the prevention of stress and heart diseases and in
the management of stress and pain. Encounters between scientists and practitioners of mindfulness (including
Matthieu Ricard, who some years ago was described as the happiness person on earth) have filled the public
imagination of mindfulness with images of brain scans, visual testimonies of the efficiency of this practice.
Despite the technical apparatus involved in mindfulness research and the thousands of articles written on the
topic, early researchers, such as Francisco Varela, recognized that the methodological intrincancies of studying
contemplative technologies, usually practiced in silence, required the need to intertwine first and third person
approaches to the study of consciousness. The passionate and often personal relationship with mindfulness tends
to suspend the boundaries between research and self-care, pointing towards new ontological politics which are
embodied, somaesthetic and often escape academic orthodoxies.
In this presentation I will analyze the assemblage of mindfulness, showing how it intertwines topics such as
silence, emergence, the brain and biopolitics. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic research at meditation
retreats in France, England and Portugal, observation at the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute and the
analysis of relevant literature, this talk will contribute towards and ecology of neglected things. Through the
support of STS literature, this presentation will explore the relationship between the anatomo-politics of
mindfulness and contemporary formations of subjectivity.
Interrelations between human agency and object agency within co-making environments
Ricardo Saint-Clair (Politecnico di Milano)
Makerspaces and Fablabs are widely known as open access workshops where people collaborate with shared
tools, resources, and know-how to make commercial and non-commercial products and services. They represent
a random synthesis of virtual and physical environments via a mix of tangible and intangible attributes: co-creation,
socially shaped innovation, non-linear routines, open knowledge, and loosely structured platforms. Often restricted
to the solely role of prototyping workshops, there is currently a proliferation of hybrid models, where individuals,
entrepreneurs, and start-ups interact in a shared relaxed work style, pushing the boundaries of what could be
considered a workspace.
The ongoing empirical study investigates the patterns and congruencies of these adaptive built environments, with
a focus on distinct locations at the European cities of Milan, Paris, London and Barcelona. An extensive
participatory research has been conducted in prominent spaces, examining the objects, structures and platforms
that can really encourage human agency and innovation. What attitudes and attributes from digital domains are
being transferred to the built physical layouts, objects, and furnishings? In what extent the design of objects and
spaces affect how people feel and interact, enabling them to become more collaborative and inventive?
This paper will also present the pilot experiment of an interactive object applied on the course of the research, that
aims to increase human connection and collaboration inside Makerspaces. This object employs a set of sensors
and actuators via the current standards and platforms of the IoT (Internet of Things) network, affecting ultimately
the attitudes and behaviours of the members, making use of the open source resources and machinery of digital
fabrication. The findings of this pilot cultural probe inform the blurry borderline between human agency and object
agency realms, more precisely the extended capabilities of smart objects encircling co-making and co-working
environments.
#3#
Designing digital encounters and their agency on users. A case study
Mauro Ceconello (Politecnico di Milano); Davide Spallazzo (Politecnico di Milano)
The paper analyses and discusses the interactive exhibit Leonardo Plays Leonardo. Milan. Life. Nature. at
Fondazione Stelline in Milan, a gesture-based interactive installation located in the cloister of Palazzo delle
Stelline about Leonardo da Vinci and his Milanese years. The installation allows visitors to meet a real size
simulated hologram of the Renaissance Master who tells short stories about his life, the years in Milan and his
relationship with the nature. The project is set in the field of HCI looking, on the one hand, at the world of digital
encounters and, on the others, at interactive system based upon tangible interaction (Hornecker & Buur, 2006)
and embodied interaction (Dourish, 2001) in particular. Retracing the design process followed to develop the three
interactive booths, we analyse if and how the designers’ conscious choices managed to achieve the stated aims
and to persuade people to behave accordingly (Redström, 2006). Relying on users’ tests and direct observation of
people interacting with the system, in this study we discuss how the interactive exhibit and the digital Leonardo
affect visitors’ behaviour, managing to catch their attention and to foster interaction. We analyse how visitors
perceive the digital character and the gestures he, directly or indirectly, asks them to perform in order to trigger
actions. The installations and the digital character portrayed are intended as mediators between users and the
contents provided, here analysed for their ability to trigger actions and interactions.
What can a diagnosis do? The case of the “geneticization” of autism
François Thoreau (Université de Liège); Fanny Duysens (Université de Liège)
The loose condition of “autism” is undergoing through a broad process of redefinition under the aegis of genomic
medicine, which promises to find (epi)genetic causes to autism (or to some forms of the autistic spectrum). What is
at stake is a scientific controversy about the very definition of the condition, i.e. the diagnosis itself. Whether it is
considered primarily as a psychopathology or as a genetic disorder has consequences. It has implications
regarding who would have the authority to diagnose the condition but also about the ways of taking care of
persons with autism. In this paper, we depart from the paradox that patients’ associations appear to claim
unanimously for a “geneticization” of the condition, so as to get rid of any sort of “psy-“ related dimensions. One
the one hand, it seems paradoxical because if the spectrum of autism is to be found in the genes, and hereby
partly determined, it would seem to imply that the margins for effective therapy are narrowing down. On the other,.
We want to test the hypothesis that the more objective, “naturalized” a diagnosis is, the more it opens up
possibilities for broadening the therapeutic reach outside the autist bodies, questioning the “milieu” of the diseases
¬— the environment through which it is produced and the wealth of linkages and relationships through which living
with autism could be eased. In other words, stressing that the diagnosis is a could site to explore these contested
dimensions of autism, its “geneticization” could lead to more active uptakes in patients care, whereas blurry
diagnosis could not afford a similar reach. Following a pragmatic stance of an “art of consequences” (Stengers),
we investigate the tensions raised by a genetic diagnosis which tends to “objectify” or “naturalize” the causes of
the condition with respect to the lived experience of autism, following some of the contested dimensions of a
“politics of diagnosis” in their effects on affected autistic bodies. To unfold those issues, our ongoing inquiry
considers the interactions between various persons and institutions involved in the debate, which includes
interviews with patients and relatives engaged in some advocacy associations, persons with autism, different
expert research centers and hybrid collective platforms (“Participate!”) in French-speaking Belgium.
Precision Medicine between environmental ‘acknowledgementism’ and ‘interventionism’
Ilaria Galasso (European Institute of Oncology, Milano); Giuseppe Testa (European Institute of Oncology, Milano)
Our analysis focuses on precision medicine, “prevention and treatment strategies that take individual variability
into account” (Collins and Varmus, 2015).
We compare several initiatives possibly ascribable to precision medicine inasmuch collecting data from large
cohorts about individual differences to be connected to health conditions. We notice that some initiatives (eg. the
“100K Genomes Project”) mainly focus on genomic differences as relevant to health conditions. On the other
hand, the American “Precision Medicine Initiative”, the most responsible for the popularity of this approach, also
dedicates a deep attention to lifestyle and environment as significant differences to explain health and diseases.
Due to this attention, it shows many similarities with studies on the social determinants of health (eg. the Whitehall
Studies) that are aimed at highlighting disparities corresponding to health inequalities. Yet, in this attention on the
socio-environmental determinants of health, we can distinguish two possible approaches:
1) An ‘acknowledgementist’ approach, keeping into account the relevant differences in order to “deliver the right
treatment at the right time to the right person” (whitehause.gov): health differences addressed by working across
the ‘scales’ of the biomedical domain.
2) An ‘interventionist’ approach, planning social interventions aimed at repairing some of the relevant differences:
health differences addressed by working across the ‘scales’ of the sociopolitical domain.
#4#
Some criticisms that question precision medicine as unsuitable to substantially improve public health (Bayer and
Galea, 2015), are built on the presupposition that precision medicine follows the ‘acknowledgementist’ approach,
being merely included within the biomedical domain, while the most significant improvements (so the claim goes)
require an ‘interventionist’ approach at sociopolitical scales. But is this presupposition about the
‘acknowledgementism’ of precision medicine correct? We argue that, given its configuration, the knowledge
produced by the “Precision Medicine Initiative” can possibly be translated into social policies, by embracing an also
‘interventionist’ approach.
Nuovi paesaggi urbani e benessere individuale e collettivo
Francesca Bitetto (Università di Bari); Angela Balzotti (Università di Bari); Rosa Gallelli (Università di Bari); Cosimo
Imperiale (Architetto); Silvio Vacca (Università di Bari)
Gli shopping centres sono diventati un fenomeno che caratterizza il paesaggio urbano di tutti i paesi avanzati. La
loro influenza ha ridisegnato il sistema generale del settore distributivo creando anche nuove domande e bisogni
che si articolano intorno a fattori di attrazione quali: l'ambiente stimolante offerto dalla varietà dei negozi, la
possibilità di utilizzo dei veicoli circolanti grazie alle strutture di parcheggio, la qualità superiore dei prodotti, la
presenza di articoli esclusivi. È interessante esplorare una nuova possibile “connessione” tra questi spazi suburbani e i centri-città con la loro importante diversificazione in senso culturale. I centri-città contemporanei, grazie
alle nuove zone pedonali e alla più recente valorizzazione storico-architettonica, stanno creando una “osmosi” di
spazi ed esperienze nuove. In un'era post-industriale segnata da un interesse collettivo intergenerazionale verso
l’embricazione dei nodi cocettuali di “sviluppo” e “cultura”, tale fenomeno non appare essere solo presente nelle
città d'arte italiane ma anche in centri più piccoli o in città a vocazione prettamente industriale. L'arte e le sue
installazioni hanno modificato le aree urbane centrali incrementadone il valore “immateriale” e anche il consumo si
è evoluto come forma/modello di identità. I prodotti non sono più scelti solo in base ai bisogni primari ma
riconosciuti e acquistati come elementi di elevazione/crescita personale, libertà ed etica.
I nuovi ambienti urbani si stanno, quindi, strutturando sistemicamente con gli shopping centres, per lo più situati in
aree suburbane. Il rapporto tra questi spazi urbani centrali e periferici non appare più in forma competitiva ma
“intelligente”, offrendo alle comunità spazi diversificati in grado di sostenere ambienti promotori di diffusione di
idee, creatività e nuovo benessere individuale e collettivo.
Open innovation e tutela guridica dell’ambiente. Il caso dell’Open Source Seed Initiative
Roberto Franco Greco (Università del Salento)
Nel dibattito sulla funzionalizzazione dei sistemi open source come pratiche di empowerment della collettività e
strumenti di congiunzione tra tecnologia e società, l’Open Source Seed Initiative (da qui OSSI) sembra un oggetto
di indagine interessante. È un’iniziativa statunitense che consiste nell’applicazione della logica open source ai
semi. L’idea è nata dopo alcuni incontri tra centri di ricerca, associazioni di agricoltori, ONG e rappresentanti delle
comunità locali, poi sfociati, nel 2014, nella creazione di una piattaforma di 29 varietà di “sementi open source”.
Con tale espressione si può intendere quelle sementi non brevettate e riseminabili a cui può accedere chiunque
ne faccia richiesta, a patto che si impegni contrattualmente a non trasformare il prodotto e i suoi derivati in beni su
cui vantare diritti commerciali esclusivi (clausola copyleft). La logica è analoga a quella dei software open source,
fondati sulla gratuità, condivisione e co-creazione dei contenuti. Principi che hanno da sempre caratterizzato
l’attività agricola, facendo dell’agricoltore quel custode della biodiversità da ultimo riconosciuto, in Italia, dalla L.
194/2015. Perciò l’OSSI potrebbe essere descritta come una retro-innovazione, come una declinazione
dell’intellettualità di massa, in grado di agire parallelamente al sistema closed shop dei diritti di proprietà
intellettuale sulle risorse biologiche il quale ha favorito la progressiva alienazione sociale delle produzioni, tanto da
trasformare spesso l’agricoltore da “custode” in passivo acquirente delle risorse biologiche e biotecnologiche di
proprietà delle multinazionali. Appare dunque necessario mettere in rilievo, sul piano giuridico, il valore socioecologico degli strumenti di open innovation. L’obiettivo è quello di inquadrare l’OSSI dall’angolo visuale della
tutela giuridica dell’ambiente, interpretandone i contenuti alla luce dei principi dello sviluppo sostenibile e
dell’uguaglianza sostanziale e indagandone le relazioni con i diritti alla diversità e sovranità alimentare dei popoli.
#5#
Geomerce: turning Arabidopsis Halleris into German miners. A case study situated in North-Rhein
Westfalia, involving speculative design, ecology and plant neurobiology
Gionata Gatto (Loughborough University)
Geomerce is a transdisciplinary design project that employs peculiar plant species, called hyperaccumulators, to
reimagine a scenario at the intersection between agriculture and finance. In the project a team of designers, plant
scientists and technology producers engaged in the design of the Plant-Bot, a plant-driven technology capable of
performing the real-time metal extraction capacity of certain species and the consequent projection of an
alternative context for speculative agricultural practices. This work analyses the process of territorialization of
Geomerce, which was brought into being through an exhibition at the NRW Forum, in Dusseldorf, Germany.The
first chapter of the work analyses the ecological perspective that was used to collect peculiar phenotypes of
Arabidopsis Halleri, growing in a former mineral mine located in the town of Bestwig (Germany).The second
chapter unpacks the process that turned the Plant-Bot into a hybrid technoscientific device that could bridge
scientific datasets into a speculative visualization. The third chapter offers an overview of the setup of the
installation at the NRW Forum: the communication of scientific data, the setup of the Plant-Bot as a monitoring
technology, the representation of the scenario using a device that could bridge the data from the Plant-Bot with the
geography of the studied site.The last chapter offers an analysis of the feedbacks gathered from the audience of
the exhibition. Here I introduce the method used to collect information from the public and report the answers
collected during the dissemination of the project. The conclusions report the implications, opportunities and
criticalities arose during the territorialization process of Geomerce. In the conclusion the author addresses also the
potential future implementations of the work, according to the feedbacks received and discussed together with the
audience of the event.
Social spirits and technologies
Kim Ye-Seul (Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
“Every society has its own technology”, French philosopher Deleuze once said. Although it’s undeniable that
technologies have impacted the social, political and economic structures in a society, technology alone does not
change one society, but technology itself is also affected by existing social conventions and structures. In this
paper, comparative study on how internet technologies reflect the existing social and political structures in 3
different countries – South Korea, China, and Singapore. South Korea has been fast in adopting internet
technologies and dispersing them throughout the whole society. First initiated with the development of TCP/IP
network by a professor Kil-nam Chon, South Korean internet structure has been more democratic, inducing more
active social and political participation among civilians. One of the biggest internet portals, NAVER, will be
presented as the core agent of this social movement with the digital technologies, initiating hackathons, bridging
urban consumers with countryside farmers to mention a few. On the other hand, China has been more stringent in
making social movements with internet technologies. Although online markets and mobile communication apps
have been developed in the country, still around 3000 websites are blocked by the government. Although Chinese
government is targeting to grow its IT market into 7000 billion dollars until 2060, focusing on economic growth
rather than social and political movements. Thus, Chinese Internet technologies can be described as top-down
rather than bottom-up, but the paper will also present the younger generation’s efforts for open political
participation with new technologies. In Singapore, the government’s plan to make smart city with internet
technology will be introduced, suggesting that its central political governance still dictates how new types of
technologies work in the society. In the end, how social, political and economic structures and technologies affect
each other in making cities in contemporary metropolitan countries.
#6#
Track 2
Let’s Do Retro-ANT!
Convenors: Alvise Mattozzi (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano), Annalisa Pelizza (University of Twente)
Scripts volant, configurations manent. Getting the useful from descriptions, to free design from
designations
Federico Cabitza (Università di Milano-Bicocca)
There are strong affinities between some of the most basic categories of analysis conceived within ANT and some
of the constructs that have been widely used in the design of Information Technologies and interactive
(computational) systems, during the last 25 years. In particular, we here focus on program of action and script to
highlight the deep analogies with the concepts of case of interaction (or process) and scenario (notably Akrich
proposed this latter label to denote the script alternatively). Affinities can be legitimately let surface for archaelogical and phylogenetic reasons; but also with a generative intent, to inform new forms of semiotic analysis of
socio-technical agencies and for their design. In particular, a reformulation of these ANT proto-concepts bears
great potential for a design that is less weighed down by concep- tual and rationalistic frills, which usually amuse
the designer’s ego, but also conspire into conflicting relationships between programs and an- tiprograms. In the
mould of Latour and Akrich we will argue about the following formulations: a program, or case, of action is a
“schema of act- ing/doing/making (that is transformative processes, as their subjects are not supposed at all)
specifying a final configuration and possible courses to reach it” (emphasized concepts will be further
characterized and dis- cussed). Script is “any sequential representation of a program from one initial configuration
to the final one” (much alike the code of a program, or a scenario in a case of interaction). In light of these
concepts, de- scription is the “analysis of a setting to render a program in terms of scripts”. In-scription the “actual
building or ordering of a socio-tecnical setting so that it can enact the program”. Some consequences for a semiotics of configuration and an immanent design of interactive systems and environments will be drawn from these
essential definitions.
Disciplining change, displacing frictions. Digital circulation across government databases and the quest
for data quality
Annalisa Pelizza (University of Twente)
The built nature of data has become shared knowledge in STS and media studies. Less debated are questions on
the costs of assuring the status of data as objective assumptions. Organizations set up programs to enhance the
“quality of data”. In governments data quality is achieved through “systems of authentic registers”. Drawing on a
research investigating the integration of databases in order to enhance data quality at the Dutch land registry, this
article suggests to conceive similar programs as technologies to settle “data frictions”: controversies aimed at
establishing which configurations of actors, sources, procedures produce more reliable data. It argues that even
when complex infrastructures are implemented to discipline change, digital circulation does not completely silence
frictions, but displaces them along the procedural chain. The case shows that obliteration of the past is carried on
at a cost: further procedures have to be activated in order to silence data conflicts.
Engaging the vintage-concept of the ‘script’ in industrial innovation studies. Or how retro-ANT is perfect
but not enough
Judith Igelsböck (Technische Universität München)
I do not even know where to start to describe the ‘importance’ of innovation to our contemporary ideas of industrial
production, business and far beyond. “Innovation is the central ideology of our age,” Vinsel (2015) states. Every
organization seems to be in a permanent state of innovation. Bluntly speaking, innovation equates everything
desirable.
While the buzzwords discursively surrounding the ‘super-category’ of innovation (Godin 2015) do not seem to
allow me to develop a satisfying understanding of the contemporary organization and reorganization of innovation
in industries, I hope that ethnographically deploying the vintage concept of the ‘script’ (Akrich 1992, Latour 2013)
will. I want to suggest that – when aiming to ‘become innovative’ – there might be some (potentially paradoxical)
recipes according to which this is done. Going from the script to the ‘inscription’ – as a second yet inseparable step
– shall allow me to highlight the mediated character of scripts and attend to technically delegated ‘prescriptions’
(Akrich 1992).
Carving out ‘innovation scripts’ should thus very well equip me to lay out inscribed ideas about adequate
distribution of responsibility, or the question who and what is supposed take part in innovation processes, as well
as the potential isomorphic character of the organization of innovation across diverse industrial sectors (see e.g.
#7#
DiMaggio & Powell 1983). In my paper I aim to highlight how retro-ANT makes a perfect start, but wants to be
complemented by a second phase of ‘intervention’ that allows me to challenge prevalent ideas of innovation and
bring alternative innovation scripts, alternative ‘figures’ and ‘myth’ as well as spaces and places of innovation into
existence.
Niente altro che argomenti e fascicoli. Note sui presupposti della svolta materialistica in La fabbrica del
diritto
Giuditta Bassano (Università di Bologna)
Nel 2002, tre anni dopo Pandora’s hope, Latour pubblica un testo decisamente unico nella sua produzione, La
fabrique du droit. Qui si interessa di un “regime di enunciazione” (Latour 1999a) o di un “tipo di associazione”
(Latour 1999b, 2002a) diverso sia da quelli che ha frequentato più spesso – i legami tecnici e scientifici, sia da
quelli del politico, o della religione, di cui pure si è occupato (Latour 2002b, 2002c). La fabrique du droit è il
risultato di un’etnografia di un anno nella sede sia fisica che simbolica della produzione del diritto amministrativo
francese, il Consiglio di Stato. Latour segue le sedute di dibattimento, le ragioni di giudizio dei ricorsi - e così nello
studio analizza cosa c’è nei discorsi dei giudici della corte amministrativa; studia le carriere e i ruoli effettivi di tali
funzionari del Consiglio - e così ricostruisce una rete di formazione e di lentissimi riconoscimenti di professionalità.
Ma soprattutto si dedica agli oggetti necessari a fare il diritto, nell’idea che il Consiglio di Stato sia un tipo di
‘laboratorio di oggettività’ che può essere comparato con quelli scientifici. Il risultato è “deludente” perché il Palais
Royal, “dai sotterranei ai sottotetti” non è fatto che di fascicoli. I dossier, le carte sono l’unico strumento
tecnologico alla base del lavoro della corte. Così Latour arriva alle due considerazioni forse più importanti. Per
prima, l’idea di un ruolo cruciale della materialità dei testi con cui si fabbrica il diritto – di un “lavoro quasi fisico
dell’intertestualità”; per seconda, quella che gli argomenti intellettuali e giuridici sono tutt’altro che effimeri, perché
possono essere fotografati nello schema di circolazione di certi “oggetti di valore” (Greimas, Courtés 1979; Latour
2002a). Alcune categorie descrittive applicate in particolare alla trasformazione sociotecnica, così, sono chiamate
alla messa in prova in un ambiente diverso e specialistico come quello della produzione legislativa e
giurisprudenziale: riteniamo che discutere della materialità del diritto, come della circolazione di oggetti di valore
nel discorso giuridico, possa cioè servire a tornare ai concetti di “associazione” e “debrayage”. La teoria ANT ha
avuto la sua propulsione iniziale in uno ‘stare all’interno delle cose’ e da questa ha potuto sviluppare un paradigma
descrittivo che lungi dall’essere esaurito, od obsoleto, forse piuttosto chiama ancora a discutere sul senso di
concetti come quelli di mediazioni ed enunciati.
Enrolling and translating: experiences of using ANT in an educational research setting
Victoria Gorton (Lancaster University)
In the thirty years since the introduction of Actor-Network Theory, there have been radical developments in its
characterisation and scope. These changes have fractured ANT into numerous waves – ANT, Post-ANT, ANT-ish
(Fenwick & Edwards, 2010) - each of which is self-identifiable yet nonetheless still tied to a shared notion of ANT.
This paper strips away the excess terms that each wave has developed and instead focuses on the central
common concepts of ‘enrolment’, ‘translation’, (both following from Callon, 1986) as well as the fundamental terms
‘actor’ and ‘network’ (despite their later problematization by Latour (1996)).
Here these terms are evaluated from the position of an early career researcher using ANT for the first time.
Drawing on my own work looking into the actor-networks that are used to conceptualise and perform quantitative
methods teaching-learning in UK Higher Education, I offer my experience of using these terms in an Educational
Research setting. Within this academic literature, and research setting, ANT is rarely applied, giving a new arena
upon which to re-evaluate the usefulness of these terms in bringing performativity to the fore (a concept often
lacking in educational research).
In evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of working with these terms in an Educational Research setting, I
explore not only their potential to facilitate analysis for this research question but also ask how these terms can be
applied to describe our own understanding and relationship with ANT.
#8#
Semiotic machines: portrait of an Actor-Network as a finite state automaton
Francesco Galofaro (Politecnico di Milano)
We are interested in exploring the consequences of the notion of action program in Akrich and Latour (1992). In
particular, among their sources we find Greimas and Courtés dictionary of semiotics (1979). Some entries of the
dictionary, such as procedure and automaton, seem interesting if applied to the notion of action program. For
example, it is possible too give a formal description of the programmed interaction between men and machines –
see Mattozzi and Piccioni (2012). From our perspective it is possible to apply the tools provided by mathematical
linguistics to describe an Actor Network in form of automaton – Galofaro (2015). Thus, the language computed by
the automaton will be the program of the network. A similar perspective has been posed with Rouvroy et Berns'
electronic gouvernamentality; however, one should ask what kind of algorithms govern social life (finite,
indeterministic, stochastic automata …). Thus, any social network will appear as a semiotic machine, made of
organic and not-organic apparata. Since the network assigns the role of subject/object to the terminals of its
internal functios, it is not possible to understand its overall meaning by observing it from inside: this leads to what
Landowski (2006) calls “insignificancy” of the programmed interactions. The involved parts which will appear as a
machine only when observed from outside – Montecchi (2000). This naturally poses the question of the
programming subject, and its relations with the observer-analyst. Values matter only in front of an instance
according to which they matter – Marsciani (2013).
#9#
Track 3
Beyond “Nightmares” and “Promises”: Politics and Practices of Health Self-Tracking
Convenors: Francesco Miele (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Enrico Maria Piras (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
Tracking as family gaming. Self-tracking practices between social ties and external rewards
Nicola Doppio (Hub Innovazione Trentino); Enrico Maria Piras (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
Health self-tracking is increasingly considered by policy-makers, healthcare professionals and managers a way to
involve laypeople in the management of their health and in the pursuit of wellness. The availability of smartphone
apps and miniaturized measuring devices has made possible to produce and share an amount of personal health
information unimaginable only a few years ago. Despite the initial enthusiasm, though, several researches show
that self-tracking devices are abandoned after a short time. Moreover elderly people with chronic conditions, the
categories that could benefit most from health self-tracking, are not a target market for the companies producing
these technologies.
To achieve the expected results some manufacturers have put under scrutiny other ways to engage users. One
popular choice is to gamify the experience of self-tracking, designing tools that could engage users through gamelike features. The underlying assumption is that users will likely collect more personal health-related parameters
when data collection is presented as part of a competition.
In this paper we present the analysis of GameBus, a self-tracking application prototype aimed at families offering a
platform to compete and gaining prizes through “challenges”. The designers’ purpose is to engage users through
peer pressure (creating family teams) and external rewards (prizes).
The study has been conducted with a mixed method approach (surveys and focus groups) whose purpose was to
investigate the role and weight of social ties, perceived benefits, rewards and ease of use in the adoption and use
of a gamified self-tracking technology.
The results show that the internal motivations (playfulness, love for competition, perceived benefits) require to be
coupled with external ones (reward system) to engage the most of the users. Our results raise some doubts
regarding the possibility to engage healthy users in self-tracking practices without providing incentives.
Senior_a Cyborg. The reconfiguration of age and health in the context of digital health management
Monika Urban (University of Bremen)
Digital veillance has and will even more become integral to health care. Digital health technologies are
increasingly used by the 65+ to maintain and prolong productivity, to delay the effects of the aging process, to
ensure treatments of chronic diseases and facilitate a home-based-care. The self-responsible digital self-tracking
practices - and thereby the management of age and chronic diseases - have become mandatory, to those who
seek a self-determined care, who desire a complex therapy management or who rely on assistive technologies.
Having a look on those digital practices through the lens of Digital Sociology (Lupton 2015), we discover a dialectic
process: On the one hand, the digital practices are socially motivated. The ageist idea in the discourses regarding
e.g. the demographic change addresses both, those of us, who still postpone or mask the aging process, as well
as those, whose physical and psychological conditions are confronting them as a personal dilemma. Withal the
digital practices fit well into the hegemonic rationalities of health and age, which perceive healthcare and active
aging as the duty of the individual. Thereby the digital practices enable new experiences, permit independency
and occupy hopes for prolonging youthfulness. Meanwhile the digital elderly become an embodiment of the
neoliberal policy of maximizing choice as well as holding the individuals accountable. On the other hand, those
digital practices affect the social structures of health services: The (potential) enabling through digital technologies
legitimatize the prospect that elderly prevent their liability on societal resources. Therefore the innovations help
deploying political agendas, like the reduction of state financed care.
Setting this as a background, my paper takes up the perspective of Sociology of Aging, by showing how the
sociotechnical assemblages help emerging a new conception of the phenomena of aging itself.
#10#
The win-win of self-tracking: insights from making symptom experiences a boundary negotiating artefact
Tariq Osman Andersen (University of Copenhagen)
Self-tracking is typically considered something that one does for oneself. However, more and more examples are
starting to show that data and information from self-tracking do a lot in relations with health professional. This
could be helping to spark a dialogue with the doctor or function as objective biomedical evidence. In this paper I
discuss self-tracking as a collaborative practice and present insights of how self-tracking can become a “boundary
negotiating artefact” and a win-win activity, useful for others than oneself.
I report from an ongoing R&D project called SCAUT (2014-2017) where we are an interdisciplinary team of
cardiologists, computer scientists and participatory designers who draw on STS (www.scaut.dk). On SCAUT we
develop prototypes of a mobile app for patients with an implanted cardiac device (such as a loop recorder or ICD)
that is connected with a website prototype for clinicians who remotely monitor the implanted device data.
Currently, are are trying out the mobile app in a living lab with more that 50 patients and relatives and exploring
and experimenting with how the tracking of symptoms can become useful for more than the patient him- or herself.
In particular, I investigate the ongoing process of fine-tuning a symptom self-tracking feature in the mobile app and
what happens when placing it as a boundary object between patients and clinicians. I present insights from the
negotiation process of making self-tracking relevant, not only for patients themselves, but for clinicians at the same
time. I conclude by discussing the opportunities and pitfalls of self-tracking as a co-designed boundary object.
Metior ergo sum: quantificare la salute attraverso il self-tracking
Veronica Moretti (Università di Bologna); Barbara Morsello (Università di Roma Tre)
Negli ultimi anni la proliferazione delle e-health technologies ha alimentato un fervente dibattito sulla
digitalizzazione della salute, che merita di essere indagato alla luce delle sfide sempre più accattivanti per la
scienza medica. Il soggetto postmoderno si confronta con nuovi dispositivi tecnologici secondo criteri di
composizione e condivisione della propria identità on line. Alla realtà virtuale della salute si accompagnano
pratiche sempre più diffuse di self-tracking, vale a dire di monitoraggio e misurazione costante di alcuni parametri
fisici e psicologici. Attraverso questo studio si è tentato di mostrare come le comunità che incentivano le pratiche
di self-tracking nella vita quotidiana (i c.d. Quantified-self groups), e la conseguente condivisione dei personal data
raccolti, rivestano un ruolo cruciale in una nuova definizione di salute, sempre meno influenzata da istanze sociali
e collettive in favore di un soggetto (auto)misurabile e dunque autonomo. A dimostrazione di questo, sono stati
scelti due casi studio: la comunità di Quantified- self di Torino (Italia) e quella di Cambridge (UK). Attraverso un
approccio mixed methods sono state condotte delle interviste semi- strutturate rivolte agli organizzatori e
somministrati dei questionari on line ai membri della community. L’obiettivo principale è stato quello di
comprendere il grado di integrazione delle pratiche di self-tracking nella vita quotidiana degli utenti con particolare
riferimento alla condivisione e co-costruzione dei propri dati all’interno delle community. In particolare, l’interesse
perseguito è stato quello di evidenziare le criticità e i conflitti legati alla pratica dell’auto-misurazione nei contesti di
condivisione, ma anche gli elementi d’innovazione e di pregio volti all’empowerment del soggetto.
“I wanted to have his exams looked at by whom I wanted and how I wanted without always having to
ask!”. Personal health data in frequent users life: from institutional design to self-tracking
Alberto Zanutto (Università di Trento)
Dopo un decennio di vari tentativi i sistemi PHR stanno mostrando una grande difficoltà a costruire un futuro certo
nell’ambito delle infrastrutture sanitarie. Oggi diversi studi confermano la difficoltà in cui versa questo tipo di
approccio (Davidson et all. 2015). Il loro sviluppo è spesso affidato a poche funzionalità definite “killer” come la
consegna dei referti o i pagamenti dei servizi, o il cambio medico. Tuttavia investimenti importanti a livello
nazionale e a livello europeo si sono dimostrati inefficaci per catturare l’attenzione dei pazienti (Greenhalgh et al.
2010). Eppure, anche di fronte a questi design che mancano l’obiettivo il processo di adozione messo in atto dai
pazienti costruisce il proprio shift per rispondere ai propri bisogni di cura. Il paper propone alcune riflessioni aperte
a partire da questi processi. Verranno riportati frammenti di storie che abbiamo raccolto dai frequent user di un
sistema messo a disposizione di tutta la cittadinanza di una regione del nord Italia. L’analisi mostra come in
queste storie sembra scomparire completamente l’infrastruttura per far mergere lo specifico labirinto di cura che i
pazienti devono affrontare per raggiungere lo scopo di una terapia adeguata alle proprie esigenze e sensibilità
(Piras e Zanutto 2014). Se il sistema, pur con i suoi limiti, si presta anche solo in parte ad accorciare o
semplificare questi percorsi, i pazienti sono pronti a riconoscere un grande merito all’infrastruttura. Ogni sistema
che interviene sui percorsi di salute è adottato dai pazienti come un contributo specifico alle personalissime attività
di self-tracking.
#11#
Track 4
Contemporary Art as Mediation of Ecological Crisis
Convenors: Monsaingeon Baptiste (CNRS/Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris), Raineau Laurence (University of
Trier)
Architecture, technique and environmental issues: toward living buildings
Marion Roussel (ENSAPLV / Université Paris 8)
“Perhaps our homes could care for us, come to our rescue, or even love us?” asks the American architect Rachel
Armstrong in her book Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives
(2012). Today, a few of the most avant-garde architects, driven by developments in the fields of genetic
engineering, information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and their convergence in the emergence of
“moist media” (Roy Ascott), are envisioning buildings that would not only be reactive, interactive and reflexive but
truly alive, growing like plants or animals, and with which we would share our living spaces. It is the ambition of
genuinely sensitive and intelligent architectures, with a true intentionality, reacting to environmental changes as
well to our needs and with which it would be possible to dialogue that is emerging.
By the introduction of these architectural new species of lives, the challenge is firstly that of a regeneration of our
environments, secondly that of a reconnection between man and nature: it would follow new ways of inhabit
founded not only by ourselves but produced by the close interaction between us and these architectural creatures.
We would come to build and live in a “Brave New World” that we would not be the only builders. Can we not see in
these experimentations the fantasy of a full integration of man in nature, a rebinding movement in which the
artificial and the natural would complete themselves until merging, erasing any division between body and
machine, any distance between man and his environment? Paradoxically, the Cartesian idea of man as “master
and owner of nature” would not be brought to its climax, the technique seeping into the manipulation of the
smallest components of living, suggesting its full exploitation?
Then arises, in an imperious manner, the question of ethics, even more of a “techno-eco- ethics” by which ensure
the habitability of our planet, the viability of our environments and our coexistence in their midst.
Corporate Social Responsibility: art of thinking or artistic thought? A ready-made investigation
Marta Gasparin (University of Leicester); Christophe Schinckus (University of Leicester)
This paper explores how contemporary art may question our relation with ecological issues. Using the method of
juxtaposition of aesthetic artefacts, which comparing in analysing visual material in organizations by placing them
two side by side. This methodology that has been used in organisation studies to create new knowledge
(Sørensen, 2014) will allow us to investigate how nature and ecological issues are discussed and created in an
organisational context. Specifically, the major aim of this article is to use conceptual art works (The Venus of Rags
by Pistoletto, England 1968 by Richard Long, and one of our creation) to analyse to what extent the notion of
corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be seen as a ready-thought implying debatable “ready-made” practices.
Corporate social responsibility issues generated particular accounting and financial theories inviting companies to
adopt specific practices to integrate their potential impact\influence. Countless societal calls are made for
organisations to be accountable and to alleviate the damage caused (Gray et al., 2014; Shivrastava, 1995).
However, this theoretical notion of “social responsibility” leaves the room for interpretation and this paper will
illustrate how organizational practices integrate it pre-defined practices that can be associated to Duchampian
ready-mades. Indeed, by following rules initially (socially) defined as “responsible”, companies tend to walk away
from their personal responsibility focussing more on the socially accepted practices rather than what they can
really do for their environment. The parallel with Duchampian practices is quite direct since these concepts refer to
what is socially accepted as art.
Our approach draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to explore the
changing meaning of ‘environment’ in art, ecology and organisational practices. Such research will allow us to
study the slippery concept environment and how it is embedded\represented in CSR practices. Our paper aims at
emphasizing the epistemic nature of contemporary art since it can contribute knowledge in the field of ecology and
organisations.
#12#
Branding art: painting techniques, sustainability, esthetics and participation renegotiated in marketing
practices
Giacomo Festi (NABA, Milano)
One of the places of negotiation of meaning of art, ethics, ecology and sustainability (see Demos 2013) is
nowadays branding. Marketing activities of brands, more and more attentive to ecological issues and adopting
sustainability as a must-have form of valorization, encompass sponsoring green or ecological art as part of a
complex strategy of public participation. Brands offer a specific version of what esthetics and art are and how the
public concern about ecological issues can be translated into active forms of intervention guided by the brand
itself. As a case studied, approached from a semiotic point of view, the ongoing event “Ikea loves earth” will be
proposed. 21 international street artists are now in different Italian cities to embellish some public places,
especially walls, using a new painting material, Airlite, that actually substitutes, in the rhetoric of Ikea, the antipollutant action of trees. The material seems to contain an immanent ethical dimension (see Latour 1998),
delegated to the process of production that is automatically positively sanctioned from an ethical point of view. In
this new and original connection between technics (Airlite), esthetics (street art), social media participation (mainly
Twitter oriented) and brand (Ikea), we will try to understand what is happening to art and ethics. In the last years,
the ethical dimension of discourses has become a relevant semiotic topic of research (see the semiotic seminars
in Paris and Fontanille 2008), after a long lasting contribution on the topic of esthetics. This contribution will also
be the occasion to compare semiotics methodologies and interpretations with sociological oriented approaches.
Sound art, a way to ecological awareness
Azadeh Nilchiani (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée); Miguel Almiron (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée)
What does raining thousands of birds sound like? A dreadful natural soundscape. What happened to about 5000
birds on the last day of 2010 in Arkansas was quite possibly the result of an interference of soundscapes.
A disproportionately loud explosion of fireworks echoed in the natural soundscape of Arkansas and forced a
species of birds with a poor night vision to fly on a lower altitude than they normally do, and to consequently crash
into the city structures such as telecommunication towers and high rises. But the same technological advances
which can have such a disturbing impact on living beings and natural phenomena can be used to preserve natural
resources. Acoustic Ecology and the emergence of the study of soundscapes as an interdisciplinary discourse was
spearheaded by R.Murray Schafer and gave rise to various practices in contemporary sound art. By placing
emphasis on the level of awareness and hearing capacity of acoustic environments, the whole body can be
transformed to an auditory receptor, and consequently, the embodiment of a soundscape. An example of such
approach is Bill Fontana’s piece Harmonic bridge, in which he uses the collective energy of moving human bodies
and the wind through the live transmission of data produced by a series of accelerometers. This creates an
extended large scale body of soundscapes spanning multiple urban spaces. In another case, and in his piece La
nuit des abeilles, Erik Samakh engenders a portrayal of the repercussions of global warming through recording,
recirculating and relocating the sounds of birds, insects and amphibians in a public park landscape. A similar
approach can be observed in Matthew Burtner’s Ecoacoustics compositions. In these pieces he gather various
types of audio data produced by natural phenomena such as wind and waves. Combined with environmental
parameters such as tempreture and humidity and using all this as inputs, he orchestrates a unique musical
embodiment of the ecology. Technology and ecology impact one another in profound ways. While often
detrimental and even catastrophic, this impact can be reverted to create disruptive narratives that reflect on,
examine and bring to light the relationship between nature, human body, technology and sound.
Synthetic biology as the new frontier of contemporary art: bioart and biohackers in the context of the
environmental crisis
Emmanuel Ferrand (UPMC, Paris)
Through the now widespread gene editing techniques of modern “synthetic” biology, often presented as an
extension to the living of the mechanist, cybernetic, computer science paradigm, bio-engineering now appears,
after the digital revolution, as the new frontier for the economy and the industry, and, hence for contemporary art
as well. Since the term bioart has been coined in the 90'ies, collaborations between artists and scientists have
thrived. It is now common to see artists in residency in scientific labs, and some synthetic biology conferences now
have a specific section dedicated to bioart. In this talk I will first try to make a cartography of those bio-artistic
practices related with genomics, with a special emphasis on those associated with the so-called biohacker
movement. Actually, as we will show, the biohacker community, which includes a noticeable proportion of artists, is
often motivated by environmental issues, which makes it of particular interest for our study. By analyzing a corpus
of recent exhibitions, competitions, prizes, and art residencies I will evaluate up to what extent Contemporary Art
has become one of the instances through which those modern techniques are now mediated and how
environmental issues are used as a justification for those techniques. I will then try to identify or clarify a few
#13#
philosophical or even ideological concerns, which are, explicitly of not, underpinning this bioart / biohacker
approach. This will allow us to clarify the position (and, hence the limitations) of those practices in the more
general landscape of ecology-oriented art activism. This study will be in part based on my own experience as a
curator / activist at the occasion of the recent COP21 conference in Paris.
The connection between digital body and universe
Sana Boukhris (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée); Miguel Almiron (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée)
Researches in Art, Science and Technology fields, existing in the artwork performances of Moon Ribas and Kitsou
Dubois, promote the body ecology movement, looking for new relationships between the body and its
environment.
Both artists are experimenting on their own bodies in order to rethink the limits. This approach raises the question
of new digital technologies impact on the human body in contemporary society. Cyborg artist Moon Ribas
promotes endogenous relationship with nature. She feels every earthquake on the planet, by a sensor
permanently grafted under her skin. Nature makes then the artist's body move and interact. In the other hand, the
French choreographer Kitsou Dubois establishes an exogenous relationship with nature. Indeed, in her
performance, body is liberated from any gravity. Therefore, it is by overcoming nature that the body move and
interact. Our article aims to analyze the body ecology in each artistic movement detailed above by considering the
relation that the body entertain with the Universe enriched by digital
#14#
Track 5
Sociotechnical Environments and Practice-Centred Mobilizations: Exploring the
Interface
Convenor: Luigi Pellizzoni (Università di Trieste)
La battaglia di Żurawlów. Formazione di expertise profana nel caso nel gas di scisto in Polonia
Roberto Cantoni (LATTS – Ecole des Ponts ParisTech)
Per circa 400 giorni, tra la fine del 2013 e gli inizi del 2015, la popolazione del villaggio di Żurawlów, nel sud-est
della Polonia, si è opposta alle operazioni di trivellazione esplorativa da parte della multinazionale petro-gassifera
americana Chevron e, più in generale, ai piani di espansione energetica del governo nazionale. Tali piani
prevedevano lo sfruttamento di un idrocarburo non convenzionale, il gas di scisto, già al centro di numerose
polemiche in altre regioni del mondo, ma il cui sviluppo in Polonia era sostenuto dalla maggior parte dell’arco
parlamentare e dei cittadini, allo scopo di acquisire una maggiore autonomia dalle importazioni di gas russo.
Tuttavia, la predominanza di modalità esecutive d’ispirazione tecnocratica all’interno della compagnia americana e
delle istituzioni scientifiche polacche ha portato a escludere i cittadini dalla presa di decisioni sull’eventualità delle
trivellazioni, e a una serie di proteste. Nel gennaio 2015, Chevron lasciava la Polonia: se, da un lato, il ruolo
giocato dalla mobilitazione cittadina è ambiguo, dall’altro è certo è che nel suo corso, i cittadini di Żurawlów si
sono adoperati alla costruzione compartecipata di un’expertise non ufficiale, non soltanto scientifico-tecnologica
ma anche legale e politica, da opporre a quella ufficiale. Tale produzione ha potuto contare sulla collaborazione di
un numero crescente di personalità accademiche e di ONG che, oltre a rendere la ‘battaglia di Żurawlów’ l’oggetto
di notevole attenzione mediatica, hanno dato il via a un dibattito sociotecnico unico nel contesto della Polonia
postsocialista. Un’analisi della mobilitazione anti-gas di scisto, e soprattutto delle modalità secondo cui è stato
declinato l’elemento tecnoscientifico al suo interno, può quindi senz’altro fornire suggerimenti utili non solo alla
comprensione di situazioni analoghe in altri contesti est-europei ma, più in generale, dei problemi derivanti da un
approccio tecnocratico alla gestione delle politiche industriali.
Latte e lotte. Sulla difficoltà di costituirsi in movimento di allevatori, distributori automatici, microbi e
mucche
Alvise Mattozzi (Libera Università di Bolzano); Tiziana Piccioni (Università di Padova)
Il tentativo di far divenire il latte appena munto, stabilizzato tramite raffreddamento, un prodotto di consumo
venduto direttamente dall'allevatore al consumatore finale, senza passare per la pastorizzazione e il
confezionamento, è parte della crisi che da diversi anni investe il settore lattiero-caseario. Tuttavia questo
fenomeno, solitamente identificato tramite la locuzione "latte crudo", è anche altro. Quello che gli allevatori italiani
di bovine da latte hanno contribuito a realizzare, soprattutto tra il nord e il centro Italia, in particolare negli anni che
vanno dal 2004 al 2009, è una rete che riarticolava le pratiche quotidiane di vendita-acquisto e consumo del latte,
e di altri prodotti agro-alimentari. Ciò poteva avvenire anche perché la rete creatasi permetteva di scavalcare
completamente l'industria di trasformazione. Tale rete si basava su uno stabilizzato sistema tecnico-scientifico, già
incorporato nelle pratiche di questi allevatori, nonché sulla mediazione di alcuni distributori automatici (Piccioni
2010; Mattozzi e Piccioni 2012), progettati ad-hoc al fine di alterare il sistema di rapporti di potere che vedeva gli
allevatori in posizione del tutto subalterna rispetto all'industria di trasformazione dei prodotti lattiero-caseari.
Quest'ultima, infatti, ha sempre imposto il prezzo del latte alla stalla, senza lasciare possibilità di negoziazione da
parte degli allevatori. Ciò può avvenire perché il latte è un prodotto peculiare - ontologicamente instabile,
potremmo dire - che va immesso nel processo di lavorazione-distribuzione, e dunque stabilizzato, nel più breve
tempo possibile. Esso infatti, fino a prima dell'avvento dei distributori di latte crudo, è comunemente considerato
non vendibile, e non consumabile, se non sottoposto a pastorizzazione o a bollitura. Inizialmente, i proponenti rifacendosi da un lato ad una tradizione che vedeva nella relazione diretta tra produttore e consumatore una fonte
di valorizzazione del prodotto e dello scambio e, dall'altro, alle tendenze attuali che riscoprono tale relazione
diretta attraverso la costruzione di reti alternative di consumo - hanno posto le basi per la costituzione di una rete
di attori che vada oltre lo scambi di beni, formando il nocciolo di un possibile movimento in grado di riconfigurare il
sistema di rapporti sociali di riferimento. Ciò però non è avvenuto e la rete si è venuta a sfaldare proprio nel
momento in cui è stata posta sotto pressione da una serie di interventi provenienti dai media e dalle istituzioni.
Dalle narrazioni degli allevatori raccolte emerge che essi hanno tentato lotte e conosciuto forme di solidarietà
inattese, nonché gratificazioni del tutto nuove, e che, tuttavia, si sono spesso sentiti isolati, in qualche momento
persino abbandonati. Cosa è dunque accaduto affinché alcune condizioni favorevoli al configurarsi di un attore
collettivo in grado di mobilitarsi non maturassero e subissero un drastico arretramento? Attraverso le narrazioni
degli stessi attori, proponiamo l'analisi di un caso di innovazione socio-tecnica fallita, cercando di prendere in
considerazione il ruolo che in questo fallimento ha giocato il mancato articolarsi della rete esistente in movimento.
#15#
Making energy grids smarter. Decomposing and reassembling socio-technical apparatuses
Dario Padovan (Università di Torino); Osman Arrobbio (Università di Torino)
In this paper, we describe the assemblages and functioning of conventional energy grids at the beginning of the
smartness process. This exercise is useful because it makes possible to pinpoint obstacles, barriers, resistances,
conflicts, differences, necessities in the process of energy grids’ democratization and aligning. Usually, the
description of an energy smart grid consists of a list of properties that the grid needs to get to be called “smart”.
Thus, smart grids are tools that “can make imaginable the management of direct interaction and communication
among consumers, households or companies, other grid users and energy suppliers”. A smart grid give smart
information, allows for savings, allows for good and real-time information, connect providers and users. Yet, what
is still lacking in the claim for smart grid is an ontological dimension of both energy and grid. In our idea, it is not
enough to enunciate an amount of technical characteristics that should mark the grid and its smartness. What we
are trying to do is to provide a deeper and more complex frame for the energy smart grid implementation. It should
be useful to understand problems in the process of implementation. To accomplish this task, we use two main
perspectives. The first one is to conceive energy grids as technological zones, in which standard metering,
communication infrastructures, and social evaluation assemble. The second one is to conceive energy grids as an
apparatus in which asymmetries of power, information, decision-making, intensity, constitutes the ontology of the
grid itself. This “irreducible inequality”, which marks the grid – likely any grid or network of relations - is what the
smartness must reduce. A smart grid that wants to align or flattening the original disparities must forge a new
apparatus able to make the disparate orders constituting an energy grid converging toward new orders of
difference and similarity.
Innovative niches of critical consumption. Experimenting meat reduction practices within a social media
campaign
Pasi Pohjolainen (University of Turku); Pekka Jokinenb (University of Tampere)
The growing global consumption of animal-based foods is a major sustainability challenge, including
environmental, social justice, public health, economics, and animal welfare and ethics issues. Reducing already
high meat consumption in the Western world would thus bring along many sustainability benefits. Sustainability
has increasingly become part of the food regimes. For example, many consumers in Western nations show
interest towards alternatives to regular meat products, including plant-based foods and local and organic products.
However, total meat consumption statistics have not so far shown signs of decrease.
This paper deals with the ways of restructuring and politicizing the meat issue within consumers’ lifeworlds. In
more detail, we look at how consumption practices can be redefined in the context of a popular Finnish social
media niche campaign called Meatless October, which has encouraged meat eating consumers to follow a
vegetarian diet for a period of one month. We explore how consumers address various sustainability issues within
this context, and whether this case can simultaneously boost new ways of framing critical consumption choices.
A qualitative content analysis has been utilized for the analyses. Preliminary findings show that most of the
participants were rather positive and open to the experiment but at the same time unsure whether they had
adequate know-how to prepare enjoyable vegetarian food throughout the whole month. However, most of the
experiences turned out as positive and the month as a whole a more pleasurable experience that was at first
expected.
This suggests that social media may work as a site for innovative niches where complicated sustainability can be
adopted. With the help of social media community, appropriate information and of inspiring framing of the topic,
consumers may be able to both experiment with new sustainability practices in a pleasurable way and to
contribute to the public discussion of consumer politics.
Exploring the interface of environmental activism and sociotechnical practices of new and social media
surveillance
Diletta Luna Calibeo (Griffith University); Richard Hindmarsh (Griffith University)
In addressing a number of questions posed for this session, the concern this paper addresses is the emergent and
important issue of surveillance of civic environmental interests through new and social media, as interests that
potentially threaten the ‘security of the state’. The latter is a seemingly growing but opaque and disturbing frame of
States that has emerged to justify the monitoring of terrorist activities especially after 9/11. However, it is now
beginning to be apparent that the target of surveillance is expanding to a range of categories across a number of
areas of socio-political issues that are perceived challenge the State; environmental activism is one of these
categories. In our paper we aim to better understand the main issues and implications of digital media surveillance
in relation to environmental activism. After providing the background for environmental activism, we situate new
and social media in contexts that enable both environmental activism and online surveillance or
‘cybersurveillance’. We then explore the concept of ‘ecoterrorism’, which frames certain understandings of
environmental activism as threats to national security, in regard to both terrorism and corporate economic
#16#
interests. Following on, we present cases of industrial and state cyber surveillance of environmental groups,
including anti-fracking campaigners in Canada and Pennsylvania. We then investigate the scope and extent of the
effect that surveillance practices may exert on environmental activists, and how environmental activists and
citizens react to, and attempt to subvert, surveillance, and even to rework surveillance, e.g., through horizontal
communication, encryption, and by way of ‘reverse surveillance’ of the ‘watchers’. Summing up, we reflect on the
and the potential of cybersurveillance to curb environmental activism, and the potential of environmental activism
to resist and reshape surveillance in the dedicated cause to protect the environment and move towards strong
sustainability and green economies.
Activism and games. Exploring boundaries
Ilaria Mariani (Politecnico di Milano); Andréa Poshar (Politecnico di Milano)
Games and design can cooperate to open political questions and challenge ethical reasonings about activism.
Designing games with social impact, designers can promote entertainment and fun, but also raise awareness on
topics of social matter (Flanagan, 2009; Flanagan & Nissenbaum, 2007; 2014). As a counterpart of mainstream
(de Certeau, 2001), the designer can pinpoint struggles of social movements (Stokes, 2014), covering
contemporary societal wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973; 1974; Sicart, 2010); problems which are currently
in need of thoughtful reflection. Recognizing the central role played by the subjectivity and individuality, activism
games as ethical systems can problematize former, rooted knowledge. In the protected space of the game fictional
world, players are allowed to safely experience other roles, challenge themselves (Bogost, 2007) and subvert
ordinary pratices of everyday life. Playing activism games becomes a way to approach collective as well as inner
dilemmas. Especially via ethical gameplay, players can be pushed to consider and deal with wicked problems – as
economic, environmental, social and political issues – through conscientiousely designed perspectives. For
instance, several activist games investigate the relationship among individual and collective, acting as potential
means for empowering citizens, building community sense, and foster cultural change (Malinowski, 1976).
Refering to Lautour (2005), designers are active agents/actors able to encourage the development of social
awareness. In consequence, within the development of games as (1) Conspiracy For Good, (2) Kill Cap and (3)
CamOver, designers can create not only consciousness that alters individual’s perception of their community and
their environment, and also sparkles questions regarding their ordinary or in-game behaviors. Our intent is to
enquire how games designed with this intention elicit experiences that initiate commentaries and confrontations
regarding political, cultural and social issues, hoping to influence/change players as citizens. According to us,
designers can create innovation activating players’ immaginaries; immerging them into extra-ordinary experiences
(Murray, 1997; Frasca, 2001; Ryan, 2001) they can influence people’s mindset showing interactive
representations/simulation (Frasca, 2003) of certain systems and processes, developing awareness of social
struggles.
Of walls and holograms: expanding the territory of activism
Andréa Poshar (Politecnico di Milano)
It is not new that one of the main activities of protesters is to develop alternative means and tools of
communication. It is also not new the engagement of graphic designers within social causes. Designers always
had the tendency to influence and shape those activist practices by designing or, remediating (Bolter; Grusin,
2001) the practices, tools, techniques and more specifically, the aesthetics of resistance movements. But, what is
interesting to observe is a new flow of interaction between designers and protesters that’s been showing it since
2010. From the Arab Revolution to the Umbrella Movement, passing by the impeachment of the Brazilian
president to the Nuit Debout protests in La Place de la République, Paris, protesters are manifesting themselves in
unexpected ways – some of them never seen before. 21th century protesters are re-claiming their rights and their
space not only with posters and banners, but also by using the vast and available technology they are able to
access to: be it from social media to holograms projections (Spain), urban projections (UK and Brazil), and light
painting (Hong Kong), protesters are nowadays using their creativity to globally communicate among them and
with society/mainstream. Within this context, designers nowadays are occupying a big role: they do not only
engage within social causes and protesters by designing visual graphics, but are guiding activists to socially
engage with society and to develop their protest in a creative way. Designers are expanding the territories, the
aesthetics patterns, the behavior, and the experience of communication of protesters (Werbner; Webb; Poots,
2014). Examples of these cases can be found among the Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), Occupy Wall Street
(USA), Kotti and Co. Movement (Germany), Indignados Movement (Spain), Não vai ter Golpe (Brazil) and Reclaim
the Street (UK). From this point of view it is possible to identify a strong technical development and exchange
among protesters and designers (Foold; Grindom, 2014; Lowey; Prince, 2014; Gee, 2011). With this paper, I intent
to demonstrate how designers engage and foster activism and, moreover, how they produce cultural changes by
doing this. To me, designers not only get involved with social causes, but also re-shapes and re-design them –
influencing, in a positive/negative perspective, protester’s mindset of how to communicate and interact with spaces
(physical or digital).
#17#
Track 6
Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to the Environments of Care
Convenors: Jérôme Michalon (Max Weber Center), Nicolae Stefan (University of Trier), Cristina Popescu
(EHESS, Paris)
Gaps and bridges between care and normativity
Stefan Nicolae (University of Trier)
Strongly connected with the work of Annemarie Mol (2002, 2008, 2012), analyses of care in the field of social
studies of science show a strong interest towards the practices in which care is done. On the one hand, this
means focusing on the particular ways in which medical practitioners and patients engage with and differently
enact their material environment along care practices. In a theoretical perspective, care thus relegates to the
ongoing discussions on ontology in the STS (Woolgar and Lezaun 2013). On the other hand, studying care also
enabled STS researchers to draw on questions regarding values and (e)valuation considered analytical
approachable in situated practices of care. In a methodological perspective, care rendered the background for
conceptualizing “ontonorms” (Mol 2013) or “intra-normativities” (Pols 2010) as normative stances informing
practices. Nevertheless, reflections on normativity are unequal developed. While the importance of a normative
reference for understanding multiple ontologies is intensively addressed in STS, the bonds between care and
normativity are seldom thematic. My contribution takes up this second point and aims to indicate different modes in
which normativity can relate to care. I explore the career of this salient relationship in a concentric format: I firstly
point at the initial relevance of bridging between normativity and care; I then follow Mol's attempts of grasping
normativity beyond care practices; and against this background I finally argue for both possible extensions of
normativity in the study of care and for alternative options in dealing with this relationship.
The techno-politics of care. European innovation policies and the robotisation of elderly care
Benjamin Lipp (Technische Universität München)
What is ‘care’ in a techno-scientific world? In this paper I argue that care is deeply reconfigured in the context of,
what I call, ‘techno-politics of care’. Here, ‘to care’ does not only mean to look after humans, treat illnesses or
reform health policy but it also means to foster techno-human relations, to speculate on the fate of machines, to
invest into the compatibility of robotic platforms and to mobilise users to ‘accept’ technology as part of their daily
lives. I will illustrate this argument by, on one hand, investigating contemporary European innovation politics with
regard to socially interactive robots in health care and by, on other hand, taking a look at the prototypical practices
in the research and development of these robots. In the spirit of a neo-materialist account (Barad) of Foucault’s
analytics of governmentality it is my aim to trace and elaborate the multiple strategies, formats and
in/disposabilities which emerge in this techno- political apparatus of care.
As a consequence I argue that care is currently re-shaped through technology, at least, on two levels: On the level
of European innovation politics care is reconfigured as a technological challenge for automation and as an
opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of robots. On the level of the development of care robots care settings
become ‘hostile’ environments which call for an extensive adaption of these circumstances to the needs of robots.
Finally, in order to grasp and critically engage this apparatus we also need to attune our concepts to the fact that
care is (and always has been) a site of technologisation. We should not rely on a merely ‘human nature’ of care as
a critical resource to engage specific care arrangements. As we witness a more and more intimate interfacing of
human and technological needs a theoretical account of their mutual involvement within socio-technical
environments is needed as never before.
#18#
“You can't put the whole birth into words! But let me tell you: the most important thing is that someone
takes good care of you.” Narratives of giving birth
Cecilia Colloseus (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
Over the course of the last thirty years, birth culture in western societies has undergone a steady change from
medicalization, over biomedicine criticism, to remedicalization. The concept of care has also been part of these
changes, that is, the profession of the midwife, the involvement of the partner or even technologies of pain relief.
My contribution will discuss empirically how women today experience childbirth against the background of
advancing technologies, staff cuts in birth clinics, and the recent changes in midwifery (given the the example of
Germany). For this purpose, I will present a collection of birth narratives from an Internet forum for maternal
interests, and from a storytelling-café campaign, that discuss the issue of care during birth. It will be asked how the
interdependences between the birthing women, their partner, obstetricians/midwives, obstetrical devices and the
birth clinic itself are discussed and narratively framed in the women's stories. Furthermore it will be discussed if
taking “narrative” into account could be an “other means” to shape care.
Ambivalences of care: monitoring in NICU
Miriam Halstein (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
According to WHO 1 in 10 babies is born preterm. Medical research is advanced in the highly engineered field of
Neonatology, whereas the challenging topic of care in the context of neonatal intensive care units (NICU) has
emerged just recently. Within my medical dissertation project, I conduct a qualitative interview-study with parents
of a preterm born child, which I will present as a work in progess. I focus on the ambivalence of the actant
“monitor” in the care environment of a NICU. Nowadays it is impossible to imagine a NICU without monitor
surveillance. It provides nurses at their workstation a convenient overview of the vital functions of every patient.
The monitor is taking excellent care of the baby: It is tirelessly checking its heartbeat, respiratory rate, level of
oxygenation etc., providing beeps in a comforting pitch and rate: the sound of “everything is alright”.
Many quantitative clinical studies (Conde-Agudelo 2014), however, gave evidence to the fact that when a preterm
born child is taken care of in skin-to-skin contact to its parents the child’s vital functions stabilize significantly.
Agathe Israel (2008) claims that this existential need for relationship goes even further: if a caring person is merely
watching sensitively over a preterm born child’s wellbeing, the baby shows fewer signs of apnoea and bradycardia.
The monitor, not capable of providing the baby with a nurturing relationship, however, can be perceived as an
equal competitor when it comes to care. Illustrated by interview excerpts I will depict these findings from the
perspective of the parents who seem to get missing as actors in a medicalized discourse. In an outlook, I will
check on the implications for medical practice.
Accessible learning environments. When care meets sociotechnical innovations for pupils with disabilities
Cristina Popescu (EHESS)
By adopting a sociological point of view, this presentation aims to show how care plays a key role within new
technologies design and appropriation in the case of young people with disabilities. It also underlines a new way of
constructing knowledge about disability and special needs into education through collective processes that
associate researchers, caregivers and people with disabilities during an experimental process.
Qualitative data were collected through ethnographical fieldwork that included participant observation within
school, specialized institutions and semi-structured interviews with caregivers and young people with disabilities.
The virtual space of forums talking about school for children with disabilities was also taken into account and the
different discourses assembled. Threads about the use of digital technologies and their possible influence on the
future of this category of students could be therefore identified and analysed.
The experimental and learning process appeared as an infrastructure (Jensen, Morita, 2015) allowing digital
artefacts and people to meet. “Adapted” technologies intended for users with disabilities overpassed their practical
dimension by directly participating to the “configuration” of their user (Woolgar, 1991). They included both
mainstream and specialized affordances (Gibson, 1977). In the same time, the relationship between the object
and user gained in being understood as a complex adjustment process (Winance, 2010). Care then appeared as a
reciprocal movement, with a collective dimension. We can therefore speak about a social “care” opposing to a
more individual one. On one hand, caregivers and families engaged into “improving the future” of students with
disabilities by guiding them during the learning of adapted or accessible technologies. On the other hand, young
people with disabilities tended to adopt the innovative artefacts in order to be autonomous and therefore facilitate
the others’ efforts and intervention over time.
#19#
High fidelity simulation in healthcare: negotiating the roles while negotiating the real
Lucien Tisserand (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle)
For the last thirty years in the USA, and earlier in Europe, a new practice has been developed in health care
education: high fidelity simulation. A robot that plays the role of the patient allows medical teams to train at
scenarios. Two surveys (Kohn et al. 2000, Michel et al. 2009) about adverse events pointed out the impact of
dysfunctions of communicational methods within the teams: something that is locally, contingently, co­operatively
produced. As a solution, both surveys recommended the use and development of this practice. The new challenge
is then at the same time technological but first and foremost pedagogical: teamwork as an educational aim in its
own right.
This communication is drawn from a fieldwork I am conducting on medical simulated practices at the simulation
department of a university of medicine in Paris. My theoretical approach is situated within the tradition of
ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) and multimodality (Mondada 2014, Nevile 2009). The aim of this research is to
provide health care education professionals with an expertise on what they are actually trying to teach, to train for,
and to evaluate.
The health care professionals use two relevant roles while working as a team : the team leader and the team
follower (Davidson et al. 2011). During the sessions and its debriefings, trainers and trainees try to define and
prescribe what a leader and a follower should do or not, and what they should have done or not. My talk will focus
on several interactional episodes video­recorded during simulation sessions. I will show how these roles are
achieved and recognized through an interactional work of multimodal resources patterns, how they are still
negotiated despite an initial agreement. I will show that these roles acquire new tasks regarding the simulation
work (Hindmarsh et al. 2014) itself in this new socio­technical environment.
Making chemotherapy/reshaping coordination. Infrastructuring administration systems in two hospital
departments
Silvia Fornasini (Fondazione Bruno Kessler); Enrico Maria Piras (Fondazione Bruno Kessler); Francesco Miele
(Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted in two hospital departments (pharmacy and clinical oncology) after
the introduction of a system to improve safe chemotherapy delivery, our contribution focuses on the
infrastructuring process brought about the introduction of this new system, showing how it had to be integrated in
the existing healthcare IT, and how this required a modification of working practices. We will show how making
“safe delivery of drugs” is accompanied by a reshaping of coordination practices and novel forms of control. In
particular, we will focus on two aspects: 1) data-work as socio-material practices and 2) redefinition of systemenforced control mechanisms of workers.
As for the first aspect, we observed the data work necessary for the conversion of data in drugs, that happens
thanks to the coordination between a multitude of actors and artifacts in a context characterized by an assemblage
of heterogeneous materials and practices (Berg, 1997; Cooper and Law, 1995; Law and Mol, 2002; Bruni 2005).
This data work is aligned with another one, that permits work coordination between multiple actors and between
the two departments.
As for the second aspect, we would illustrate the multifaceted role of the ICT supporting the trajectory showing
how it redistributes tasks among human, performs automatic operations, and allows human supervisors to have a
stricter control over workers. This control regards also the design practices: according to Pipek & Wulf (2009)
“traditional design methodologies in IS prioritize the designers’ perspective in a way that obstructs the perception
of the users’ contributions to the improvement of infrastructures”. We observed how highers-up have more
chances to influence IT designers, while other actors are only «represented» and do not have voice in the design
phase. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate designers’ and users’ choices in understanding organization’s
information system, and to reconceptualize one's own work in the context of existing, potential, or envisioned IT
tools.
#20#
Understanding the medication work in nonclinical settings: the case of older adults’ medication practices
Nervo X. Verdezoto (University of Leicester)
There is a growing desire to address societal challenges in healthcare and sustainability through the use of
information technology in which an increasingly number of reminders (e.g., medication) and monitoring systems
(e.g., energy meter) are being designed. Although these technologies have managed to raise awareness
regarding people’s care activities or energy consumption, most of these technologies have focused on the
individual behavior change and have failed to consider how people actually use and integrate care activities and
technology into their everyday lives. In particular for medication management practices, most of these systems
have been designed taking the healthcare professional’s perspective or targeting a specific treatment or condition
that might not sufficient support the medication work in non­clinical settings. As a result, people still find it difficult
to adopt and embrace these technologies to improve their health. For example, an older adult with an active
lifestyle might frequently be outside the home (e.g., at work, restaurant or any other social setting) when they are
supposed to take their medication. Indeed, an active lifestyle and comorbidity further challenge medication
management practices as they are becoming more and more intertwined into people’s everyday life. People need
to know what medication to take, when to take them, how to take them and why it is important to take them. Based
on a case study of medication management practices of older adults and drawing on the Contextual Wheel of
Practice (a research framework for Sustainable HCI), this paper takes a practice­based research approach to
further explore and understand the medication work in non­clinical settings. This understanding would provide a
more holistic view of the care situation at hand in relation to people’s everyday lives and routines to inform system
design of medication management systems as well as facilitate designer’s reflective practices.
#21#
Track 7
Algorithmic Social Influence
Convenor: Giuseppe A. Veltri (University of Leicester)
Algorithms and big data: the road is paved with black boxes (and methodological issues)
Giuseppe Tipaldo (Università di Torino); Nicola Miraglio (Quaerys srl)
Latest developments in the ICT market have terrifically increased the amount of info potentially available for social
research. A single day, as measured by the standard of a social network like Facebook, Snapchat or Youtube, is
equivalent to decades of work in the era of traditional media, when videos, images and texts were traveling still in
analog form and were dispersed in billions of different "places". The abundance of information sources and the
speed of retrieving and storage, while helping to speed up some phases of social research, as well as to extend its
domain to emerging phenomena, on the other hand are raising new issues: privacy, (private) property of data,
reliability of data and data sources, access to big data archives (like Facebook or Twitter firehose) are just few
examples of a bunch of relevant issues brought about by the Big Data era. Surprisingly, it is not only society that
seems to be blinded by the glare of what is being called “algorithms society”. The academic community too is
largely lacking a critical and methodological reflection, at least within the Social Sciences domain. How will Social
Research 2.0 look like? Which are the main threats ahead? This small contribution represents a first draft to open
a critical discourse.
Strategie cognitive e razionalità limitata nella progettazione del software
Giacomo Scillia (Università di Bologna)
Nel contesto attuale le persone prendono decisioni basandosi su software che forniscono informazioni o su agenti
computazionali che elaborano dati e forniscono informazioni sul mondo e su noi stessi. Tuttavia la maggior parte
di questi software sono realizzati – a loro volta – in situazioni di incertezza. La qualità delle decisioni – in materia di
tecnologia, usabilità, scalabilità – è un fattore determinante per la qualità dell’applicazione software. A partire dagli
anni Settanta, in alcuni importanti esperimenti sugli aspetti procedurali del giudizio e della decisione, Tversky e
Kahneman hanno documentato diversi casi in cui gli individui violano sistematicamente i principi fondamentali
della razionalità (cfr. Kahneman e Tversky 1979, 1982, 2000). Tali violazioni non possono essere spiegate come
una mancanza di attenzione o di impegno: per il loro carattere sistematico, esse somigliano piuttosto ad altri tipi di
errori ben noti, come le illusioni percettive. Nel mio lavoro mostrerò come i progettisti esperti quanto i neofiti
semplificano problemi relativamente complessi adottando strategie cognitive (euristiche) che spesso conducono a
risultati erronei. Queste strategie conducono i progettisti di software a dover selezionare l’opzione da preferire –
fra scelte tecnologiche, vincoli normativi, applicazioni informatiche già realizzate – ponderando i relativi costi e
benefici in condizioni di incertezza e rischio. Queste scelte inducono progettisti e sviluppatori a servirsi di
scorciatoie cognitive che producono errori sistematici. In particolare presenterò i risultati dell’applicazione della
prospect theory (Kahneman e Tversky, 1979, 1992) ai comportamenti dei progettisti di software. Si mostrerà il
ruolo determinante dell’effetto contesto dato dall’evoluzione tecnologica, che indirizza molte scelte progettuali, e
dall’effetto di isolamento che deriva dalla propensione a segmentare in singole azioni gli elementi consecutivi di un
processo da automatizzare fino a perderne l’obiettivo finale. In questa prospettiva i progettisti spesso ignorano le
componenti probabilistiche delle alternative alle loro scelte, portando a realizzazioni corporatized che non operano
nell’interesse delle persone.
Coding relevance. Algorithmic recommender systems as mediators in media publics
Nikolaus Pöchhacker (Technische Universität München); Andrea Geipel (Technische Universität München);
Marcus Burkhardt (Technische Universität München MCTS); Jan-Hendrik Passoth (Technische Universität
München)
In today’s media ecology users are faced with an ever growing abundance of available information, of news,
tweets, status updates, etc. As a result, algorithms for personalization and recommender systems become more
and more important. While prominent social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook follow a market logic
which aims to maximize click rates, other media providers need to implement different logics. A key challenge for
public broadcasters in particular is the inherent tension between their official mandate to present a wide variety of
perspectives and opinions and the very nature of algorithmic profiling as means to provide personalized services,
that is to put content to the fore that caters to the individual interest of a user.
Our project “Media Plaforms of the Future” explores the development of a non-linear video and audio content
distribution system for public broadcasting in cooperation with Bayerischer Rundfunk. In such a setting the
#22#
construction of relevance is the result of a constant interplay of algorithmicly produced and segregated publics
(Gillespie, 2013) on the one hand and broader societal publics on the other hand. Additionally, the development
and operation of such an algorithmic system must be aligned with pre-established practices and modes of relevant
meaning making in order to create an information infrastructure that works like magic (Bowker & Star, 2000). Our
project is designed as a collaborative ethnography in which we not only analyze the role of algorithmic
personalization and profiling for content processing and distribution but also use our findings as interventions into
the software engineering process. In our presentation we will explore the interplay between different levels of
relevance regarding the presented and processed data and how the implementation of the different constitutional
obligations is negotiated during the development process.
Il lavoro nella e-society: polarizzazione della struttura professionale e scomparsa delle professioni
esprimibili in termini algoritmici
Federico Fiorelli (Università di Roma Sapienza)
Dalla fine degli anni Ottanta le analisi econometriche mostrano come l’utilizzo delle tecnologie ICT ha comportato
una polarizzazione della struttura professionale. A una crescita delle professioni high skills e low skills ha fatto da
contraltare un calo delle professioni medium skills.
Difatti la digitalizzazione dell’economia ha da un lato portato alla formazione di nuovi settori di mercato mentre
dall’altro ha profondamente mutato la composizione occupazionale di molti settori tradizionali, comportando un
ampliamento dello skill gap tra le competenze richieste dalla domanda e le capacità possedute dall’offerta.
La tendenza dei mercati a privilegiare innovazioni del tipo labour saving, al fine di ridurre i costi di produzione e di
accrescere la competitività delle imprese all’interno delle catene del valore globale, ha portato verso una forte
contrazione dei lavoratori aventi competenze routinarie.
Il fenomeno della routine-biased technological change ha permesso il superamento della precedente dicotomia tra
colletti bianchi e colletti blu. La nuova classificazione prevede una differenziazione dei lavoratori in base alla
possibilità di esprimere la loro professione attraverso una sequenza programmabile. Nella società degli algoritmi
emergono sia le professioni analitiche, interattive e manuali routinarie che le professioni analitiche, interattive e
manuali non routinarie. Le prime facilmente sostituibili attraverso processi di automazione (datafication) mentre le
seconde complementari ai processi di innovazione delle pratiche lavorative.
Le principali conseguenze dell’evoluzione del mercato del lavoro concernono da un lato il rischio di un
allungamento dei tempi della disoccupazione frizionale, mentre dall’altro la necessità di adeguare i percorsi
formativi alle necessità della domanda di lavoro al fine di ridurre il mismatching sia dal lato quantitativo (labour
shortage) che dal lato qualitativo (skill gap). La sempre maggiore diffusione delle tecnologie digitali richiede un
accrescimento delle competenze computazionali della forza lavoro con il fine di mantenere inalterato il legame tra
innovazione, sviluppo economico e crescita occupazionale.
Finnish elite culture in 1640-1910: approaches to digitalized mapping and theorizing of powerful actors in
the Finnish public debate
Seppo Poutanen (University of Turku); Hannu Salmi (University of Turku)
This paper analyzes the idea and concept of ”Finnish elite culture” as it is expected to emerge in the recently
launched interdisciplinary research project COMHIS, that is ”The consortium Computational History and the
Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland, 1640–1910”. By utilizing library catalogue metadata and full
textmining of all the digitized Finnish newspapers and journals published before 1910 (roughly two million pages),
the COMHIS project is able to achieve groundbreaking, qualitatively new kind of understanding of how e.g.
language barriers between Finnish and Swedish interacted in the period, how elites became mingled in popular
debate, and how “domestication” of transnational influences into the Finnish public discourse took place.
Membership of an elite conventionally indicates inhabiting an exceptionally favourable position in some significant
relationships of power, and/or strongly advantageous access to economic, cultural or social capital. In this paper
we discuss how choices concerning techniques of digitalized textmining and methods of abstraction and
visualization in getting command of the mining’s results are best put into dialogue with a) the evolving and refined
conceptualization of key changes in the Finnish elite culture through centuries, b) nature and scope of various
power positions/powerful actors that get enacted in the research material, and c) possibilities to trace “roads
invisible and roads not taken”. The last item means reading the research material as space of potential realities or
possible worlds; tracking, for example, such important historical turning points where things arguably could have
turned otherwise than they actually did.
#23#
Track 8
Exploring Sociotechnical Forms of City Making
Convenors: Claudio Coletta (Maynooth University), Liam Heaphy (Maynooth University), Sung-Yueh Perng
(Maynooth University)
Urban accessibility issues: technoscientific democratizations at the documentation interface
Tomás S. Criado (Technische Universität München)
In this paper I outline a research programme to understand the technoscientific democratizations undertaken by
different urban accessibility struggles. Grounding on ethnographic fieldwork studies in Barcelona working with
urban accessibility professionals and activists, I will argue for the importance of the ecology of ‘documentation
interfaces’ created in their struggles: that is, the relational processes to collaboratively build multi-media accounts
in a diversity of formats seeking to enforce different translations of bodily needs into specific urban accessibility
arrangements. In discussion with the asymmetries that the ongoing expertisation of accessibility might be opening
up, I would like to foreground these apparently irrelevant practices as an interesting site to reflect on how these
peculiar knowledge and participatory devices might allow creating different instances of technical democratization.
Two cases are analysed: (1) the creation of Streets for all, a platform to contest and to sensitize technicians and
citizens alike of the problems of ‘shared streets’ for the blind and partially sighted led by the Catalan Association
for the Blind; and (2) the organization of the Tinkerthon, a DIY and open-source hardware workshop boosted by
En torno a la silla to facilitate the creation of a network of tinkerers seeking to self-manage accessibility
infrastructures. These cases not only bring to the fore different takes to the democratisation of the relations
between technical professionals and disability rights advocates, but also offer different approaches to the ‘politics
of universals’ in the design of urban accessibility arrangements.
Un/Responsiveness: the politics of bodies in street furniture design
Kim Kullman (Goldsmiths University)
This paper enquires into the politics of bodies in contemporary data-driven city- making. Taking a European
Research Council funded ethnographic study as a starting point, it describes the development of a new range of
responsive street furniture in the UK, concentrating in particular on how disabled users are enacted as part of the
emerging system. Although disabled people are largely absent from current technoscientific urban imaginaries, the
paper describes how the project experiments creatively with the experiences of marginalised bodies, deploying
these to introduce new relations, rhythms and trajectories into the designs that have the potential to produce
coded spatialities that are more responsive to diverse urban populations. This case will then be employed to
critically discuss broader challenges in the area of inclusive city-making, which often stem from limitations in
present knowledges of the body and the complex patterns of un/responsiveness that shape its mobility in urban
environments.
Smart city selling? Corporate approaches on the smart city concept and urban business models in
Warsaw
Monika Maria Kustra (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya); Jörg Rainer Noennig (Technische Universität Dresden)
In the era of knowledge economy and rapid technological development related to ICT, open data and IoT, cities
became laboratories where new forms of urban operations are envisioned and introduced. In this regard, cities are
multi-stakeholders platforms and markets offering numerous opportunities for both startups as well as large
corporations, e.g. hackathons and urban living labs. This is especially evident in the idea of the smart city concept
that is in center of attention in both academic and public discourse. So far, a considerable amount of literature has
been published on the theoretical as well as technical aspect of the smart city model. Still, there is a big research
gap in term of in-depth empirical case studies and strategic planning activities like involvement of private sector in
smart city creation and the role it plays in urban business models preparation. Therefore, with the main case study
of the city of Warsaw, the goal of this paper is to grasp some specificities of the smart city model and present the
role of large corporations in strategic urban planning. Firstly, the emergence of the term smart city in the private
sphere will be traced. Secondly, several corporate examples will be provided and analysed. Based on semistructured interviews with experts from private and public sectors, the paper aims to stimulate discussion on the
involvement of corporations into strategic urban management and urban business models creation. The results
presented may facilitate improvements in strategic urban management.
#24#
Tracing AirBnB controversies: the making of sharing economies and policy responses in four European
cities
Torben Elgaard Jensen (Aalborg University Copenhagen)
AirBnB - a company with a homepage for people to list, find and rent lodging - has expanded rapidly in many
European cities in the past 5 years. The company has gained a positive reputation as an emblematic case of the
so–called sharing economy or collaborative economy, but it has also been strongly criticised for disrupting housing
and communities and for renting many apartments out all year round despite AirBnB’s claim to be different from
the hotel industry. The AirBnB phenomenon is thus entangled in discussions about sustainable development, city
space, city economy, city regulations and much more.
The paper presents a mapping of the controversies that have recently evolved around AirBnB in four different
cities: Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona. The analysis is based on data harvested from facebook discussions,
from customer reviews, and from media coverage. By means of the CorText digital platform for semantic analysis,
the paper explores how controversies in each of the cities are articulated in different sources of data. Finally, the
paper reflects on how we, as STS researchers, may contribute to the process of understanding, valuating and
regulating AirBnB as it evolves in the contexts of the four different cities.
Civic hacking and testbedding as alternative city making
Claudio Coletta (Maynooth University), Heapy Perngi (Maynooth University), Sung-Yueh Perng (Maynooth
University)
The aim of this paper is to account for alternative processes of city making through hacktivism and testbedding,
observing how they actually engage with smart city transformation processes and create specific regimes of
change and innovation. To what extent are these alternatives viable for cities? What are the benefits and for
whom? How is the idea of urban change produced and performed? What kind of digital
atmosphere/skin/governmentality is produced? Hacktivism and testbedding are considered here as two forms of
collaboration between public institutions, companies and civic communities to envision and test the deployment of
IoT-based services in the city. These two forms of collaboration collide and interact with their own rationalities,
stemming from from different ideas of users and value for the city and performing different possible urban worlds.
In so doing, they present relevant features for STS analysis: they act upon a web of relations that creates a
common platform or infrastructure; they move across and enact mutable urban scales; they assemble
heterogeneous actors (such as public organizations, civic communities, start-up companies, multinational
corporations, city innovation frameworks and protocols, etc.); they build on specific ideas of change, they
contribute to create a digital innovation “thing” that pervade smart urbanism practices across the city. This “thing”
seems to orient the discourse and the innovation in very unpredictable ways, acting both as a source of ideas and
practices that can be enrolled enacted by companies and/or public sector to become actual project. Looking at
hacktivism and testbedding practices in Dublin, the study wants to provide an empirical account on how ideas are.
#25#
Track 9
Environmental Sustainability, Sociotechnical Transitions and Practices
Convenors: Paolo Giardullo (Università di Padova), Sonia Brondi (Università di Roma Sapienza)
Energy transition: technological change or behavioral change?
Felix Ekardt (Forschungsstelle Nachhaltigkeit und Klimapolitik, Leipzig)
This presentation analyzes the controversy on technological versus behavioral pathways (sufficiency) to
sustainability. Sufficiency implies in short the idea of a simple life and a sustainability strategy and a vision for the
future through changing behavior (instead of only technology). The mainstream discourse on sustainability is
confronted with the question whether sustainability can be achieved by only (!) using technology or not, which is
the main basis for sufficiency strategies. Regarding energy transition, renewable energies and energy efficiency as
technical perspectives might by themselves not be enough to meet the radical global temperature limit in Article 2
of the Paris Agreement (1,5/ 1,8 Degrees Celsius). To address various problems associated with the current
energy supply system, sufficiency might become necessary, even though purely technical solutions seem
appealing to solve environmental problems such as climate change. In view of interdisciplinary controversies on
the empirical factors for change in societies, the next step is to ask why substantial behavioral change has been
failing so far. Furthermore, it will be asked whether sufficiency is promising (as assumed by many) increased
human happiness in the light of happiness and cooperation research. This question is also relevant, seeing that
sufficiency might (unintentionally) lead an end of the growth-driven society as overarching development model of
Western industrialized states. This will trigger immense follow-up questions for several subsystems of society. Yet,
the question in how far the debate on sufficiency is necessarily critical of capitalism is rather multilayered.
Intermediation and innovative practices of consumption/production of renewable energy
Natalia Magnani (Università di Trento)
Intermediation and innovative practices of consumption/production of renewable energy
My contribution intends to focus on the role of socio-technical intermediation in the energy transition. The
emerging literature on this issue stresses that the role of intermediaries is to create connections and relationships
between different people and things (Bird, 2014; Moss et al. 2010). Intermediaries perform operations of '
translation ' among actors and technology in order to coordinate and articulate better interaction. They redefine the
social organization of technological systems and help stabilize the innovation processes (Beveridge and Guy,
2009). Intermediaries are part of the production-consumption relationship, but at the same time mediate between
dimensional scales, technologies, social contexts, and different meanings and interests. On the basis of this
literature in the presentation we will focus on the role of civil society organizations in the energy transition in Italy.
The civil society organizations we will analyse work as intermediaries between energy consumers, producers and
technology favoring in many ways their re-assemblance into one single collective entity different from individuals.
Sometimes, the need for further re-intermediation comes from the attempt of civil society to limit the action of
commercial third party actors considered outsiders to the values of sustainability, mutuality and self-management
carried out by the third sector on the topic of energy. Eventually the focus on intermediaries will allow us to see
how the liberalization of the electricity system have reconfigured the boundaries between producers and
consumers and has produced new forms of social engagement.
Technological clusters, energy transitions and social change
Alfredo Agustoni (Università di Chieti-Pescara)
In this paper, we try to propose and discuss some theoretical instruments for an historical and sociological
reflection on relations between energy, power and society. Several approaches, leaving from Ostwald's one,
proudly criticized by Max Weber, to Lotka's and Odum's ones, tried to frame biological evolution in general, and in
particular human development, within thermodynamic theory. This point of view is able to show the meaning of
human cultural development within the network of fisical and natural processes. Nevertheless, this kind of
approach seems to consider Humanity as a single biotic collectivity, contending spaces to other ones, ignoring
power relations within human societies themselves, again in the framework of the networks of life. For better
analysing this former issue, we recovered some key ideas and concepts: for example, Mumford’s idea of a “MegaEngine” and Schumpeter’s concept of technological clusters, further developed by his followers, such as the
“MultiLevel Perspective” of Geels, Rip and Kelly.
#26#
Exploring knowledge production and innovation ecosystem in the solar energy sector in India
Amit Akoijam (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
The main objective of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of knowledge production
in different solar energy technologies and innovation ecosystem in the domain of solar energy sector in India. In
2010, the government of India introduced National Solar Mission to promote our country’s energy security
challenge, aims to become a leader in solar power generation, supporting R&D activities, develop trained human
resource for solar industry. Knowledge production here refers to the research outcomes such as patents and
research publications from the various R&D institutions, university, firms, etc. and the innovation ecosystem is one
of the perspective where the sense of environment or ecology of various institutions, actors and various other
factors surrounding the activity of research and innovation. The study shows that research outcomes specially
patents, research publications and R&D investment has become a more essential area after the announcement of
the National Solar Mission in the country. It highlights the number of research publications and patents has been
also increased. There is also a significant presence of productive academia, R&D institutions and supportive policy
initiatives in the country. Moreover, the study addresses the research trust area in various solar technologies, the
current solar energy scenario in the country and explores the ways in which various actors, agencies and policies
shape the solar sector from various perspectives on science, technology and society studies and innovation
literature.
People-plant interactions and the emergence of ecological self
Matthew Del Sesto (Boston College)
While policy makers struggle to realign socio-technical infrastructures and institutions based on the urgency of
climate crisis and environmental degradation, civil society groups and urban organizations enable ecologically
informed practices everyday. Focusing on the interpersonal, community and city contexts, this theoretical paper
will first investigate different theories of the self, including the contribution of nonhumans and plants to the
(trans)formation of self. The paper will then explore how direct tactile engagement in the world of plants affectively
and ecologically reorients collective consciousness through the relational demands of daily horticultural practice.
Particular attention will be given to the interplay between culture and socio-technical structures, with emphasis on
possible openings for a movement from ego-logical social formations to more eco-logical social formations. In
contrast to destructive ego-logical socio-technical infrastructures and institutions that view humans as outside the
living interdependency of the world looking down, the dynamic, temporal and cyclical character of people-plant
interactions mediates increasingly ecological socio-technical forms. Drawing on insights from environmental
psychology and eco-therapies, the paper will conclude with an investigation of possible interventions that harness
the power of people-plant interactions for transformation of the self and community.
Internet and Inuit subsistence
Alexander Castleton (Carleton University)
Recently, observers have indicated that Inuit are using the internet, particularly Facebook, for the
commercialization of country foods in the Canadian Arctic. Wildlife Managers have shown preoccupation on the
fact that the population of some caribou herds have been steadily decreasing, and have pointed at internet sales
of meat as having part of the responsibility. In this paper, I use Martin Heidegger’s notions on technology as
developed by some of his American followers such as Hubert Dreyfus, to argue that technology is as a factor that
fosters a particular engagement with the world, namely, a paradigm or a horizon of intelligibility through which
things show up to people in a particular fashion. In the case of Inuit, it changes how the animals, nature, the
environment, and others, are conceived. I will argue that Inuit’s use of Facebook to sell meat is a way through
which the world is transformed to what Heidegger defined as standing-reserve, namely, an understanding of being
through which reality is transformed into pure resources or supplies which are flexible, disposable, reconfigurable,
and inter-changeable. In this sense, through the commercialization of food through the internet, animals are turned
into a resource to be exploited and sold as a commodity. This way of seeing the world contrasts to Indigenous
people’s such as Inuit’s traditional values, which depended on what Ingold (2000) defined as a “relational thinking”,
through which there is a continuity of people and environment. The relation between Inuit and animals is based on
respect, interconnection, lack of pride and control, and of interdependence. One should take from the land only
what one needs and not more. The fact that Nunavut’s Wildlife Board suggests that herds are being over-hunted,
seems to point at a violation of this norm. Therefore, I will investigate the hypothesis of whether technology’s
essence has a relation to the over-hunting of animals.
#27#
What a bag can do: compostable shopping bags and their role in reconfiguring urban material practice
Samantha MacBride (City University of New York)
In 2012, Italy passed the “Legge Shopper” mandating the use of reuseable or compostable shopping bags in
supermarkets and large grocery stores. The specification of compostability was meant to facilitate separate
curbside collection of urban food scraps, with subsequent processing to yield compost and natural gas.
Implementation of this provision entailed a mass substitution of a new, seemingly biocompatible product in place of
a widely used and biodisruptive alternative: the traditional plastic bag. This shift was engineered with active
participation of branches Italy’s chemicals industry and altered daily, local practice over a very short period.
This paper examines the rapid proliferation of the compostable shopper as a pivot point in the reconfiguration of
urban material practice, using the city of Milan as a case study. It is argued that the complex of industrial activism,
household practice, municipal waste operations and materials flows that come together in the object of the
compostable bag shows promise and contradiction simultaneously. On one hand, this complex presages an
economy-wide transition to materials that have the capacity to assimilate harmlessly into earth’s biogeochemical
cycles. On the other, it reinforces political-economic practices of synthetic production, overconsumption, and
centralized state-industrial infrastructure. The resulting uncertainty is in keeping with general challenges to
substituting the materials and practices of hydrocarbon economy with safe, abundant and socially just alternatives.
Efficienza Energetica, “emblema” di sostenibilità ambientale, sociale, politica ed economica
Francesca Cubeddu (Università di Roma Tre)
Le problematiche ambientali, in particolare il cambiamento climatico, cambiano il quadro sociale ponendo problemi
che vanno dalle modifiche della struttura economica fino a cambiamenti nelle strutture occupazionali e
professionali. L’Efficienza Energetica è la policy che verte in questa direzione, infatti, apporta sia un beneficio
ambientale sia sociale. Agisce sulla salute dell’uomo e può contribuire alla formazione del reddito incrementando
e favorendo nuova occupazione. Raggiungere una maggiore Efficienza Energetica va da misure puramente
“tecnologiche” a misure invece che comportano azioni attive da parte degli utenti, come ad esempio quelle azioni
che guardano a un cambiamento degli stili di vita e a un cambiamento nelle strutture abitative. Con la policy
dell’efficientamento energetico si punta ad una sostenibilità ambientale, sociale, politica ed economica. Incentrata
sulla ripresa dei settori, il benessere e la coesione sociale, la governance, equità e ricchezza economica. I principi
di sostenibilità espresso dalla politica dell’Efficienza Energetica saranno ampiamente trattati nella ricerca sul
campo, attraverso la quale si cerca di costruire un link fra il modello sociale e il modello economico, grazie al quale
affrontare le problematiche economiche e sociali legate alla policy. La società è composta da un insieme di fattori
che sono incatenati l’uno all’altro da un rapporto di sinergia. Analizzare la policy significa ricostruire l’approccio di
sistema che si ottiene studiando il suo ciclo, gli attori, le interconnessioni e gli impatti.
ISO 14001 in practice: the promotion of ecological behaviour in and of organisations
Maruska Strada (Università di Milano-Bicocca); Luca Vecchio (Università di Milano-Bicocca)
As a tool to encourage a preventive approach towards environmental sustainability, the standard ISO 14001 has
become one of the most recognised formal model to demonstrate a firm’s concern to ecological issues. However,
the literature has underlined a possible “opportunistic” use of ISO 14001 certification, when adopted more for
symbolic purposes of social legitimation rather than for substantive reasons of efficiency (e.g. Christmann &
Taylor, 2006; Boiral 2007). How thus to overcome the “gap” between what organisations say about their
environmental management – the stated effort or commitment – and the real operating practices – the
organisation’s daily actions? The present contribution tries to answer this question by analysing the experience of
ISO 14001 certification among a group of logistics companies. The aim is to understand how the technical
standard can be used to encourage real behavioural change in organisations. Given the exploratory purpose of
the study, a qualitative approach has been adopted using Grounded Theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss,
1967). Data are collected through semi-structured interviews, conducted with CEOs, HR, environmental, operation
and marketing managers. Among preliminary results (data collection is in progress and expected to end by the end
of June 2016), we highlight: 1) the role that organisations have in educating the employees regarding
environmental issues 2) the key role and activities of HR function in fostering bottom-up processes during ISO
implementation 3) the importance to integrate a “hard” (technical) perspective with a “soft” (behavioural) one, when
addressing sustainability issues.
#28#
The use of knowledge on decisions of sustainable electric mobility
Nuno Boavida (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
This paper will present the theoretical background and develop the methodological approach needed to
understand the use of knowledge in decisions of sustainable electric mobility. The use of knowledge in these
decisions has a double interest: it has potential to stimulate a transition and it is a decision-making practice.
Understanding the use of knowledge is key both to foster the dissemination of devices that contribute to
sustainable mobility transition (i.e. electric engines) and to change the way decisions are made through the
clarification of what and how knowledge is used in these decisions. Both have the potential to change choices,
practices and daily habits in a large scale in relation to environmental sustainability.
There is literature about the use of indicators (i.e. explicit knowledge) in four policy decisions of sustainable
mobility (Boavida 2015, Sébastien and Bauler 2013, Boavida, Moniz, and Laranja 2013, Gudmundsson and
Sørensen 2012). The work intends to add dimensions not previously studied about electric mobility, namely the
tacit dimension of knowledge and the business decisions. The approach will include literature review, expert
interviews, and four case studies with respective social network analyses. Case studies will be oriented to policy
decisions of electric mobility in Portugal and Norway, to a Japanese automotive company that opted for electric
engines and to one Italian firm that continued with diesel. To fully explore the path and perils of knowledge flows,
interviews will include questions about the use of explicit and tacit knowledge, i.e. relational, somatic and collective
tacit knowledge (Collins 2010), as well as simulations about the heuristics of knowledge used among decision
makers. Results will identify what types of knowledge were (and are) commonly used in decisions of electric
mobility, and how knowledge influenced(s) policy and business strategies of electric mobility. From this
perspective, these investigations will contribute to foster transition to sustainable mobility.
Biofuel: sostenibilità o greenwashing? Le rappresentazioni sociali dei biocarburanti a Porto Marghera
Giulia Scocciolini (Università di Padova); Paolo Cottone (Università di Padova)
L’obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di indagare le principali rappresentazioni sociali in materia di biocarburanti
da parte dei cittadini che abitano in contesti adiacenti le centrali a biomassa e l'eventuale transizione socio-tecnica
in atto. Tali realtà negli ultimi anni si sono moltiplicate nel territorio italiano, grazie anche all’aiuto di particolari
incentivi da parte dello Stato. Le informazioni riguardo a queste centrali e ai biocarburanti da loro prodotti sono
però molteplici e in parte discordanti e rendono difficoltosa la lettura del fenomeno da parte della popolazione. Se
da un lato i biocarburanti riducono le emissioni di gas effetto serra e garantirebbero la sicurezza energetica anche
in zone con scarso accesso al carburante fossile, dall’altra la produzione di biocarburanti richiede l'utilizzo di
ingenti risorse agricole a discapito dei contesti di produzione. Il caso di studio per questa indagine è la centrale a
biomasse di Eni presente a Porto Marghera che produce biocarburante a partire da olio di palma certificato
secondo le normative dalla Commissione Europea. Verranno presentati i risultati ottenuti mediante la
somministrazione di un questionario appositamente costruito finalizzato a raccogliere le informazioni a
disposizione della cittadinanza per prendere decisioni in materia di centrali a biomasse e biocarburanti. Inoltre
verranno illustrati gli esiti dell’analisi della comunicazione pubblica veicolata da parte dei principali stakeholder
presenti sul territorio. Verranno discusse le principali implicazioni emerse nella differente rappresentazione
proposta dagli stakeholder, produttori e finanziatori da una parte e movimenti ambientalisti dall’altra, e come
queste vengono recepite dalla cittadinanza coinvolta nello studio. Le caratteristiche specifiche del contesto preso
in esame consentono di considerare gli aspetti storico-culturali come centrali nel processo di diffusione delle
differenti rappresentazioni presso la cittadinanza ponendo le basi per una maggiore comprensione del
cambiamento socio-tecnico riguardante il nostro contesto di studio e futuri confronti con altre realtà presenti sul
territorio.
#29#
Track 10
Towards an Ecology of Neglected Things
Convenors: Jeanne Guien (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Gabriel Dorthe (Université de Lausanne)
A mundane economic exchanges: the second life of neglected things
Daniel Neyland (Goldsmiths University); Marta Gasparin (University of Leicester)
This session asks: how are things concretely set apart, hidden, transformed, or made dazzling? This question
impels us to critically engage in a discussion of the complex material and practical entanglements within which
neglected things are inscribed, intertwined, practiced, and made history. In this paper we consider neglected
things (sold at second hand markets), an oft-neglected phenomena (the composition of price) and even a
neglected method (the breach experiment; Gafinkel, 1963; 1967).
In order to bring to the surface the varied orders of pricing, we conducted three breach experiments in secondhand markets: street sellers in Beijing, Danish flea-markets and a UK car boot sale. Following Garfinkel’s
instructions we decided: “to start with a system with stable features and ask what can be done to make for
trouble.” (1963: 187). Trouble, we premised, might bring to the fore or make dazzling the nature of neglected
matters (the objects for sale) and practices (how prices are composed).
Our presentation opens with a brief vignette from Silk Street Market, exploring the price of a cardigan in China.
This provides the basis for breaching and hence bringing to attention the taken for granted orders of flea markets
and boot sales. Through a deceptively simple breach – we removed prices from the objects we placed on sale –
dazzling grammars of pricing in different parts of the world were drawn to our attention. We conclude with some
suggestions on future economic experiments through which we might see further values.
Gleaning, dreaming and encountering hyperobjects on the way to work: the eco- poetics of car park beach
Joanna Croft (Liverpool John Moores University)
Everyday on my way to work I traipse across a gravelly, beach-like car park that washes up behind Liverpool’s
Adelphi Hotel. There is something about this car park’s grey, dusty shingle, the seagulls, and the sound the stones
make underfoot that reminds me of other less urban beaches. As I walk, I adopt the eyes-down vigilance of a
beachcomber, scanning not for shells but a different species of flotsam and jetsam: neglected matter dropped from
pockets and car-doors, or just deposited by the wind that whips around the neighbouring buildings. Sometimes I
photograph things that I see, and sometimes I actually pick things up. In each instance - as I gather up either an
image, or the object itself - I experience material entanglement.
In this paper I shall explore urban beachcombing as a practice that combines mobility with eco-poetical
daydreaming. I shall argue that gleaning enables us to connect to the material world differently, with both sensory
pleasure and with political acuity, or - as Walter Benjamin puts it - ‘with tactile nearness’. Through an eco-poetics
shaped by ‘inconceivable analogies and connections’ (Benjamin), my “car park beach” is re-imagined as a littoral
site which invites a different form of ecological encounter with our own precarity, one ushered in by the gleaner’s
heightened awareness of how waste matters transforms our world. Inspired by the Situationists’ slogan ‘Sous les
pavés, la plage’, this paper explores the possibilities for radical enchantment of my own car park gleaning
alongside Agnès Varda's 'Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse' (1999) and Martin Hampton's 'The Collector' (2005).
According to Timothy Morton (2013), our anthropocene age is ‘the time of hyper objects (when) we discover
ourselves on the inside of some big objects’. Car park beach can be conceived as a ‘bloom space’ (Kathleen
Stewart) where the hyperobject of a vast plastic ocean washes up. Thus, as we move like beachcombers across
this neglected strand, we can also begin to use our everyday encounters with things to connect with a non-local,
ecological politics.
Shadow biosphere and life as-we-don't-know-it
Valentina Marcheselli (University of Edinburgh)
All life on Earth shares the same ancestor, the most primitive form of life that arose, in still unknown
circumstances, more than 3.5 billion years ago. At least this is what is commonly assumed.
Astrobiologists have revisited this assumption and advanced the hypothesis of the existence of a shadow
biosphere on Earth, addressing the possibility that life emerged on our planet more than once, giving origin to a
parallel tree of life whose instances, being different at the molecular level to the kind of life we are familiar with,
remain hidden from view.
Traditional biology uses a number of techniques to study, visualize and understand the microbial world, but such
technologies have been developed on the basis of the kind of life we are used to. Would they enable scientists to
#30#
detect life as-we-don't-know-it, either on Earth or beyond? In this paper I will explore the emergence of the shadow
biosphere hypothesis and the intellectual space it creates for astrobiological discourse. I will also ask what the
epistemic consequences of unpacking black boxes are: is the creation of knowledge still possible when the tools
that enable this knowledge creation are themselves at stake?” At the laboratory bench, life as-we-know-it is
embedded in objects, concepts and practices, possibly limiting the capability for detecting other kinds of life, if they
exist. The hypothesis of a shadow biosphere is a theoretical exercise that poses a methodological question,
inviting scientists to find new ways of thinking outside of the box and possibly revealing what might be
systematically neglected by current scientific practices.
Making computational machines matter
Cléo Collomb (Université de Technologie de Compiègne)
Ignored objects I care for are computational machines, i.e. technical objects whose functioning is based on binary
calculations integrated in a piece of electronic machinery. Those objects are neglected because human beings do
not have the perceptual apparatus appropriate to those machines’ spatio-temporal scale: humans are unable to
grasp the difference between 0 and 5 volts. This difference is nevertheless highly significant for the machine since
it is the basis of the binary code which structures the way the machine stocks and handles data. Isn’t it difficult for
human beings to interact with machines which execute instructions inscribed on a surface of less than 100mm2 in
a few fractions of a microsecond?
In order for humans and computational machines to meet, it is necessary to build bridges between the
requirements of one and the other. The “interfaces”, or the mediating texts such as source codes and the
“architexts” – to take up a term invented by a whole section of French media theory – do constitute bridges of a
sort. However, these notions tend to mask the technical reality of the machines, because they are anthropocentric:
they are organized around an anthropocentric understanding of writing. The concepts of architext and interface
both deal with the way humans interact with machines. But their respective anthropocentric presuppositions have
the effect that, only too often, it is really a question of how human beings interact with other human beings, the
mediation by the machine being reduced to a purely instrumental role. Whether it is in the ideal of a “transparent”
interface, which fades into the background leaving space for the desiderata of the user, or in the conception of an
architext which is supposed to be the technical crystallization of relations of power between humans, the technical
mediation in both cases takes second place. It counts either as a necessary evil which is best forgotten (the
invisible interface), or as the substrate for human affairs (architext).
In order to avoid the “end of the world” themes, it’s of crucial importance to make non-humans matter in the world:
here, computational machines in digital media. This is why we need i) to qualify the activities of those machines
and ii) to value them – culturally speaking.
The unspoken: neglected discourses and emotions in becoming a different life scientist
Sara Tocchetti (University of California, Santa Cruz)
This presentation takes the risk of moving away from the landscape of the 'neglected' set by the organizers to
consider another related sphere of 'the ignored.' Not so much the neglected and ignored technologies, objects or
more generally things, but instead the neglected individual and collective discourses and emotions. In particular,
working with the life sciences as a case study marked by a tradition of investing great amounts of labour into
making things visible and palpable, this presentation questions what remains invisible, silenced and neglected in
life scientist's labour. Based on in-depth open ended interviews with life scientists, in particular young graduate
students, this presentations questions how do we know about the neglected discourses and emotions in the life
sciences? What type of work does 'the neglected' do in relation to the mainstream, the norm? And what epistemic
and empirical imaginaries can be made possible when taking into account neglected discourses and emotions in
becoming a life scientist? When the unspoken remains neglected which modes of making of science remains
obfuscated? This preliminary work draws on two fields of related literature, the sociology and anthropology of the
unsaid, the unspoken and more generally the envelope of the unthought, and combines it with approaches in the
histories of science concerned with professional identities and the unspoken, such as Susan Lindee's concept of
the 'hidden curriculum' to describe the ways in which scientists have kept and continues to keep secrets in the
context of military research (Lindee, 2014). The overarching aim of this presentation is to elaborate a preliminary
discursive and pragmatic move from the 'unthinkable,' always imagined as the next frontier to be conquered, to the
'unthought,' a more modest and introspective collective practice strongly grounded in a present filled with
significant emergencies.
#31#
Track 11
Gendering, Learning, and Work Practices in Technologically Dense Environments
Convenors: Mariacristina Sciannamblo (Università di Roma Sapienza), Assunta Viteritti (Università di Roma
Sapienza)
Le ricercatrici in fisica: primi risultati di un progetto di ricerca
Sveva Avveduto (CNR-IRPPS, Roma); Daniela Luzi (CNR-IRPPS, Roma); Maria Carolina Brandi (CNR-IRPPS,
Roma); Loredana Cerbara (CNR-IRPPS, Roma); Maria Girolama Caruso (CNR-IRPPS, Roma); Lucio Pisacane
(CNR-IRPPS, Roma); Ilaria Di Tullio (CNR-IRPPS, Roma)
Siamo lontani dai tempi in cui le donne erano sotto-rappresentate nei percorsi di carriera dottorale, gli ultimi dati
mostrano infatti, come in Europa esse siano il 47%. Solo un terzo però, sceglie di formarsi nelle discipline STEM.
Inoltre, nonostante si sia registrato un incremento delle donne scienziate pari al 8% negli ultimi 10 anni, esse
risultano essere solo il 33% della forza lavoro nelle università e nei laboratori. GENERA è un progetto H2020 che
si pone come l’obbiettivo di supportare gli enti pubblici di ricerca e le Università nell’implementazione dei Gender
Equality Plan (GEP), attualmente attivati da solo circa il 36% degli Research Performing Organisations.
In linea con l’idea della Commissione Europea, i GEP sono dei piani di azione aventi l’obiettivo di riequilibrare la
disparità di genere nelle carriere scientifiche, promuovere un gender balance nei processi decisionali, sostenere la
creazione di un sistema di monitoraggio sulle statistiche di genere. GENERA pone l’attenzione sul campo
disciplinare della fisica perché è un settore che presenta scarsa presenza di ricercatrici nonché marcata sottorappresentazione nelle posizioni di vertice. L’obiettivo è fare in modo che ci sia una maggiore uguaglianza di
genere e che vengano scardinati unconscious bias e pregiudizi radicati da lasciti culturali sedimentati.
Nella conferenza presenteremo alcuni dei risultati ottenuti nel corso del primo anno di progetto e gli obiettivi che
stiamo perseguendo. Ci occuperemo in particolar modo di illustrare, all’interno dello scenario scientificotecnologico del CNR, i profili delle ricercatrici in fisica rispetto al loro percorso di carriera. Mostreremo dati in
relazione alla formazione, all’età, alla conciliazione vita-lavoro, alla responsabilità progettuale.
Understanding the life of women scientists
Chandni Vadhvana Central (University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar)
The scope of this paper is to explore gender politics in scientific laboratories. It is widely accepted that there is
gender bias in science research spaces such as research institutions, research laboratories, field work, and in the
funding systems. Many factors make it difficult for women to live and work in scientific professions with their
surrounding such as geographical space, linguistic, and socio-cultural practices, and many other hegemonic
structures of society. The paper tries to investigate how hierarchical structures of caste, class, and gender hinder
women’s participation in science laboratories and the mechanisms of male-bonding within these spaces of
research, which create a specific environment and work culture favors male scientists. In addition the paper
analyses the conditions of glass ceiling, as explained in feminist discourse, produced within the spaces of science
research and what effects they have on women’s ability to work and progress. The paper proposes to raise the
issues with the help of theoretical and empirical approaches. The everyday working of science laboratories with
their systems of surveillance, tight schedules of intensive research, infrastructural facilities and segregation of work
inside the laboratories will come under empirical analysis. Along with this, the paper includes my own experience
as a former science researcher worked in science laboratories plays a considerable role in analyzing the working
of gender dynamics of science laboratories.
The gendered life courses in engineering: work-life balance and motherhood during postgraduate studies
Veronica Paksi (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
The proportion of female researchers in R&D compared to men is still low, especially in the field of science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). There is still a strong need to explore the reasons why STEM
careers and training resist trends that point towards the equalization of genders. Women tend to leave science
mainly for still facing difficulties in integrating motherhood into academic career. Though postgraduate studies
imply in a special life period where work, studies and family establishment usually overlap in female life courses,
we have little qualitative knowledge on the mutual effects of PhD education and family establishment.
In our research we aimed to explore how female PhD students balance their multiply life domains in the highly
male-dominated field of engineering in Hungary. Results of 22 semi-structured individual interviews show that
young engineers face serious dilemmas in relation to their work-life balance. Postgraduate studies have a delaying
#32#
effect on their motherhood and their age norm of the ‘ideal’ age for motherhood is in a serious conflict with the
norm of ‘school first, parenthood later’. The uncertain labour market opportunities burden their decisions,
moreover, working in laboratories with hazardous substances further narrows their childbearing plans. Finally, we
will show that prejudice and discrimination against women in this field is still a relevant problem that permeates
these young engineer women’s academic career.
Our research using different work-life balance theories and the life course approach gives a more complex
understanding of women’s constrained career in this highly male dominated technical field in a post-socialist
context. In addition, it is a policy implication that young female academics need social support to overcome the
obstacles they face during as early as PhD education.
“The hard hat problem": women traveling in the male world of computing
Mariacristina Sciannamblo (Università di Roma Sapienza)
Gender and feminist studies of science and technology have shown the benefits of using gender as analytical
category (Harding, 1986) in order to detect and problematize not only formal discriminations of women in
technoscientific fields, but mainly gender biases encoded in technical knowledge and professional cultures.
According to such a view, gender and technoscience are mutually shaped, so that just as practices, beliefs and
values informed by gender assumptions affect the construction of scientific knowledge, so too imaginary, objects
and daily activities within technoscientific fields define relations between men and women, what is ‘male’ and what
is ‘female’.
In the field of computing these processes have been coming to greater attention thanks to recent historical and
sociological analyses (Ensmenger, 2010; Misa, 2010; Abbate, 2012) that put under scrutiny those “unspoken
ideas” (Abbate, 2012) on gender that have shaped the profession of computing. In the light of these
considerations, this paper presents and problematizes the experience of some women who travel in the field of
computing as practitioners and academics. The analysis is based on a broad set of in-depth interviews made
throughout 2 years of my doctoral research, which aims at addressing the issue of gender gap in computing by
questioning the gender assumptions that shape the construction of disciplines, organizations, practices, and,
ultimately, the knowledge surrounding computer technologies. Therefore, rather than emphasizing those
mechanisms that keep women outside or at the margins of computing (glass ceiling, leaky pipeline), the analysis
of the experience of those women who naturally inhabit computer professions serves as powerful analytical lens
whereby to question the alleged gender neutrality of the field.
Developing an organic strategy of change to challenge gendered stereotypes around the technological
(in)capacity of women in architecture
Maria Silvia D’Avolio (University of Sussex)
Architecture is characterised by a lack of women in the profession and a significant drop-out after education all
over Europe, despite decades of policies of inclusion.The practice of architecture requires the use of specialised
instruments and technologies that often collide with the social assumptions and stereotypes around the conflicted
relationship between women and technology. Women are socially perceived as inadequate users of technology in
terms of:
• knowledge of the specific characteristics and components of the means they’re using;
• ability to use an instrument other than for its basic outcomes - women are expected to use technology as basic
and not proficient users;
• capacity to use technology in collaboration with co-workers – this incapacity leads them to occupy segregated
physical positions in the workplace.
What can be done to challenge this widespread social perception? I am carrying out a research focused not only
on the experiences of women in the field, but also aimed at understanding how far gendered patterns of work in
architecture can be explained in terms of the specific characters of the profession itself. The practical aim of the
study will be to develop an organic strategy of combined actions able to foster a simultaneous change on different
levels: individual, relational, cultural and structural.Women themselves need to challenge the stereotypes about
their own identity of technology users, and they need to prove their ability in smaller communities, such as the
workplace. At the same time, institutions and organisations should promote formal policies and informal actions
able to challenge social gender assumptions and stereotypes. Furthermore, a structural change is needed to
address equality in the very own practices of the profession itself. All these actions should be promoted at the
same time and combined, allowing the possibility for each of them to work as a catalyst for others or to overlap.
#33#
Il mentoring come strumento di valorizzazione della dimensione di genere nell’accademia
Ilenia Picardi (Università di Napoli Federico II); Maria Carmela Agodi (Università di Napoli Federico II)
In questo lavoro sono riportati i risultati dello studio di valutazione del primo programma di mentoring
dell’università italiana per il sostegno alle donne nella ricerca. Attraverso la revisione dell’approccio evidencebased in una prospettiva STS si è disegnato uno schema di valutazione del Programma Pilota di Mentoring
implementato dal progetto europeo FP7 di ricerca-azione GENOVATE, nell’Università di Napoli Federico II.
L’obiettivo della valutazione così costruita era identificare le condizioni che rendono un programma di supporto
individuale (anche) un progetto di trasformazione, per la realizzazione di una maggiore equità di genere
nell’organizzazione universitaria. Integrando lo schema di meta-evaluation proposto da Pawson e Tilley (1997)
con la prospettiva “bifocale” del mentoring elaborata da de Vries (2010), la valutazione del modello utilizzato nel
Programma Pilota si è proposta di identificare le condizioni che rendono efficace e operano in senso trasformativo
nel matching mentore-mentee. In Italia manca un’esperienza consolidata di mentoring strutturato nell’università. Il
Programma Pilota di GENOVATE@UNINA si presenta pertanto come un’esperienza pioneristica per l’accademia
e la ricerca italiana, e si sta attualmente proponendo come riferimento per altre realtà universitarie che intendono
attuare azioni di supporto allo sviluppo delle carriere femminili.
Lo studio si inserisce nel filone di ricerche su “valutazione e genere” che è andato delineatosi a partire dagli anni
Novanta con un duplice obiettivo: da un lato implementare la valutazione nelle politiche e nei programmi di gender
equality (Kriszan e Lombardo, 2013); dall’altro introdurre una prospettiva di genere negli esercizi di valutazione
(Bustelo e Espinosa, 2015). La prospettiva di genere adottata nel programma di mentoring e nel disegno di
valutazione è stata di supporto alla diffusione di una maggiore consapevolezza della dimensione di genere
nell’università ed alla creazione di una rete di donne nell’accademia che si focalizza sul mentoring per costruire un
actor-network capace di trasformarlo in senso paritario superando il tabù della tecnoscienza come gender-neutral.
L’(in)differenza di genere nella sociomaterialità della scuola steineriana. Un’esperienza di ricerca
Camilla Barbanti (Università di Milano-Bicocca); Alessandro Ferrante (Università di Milano-Bicocca)
La scuola primaria può essere considerata in senso lato un “laboratorio” pedagogico in cui si producono alcuni dei
primissimi incontri con le conoscenze scientifiche e con le tecnologie. Essa è luogo densamente abitato e a sua
volta costituito da materiali di uso comune e da materiali specifici per l’apprendimento (McGregor, 2004;
Sørensen, 2007, 2009; Roehl 2012, 2014; Landri e Viteritti, 2016). Inoltre, nello spazio scolastico attori umani e
non-umani si combinano articolando e disarticolando i confini tra i generi (Waltz, 2006; Fenwick, Edwards e
Sawchuk, 2011). Il contributo intende sviluppare la questione della costruzione sociomateriale del genere a partire
dai risultati di una ricerca etnografica svolta in una scuola steineriana italiana. In particolare, ci si soffermerà su
alcuni esempi concreti tratti dal campo, volti a mostrare le peculiari modalità attraverso cui gli oggetti e le pratiche
quotidiane definiscono di volta in volta la relazione tra maschile e femminile, dando vita a dei processi di
apprendimento che configurano materialmente il genere. Ciò che emerge dalla ricerca è che la materialità agente
nella scuola steineriana non sembra strutturare rigidamente le identità di genere, ma le “mette in scena” in modo
fluido e nomadico (Braidotti, 1994, 2013).
Where are the girls in STEM?
Asrun Matthiasdottir (Reykjavik University); Jona Palsdottir (Reykjavik University)
Our research demonstrates that girls go into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects
searching for high paid jobs although they would rather like to go into social care after their graduation. Girls
complain about male dominated environments in STEM working environment and often quit their jobs for more
gender equal workplaces.
It’s no news that the STEM sector is gender biased at all levels, in schools, workplaces and academia. Reports
have been written and studies carried out in order to investigate and understand the situation and find how to
change it. There are multiple reasons for why few women attend STEM education and look for careers in STEM.
Influencing factors have been recognized, e.g. the organization of STEM education and institutional cultures, the
family, community groups and models, impact of peers and the media and a popular culture. One of public actions
to change the situation has been to influence young girls in compulsory schools and initiate events like the Girls in
ICT Day are used to draw their attention to the diverse possibilities in STEM education and jobs. Female models
from the technical sector have been introduced in order to break down stereotypes and open up girls’ minds to the
world of technology. At higher school levels technological programs have been renamed and redesigned to attract
female students. In academia the situation is even worse, although more women have finished PhD and are in
faculty positions in STEM education at the university level, the development is slow and women are less often
promoted and receive fewer grants.
In this paper we will give an overview of the situation in Iceland and present result from a survey conducted among
female university students in computer science where they were asked why they attended STEM education.
#34#
Binding gender and technology: emergent methods and employability research
Athena Enderstein (University of Hull)
Gender equality is enshrined as a fundamental European value in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and the European Union
claims to have one of the most progressive gender regimes in the world. The equal pay and opportunities
directives of the 1970s-1980s have been replaced by transversal approaches of gender mainstreaming and
diversity management, but upon closer scrutiny it is apparent that multiple inequalities and disparities persist in the
lived realities of the European workforce. This paper is positioned at this disjuncture, against the backdrop of a
variety of meanings of equality which are deployed within professional contexts and the contingent implications for
gender relations in public and private spheres. I propose emergent technologies, such as Smartphone applications
and Voice over Internet Protocol technologies, as feminist methodological tools to investigate the dialectic
between learning and work practices to explore how the feminist thinking is involved in this process. The paper will
discuss the relevance and potential of these methodologies in the context of our time, where we are “chimeras,
theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism” (Haraway 1991: 192). I argue for the triangulation of
methods, integration of multiple kinds of information and the dialogic value thereof, and a generative and open
interpretivist ontology. I elucidate this rational through reference to research on the translation of critical and
creative competencies of gender experts into innovative cultural practices for employability and gender equality.
Emergent methods and technologies are not simply a by-product of an information society but a potential a
feminist tools in dissolving disciplinary boundaries and rearticulating relationships between gender, work, science
and technology.
Female academics - Symbolic domination by numbers. Commercial citation indexing discriminates female
academics with non-ASCII names
Terje Tüür–Fröhlich (Johannes Kepler Universität)
The current academy is driven by audit-culture – anything what can be measured, is measured. The measurement
tournaments use various -mainly quantitative - indicators, which were produced using sophisticated methods on
big dirty data. The scientists are under continuous pressure to publish as the success of scientists’ career is based
on the outcome of intern- and extern performance evaluations. One of the globally employed indicators in
evaluation decisions is the number of citations produced either by Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus. This
contribution is questioning the objectivity of citation databases from the gender perspective. My assumption is that
the usage of citation data gained from database bear discriminations for non-English female academics. Currently
there is a gap in the scientometric research which this contribution aims to fill. Several papers describe numerous
mundane citation database errors (for WoS see Tüür-Fröhlich 2014; for Scopus see Franceschini et al. 2016) but
less expressed are the global consequences. Therefore, I claim these endogenous and trivial databank errors
have a serious impact to female scientists from non-Anglo-American countries, publishing in languages other than
English. Even more, publishing in English does not prevent female scholars with non-ASCII name being
discriminated. Scientometric performance indicators as JIF or h-index are highly sensitive and react to minimal
differences in the citation data. Minimal losses of citations due to trivial errors in citation databanks data result in
strong negative effects for researcher(s), departments, journals, universities, disciplines and countries
“performance measurements”. Endogenous database errors’ have adverse effects on evaluation outcomes.
Disciplines like the social sciences and humanities are female dominated. The WoS endogenous errors in citation
data systematically undervalue social sciences and humanities performance and therefore discriminate female
scientists twofold.
#35#
Track 12
Communicating Research in Public
Convenors: Giuseppe Pellegrini (Observa Science in Society, Vicenza), Barbara Saracino (Università di Napoli
Federico II)
Apriti scienza: lo stato della comunicazione della scienza in Italia
Giuseppe Tipaldo (Università di Torino)
Il contributo si propone di offrire un’immagine aggiornata sulla comunicazione scientifica nel nostro paese, filtrata
attraverso la lente dei produttori dei contenuti, ossia la comunità scientifica italiana.
Saranno anzitutto presentati gli emittenti: quali sono le loro caratteristiche e quali attività comunicative svolgono;
quale percezione hanno delle proprie competenze comunicative e qual è il loro atteggiamento nei confronti di
diversi tipi di pubblici, stakeholder e mass media. Poi, saranno analizzati messaggi e codici utilizzati, le strategie e
gli stili comunicativi preferiti dagli scienziati. A ciò seguirà una descrizione dei destinatari dal punto di vista dei
comunicatori: qual è l’immagine del pubblico da parte della comunità scientifica e quali sono le principali fonti
informative cui, secondo gli scienziati, il pubblico ricorre. Infine prenderemo in considerazione il contesto della
comunicazione nell’opinione degli scienziati, in termini di vantaggi e svantaggi, incentivi e ostacoli che si
frappongono allo sviluppo delle attività comunicative.
Beyond crystallization of newsworthiness. When communicating research seems impossible
Andrea Rubin (Università Cattolica di Milano)
Studies on Public Communication of Science (PCST) have traditionally focused either on the cases of "deviation,"
i.e. cases in which scientists face directly the audience by skipping the usual stages of scientific communication,
or, in line with relevant theoretical prospects [1] on cases of technoscientific controversies. The extra-ordinary
science is over-exposed by the media compared to the attention dedicated by the same to the “normal science”
[2]. Sometimes this causes a conflictual relationship between the media and researchers. However, scientists and
researchers have to deal with the limitations of mass media mechanics - above all the newsworthiness - and with
the specific limitations of each medium (radio, tv, disclosure magazines an the Web). This crystallization process
[3] doesn't appear to be overcome, not even through multimedial channels. This paper aims to reflect on the
possibilities, strategies and tools to communicate researchers daily activities, i.e. those cases in which research is
not occupied with crisis situations, nor it is involved in processes aiming to defining scientific boundaries. A good
example can be found in non-specialist forms of public involvement in the scientific process (public engagement),
also supported by institutional initiatives. In this study we try to understand the new trends in the PCST and its
possible future developments. Therefore, starting by analysing the trend of scientific news presented by the media,
up to the recent case of involvement of a non- expert audience in an RNA study [4] - which led non-expert citizens
[5] to co-sign a scientific paper for the first time- this paper will try to comprehend the new trends in the PCST
department and its possible developments.
Drawing boundaries between science and civil service: evidence from the L'Aquila trial
Federico Brandmayr (University of Cambridge)
According to Nature, the sentence against seven members of the Italian National Commission for the Forecast and
Prevention of Major Risks was one of the most striking events of 2012. The seven commissioners, all university
professors in seismology, volcanology and engineering, had been convicted to six years of prison for
manslaughter. The charge is that of having misled the public about the tremors that had been striking the town of
L’Aquila in the first months of 2009, tremors that eventually culminated in a deadly magnitude6.3 earthquake on 6
April. The paper will focus on one aspect of the case, i.e. the boundary-work made by the two sides and judges to
establish a certain line of demarcation between science and nonscientific activities. In particular, the prosecution
and the judge of first instance claimed that the seven accused participated to the 31st March meeting, during
which allegedly reassuring statements were made, not as scientists but as civil servants. As such, they were
addressing the population of the city and were not engaging in puzzle-solving speculations but had the
responsibility of producing an accurate evaluation of risk. The defendants and the judges of second instance, on
the contrary, claimed that the accused were addressing the head of the Civil protection department and not the
population, and were first and foremost scientists whose ideas and hypotheses were not to be prosecuted. Judges
and lawyers used a wide array of proofs and documents to prove their case. The paper will analyse in detail their
rhetorical strategies.
#36#
Artist as science communicator
Michelle Kasprzak (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute)
Artists and designers working with scientists or science-related topics in their work often take on the mantle of
science communicator. While bigger pulpits (public radio, science in museums, etc) form the basis of popular
notions of science communication, in this paper I demonstrate that artists working on long-term investigative
projects with science have a unique role to play which adds more nuance to the overall 'straight' science
communication offering. Two case studies I will examine include Nelly Ben Hayoun's International Space
Orchestra, an ensemble composed of scientists from NASA's Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute.
Ground Control: An Opera in Space was a performance celebrating and recounting the Apollo 11 mission,
composed by several musicians, performed by scientists and astronauts, and eventually recorded and sent into
space on a Japanese satellite. As Ben Hayoun said of the performance, it was “a call to imagine and disrupt future
human relations to science – to adapt science to our creative needs.” In another example, artist Ilona Gaynor
produced Paper Moon, a multimedia installation interrogating the legal and economic implications of the lack of a
cohesive international approach to conduct in outer space. Using an animation, a custom cake, figurines, office
equipment, and works on paper, Gaynor fashions a highly unconventional visual approach to communicating a
complex subject. My paper will describe the unusual merits of these two cases as science communication rather
than art objects, from my perspective of having worked closely with both artists on the works as commissioning
curator. The conclusion of the paper will also touch on ideas of how the academic institution can insert itself into
these streams of science communication, which largely operate autonomously in cultural venues.
The Risk inSight exhibition
Valérie November (Université Paris-Est)
I will present an exhibition on risk issues that I have commissioned and provide a critical view on why to choose to
talk about scientific issues in a different way.
Combining science, arts and society, the Risk inSight exhibition (http://irisc.ch/exposition-sciencesartssociete-riskinsight) aims to show risks and to highlight why and how they are playing an increasingly important role in modern
societies. The exhibition space is divided into four thematic sections: identifying risks, living with risks, debating
risks and handling risks. Visual and sound installations, photographs, video modeling, interactive interfaces and a
documentary film will dialogue with a series of scientific contributions from all walks of scientific life in order to
share researchers’ questions with a broad audience.
Created in 2012 at EPFL, the exhibition travelled in Switzerland and Paris. It will be held at the Museum of science
of Trento (MUSE, http://www.muse.it/it/Pagine/default.aspx) from the 20 of September until the 26 of November. A
visit can complete my presentation.
The challenge of collecting and exhibiting the future
Ana Daldon (Technisches Museum Wien)
Technical museums collect and exhibit objects of the past and everyday life. The criteria to decide if one object
can be part of the collection are defined by structured collection policy. The Technisches Museum Wien with the
exhibition project “urban future” challenges and plays with the border of what it has to be collected and what no.
The act of collecting is not innocent and it influences the contemporary and future knowledge. This study explores
the choices and the challenges of collecting objects, that are not part of our everydaylife and not part of
mainstream markets like “smart watches”, “wearables” and “self-tracking devices”. Furthermore, the study
analyses how the exhibition design in “urban future” incorporates the “future”, focusing on how to put on display
the digital and apps world, because most of the “smart-devices” are releted to an digital app, that permit the users
to visualize the data and the information.
#37#
Track 13
Sociotechnical Infrastructures and Ecological Environments
Convenor: Giuseppina Pellegrino (Università della Calabria)
The engineered dimension of sociotechnical systems
Vivek Kant (Nanyang Technological University); Alexander P. Demos (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Sociotechnical systems (STS) are often conceived of as ecosystems. Coined by the botanist Tansley in 1935, an
ecosystem is a biological conception of the coupling of organism and environment in the widest sense. While
using this conceptualization for STS has been useful, it is not complete. STS cannot be completely reduced to
biological or physical systems; instead they involve both engineered components and socialized individuals in
multiple system roles. The individuals in the system, both designers and users, can have different expectations,
needs and goals, i.e., intentions. In accordance, engineered products and systems are designed to have specific
correct functions and can hence malfunction. This is unlike biological ecosystems, which are not humanly
designed and thus have no specific designed intentions in the humanistic sense of the word, no correct functions
or malfunctions. The challenge in STS is balancing the designer's needs to control the system usage (correct
functioning) over the emergent ways the system is used (like in biological ecosystems), without damaging the
environment/society they are created to serve. The goal is to design a sustainable STS that incorporates the
concepts of correct function and malfunction to recognize the intentional dimension of designed systems. This will
allow for better integration of individual and societal needs with technical and physical requirements. We outline
the requirements for a conceptual model of STS, which adapts and extends the ecosystem metaphor for designed
systems. This model incorporates three perspectives: The first-person perspective of the people in the system,
second-person perspective of the engineers/designers, and the third-person perspective of environmental
processes that impact both the designers and people in the system. This reconceptualization allows for the
metaphor of STS as ecosystem to be more complete by allowing the integration of the concepts of correct
functioning and malfunctions to be addressed in a sustainable fashion.
Riverine population, natural environment and technological artifacts: ecology of a sociotechnical network
in Brazilian Amazon
Iaci Penteado (Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development)
Technology addressed in this paper is a solar-powered water pumping system serving small remote populations of
two protected areas in Brazilian Amazon (Mamirauá and Amanã Sustainable Development Reserves), a wetland
area characterized by hydrological seasonality and poor access to electricity and sanitation resources. Mamirauá
Institute for Sustainable Development has carried out such initiatives for the past 15 years, introducing
technological artifacts in rural riverine communities to promote population’s quality of life with environmental
sustainability. This paper is a result of participant observation made from 2015 through 2016 in those villages.
Intertwined in this sociotechnical network are humans, machines and nature itself, producing technological
efficiency and satisfaction of community needs. This is not a merely symbolic process, but rather materially
heterogeneous, as it is based on a sociotechnical infrastructure (water pipes interconnecting dwellers) derived
from actants mutual production. Water pumping systems rearrange social relations, especially concerning gender
(by increasing women spare time) and collective organization (with the establishment of a community rotation
system for technology care). This technological artifact also changes people's interaction with territory, reducing
their environmental impact by the use of clean energy, but even more, maintaining human settlement through
improvement of livelihood conditions. In turn, human practices of usage and maintenance, along with environment
itself (acting for instance through cloud cover, river level variance, riverbank erosion and muddy water), alter
artifact efficiency directly. Relationships described show an underlying crucial role of ecology in such initiatives,
both as nature forces shape sociotechnical infrastructure and due to the production of a new ecological
relationship between people and their environment.
#38#
Innovation and the mastery of micro-pollutants contained in stormwater runoff. The design prospective
Silvia Bruzzone (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées)
Stormwater management is a key factor of sustainable urban systems. The quantitative objective of reducing
impacts on sewage systems has emerged since the 1960s. More recently, the mastery of micro-pollutants
contained in stormwater runoff has emerged as a new priority, imposed by regulation (including the Water
Framework Directive) to less impact on the receiving waters.
Nonetheless many technical and organizational uncertainties are associated with the improvement of the quality of
water discharged to aquatic environments through the implementation of “innovative” management practices for
the control of micropollutants. So how can we talk about innovation? How is it produced and can it be transferred?
The notion of “design” differs from the positivist idea of innovation as “plan”; rather, it is conceived as a process of
adaptation /repair in relation to already existing infrastructures and social practices. This work is based on four
different management devices to treat road runoff in the Paris region. We first show that innovation does not
emerge ex nihilo but rather as a form of adjustment / re-design of pre-existing infrastructures and skills. Second,
the establishment of such devices is not a “linear” process but a back-and-forth movement between the idea, its
empirical characterization and its experimentation. In the end, we give account of the “transitional” nature of the
technical device that changes in the process depending on the actors and skills developed through fieldwork.
Autonomous automobilities and the interplay of infrastructures
Oana Mitrea (Alpen-Adria Universitaet Klagenfurt)
An autonomous vehicle is self-reliant, fully automated and has the capacity to drive without human intervention
from the beginning to the end of the trip. Various prognoses foresee first automated vehicles riding in the cities in
approximately 20 years. Currently various scenarios of autonomous driving in the social context have been
advanced (such as for example in Wachenfeld, et al., 2015). Particularly interesting in these is the simultaneous
inclusion of autonomous cars in several intertwined socio-technical infrastructures: the „classical” infrastructure for
the transport of goods and persons, the information infrastructure (driving robots as powerful moving sensors and
computers), the infrastructure for social interaction (made possible by car interiors as mobile rooms with no
steering wheel and pedals), entertainment, etc. The multiple infrastructural integration and high plasticity
(adjustment to various contextual needs) might represent key hallmarks of the coming autonomous mobilities. The
current paper analyzes the use scenarios of autonomous driving formulated in the interdisciplinary field literature
on vehicle automation from the perspective of the STS-oriented Mobilities (Pellegrino, 2014). It will answer the
following research questions:
- To what extent can autonomous cars be regarded as boundary objects (versatility of infrastructure-related
meanings versus core identity)?
- What interdependencies (i.e. symbioses and confrontations of infrastructures) can be revealed in autonomous
automobilities?
Changing complex socio-technical infrastructures: the case of air traffic management
Roberta Cuel (Università di Trento); Giusi Orobona (Università di Trento); Diego Ponte (Università di Trento)
In this paper, we analyse the practices used to make decisions and changes in Air Traffic Management (ATM)
systems. ATM systems are complex systems-of-systems aimed at assist aircraft flights and are composed by
distinct activities: air traffic control, air traffic flow management, aeronautical information services, etc. Thanks to
the ecological approach, we studied the complex interrelations among heterogeneous elements at various levels:
- The operational level deals with the real management of any air traffic action, and decisions are made in realtime on an emergency basis.
- The managerial level deals with all the technical changes that may occur during a revision of ATM procedures,
such as the introduction of new technologies, protocols etc. The changes are usually planned and are based on an
in depth technical and specialized knowledge shared in national and multinational projects.
- The strategic practices deal with the adoption of policies, norms and regulations at national and international
levels.
Our analysis is focused only on the managerial and strategic levels, and in particular on the practices dealing with
changes of ATM system (or part of it). When such a system changes, different and complex relationships are
created making also visible the socio-technical infrastructure. We analyse these relationships and their visibility
through the interpretation of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in decision processes. In
particular, the study focus on how the main relational elements involved in decision processes - such as
reputation, usefulness of the decision and trust - affect the ATM infrastructure.
In our conclusion, we sketch out whether and to what extend different decision making practices come into play in
the adoption of any ATM change and in the construction of the socio-technical system which can be seen as an
ecology constituted by interrelated elements that are continuously negotiated.
#39#
#ViewFromTheOffice – Reconceptualizing the workplace as an information-based ecosystem
Andrea Resmini (Jönköping University); He Tan (Jönköping University); Vladimir Tarasov (Jönköping University);
Anders Adlemo (Jönköping University)
People work on their phones while driving, on portable computers in coffee shops, or manage strategies on
Facebook. Work hours do not follow a 9-17 rule. Personal devices are used in combination with companysanctioned ones. Generational gaps separate digital immigrants and digital natives and the way they project
technology into their lives. The workplace identifies less and less a dedicated space: any place offering the right
affordances is the right place for work.
This paper details a study carried out in 2015 on public and private workplaces in Småland, Sweden. The study
intended to assess how technology was changing the workplace, identifying elements having an impact on the
work experience and contributing to the conceptualization of a blended, digital/physical workplace. Contextual
semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation were used to capture and describe workflow processes,
behavioral patterns, and the user experience of employees. The relationships between actors, the workplace, and
technology were framed according to three fundamental shifts:
1. The design shift leading from usability, ergonomics and performance to user experience, engagement, and
satisfaction.
2. The cultural shift from postmodernism, control and authorship to digimodernism, onwardness, evanescence,
playfulness, and multiple anonymous ownership.
3. The demographic shift from a population of digital immigrants to one of digital natives and their post-digital
outlook on digital as part of the fabric of everyday life.
The study identified a number of technological, spatial, and organizational stress points connected to employees’
needs, wants, and concerns: from the reduction in private digital and physical space to legal constraints
hampering a “bring-your-own-device” approach, to the misalignment and disconnection between digital and
physical processes. Based on these results, it proposed to reconceptualize the workplace as a blended,
digital/physical, information-based ecosystem and concluded describing how this model could contribute to solving
the issues captured in the course of the study.
Framing resilience as a sociotechnical problem: concept and methodology
Sulfikar Amir (Nanyang Technological University)
In the globalized world characterized by rapid technological changes, shifting demographics, and transforming
roles of agents, groups and institutions, new challenges are emerging at an unprecedented rate. At the same time,
ecological and socio-political turbulences render our life more vulnerable than ever. These trends inevitably cause
technological systems and infrastructures to become increasingly fragile. Recently, resilience has been introduced
and widely adopted as a framework to deal with the growing risk of crisis and disturbance, especially in advanced
cities that deeply rely on interdependent urban infrastructures. This paper aims to contribute to the scholarly
discourse of resilience by offering a new conceptualization of resilience framed as an inherent attribute of
sociotechnical systems. In this paper, a novel formulation of sociotechnical resilience and accompanying
methodology to address this concept are presented. Sociotechnical resilience is primarily characterized as
transformability, which refers to the ability of a sociotechnical systems to shift from one formation to another in
response to shock and crisis. During this process of transformation, we identify three factors as extremely crucial
to support the internal mechanisms of system response: informational relations, socio-material structures, and
anticipatory practices. Furthermore, based on this theoretical outlook we propose a three-step hybrid methodology
deriving from both social sciences and engineering disciplines to understand how sociotechnical resilience
develops and deteriorates. This new formulation and methodology for sociotechnical resilience draws on insights
from the fields of science and technology studies, human factors and safety science, and organizational and
systems engineering.
#40#
Infrastructuring is the new black. Challenges and opportunities of a fascinating intellectual tool
Teresa Macchia (Università di Trento)
Infrastructuring is a helpful intellectual tool for informing the analysis and the design of collaborative and relational
experiences that combine people and technologies. While scholars referring to complementary research areas
considered and discussed the notion of Infrastructuring from disparate perspectives (Macchia, 2016; Light and
Akama, 2015; Simonsen et al., 2015; Karasti, 2014; Björgvinsson, 2010; Karasti and Syrjänen, 2004; Bowker and
Star, 2002), little exploration has been dedicated to challenges associated to the use of this intellectual tool. In this
paper, we discuss this tool by focusing on the analysis and the description of practices and features that depict
sociotechnical phenomena in terms of Infrastructuring. Moreover, we expect to highlight features and limitations
that the notion of Infrastructuring may face when it comes to the analysis and the design of multilayered and
multipurpose public spaces.
Thus, we focus our analysis on practices that distinguish the notion of Infrastructuring in relation to the design
process of interactive technology for public spaces such as museums: what is the sociotechnical configuration of
public spaces? What are the challenges that add value to the concept of Infrastructuring.
Reflecting on challenges, we aim to understand and highlight parameters that inform the use of the intellectual tool
of Infrastructuring for analyzing and organically design interactive technology for public space.
Infrastructuring in design and development practices
Alessandro Mongili (Università di Padova)
Following designers and developers in their practice means to observe a long series of activities which are often
focused in remote infrastructures. These infrastructures are employed to test new devices, but they are also
challenged in their fonctioning, often fixed, or reloaded. They are open to developers’ interventions. In this sense,
designers and developers act as users. This contribution arised from a research carried out in an Italian ICT
company, into a group of designers and developers. They aimed to extend an extant architecture of a social
network toward a remote surveillance device, understood as a new application of the old social network. In order
to test their device, technicians used to monitor the tests’ evolution employing two different remote devices. The
first one was used to assess the flow of data exchanged during the attempt to make a video call, while the second
one gave more detailed information about the operating commands and the parts of the protocol used during the
attempt to exchange a video call. Despite the conventional and taken-for-granted accounts, the two remote
devices worked as infrastructures, without which all the testing activity was unthinkable. This situation challenges
not only the traditional divide between designers and users, but also opens to considerations on spacial
dimensions not strictly defined by a set of use, due to remote and digital characters of this kind of infrastructure.
Furthermore, the “origination” of digital devices emerges as a strongly infrastructured work, where infrastructuring
challenges “creation” or planned activities as the main activity.
Digital copyright hub and the politics of infrastructural delegation
Gianmarco Campagnolo (University of Edinburgh); Hung The Nguyen (University of Edinburgh); Robin Williams
(University of Edinburgh)
Technological delegation has been a central theme in history of science and technology scholarship since
Langdon Winner first asked the question: do Artifacts have politics. Politics has been recognized even in
contemporary digital infrastructures. Proponents of the idea have drawn our attention to the myriad of ways in
which technological systems are transformative of their work environment. Politics here means doing more than
what information infrastructures seem to be doing prima facie. But what about infrastructures that do less than
what they are supposed to do? Taking stock of emerging sociology of low expectations literature, in this paper we
respond by discussing the case of the copyright debate in UK and how it has been streamlined so that its solution
could be delegated to a digital infrastructure. Our description will exemplify a new type of infrastructural politics. By
disabling the tense relations and urgent actions of the debate on copyright exceptions through shifting the site and
objects of political conflict to the always already incomplete character of technological realizations, the low
expectation infrastructure of the copyright hub provided the innovative project of IP framework revision with
momentum.
#41#
Track 14
Media Environments: Metaphors, Ecologies, Materialities, Infrastructures
Convenors: Paolo Magaudda (Università di Padova), Sergio Minniti (IULM, Milano)
The potential of new and social media for environmental activism in contexts of media ecology and
society
Richard Hindmarsh (Griffith University); Diletta Luna Calibeo (Griffith University)
Many claims of the potential of new and social media to enhance civic engagement have been made. In turn, a
supportive claim of this potential is that the infrastructural materiality of new and social media represents a more
tightly coupled and thus more ‘open’ social-technological media system than traditonal mass media. In relation to
this potential for pressuring governments, organisations and institutions for enhancing environmental protection
and sustainability, the focus of this paper lies on ‘digital environmental activism’. Three meta-themes are explored
(i) new and social media as enabling environmental activism, (ii) engaging in the environmental activist terrain, and
(iii) potential constraints to digital environmental activism. It was found that digital environmental activism focuses
substantially on technologically-informed disasters and a range of protest campaigns, e.g., old growth forests,
whale hunting, coal seam gas mining, and consumerism. In this digitised ecoactivist terrain, invetigative studies
signal the role of media ecology, wheremetaphors for the use of new and social media for activism range from
‘culture jamming’, ‘mediated visibility’, to ‘ecologies of dissent’. In turn, key potential constraints to digital activism
are concentration of media ownership and surveillance. Populating metaphors in the context of surveillance
operations include ‘ecoterrorism’, and ‘digital suspects’. However, challenges to such potential key constraints
include emergent regulation, and a robust field of smaller platforms, with keen competition featuring a range of
differing services catering to evolving user trends and preferences. In conclusion, and informed by new and social
media’s main conduit of horizontal (or many-to-many) communication as a new materiality of mass
communitcation, complemented by that of encryption, and also by an increasing number of new media platforms
offering anti-surveilllance safeguards, we find a robust potential of new and social media to enhance activism
tempered by corporate and government attempts to reign in new and social media civic potentialities.
Constructing the scientists-broadcasters relationship on British television in the post war. The case of
wildlife filmmaking
Jean-Baptiste Gouyon (University College London)
The recent naming of a British oceanographic research vessel after a British entertainer, Sir David Attenborough, a
choice by no means self-evident, points towards an intriguing relationship between television broadcasting and
scientific research in Britain in the early 21st century. Specifically, that “Sir David Attenborough” is perceived as
‘[reflecting] the serious nature of the science it [the ship] will be doing’ (to quote British Science minister Jo
Johnson), suggests that science television (which includes natural history television) is perceived as, or believed to
be a worthy participant in the scientific enterprise. This relationship is not a given. It has been actively constructed
during the past five decades, as shows the evolution of the wildlife making-of documentary genre. In this paper, I
look at this history and what entails in terms of the place and placing of science in culture.
Al Dente textiles. Notes on edible textiles as economic and ecological intermediality
Tincuta Heinzel (Nottingham Trent University); Svenja Keune (University of Boras)
One of the red lines of aesthetics as modern established discipline was the definition of media categories and
disciplines in order to support “efficient” ways of expression. The debate between Gotthold Lessing and Charles
Batteux in the XVIII century, and later on the modernist propositions of Bauhaus artists and designers in the
beginning of XX century, as well as the intransigence position of Clement Greenberg, have all emphasise the need
of a certain “aesthetic efficiency” of artistic production. This aesthetic efficiency was to be achieved by taking into
account the limitation of materials used by different forms of expressions and the sensorial channels they were
addressing. Classifications like “major arts” and “decorative arts”, as well as “primary senses” and “secondary
senses” were introduced to better support these ideas.
Fluxus mouvement in the 1960’s, as well as the impact of digital media, questioned these approaches. Intermedia
and multimedia were forms of “expanding consciousness” (Youngblood). “Visual poetry” and “performance art”
were such hybrid forms of expression and were all forms of questioning the modernist propositions. If most of the
critics formulated by the Fluxus movement were attached to the aesthetic performances, few have noticed the fact
that “efficiency” is a term from the economic sphere (one exception will be Robert Filliou).
#42#
Addressing the impact of media, Marshall McLuhan considered the “ecology” of the media as a way to understand
the relationship between the media technology and the environment in which it is used. Defined as an extension of
human senses, McLuhan’s definition of the media is one that points towards a certain technological determinism,
deeply influencing our perception of world in certain contexts and epochs.
Taking as starting point a series of experiments made during a workshop at Boras University in April 2016 on
edible textiles, the present paper questions the notion of media efficiency and media ecology from the perspective
of intermedia and multimedia. Apart exploring possible applications related to our new edible textiles, we will
address issues related to regenerative media, a media realised from regenerative materials. In this sense we will
try to see if intermediality can support media efficiency, not only in aesthetics terms, but also in economic and
ecological terms.
(re)Shaping imaginaries. The evolution of practices, interfaces and forms in the fan vidding phenomenon
Mariana Ciancia (Politecnico di Milano); Simone Tosoni (Università Cattolica di Milano)
The evolution of social interconnections through digital technologies has emerged from a phenomenological
approach to the contemporary mediascape (Appadurai, 1990). A scenario in which technology and new forms of
consumption foster individual consumer choices (re-appropriation, political remix, DIY media and hacking) and
social production (Benkler, 2004). According to Lessig (2004), we are living in a century in which the digital turn
have been allowing people to express themselves, to be part of their beloved storyworlds (fan culture) and to
criticized the contemporary culture (culture jamming).The media forms and languages are linked to the abilities of
people in the creation and circulation of new content. The classic examples are the content produced by fans and
amateurs, such as fan fiction, fan movies and machinimas. This paper aims to examine the role of the technology
in the making of user-generated content and the processes involved. In doing so, the focus will be a specific
audiovisual form: vidding. Vidders are fans that create “short videos in which scenes from the canon source are
set against a particular musical piece carefully chosen for its thematic meaning” (Busse & Hellekson, 2006 p. 12).
In this work the vidding phenomenon is analyzed from three different point-of-view that are always intertwined:
practice (the production of vids and the development of tutorials for the vidding community), software (from VCRs
to software for the manipulation of digital files) and language (vids as a textual form). The work proposes a
diachronic exploration of vidding through a sociological and design approach considering the following core points:
how new digital technologies are changing the production process? What is the role of online tutorials for the
production of vids? How digital tools and softwares are chancing the dynamics of the fan community? How
aesthetic, technological and economic issues work together in the ‘media ecology’?
“Limiting” digital media: a theoretical approach
Paolo Bory (Università della Svizzera Italiana); Gabriele Balbi (Università della Svizzera Italiana)
In the popular imaginary digital media have unlimited potentials: e.g. computers has been often hailed as
instruments of liberation because they are able to extend the power of any other medium, the Internet is
considered as an infinite and unlimited repository for knowledge, and mobile phones are multitasking media where
many other communication (and not communication) technologies have converged. Challenging this perspective,
this paper claims how digital media have been limited by their inventors, companies, users, etc. for two main
reasons. On the one hand, limiting digital media means opening new technologies to a wider audience, mainly
defining a common set of rules and practices for users; on the other hand, the limitation of possible usages, for
instance in the case of the so called “walled gardens”, has been an essential condition for sharing contents and for
individual expression through user-friendly devices. Rather than looking at digital media as extensions, the authors
suggest to look at them as limits, using the notion of “limit” to define three main aspects:
1) The role of digital media as technological boundaries;
2) The importance of prohibitions and constraints in the domestication process of digital devices;
3) The role of deficiencies and lacks as strategic features of media products.
Drawing on this categorization, the paper aims to introduce a limit-based theoretical perspective focusing on some
cases in digital media history such as the Apple computer, the World Wide Web, and the social network Instagram.
The authors claim that extending and combining the analysis of media as boundaries, prohibitions and lacks could
be an interesting way to select the distinctive features and the communicative shape of digital media over time.
#43#
Enacting infrastructures: the case of Cadorna station
Simone Tosoni (Università Cattolica di Milano)
The proposed paper aims at tackling (media) infrastructures and their power-related structuration of urban public
space, addressing what could be called “captive audience positions”: situations in which, during our daily urban
practices and routines, we are somehow forcedly put in the physical position to audience a (media) spectacle - and
consequently to assume the social role of an audience.
Drawing on the case of the electronic screens deployed in Cadorna station in Milan (Italy), the paper shows how
temporary captive audiences are not produced just through the material and technological assets of the station: a
key role is in fact played also by the moving bodies of the travelers engaged in the complex choreography of
passing through the station. Thanks to this strategy, travelers are kept in front of the screens, accurately quantified
and sold as audiences to advertisers.
To tackle the subtle strategy – and the structuration of space through infrastructures, I’ll advance an approach that
has as its linchpin a relational conceptualization of space, that sees space not as “given” once for all, but as
continuously produced as an entanglement of heterogeneous elements: material, symbolic and
pragmatic/performative. The methodological proposal is therefore to address infrastructures not as defined sets of
affordances and constraints, but as “enactments”: relational space is in fact produces by the performative practices
it is supposed to host.
#44#
Track 15
Fukushima and the “Reactivation” of Nexus between Knowledge Production, Expertise
and Governmental Decisions
Convenors: Christine Fassert (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Reiko Hasegawa (Sciences Po Paris)
Fukushima and Black Rain class action lawsuit: reactivating the nexus of knowledge production, expertise
and government decisions
Masae Yuasa (Hiroshima City University)
In November, 2015, 64 members of the Association of Black Rain Hibakusha filed a class action lawsuit in
Hiroshima Local Court. They demand that the Japanese government expand the officially designated radiation
affected area to reflect the actual rainfall and health damage. The Black Rain Hibakusha are people who were
exposed to radioactive fallout after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. They have suffered from various
illnesses and chronic disorders since their childhood. The government, however, has not officially recognized them
as Hibakusha, judging the amount of radiation they received was too little to harm their health. This is their first
lawsuit since they formed the association 35 years ago. The decision to appeal was not easy for unhealthy people
in their 70s and 80s. However the accident of Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant has created an opportunity
to wage their last struggle. There are at least four factors encouraging them:
1. The accident shed light on issues of internal exposure and low dose radiation, which have been underestimated
in designation of Black Rain Hibakusha.
2. Confusing and contradictory policies on evacuation and repatriation after the accident have invited severe
criticisms from scientists domestically and internationally.
3. The criticisms highlighted the “100mSv threshold discourse” induced from renowned Hiroshima -Nagasaki
Hibakusha data (Life Span Study) and questioned the legitimacy of the discourse, expertise and government
policies relating to radiation.
4. Those debates have caught public attention and enhanced public knowledge of radiation.
This paper describes how the Fukushima accident has reactivated the Black Rain Hibakusha movement and how
the Black Rain Hibakusha lawsuit could elucidate issues of radiation protection measures relating to the
Fukushima accident. It also discusses the possibility of reshaping the “regime of truth” that has constructed our
nuclear world.
The lawsuits of the inhabitants of Fukushima: ‘solidarity in the fear’ after the nuclear accident
Rina Kojima (Université Paris-Est)
Since the Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011, the Japanese authorities have designed and redesigned the
evacuation zone, based on a 20 millisieverts annual radiation dose. According to the existing national and
international norms, this is 20 times higher than the threshold dose for the public. On this account, the inhabitants
residing within the evacuation zone were imposed to leave. Besides, also some of the inhabitants residing outside
the evacuation zone decided to leave on learning about the radiation risk. With time, however, they have faced
with increasing difficulties to keep leaving. Yet, the majority of inhabitants living outside the evacuation zone have
stayed, or have returned to their district after the initial evacuation. In Valérie November’s analysis of the
relationship between territory and risk, the inhabitants inside the evacuation zone could be considered as “being
evicted” and the inhabitants outside the zone as “being captive” because of no/little choice of mobility.
Today, some of these inhabitants of Fukushima have initiated lawsuits against the Japanese electrical company,
TEPCO, and the Japanese authorities, the government. Through these lawsuits, they demand, on the one hand,
the recovery of their social and cultural surroundings, which have been ruined because of radioactive
contamination. On the other hand, they seek to have supports to avoid the radiation risk, in order not to experience
the consequences of the accident on their health in the long term. This developing social mobilization is reflected
in Ulrich Beck’s expression “solidarity in the fear” (1992) : fear to lose their surroundings and their health. Through
a number of conducted interviews since 2012, this paper analyzes firstly the trajectory of these inhabitants since
the accident, as well as their behavior with regard to the radiation risk. It then sheds light on their statements about
the lawsuits.
#45#
The end of citizen science as we know it? Public participation in nuclear sciences and technologies after
Fukushima
Michiel Van Oudheusden (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven); Ine Van Hoyweghen (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven);
Shoko Tanaka (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
This paper takes as its starting point the rapid development of citizen science initiatives in Japan after the 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster, where citizens in affected areas monitor radioactivity in the environment and
communicate about health and environmental risks with one another (e.g. Citizens’ Radioactivity Monitoring
Project). In these processes, citizen scientists voice ardent criticism of government, industry, and academia, as
these institutes are seen to deliberately spread biased information to sustain an illusion of control
(http://blog.safecast.org). By taking science and technology into their own hands, they challenge conventional
notions of citizen engagement, science, and volunteerism. The paper builds on the notions of contentious politics
and issue politics (e.g. Marres 2005) to highlight the issue-driven, adversarial and untamed character of postFukushima citizen science in the nuclear field. It is argued that these notions better capture what citizen science
after Fukushima amounts to, as conventional representations (e.g. volunteer sensing, “citizens as sensors,” public
participation in scientific research) downplay scientific uncertainties and power asymmetries between citizens and
authorities, and do not account for how “Fukushima” is reconfiguring citizenship and nuclear sciences and
technologies (e.g. radioprotection research). To develop the latter point, the paper illustrates how citizen science
initiatives like Safecast redraw the boundaries between science, industry, and politics (e.g. by developing
innovative measurement techniques) and reproduce conventional distinctions (e.g. the separation between
science and politics); thereby hybridizing scientific citizenship.
Nuclear accidents and sociotechnical controversies: the rationalizing role of citizens participation in La
Maddalena
Davide Orsini (Mississippi State University)
Nuclear disasters, like the Fukushima accident, reveal the problematic relationship between expert knowledge,
safety regulations, and the role of the public in emergency responses (Schmid, 2013). In situations characterized
by uncertainty (about the consequences of the disaster), governmental institutions and expert agencies are
expected to provide transparent communication and steady guidelines for managing the crisis. When accurate
assessments cannot be achieved, are contradictory or controversial, counter-experts and citizen scientists can
introduce new and alternative forms of knowledge production, which challenge established protocols and expert
authority. In this paper I argue that under certain circumstances, local communities assume the role of
“rationalizing agents” by organizing open forums for public debates during sociotechnical controversies. I focus on
a US Navy nuclear submarine accident, which occurred in the Archipelago of La Maddalena (Sardinia, Italy) in
2003. I use this event as a heuristics for understanding how expert protocols and military secrecy black-boxed the
environmental surveillance system installed around the US Navy base, and how two teams of independent
experts, one from Italy and one from France, intervened and produced data that contradicted the initial
assessment of state expert agencies. In a state of uncertainty regarding the environmental consequences of the
accident and the risks for the local community, a group of local residents organized a public forum for debating
diverging expert assessments. Instead of embracing one argument or the other, local activists opened a space for
public engagement and scrutiny. By examining these controversies, I argue that while science can “make
environmental controversies worse” (Sarewitz 2004), the introduction of a democratic method for discussing
alternative interpretations (even in the aftermath of serious accidents) can reinvigorate trust in expert knowledge
production and introduce new forms of civic epistemology (Jasanoff 2005).
#46#
Glory and failure of “SPEEDI” system: historical sociology of real-time simulation-informed emergency
radiation protection scheme in Japan
Kohta Juraku (Tokyo Denki University); Shin-etsu Sugawara (Central Research Institute of Electric Power
Industry)
Once the Fukushima nuclear accident happened, public attention was focused on the magnitude, trend and
consequence of off-site radioactivity release. Everyone wanted to have concrete information to protect them from
its possible harm. In this context, “SPEEDI” (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information)
attracted very strong public attention. SPEEDI is a Japanese original real-time simulation technology for
emergency radiation protection developed and implemented since 1980s. It was expected to output both graphical
and quantitative simulation results which enable the relevant actors to take appropriate actions to protect the
people from undesirable radiation exposures.
However, it was not the case that SPEEDI achieved the good reputation as expected. Rather, it has been
repeatedly criticized the insufficiencies in its performance, public release of its output and governance for its
handling so far. Use of SPEEDI became one of the most controversial points in the off-site nuclear emergency
enhancement discussion. The National Governmental accident report and the National Diet’s one showed almost
opposite evaluations on the use of SPEEDI after their investigation. There has been a pros-cons dispute since
then. Recently, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and the Ministerial Council for Nuclear Power Utilization, issued
very contradictive official recommendations on the emergency use of SPEEDI. The controversy has not been
settled down, but is still glowing up.
In this paper, the authors would carefully and critically trace the history of research, development and
implementation of SPEEDI and analyze the trajectory of Japanese emergency radiation protection scheme. Effects
of the experiences of foreign and domestic nuclear accidents and scandals, including the Three Mile Island and
Chernobyl accidents would also be discussed. It would also touch upon the effect of public imaginary on this kind
of real-time simulation technologies which are believed to make the society more “disaster-preventing” through
“scientific prediction.”
#47#
Track 16
Robotics in Everyday-Life Sociotechnical Environments: STS Perspectives
Convenors: Maria Carmela Agodi (Università di Napoli Federico II), Ilenia Picardi (Università di Napoli Federico II)
The ethical framing of research programs in robotics: an issue for STS perspectives?
Guglielmo Tamburrini (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Robotic systems and technologies step out of research laboratories jointly with information about long-term goals
of technological inquiry they are lined up with and about the short-term objectives guiding daily laboratory
activities. A comprehensive ethical framing of research programs in robotics is decomposed here into the ethical
framing of their long-term and short-term goals, respectively. This approach to the ethical framing of research
programs in robotics is exemplified by reference to fundamental human rights protection and promotion in the
context of research on care robots for the child, the elderly, and the disabled. Moreover, the political significance of
this approach is highlighted in connection with democratic decision-making regarding new and emerging
technologies, which is often hindered by the cultural production of ignorance about the protection and promotion of
human rights in technological contexts.
Ageing and care robots for the future towards analyzing scripts, scenarios and scenes behind proactive
technology
Tuomo Särkikoski (University of Tampere); Satu Pekkarinen (Lappeenranta University of Technology); Jaana
Parviainen (University of Tampere)
Ageing developed societies are setting hopes for assistive and therapeutic robotic technologies and autonomous
systems to cope with the challenge of growing imbalance between the amount of caregivers and care receivers.
The term “social robot” has been cultivated from the late 1990’s (e.g. Breazeal – Scassellati 1999;) but it has
predominantly referred to close and direct interactions between humans and machines (e.g. Fong et al. (2003).
During the last few years, the STS-approach has been seen promising to explain and expand the role of robots as
nonhumans in social interaction (e.g. Cerulo 2009). Design practices are often based on stereotypical views on
users and their wishes (e.g. Neven 2015), and e.g. Östlund et al. (2015) suggests STS-inspired design as a
paradigm shift to enrich design practices for developing proactive technology and meeting the needs of users.
In this paper, we utilize the concepts of script (Akrich 1992), scenario and scene and combine them to form the
three stage time perspective that could be useful as an analytical tool in innovating and designing care robots. In
our view, scripts could be understood as a representation of qualities which are inscribed into robot-artefacts
based on today’s technological design principles and potentialities – as well as certain stereotypical views of
ageing or family or gender relations (cf. Šabanović 2010). Scenarios can be seen as practical simplifications of
complex “near future” robot environments (e.g. Reiser et al. 2013). Finally, we would like to see societally
envisioned scenes (or imaginaries) to cover the longest future of post-industrial digitalized societies.
Based on our observations in the Finnish care service environments, we discuss the inscription of three
mainstream care robot types: telepresence (e.g. Double), companion (e.g. Zora) and assistive (e.g. Care-O-bot 4)
robots.
Robotica e lavoro: riflessioni sulle conseguenze socio-politiche dell’automazione
Annalisa Dordoni (Università di Milano-Bicocca)
La ristrutturazione del “mercato del lavoro” presentata come unica via in un periodo di crisi è causa strutturale
della condizione di solitudine del lavoratore globale (Bauman 1999). I lavoratori hanno sempre più difficoltà a
percepirsi come classe (Gallino 2012), sono state messe in crisi le conquiste della modernità in materia di diritto
del lavoro che hanno trasformato i lavoratori in cittadini a pieno titolo (Gallino 2001). In un contesto di tagli ai
servizi sociali queste divengono anche premesse di problematiche drammatiche, che investono la vita quotidiana
degli individui. Influenzano inoltre la percezione dell'altro da noi, restituendo l'immagine di un nemico in una
perenne guerra per la sopravvivenza, sfociando in fenomeni e comportamenti dettati dalla paura e dalla mancanza
di prospettive, dall'individualismo al razzismo (Bauman 2001, Biorcio 2012). Rileviamo già ora, non solo in Italia,
una disoccupazione massiva soprattutto giovanile ben oltre i confini numerici del “tradizionale” esercito industriale
di riserva (Marx 1849). Al lavoratore è assegnato, sia dale organizzazioni economiche che politiche, il ruolo di
semplice variabile dipendente. La celebre perifrasi kantiana è stata disattesa, l'essere umano è un mezzo e non
più un fine, la filosofia del denaro regna sovrana (Simmel 1900). Queste premesse sono necessarie per
comprendere il ragionamento qui proposto. Se cambiamo prospettiva, ponendo l'essere umano al centro, diviene
palese la contraddizione in essere: laddove “lavora” la macchina, non può lavorare l'essere umano. Da qui ne
#48#
deriva la necessità di un ragionamento sulle conseguenze politiche-sociali, e in primis sul concetto di lavoro in se’.
Il lavoro è prerogativa dell'umano? Seppur siano certamente indubbie le potenzialità di liberazione date dall'utilizzo
della robotica nell'attività produttiva non possiamo esentarci dal porci tali questioni. La macchina può essere
facilmente portata da on ad off, come si vorrebbe per la forza lavoro trasfigurata in “risorsa umana” (Gallino 2001).
Una riflessione sulla natura e sul futuro del lavoro è d'obbligo: se ci emancipiamo dal lavoro come potremmo
procurarci da vivere, in una società in cui per vivere serve il denaro e questo viene necessariamente dato in
cambio di lavoro sotto forma di salario? Che conseguenze ci saranno per la democrazia? Qual è il legame tra
democrazia e lavoro?
The convergence of ethical and legal arguments for banning autonomous weapons systems
Daniele Amoroso (Università di Napoli Federico II); Guglielmo Tamburrini (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Deontological and consequentialist arguments against autonomous weapons systems (AWS) are analyzed with a
view to bringing out their respective weaknesses and strengths, as well as to emphasizing their largely
complementary character. As to the deontological viewpoint, in particular, both ethical and legal precepts are dwelt
upon ranging from the principle of human dignity to the standards of international humanitarian law and
international human rights law. With reference to consequentialist arguments, a distinction is drawn between
narrow and wide appraisals of the implications of AWS deployment in order to assess the latter’s expected effects
on the maintenance of peace and security in international relations. By way of conclusion, the variety of available
political options on AWS (regulation, moratorium or pre-emptive ban) are critically analyzed. In this respect, it is
maintained that the above ethical and legal arguments afford a strong case for preferring a pre-emptive ban on
AWS.
Fluid Li-Fi on demotic services
Andrea Russo (Université Grenoble Alpes); Samuele Barone
La tecnologia Li-Fi (light Fidelity) è una tecnologia presentata per la prima volta al TED 2011 da Harald Haas.
Durante la presentazione ha convinto numerosi spettatori delle straordinarie caratteristiche di questa tecnologia,
riuscendo a riprodurre un video in Full HD usando una semplice lampadina LED con un Chip Li- Fi e puntando la
stessa lampadina ad un recettore led, collegato alla televisione. L’innovazione che vorrei presentare, da me
definita Li-Fi fluido, non ha una struttura fisica come un computer o un hardware di grosse dimensioni, ma
necessita solo di chips particolari all’interno dei LED per avere questa tecnologia a disponibilità degli individui. In
ambito domotico questo concetto è molto interessante, in quanto la possibilità di avere un dispositivo mobile Li-Fi
(caricato da batteria o/e caricato dal comunicatore madre mediante il medesimo fascio di luce) può dare una
duttilità agli ambienti di vita quotidiana come la casa. Ad esempio il LED madre (di partenza) potrebbe essere il
lampadario del salotto che comunica con un altro dispositivo Li-Fi fissato ad un albero dando così connessione
internet ad un computer usato da un utente in giardino. La lunghezza dell’onda luminosa, che riesce a comunicare
con un altro dispositivo, attualmente è di 10 metri ma, mediante il Li-Fi Fluid, è possibile collegare un medesimo
dispositivo al primo per avere una portata più lunga senza dispersione d’informazioni. Questo mio studio
desidererebbe contribuire alla robotica, al suo immaginario ed usi comuni, in quanto la società attuale, come
definita nell’opera di Isaac Asimov “Io Robot”, presume che nel futuro i robot siano degli esseri senzienti ed
umanoidi capaci di grandi opere e al nostro servizio, dimenticando che il robot cardinale e madre è di per sé un
qualche cosa di incorporeo che potremmo trovare in qualsiasi luogo o casa, la quale opera in maniera invisibile e
grazie ai propri robot umanoidi.
#49#
Track 17
Designing Objects that Act. The Contribution of Interaction Design to the Theories of
the Agency of Objects
Convenors: Paolo Volonté (Politecnico di Milano), Sara Colombo (Politecnico di Milano)
Intriguingly familiar. Embracing ambiguity in product design
Lodovico Marchesini (Delft University of Technology); Elif Ozcan (Delft University of Technology)
Our material world is filled with well-defined objects. We see cars, chairs, spoons, computers, pens everywhere.
There is no thrill in identifying over and over the same objects and knowing the object will respond to the user in
the same way as it always does. Being familiar with one’s surroundings can be a very comfortable experience
allowing people safely navigate through objects and tasks. However, constructs of comfort and safety are relevant
for ergonomics research. Experience-driven design research is after defining and constructing unique, engaging,
and rich experiences with products. One way to achieve such a goal is through creating novel objects that users
have never experienced before in such a way that perception of such objects gives rise to multiple meanings
creating ambiguity. If well applied, ambiguity in product design can evoke novel experiences by puzzling users,
encouraging them for discovery of meanings and pleasantly surprising them. However, not much is known
regarding how users respond to ambiguity and how designers tackle ambiguity as a tool to evoke rich and
evocative experiences. In this paper, we will present a research-through-design case that demonstrate how users
and designers embrace ambiguity. We will showcase five products that are specially designed with the intent of
being ambiguous and explain how each product is rooted in the psychological and emotional construct of
ambiguity. Our aim is to demonstrate that when designers successfully tackle ambiguity, they are in fact creating
intriguingly familiar products that allow users unique experiences rich with imagination and action.
The concept of displacement (in the agency) of objects on the design process: a proposal for a possible
framework for design research.
Juan de la Rosa (Illinois Institute of Design)
The field of design is a very active one, in which new knowledge is constantly seek and apply in a persistent
search for a better understanding of the way the constructed human world works. The knowledge that is coming
from other disciplines has become a valuable asset for designers as a way to generate frameworks that provide a
more stable design process. But the argument over the specific knowledge that is provided by the disciplines of
design is still in debate.
Since design has made an argument on its ability to foreseen possible future scenarios for the artifacts we
construct, one of the most important contemporary issues is the understanding of how these objects and the
people around them interact in the real world, beyond the expectations proposed on the process of design.
Based on the concept of displacement first proposed by Simondon (1958) and later developed by Latour and
Akrich (1990,1992) I have tried to recognize how the experimental use of objects on the design process can unveil
specific knowledge about the constructed world and the interactions surrounding it, a type of tacit knowledge
(Polanyi) that maybe unique to the field of design and that could set a tone on the process of design research.
With this argument I am proposing a variation on the common reframing process model of design, based on the
basic idea of recognizing the complexity of the surrounding interactions on a design problem rather than jumping
into conclusions about the possible future scenario. This variation of the model tries to recognize the agency of
temporary artifacts (like prototypes) on the conversation that shapes the design research process, and how the
interaction of test subjects with this objects (or through them) could open a path to understand basic sociotechnical principles from the perspective of the design of the non-existent constructed reality.
The culture of practice: Interrogating collaborative making in design research
Kaajal Modi (Loughborough University London)
Design practice is currently lacking a “theory of social action that incorporates a relation to products,… [or] studies
of how people acquire and organize the aggregates of products with which they live their lives.” (Margolin, 2002, p.
52). This paper aims proposing a theoretical framework for considering consumption as a form of practice. This
framework forms part of a broader research project which examines a discrete scope of selected collaborative
design projects, wherein the act of making, particularly making together, is identified as a key component in the
research activity at the front end of the design process (Sanders and Stappers, 2014). By doing so, we aim to
establish a dialogical relationship between network actors, the investigation of which can itself contribute to
collaborative design as an evolving discipline.
If we consider objects as textually- or materially- inscribed or scripted (Ingram et al, 2007), how do we then
consider the process of consumption-as-practice, wherein consumption of the object itself is understood as an
explicitly political socially- and culturally-active process that contributes to an evolving dialogue of meaning and
capital (Julier, 2009)? Thinking about design in this way how do we account for the ways in which users actively
resist inscription programs, but also (more commonly) how do alternative scripts and unnoticed affordances
emerge through use, as users/consumers position objects (symbolically and materially) within existing complexes
of possession and practice (or use) (Reckwitz, 2002)?
Drawing on a variety of theories of practice, including Bourdieu (1984, 1993), Reckwitz (2002) and ANT (Latour,
2005; Law, and Hansard, 1999; Callon, 1986), as well as an analytical framework based on du Gay et al’s Circuit
of Culture (1997), this paper and its associated research project investigates the above questions as they manifest
within co-design practices. The aim is to challenge assumptions around power, agency and representation (Hall,
1997; Butler 1990) as they are currently made explicit within the literature and implicit in the practice(s) of design.
Smart digital solutions and desirable human-machine interactions: a contribution in terms of design
methodology
Margherita Pillan (Politecnico di Milano)
What kind of proactive features can we give to the digital products, services and apps we design? How can we
learn to shape the style of the interactive experience as we learned how to shape the physical shape of objects
and environments? During the last years, working as designers of interactive products and systems, we
investigated these issues through a number of design and education activities, focusing on functional and
aesthetic components of the user experience associated to the interactive dimensions of smart objects, of digital
applications and multimedia artifacts. As designers, we don’t deal directly with the project of intelligent agents,
and, instead, we design interactive solutions focusing on the quality of the overall user experience and on the
specific features of the interactive dialogue between users and artifacts. In this approach, the requirements about
the “behavior” of the intelligent system are a consequence of a correct design for experience.
Through the shaping of the interactive dimensions of an artifact it is possible to create sense effects, manage
complex interaction, vehicle messages and create symbolic effects. On the other hand, the ability of shaping
interaction is something new for designers, and it requires specific design methodologies, beyond the classic user
centered ones, so to support the design process in the creation of new paradigms of interaction.
We verified that creativity with respect to the specific task of shaping interaction can be supported and elicited
through suitable design techniques and we demonstrated that virtual experiments carried through representation
techniques such as video-scenarios, can help designers to sketch and refine the interactive features of smart
objects. Furthermore, we investigated the potentials of interactive processes in terms of expressive media,
exploring the possibilities to express complex contents through the shaping of interactive dialogues, and to
produce virtual environments where interaction produces meaningful involvement of users through empathic
identification with contents expressed by the author/designer or through a suitable use of ambiguity that allow
users to create their own interpretation of virtual events.
The final presentation will support the previous statements with the report of some design experiences, and will
present some design methodologies.
Towards a post‐human interaction era. Refocusing the idea of agency in the shift from individual user
culture to digitally integrated systems’ culture
Stefano Maffei (Politecnico di Milano)
There is an important research tradition that reflects the relationship between the evolution of technological
systems and the evolution of artifacts seen through the perspective of the design process, materialization and use
(B. Arthur). This literature has imagined possible scenarios and described potential evolutionary transitions in
which they foresee the impact of digitalization process as an enabler of the application of cybernetics’ control logic
(T. Winograd and F. Flores) together with the relationship expressed by the capability of interconnection between
machines (M. De Landa, P. Agre).The relationship between embedded capabilities of a single artifact and its ability
to express its function within a system/technology in an appropriate domain is one of the essential elements of the
interaction design project (intended as a specific disciplinary approach). You can also identify this domain as the
possible space for a user centered design characterization, which could build a vision able to structure,
communicate and interact starting from an idea of human agency. Most part of the interesting evolutionary
potential in terms of agency arises, however, from the ownership of the systems that are behind the most
interesting interfaces (C.B. Frey & A. Osborne; Brynjolfsson E. & A. McAfee).
The new opportunities for developing an evolved user interaction arise not from the empowerment of agency and
knowledge of a user (individual) but from the capacity of a systemic machine learning applied with an algorithmic
models of cognition/communication of a non human domain.
#51#
How will we then approach (from a design perspective) the idea of a new trasformed agency? Will it be a mixed
one involving a user + system centered approach? Almost probably yes. And this will be the territory for an
emerging post-human interaction that will develop in practice some classic issues that come from cognitive
science, logic and philosophy of language, systems theory, political science.
Exploring user experience design through the lens of practice theory
Ruth Neubauer (Loughborough University); Erik Bohemia (Loughborough University); Kerry Harman (Birkbeck
University)
A socio-technical reconceptualisation of use, and the active roles of the material and users in design prompt us to
question professional designers’ roles and agencies within the wider realm of social (re)production. This paper
focuses on bringing together key concepts of UX design and theories of practice, and pointing out some
challenges that lie ahead of professional designers in the conception of their work. Theories used in HCI and
historical legacies of production models may limit a full conception of ‘experience’ – or a locating of the social
‘motor’– that can bring change about, as well as ‘hide’ other factors that make up professional design. We argue
that there are limitations with current theories underlying design practice, and that the commonly conceived
concept of agency in design and use, and the ontological place allocations of the professional designer and the
user in the mechanisms of social (re)production need to be revisited. An investigation of professional designing as
a social practice can serve the purpose to illustrate alternative conceptions of agency in professional designing,
and help designers to be more aware of the social dynamics in their work.
Agency as a potential
Neslihan Tepehan (University of Edinburgh)
In The Fold Deleuze states that “the transformation of the object refers to a correlative transformation of the
subject: the subject is not a subject, but as Whitehead says, a superject. Just as the object becomes an objectile,
subject becomes a superject” (2003, p.21). Thus an objectile is what invites a subject to transformation. In this
paper, I break apart the concept of agency prominently by utilizing “flat ontology” as it is discussed by Manuel
DeLanda, to point out that agency is what happens in‐between when two bodies hit a certain threshold rather than
“agency” belonging either to the object or to the subject. DeLanda points out “an approach in terms of interacting
parts and emergent wholes leads to a flat ontology, one made exclusively of unique, singular individuals, differing
in spatio‐temporal scale but not in ontological status (2002, p.51). Through Gilbert Simondon’s ‘schema of
concretization’ I will argue, how agency becomes possible only when the potentials at all ends of the encounter
are actualized. This means that “agency” is only possible when a certain threshold is reached. Thus the initial idea
in designer’s head, the object, the smartness of the object, the subject that is encountering the object have the
same ontological status and are equal factors that are affecting the emergence and the magnitude of the agency.
Multi-scalar object agencies. The Goldilocks affect
Arno Verhoeven (University of Edinburgh); Fabrizio Gesuelli (University of Edinburgh); Graig Martin, Chris Speed
(University of Edinburgh)
This paper investigates “the goldilocks affect” of object agency. Using the popular myth surrounding the three
bears in Robert Southey’s 1837 story ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ we argue that the agency of objects is not
singular, rather the specific agential qualities of design objects are, in part, determined by scale and associated
temporalities. This relationship between object agencies, affect and scale is central to recent debates on both the
global scale ‘hyperobjects’ such as climate change (Morton, 2013) and the quotidian scale with the ‘thing power’ of
trash (Bennett, 2004). The present paper considers the issue of agency-to-scale in the context of design practice:
large scale, architectonic and infrastructural objects; medium scale artifactual-level interactions; and smaller scale
sensorial data objects.
Rather than surmise that objects have agency, we consider how objects have agency and the different situated
contexts which give rise to different trajectories due to agency to scale. These different agencies we discuss as
“the goldilocks affect.” To examine this we present three case studies regarding particular objects at particular
scales which clearly articulate the agencies of the objects involved.
Our first case study discusses a selection of objects involved with the rapid transmission of data as part of an
intervention involving the Internet of Things. The 30 artifacts are consumer technical products that are all flawed in
the way that they treat their owners, and once unboxed and plugged seem to be ‘calling back to base', sending all
manner of information. Agency to scale is discussed in terms of data and its relation to time; speed of information
exchange affects agency by enabling rapid action through a particular intermediary construct. Within these social,
material and digital ecologies the amount of actors scales significantly as the Internet-connected devices operate
#52#
by making connections with servers beyond the knowledge of the human, and far beyond the physical
environment in which they are intended to function.
Our second case study presents agency to scale in objects and artifacts which are readily modifiable and
adaptable – prototypical devices – which encourage direct engagement and present agency to scale in direct
interaction. Key to this scale is the direct scalar relationship between subject and object agency. Prototypical
devices (including traditional design prototypes) are objects inherently open to change; they are unfinished. Their
structure and form remain unstable, these are solid yet flexible, immovable yet fluctuating. As such they too
demand reconfiguration from the human subject.
The third case study presents the interrogation of an architectural space and the occupation by students during
protest involving the homeless. Agency to scale suggests that the concreteness of the intermediary prevents
modification and adaptation, and an additional device (the 'provotype') is required to instill flexibility and
adaptability. Agency to scale in this case presents an artifact which displays situated concreteness and a slow
movement of agency, only available through the introduction of an additional agent.
These three case studies are employed to build on existing theories of object agency, positing the key argument
that agencies are situated across a range of different operative scales and temporalities. Through a comparative
analysis of the three studies the paper also discusses the interconnecting scalar ecologies that inevitably occur.
The implications of “the goldilocks affect” are outlined in pursuing a design-led agenda, leading to future
considerations about how these three types of object agency and affect might lead to intended impacts through
attention to scale.
Designing behaviours for reciprocal engagement
Patrizia Marti (Università di Siena / Eindhoven University of Technology)
Different kinds of smart and technological objects populate our everyday living. In this paper we examine a specific
category of emerging smart objects that are not merely static or simply reactive to our input. We refer to social
robots, machines that are capable of engaging in social relationships with human beings. These robots have some
autonomous decision-making abilities. They are capable of taking initiatives and engaging in social interactions.
This type of machine confronts interaction designers with new challenges. In fact, their credibility as agents is
given by their ability to show intentions and internal states, and to express and pursue them. In this paper we
present different robots behaviours designed to interact with human beings. Each design case explores scenarios
of reciprocal and contingent human-robot interactions exploiting different agentivity qualities:
- Intention Crossing Interaction. This is a design of a robot's movement behavior that explores movement qualities
in a reciprocal engagement. Through simple scenarios, in which robot and person happen to arrive in a situation
where they both want to cross a door, or to move to another room, a movement behaviour design is applied that
negotiates in interaction the behaviour of both actors. For instance, the design addresses who is to go first, either
the human or robot, in an appropriate manner, or in which way robot and person should walk together, that is, if
the robot should precede, follow or walk beside the person.
- Expressivity and perspective taking. This is a design of dynamic expressive mask associated to a remote robotview used to control an assistive robot. It is designed to stimulate empathic concern and facilitates perspective
taking during interaction scenarios. The design cases are presented on both theoretical and experimental level.
Actualizing agency through Smart Products: Smart Materials and metaphors in support of the ageing
population
Massimo Micocci (Brunel University); Gabriella Spinelli (Brunel University); Marco Ajovalasit (Brunel University)
Technological innovation is increasingly contributing to the development of Smart Products, autonomous devices
augmented by sensing, processing and network capabilities. Given the reduced familiarity that the ageing
population has with technological products, it is deemed appropriate to deploy SPs to enhance the experience with
technologies of this population segment. Recent studies in interaction design demonstrate how analogies and
metaphors, powerful learning tools for both written, verbal and visual communication, can be physically embedded
into products to improve the interaction with the users. Metaphors, that can trigger established knowledge
domains, allow users to create bridges between old and new products making the product more intuitive. However,
research is still unclear on how analogies and metaphors can systematically be used to stimulate an independent
cognitive response and volitional actions from the user.
This study proposes that Smart Materials (SMs) with their rich and versatile properties may be more successful at
embedding multi-sensorial metaphors into novel SPs, increasing the chance of adoption among ageing users.
With this intention, a novel device has been designed using 4 different SMs families so at to evaluate which design
would be better understood by the users. 54 participants (N=42 under-60 years-old and N=12 over-60 years-old)
were involved in the assessment of 32 interactions. Findings reveal how age impacts on the selection of the
preferred interaction and how SMs can embed metaphors to support the users re-establishing their own subjective
awareness of the world around them.
#53#
Interaction matters. A materials experience’s perspective on agency of objects
Valentina Rognoli (Politecnico di Milano); Stefano Parisi (Politecnico di Milano)
Recentemente la comunità della HCI sta rivalutando il valore attribuito al coinvolgimento con la materia fisica,
promuovendo le nozioni di material turn (Robles e Wiberg, 2010) e material lens (Wiberg, 2014). Parallelamente i
ricercatori nel campo dei materiali per il design hanno familiarizzato con i loro aspetti esperienziali. Considerato il
ruolo fondamentale che ha la materialità nella definizione della product experience è stata coniata la nozione di
materials experience (Karana, 2009) definita come “l’esperienza che le persone hanno con, e attraverso, il
materiale di un prodotto” e che si sviluppa secondo quattro livelli: sensoriale, interpretativo, affettivo e performativo
(Giaccardi e Karana, 2015). Nonostante la materials experience si esprima autonomamente e venga interpretata
dall’utente soggettivamente, risulta fondamentale il ruolo del designer nel comprenderla e progettarla contribuendo
alla determinazioni di relazioni, coinvolgimento e pratiche significative.
Il concetto di materials experience può offrire una prospettiva interessante sul ruolo della materialità nella
definizione dell’agency. Tuttavia, limitandosi a una visione human-centered, la struttura della materials experience
non considera le interrelazioni tra soggetti non-umani che sono sottese nel concetto di agency (Latour, 1996), vale
a dire gli altri artefatti e le sostanze con cui un oggetto entra in relazione e gli ambienti in cui è collocato. Inoltre si
assiste all’emergere di nuovi classi di materiali ad alto grado di interattività che presentano proprietà inedite e
stabiliscono peculiari relazioni con utente, progettista, artefatti e ambiente: materiali connessi, interattivi, smart,
dinamici, computazionali e autoprodotti.
Obiettivo dell’articolo è esaminare le modalità in cui i materiali di un artefatto contribuiscono alla definizione
dell’agency. A questo fine, dopo aver tracciato un framework teorico illustrando i maggiori contributi e le posizioni
più rilevanti sull’argomento, saranno presentati dei casi studio di materiali e artefatti con diversi gradi di
interattività, analizzandoli secondo i livelli della materials experience, considerando le interrelazioni non-umane e
mettendone in evidenza la componente autonoma, indotta e interpretata.
F.E.E.L.: promoting sustainable behaviour through material interactive coupling
Sara Bergamaschi (Politecnico di Milano); Jelle van Dijk (University of Twente)
The field of Persuasive Design (PD) aims to investigate how products can influence users’ action. Conceptually it
is largely grounded in classic theoretical models, which invoke behavioral change either in terms of physically
constraining behavior or by changing mental attitudes by providing the necessary information to do so. When the
focus is on providing information, most design-principles assume the use of numbers, words or visual metaphors,
i.e., representations, typically elucidating some discrepancy between current behavior and desired behavior. Few
studies in persuasive technology have focused on more direct persuasive effects of material properties of products
and environments (without resorting to physical enforcement). In recent years, however, new technologies and
materials have been developed that offer a rich design space in which materiality plays a central role, and through
which meaningful, action-affording experiences can be created in interaction itself. For instance, objects are
presently able to change color or shape, offering new action possibilities in relation to the user’s history of
embodied activity and context. Thanks to this changeable materiality designers now may affect behavior by
creating personal meaningful experiences that emerge out of the situated embodied interactions with the product,
rather than by influencing rational decision making or plain enforcement. We propose a theoretical model of
persuasive design based on this opportunity. We offer an explorative case study as an illustration of the
possibilities that this framework offers which focuses to promote water saving behavior. A research-through-design
approach was applied with the purpose to explore design opportunities for a persuasive shape-changing system
embedded in the floor of a shower. The resulting design, “F.E.E.L.” embodies a novel form of interaction and new
tactile experience while showering with the aim to activate an interactive learning process though a dynamic
product experience. We use the F.E.E.L. case to reflect on the potential of the framework and offer possible
directions for its future development and implementation.
What light does: reflecting on the active social effects of lighting design and technology
Daria Casciani (Politecnico di Milano); Fulvio Musante (Politecnico di Milano)
Lighting can be interpreted as a meaningful social agent in setting a strong social relationship between ambiance
and people, despite of cultural differences and heterogeneous social representations. Even though the lighting
research has under-investigated the social effects of lighting, there is a general understanding that lighting have
strong social meaning and can influence people emotional, behavioural and social experiences: higher light levels
can induce greater arousal, increasing the sound levels of conversations and affording a more general
communication; on the other hand, a homelike environment and lower lighting levels, can influence a more relaxed
and intimate communication. Certain lighting atmospheres are considered more inviting and hospitable for people,
while specific juxtaposition of lighting patterns can even guide people gaze, attention and also drive their
movements.
#54#
In this paper we advance that, the active role of lighting needs to be deeper studied in order to design lighting
atmospheres that are sensitive to cultural, contextual and social situations. Recurrent insights from the literature
review have been integrated and fused into the research topic by focusing on the social experience of lighting
interaction. We present an extensive synthesis about the role played by lighting in human social life and social
experiences by both analysing the previous works from other researchers and by presenting concepts developed
by us. In our research-through-design exploration, we designed an adaptive luminous micro-environment that can
support the personalization of the lighting atmosphere for different degrees of socialization by different users or it
can adapt autonomously to social conditions by supporting participants’ social interaction, by anticipating or
instigating different social. From the user confrontation and through the qualitative analysis, we describe emerging
insights about the social role of light, reflecting on the sociality of lighting that act and perform for social intimacy
and inclusion and for social exclusion, facilitating different social structures.
Tangible interaction and cultural heritage. An analysis of the agency of smart objects and gesture-based
systems
Daniele Duranti (Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca); Davide Spallazzo (Politecnico di Milano); Raffaella
Trocchianesi (Politecnico di Milano)
Moving from a design perspective, the paper explores the potential of tangible interaction in museums and
heritage sites analysing how tangible interfaces and gesture based systems stimulate visitors’ involvement and
engagement. Going beyond tangibility intended in the strict sense of touching assets we propose a wider
interpretation of tangibility, intended as a practice of meaning making that fosters a strong involvement of the
body.
Starting from the broad categories of embedded and embodied interaction, we propose four paradigms of
interaction with smart objects and gesturebased systems: (i) smart replicas/originals, (ii) symbolic objects (iii)
codified gestures and (iv) performing gestures. Each category is described and analysed for its ability to stimulate
users’ interaction, suggesting what visitors should do in order to trigger contents. We study the agency (Latour,
2007) of objects and interactive systems in exhibits based upon tangible interaction and the role of design in
shaping the expected behaviour of users. We further connect the persuasive power of design (Redström, 2006)
with the ability of smart objects and interactive systems to foster interactions not only per se but also for their
ability to stimulate reflection on the assets on show.
Designing safety. The agency of PPE in everyday work practices
Silvia Doria (Università di Roma Sapienza)
Il non uso dei Dispositivi di protezione individuale (Dpi) in alcuni contesti di lavoro resta un tema ancora
problematico (Doria, 2012; 2014). Sebbene le teorie dell’agency degli oggetti sottolineino come in certi casi gli
oggetti divengano parte attiva nella rete delle relazioni sociali essendo in grado di prescrivere “agli umani” cosa
fare, è necessario continuare a riflettere su che tipo di relazione si (non si) attivi fra Dpi e suoi utilizzatori.
L’essere spesso calati dall’alto, in modo non partecipato, richiede agli utilizzatori di familiarizzare con essi, di riposizionarli entro un set di strumenti di lavoro quotidiani e di rispondere alle richieste dei nuovi script che dovranno
conquistare un proprio spazio di azione e interazione. Osservare i Dpi nel loro contesto d’uso e analizzarli entro la
prospettiva STS, dei design studies e dell’interaction design darà l’occasione per interrogarsi sul loro processo di
progettazione (anche in ottica di genere, dato il male standard su cui si basano), il disallineamento che avviene
nella traduzione delle norme sulla sicurezza (e relative specifiche tecniche che ne regolano/prescrivono la
presenza nei luoghi di lavoro), la relazione che tali oggetti intrattengono sul campo con gli attori che per legge
devono utilizzarli secondo modalità anch’esse stabilite dall’alto e sul loro complesso processo di stabilizzazione.
Tale circolarità d’inter-azione sarà il focus del lavoro. L’etnografia di alcuni cantieri e ulteriori interviste hanno
permesso di osservare le quotidiane pratiche di interazione con i Dpi: il bricolage, il non uso e il loro “sfoggio”,
p.es. In un cantiere sono diversi gli oggetti che traducono in pratica la sicurezza. Tra questi i Dpi: veicolo del
discorso “ufficiale” sulla sicurezza (fino alla sua identificazione: “la sicurezza addosso”); traccia per una loro
problematizzazione rispetto alla pratica operaia (spavalderia e sprezzo del pericolo vs pratica della sicurezza);
fenomeno di moda. Gli strumenti/Dpi calati dall’alto, inoltre, agiscono ‒ agevolando o impedendo ‒ sul
coordinamento e la collaborazione tra gli attori che li utilizzano nelle loro pratiche quotidiane di lavoro.
#55#
Acts of use from Gestell to Gelassenheit: calculative thinking and exploratory doing
Giovanni Marmont (University of Brighton)
This paper addresses the implications of open-ended instances of use and non-instrumental person-thing
interactions. Central to the argument is an analysis of Heideggerian work on technology and particularly of the
notions of Gestell [enframing] (Heidegger, 1977 [1954]) and Gelassenheit [releasement] (Heidegger, 1969 [1959]).
In Heidegger, these name respectively modern technology’s inherent danger – a totalising ‘unconcealment’ of the
world as mere resources to be exploited – and a possible gateway from it – in the form of an open mode of
thinking, void of calculative demands towards what is encountered. Suggesting that a possible transition from
Gestell to Gelassenheit needs not be intended as an exclusively metaphysical shift, as some have argued, it will
then be considered how a different way of thinking could be prepared and assisted by a different way of acting, of
doing. Such radical modification would crucially require questioning the very notion of use and its hazy relation to
functionality. The paper ultimately makes a case for modes of interaction with artefacts and acts of use as ends in
themselves, transcending teleological explanations and not exhausted in utilitarian functionalism. It is proposed
that a possible prototype for this type of inherently ludic and exploratory doing might be found in the activities of
French revolutionary group Situationist International.
LBMGs and boundary objects. Negotiations of meaning between real and unreal
Ilaria Mariani (Politecnico di Milano); Davide Spallazzo (Politecnico di Milano)
The paper reports on a study grounded on higher education didactic experiences involving around 180 BSc
students in the design of Location Based Mobile Games that mix digital contents and physical artefacts. These
games aim to raise awareness on sensitive issues and societal taboos or to increase citizens’ consciousness on
their role in preserving and improving the quality of the district wherein they live.
By means of data gleaned from a three-year didactic experience, we challenge the extant assumption that LBMGs
should exclusively rely on the digital/mobile component. Looking at LBMGs as situated experiences, we
investigate the relevant role and agency of physical elements: How do they interact with the space? With players?
How do they affect players’ behaviours? And players’ sociality? The study enquires a sample of 44 games
designed including consistent links between real and digital spaces initiated through game kits and physical
objects spread in the urban space, and able to activate specific behaviours and interactions.
In particular we focus on the agency (Latour, 2007) of the above mentioned physical objects, and on their ability to
trigger players’ actions and to persuade them to behave according to designers’ will and expectancy (Redström,
2006). We reflect and point towards students’ expectations of the object’s ability to trigger “correct gameplay”,
namely observations we considered significant being a clear statement of the design teams’ expectations that
have been confirmed or contradicted.
We analyse how these objects translate the fictional world into a space intertwined with the real one, rather than
simply overlapped, and how they foster meaning making and context awareness. Throughout the games, the
mobile device themselves are often employed as sources of fictional immersion (Murray, 1997; Ryan, 2001; Wolf,
2001) and as boundary objects that activate negotiations of meaning between real and “unreal”.
When objects tell stories. Children designing future smart objects
Seçil Uğur Yavuz (Libera Università di Bolzano); Nitzan Cohen (Libera Università di Bolzano); Roberta Bonetti
(Libera Università di Bolzano)
As objects are animated artefacts coming to life through their interaction with user, they are often defined as
agents, through which an individual make sense of his own existence and becomes a social individual. While our
material world has been continuously changing through the influence of new technologies, our relation with objects
has also altered, and consequently reaches new dimensions. Due to the fact that technology has been
continuously penetrating our daily life and the objects facilitating it, it has practically eliminated the difference
between a technological device and non-technological one. As a consequence, designers' role is becoming even
more crucial in merging the digital and physical worlds in a more harmonious way.
The Internet of Things has been widening the possibilities to make objects being connected to other objects,
people and digital data, while smart materials and microelectronics have given rise to intelligent living like
structures, having a defined character, behavioural patterns and even emotions. In this new realm, TANA
(TAngible NArrators) research project, conducted at UNIBZ, Faculty of Design and Art, intends to explore possible
future scenarios, in which objects become storytellers of many untold stories. This paper will represent the results
and analysis of co-design workshops conducted with 7-8 years old children, in order to discover objects potential
as storytelling agents.The workshops aimed at harnessing children’s free imagination and innovative power into
generating new ideas and new concepts of smart products integrated into our daily life.The paper will reflect the
results of the workshops with assumptions from both design and anthropological point of view discussing how
through smart objects people can enhance, evoke or create new meanings and social relations.
#56#
Track 18
Aligning Biotechnologies, Clinical Labor and Knowledge:
The Reconfiguration of Contemporary Biomedical Landscapes
Convenors: Stefano Crabu (Università di Padova), Manuela Perrotta (Queen Mary University of London)
Self-tracking, inter-veillance and the “endoptikon”. Why health apps have accelerated biomedicalization
Antonio Maturo (Università di Bologna)
Conrad (2007) defined medicalization as the extension of medical frames into everyday life and human conditions
not previously viewed as pathological. According to him the (interrelated) engines of medicalization include:
economic forces, the proliferation of diagnosis, consumerism and the organization of care. According to Clarke et
al. (2009), bio-medicalization is a more appropriate term than medicalization in light of a series of important
changes which have taken place since the beginning of the 21th century: the growing importance of the Health
Industrial Complex (Light and Maturo 2016), the centrality of the molecular gaze based on biology and most of all
on genetics (Rose 2007); and the advent of a medicine of optimization and human enhancement (Savulescu
2001 ). It is possible to claim that bio-medicalization is right now undergoing an additional “acceleration” (Rosa
2013). This acceleration is spurred by health apps. With health apps the “Quantified Self” is able create attractive
graphs and vivid histograms that represent detailed statistics about her physiological data (Lupton 2016). For
example, with health apps we can measure our level of anxiety, the progress we make in our diets or in our
running. Quantification is the mechanism that renders this process easy (Neresini 2016) - quantification is often
fostered by gamification (Maturo and Setiffi 2016). Quantification is connected to a technoscientific idea of health
based on biology and neurological frames (Maturo and Moretti 2016).
Moreover, we are able to share our most intimate biometrical states within seconds on the internet letting a
multitude of “hybrids” (friends, firms, algorithms) be informed about our quantified health. Therefore, surveillance –
or, better, interveillance (Colombo 2013) – stretches out into the molecular dimensions – what I call the
“endoptikon”. I will demonstrate this change by a content analysis of the most popular health apps.
From clinical trials to the clinic: translating genomic research into routine oncology practice
Sylvain Besle (SESSTIM, Marseille); Pascale Bourret (SESSTIM, Marseille)
The recent expansion of precision medicine in oncology is linked to the development of novel clinical trials whose
objective, namely the introduction of targeted therapies in clinical practice, can no longer be reduced to the mere
testing of the efficacy of targeted drugs. Rather, these trials qualify as complex experimental devices that aim to
explore the feasibility and large-scale implementation of genomic-profiling technologies and decision-making tools
for selecting targeted therapies.
This new kind of trials shares a common goal, i.e. to challenge the traditional design and organisation of clinical
research. Their performance relies on the establishment of new organisations such as biological/bioinformatic
analysis pipelines, and molecular tumour boards (MTBs), a novel institution that brings together clinicians and
biologists to discuss the genomic analysis of tumour tissues in order to decide, on that basis, which targeted drug
should be given to patients. In spite of these common features, however, this new kind of trials quite often has
different designs, and organizational features. Each trial, can be said to embody a specific development strategy
(Biankin, 2015), a scenario of how targeted therapies and precision oncology should be implemented and
translated into clinical routine and public health.
Based on an ongoing fieldwork in France, our paper explores how genomic-driven trials are increasingly paving
the way for “quasi-routine” clinical genomic activities. The paper will focus on how organisational devices and tools
initially developed as part of the trials have to be adjusted to fit the much less protocolized settings of routine
clinical activities, such as the lack of advanced laboratory equipment, the heterogeneity of patients and their
tumours, the lack of access to experimental drugs, and so on. In spite of these necessary adjustments, genomicsoriented cancer clinics are characterized by a strong orientation towards research, as exemplified, for instance, by
the quick adoption of new technologies such as liquid biopsies or exome sequencing, and by their close relation to
a portfolio of ongoing clinical trials. In other words, and beyond the distinction between research and treatment,
efforts are clearly underway to establish the organizational arrangements that will provide for the alignment
between routine clinical work and experimental genomics.
#57#
Allineare ricerca di base e ricerca applicata nelle biotecnologie del settore medico: uno studio di caso
francese su un procedimento innovativo di sequenziamento del DNA
Paolo Crivellari (Université Toulouse III)
La diffusione massiccia in diversi paesi di “innovation hubs”, “pôles de competitivité”, servizi universitari di
valorizzazione e sostegno alla ricerca solleva numerosi interrogativi sull’allineamento tra ricerca di base e ricerca
applicata, sulla democratizzazione della ricerca scientifica e sulla governance dell’innovazione biotecnologica. In
particolare, il trasferimento di nuove conoscenze e biotecnologie innovative in campo medico solleva diverse
questioni di tipo sociale, politico, economico ed etico come, ad esempio: come allineare ricerca fondamentale e
lavoro clinico? Quali sono le conseguenze politiche, sociali ed economiche di questo allineamento? Quale ruolo
può essere rivestito dal paziente o dal potenziale fruitore delle nuove conoscenze in campo biomedico?
Il nostro contributo si basa su una ricerca sociologica di tipo empirico finanziata dalla Maison des sciences de
l’homme et de la société di Tolosa (MSHS-T), condotta mediante tecniche di ricerca qualitative (interviste semistrutturate e analisi di documenti) su uno studio di caso in Francia. La ricerca studia in particolare le dinamiche del
trasferimento di tecnologia relativo ad una procedura innovativa di sequenziamento del DNA (chiamata
“MicroLAS”) più rapida e più economica di quelle attualmente utilizzate, con ricadute potenzialmente molto
importanti nella prevenzione delle recidive del cancro e nell’analisi del DNA fetale libero circolante nel sangue.
Tale trasferimento di tecnologia viene effettuato da un laboratorio pubblico di ricerca (il LAAS-CNRS) verso
un’impresa privata (l’azienda Picometrics), attraverso la mediazione di una società di accelerazione del
trasferimento di tecnologia finanziata con fondi pubblici: il Toulouse Tech Transfer (TTT). Le conclusioni
verteranno sull’evoluzione delle modalità di collaborazione tra laboratori di ricerca pubblici e imprese private nel
settore delle biotecnologie ad uso medico, sugli ostacoli e sui fattori facilitanti legati al trasferimento di
biotecnologie e alle conseguenze politiche e sociali ad esso collegate.
The medication reminder as enforcing a medicalised perspective on daily life
Francisco Nunes (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
In recent decades, western countries have invested large amounts to research and develop technologies for
people living with chronic conditions. Technology was the key enabler of a care reform that would shift patients
from institutionalised settings to the home, where they would self-care – or manage the condition by themselves.
Self-care technologies were often framed as promoting ‘choice’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘emancipation’, however, that
might be well detached from the everyday experience.
In this paper we discuss how self-care technologies can impose a medicalised perspective on daily life. In
particular, we discuss how the medication practices of people living with Parkinson’s, that include planning,
delaying, and skipping medication, contrast with medication reminder applications that promote blind adherence to
a strict schedule with no possibility for exceptions or adaptations. Medication reminders seem to have incorporated
a medicalised perspective on selfcare, where it is not about practical challenges and negotiations, but about
complying with medication at the right time at all cost. While medication reminders were supposed to be tools for
helping to weave medication into the daily life, they ended up functioning as tools that promote strict daily
schedules. The example of medication reminders shows that self-care technologies can contribute to enforce a
medicalised perspective on patients’ everyday lives. What is most concerning though is that such enforcement can
lead to further disciplining patients in a relationship dominated by doctors and healthcare systems.
Frozen oocytes: polemic bio-objects to reconfigure women’s and men’s wishes, fears and contradictions
Lucia Martinelli (MUSE, Trento); Lucia Busatta (Università di Trento)
Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) offer favorable insights for analyzing women’s and men’s wishes, fears
and contradictions through processes continuously negotiated in the intersection of science, politics and society. In
our study, analysis of narratives of various actors involved in ARTs, in Internet-based social networking sites as
well as during 2 focus groups with patients and stakeholders, pointed out the ambiguous interpretation of biology
innovations as promoter of new opportunities or new facade of enduring contradictions. ‘Timing’ and ‘aging’ are
particularly stressed in medical narrative, as well as in the web sites of private clinics to recruit patients. This is
quite noticeable in the case of social freezing, i.e. the autologous human oocyte cryopreservation to store
women’s eggs to be used later by the same donor for ‘elective’ (non-medical) reasons, which poses new questions
about timing related to fertility decline and motherhood. In distorted information, social freezing to postpone
parenthood is proposed as a suitable alternative to conventional reproduction. When this practice has been
proposed as a new opportunity to conciliate professional needs and pregnancy, it has also been questioned if
such need should be better deserve proper changes in social and working organization. A more inclusive society
should instead find concrete structural solutions for supporting women to conciliate motherhood with
social/professional lives. By shifting the awareness from a medical procedure to social relations, frozen oocytes
become polemic bio-objects and pose the questions “what is / who decides which is the ‘right’ time to be a mother”
and point out as ARTs may result in a medicalization of social problems.
#58#
Old policies, new science and global publics: governing stem cell research and therapies in India and
China
Saheli Datta (King’s College London)
In 2012, China issued a one-year trial ban on unapproved stem cell therapies. A year later, India published the
‘Guidelines for Stem Cell Research’ ostensibly dropping the word ‘therapy’ from its earlier 2007 edition. The
problem is that despite these policies, the stem cell therapy industry in both nations continues to grow. I argue that
this governance dichotomy- strengthening policies and unhindered growth of divergent practises- emerges from
unique features of science, society– the market and the state. First, I argue that it is the disruptive nature of stem
cell science that lends itself to direct-to-consumer models of ‘unproven’ therapeutic-delivery and creates spaces in
the global lifesciences industry for emerging players like India and China. Second, that globalisation effects shape
and are shaped by the gradual ‘mainstreaming’ of the direct-to-consumer model of therapeutic-delivery by
emerging techno-globalised modes of communication that have given voice to patient autonomy and helped
construct new ‘publics’ of internet-mediated patient networks. With the ‘health choices’ of these emerging ‘publics’
increasingly challenging established statistical foundations of western science and medical innovation (Salter, et.al
2015). Third, that the lower-levels of governance mediated through historic patron-client relationships e.g. guanxi3
in China and similar networks in India, enable the science-society relationship – i.e. the direct-to-consumer
therapies – to exist outside the policy-mechanisms against it. Finally, I draw on the unqiue ‘goldilocks’ features
from which the direct-to-consumer (D2C) model evolves to show that while D2C’s ‘uniqueness’ (a) makes it
nongeneralisable and thus unlikely to be replicable by other emerging medical technologies, it also (b) makes the
D2C incompatible with India and China’s governance efforts that are intrinsically oriented to established
statistically-driven drug delivery systems.
#59#
Track 19
It's not All about Numbers: Gendering Processes in Technologies
and Technological Careers
Convenors: Annalisa Murgia (Università di Trento), Barbara Poggio (Università di Trento)
Gender asymmetries in science and technology in India and the world. Interplay of social structure and
culture
Venkatesh Sujatha (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Women’s under-representation in science and technology careers is found in all societies, including those that
have high civil liberties for women in other domains of life. There are several explanations for the exclusion of
women in the ST sector -, namely, leaky pipeline and glass ceiling effect, that stress on organizational factors. But
the question remains why despite such lofty achievements in legal and civil liberties women’s participation in
science and technology fields is so poor even in the countries of the global north. Also interesting is the fact that
women’s participation in S&T careers in Catholic countries, Eastern Europe, Brazil and India is equivalent to or, at
times higher than that of Germany, Sweden and the US. This paper makes four key arguments: Firstly, that
gender asymmetries in science and technology fields exist everywhere, but the pattern of asymmetry and the
reasons are different. The enquiry hence has to go beyond organizational factors. Secondly, there may be a
common set of problems affecting men and women in a social setting and there may be ways in which they affect
women more. We have to start with the general and identify the grounds from which we understand women’
careers differentially. Thirdly, it is important to examine the role of cultural ethos of a society because cultural
stereotypes which lead to gender bias are not the same in different societies. Fourthly, the issues regarding
women’s careers in the sciences are different from mission oriented technology projects and the way in which
women negotiate in these two environments will have to be understood. Drawing on published data on the theme
in the international arena and interviews with women and men scientists in S&T fields in India, this paper tries to
highlight the four arguments mentioned above.
Let’s talk about… Reflexivity as tool for implementing a habitus-sensitive culture
Elisabeth Anna Guenther (Technische Universität Wien)
The area of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is hallmarked by several subtle and implicit
processes that engender inequality. Women and minority members encounter several small hindrances and
accumulate different kinds of disadvantages during their life course (i.a. Ferree and Purkayastha 2000; Haines,
Wallace, and Cannon 2001; Primack and O’Leary 1993). Very often, it is rather a covert, tacit nudge than an overt
discrimination that fosters opt-out decision of qualified women and minority members. For instance, when it comes
to students’ performance reinforced or even unaddressed stereotypes threaten the test outcome of stigmatized
students (i.a. Shapiro and Williams 2012; Tine and Gotlieb 2013; Trytten, Lowe, and Walden 2012). Based on the
understanding that such tacit acts are inscribed in a person’s habitus and therefore an echo of somatized
domination patterns (i.a. Bourdieu 1998; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) I aim to elaborate on how someone can
engage in a more habitus-sensitive and inclusive, i.e. anti-discriminatory, social practice. One main tool in this
regard would be to engage in a reflexive inspection of common practices, such as teaching STEM.
In this paper I elaborate on what is needed to engage in such a reflexive practice. I base this paper on the
theoretical principle of Bourdieu and on empirical results achieved by examining the inequality regime within the
social practice of teaching STEM at an Austrian university. Regarding the latter, I ground this elaboration on
results of my doctoral thesis, where I showed among others, that the teaching staff often neglects social markers
and thereby reproduces a narrow normative notion of an »ideal« student. Even teachers who recognize difference,
often reproduce prejudices. Based on this observation, I conclude that there are three steps towards a more
reflexive practice: (1) neglect, (2) recognition, (3) deconstruction. I will expand on this in the final paper.
#60#
A web resource for gender aware PhD supervision
Daniela Ferri (Fondazione Bruno Kessler); Tatiana Arrigoni (Fondazione Bruno Kessler); Ornella Mich, Anna Perini
(Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
As extensively shown in the literature, women's under-representation in the STEM area, a definitively male
dominated field, should be traced back to the obstacles that women face in the course of the development of their
scientific career already at its initial stage, i.e. the PhD (Benschop, Brouns, 2003; Bagilhole, White, 2013).
Several international research studies have shown that in the STEM area women have more negative experiences
of doctoral supervision than men. As a result, women are more likely to leave the academia than their male
colleagues (Lovitts, 2004; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012)
Staring from the evidences presented in the literature, the 7FP project FESTA (http://www.festa-europa.eu/) has
worked at the specific task of developing a gender oriented web resource through a participative approach,
involving 63 PhD supervisors (29M, 34F). The goal of the task is to enhance PhD supervision processes by
offering a set of supportive tools for both students and supervisors. More exactly, the web resource is aimed at
increasing the gender awareness of supervisors, while at the same time helping students in learning and making it
possible to them to navigate the PhD journey in a supportive environment. The web resource covers in facts many
of the issues that one may face during the initial stages of his/her scientific career. It also includes
recommendations for a good supervising practice. We thus assume that the development gendered-oriented
technologies can help, in the long run, to undermine gender imbalances.
A first assessment phase of the tool has been already carried out through an open discussion with a group of
supervisors - both senior and junior. For future work, a new assessment step has been planned involving both
PhD students and supervisors, in order to check the real effectiveness of the instrument in the long term.
Both women and men are expected to benefit from the recommendations of the web-resource, since the latter
describe effective and high quality supervision practices for everybody. Moreover, addressing biases of a specific
kind, like gender biases, one contributes to a culture that challenges all kinds of biases, and may create an
inclusive learning culture for everyone.
Strategy for institutional cultural change. Guiding universities to gender equality
Virginija Šidlauskienė (Šiauliai University); Gintautas Jazdauskas (Šiauliai University)
In 2015 women have been pursuing upper secondary and further education more actively than men, but,
obviously, women remain more severely underrepresented among researchers than among highly qualified
professionals in traditionally male-dominated scientific and professional fields. This could point towards a need for
organisational culture which moves towards and promotes integration of women into STEM fields.
The purpose of this study was to examine how institutional culture promoted or impeded the implementation of the
EC flagship initiatives ’structural change program’ promoting the structural transformation of science institutions.
The approaches suggest a slow and holistic change management, in other words a multi-layered approach. This
approach suggests overarching and cross-related actions that are being implemented in an evolving matter where
the need for certain actions is evaluated and assessed in order to achieve a cultural change. This was illustrated
by using practical examples of one of the projects as well as explaining the methodology and guiding through the
process of implementation.
By employing the experience drawn from implementation of the EU project INTEGER (abbr. Institutional
Transformation for Effective Gender Equality in Research) which was implemented in 3 EU member states
(France, Ireland and Lithuania) (2011-2016) we were able to extract and differentiate the best practices and
transform them into certain step-by-step guides on how to achieve the desired results. Moreover by explaining the
overarching methodology of structural socio-cultural change the article discusses the procedure in a guide-like
manner thus enabling the good experience to be used in other HEI & RI organisations.
“(Do not) publish with your supervisor!”. The ambivalent construction of independence in a scientific
career
Marita Haas (Technische Universität Wien); Helene Schiffbaenker (Joanneum Research)
The conference paper deals with the construction of gender asymmetries in scientific and technological careers.
Relating to the allegedly neutral requirement of excellence in scientific careers (cf. ERC Work Programme 2016,
ERC Rules for Submission and Evaluation, 2015) we look at (gendered) mechanism of preference and
discrimination in promotion processes. In this context, we pose the question how independence – which serves as
an element of excellence and thus as a selection criterion – is constructed differently in two distinct, but
comparable settings. The body of data consists of two data sets that were developed i) in narrative-qualitative
interviews with female scientists about their career development; and ii) in qualitative interviews with male and
female reviewers who discussed the selection process of a European excellence award. Our aim is to analyze if
#61#
and how gender practices allow for the same reconstruction of independence in the two different environments
and how this especially affects upon women.
Analyzing data from two highly competitive settings in the male dominated field of academia, we pose the following
questions: How is independence constructed in promotion processes? How is it talked about and negotiated in
formal and informal interactive settings that aim to foster young scientists’ careers? In which respect do actors
refer to independence and what notions of independence do they have in mind? Is it done differently for female
and male scientists? We use a social constructionist perspective that connects face-to-face interaction of
individuals with organizational structures and processes as they depict the dynamic and interactive processes of
constructing social order (Acker, 1990; 1992; Gherardi & Poggio, 2001). Practices refer to conscious and
unconscious acting that are informed by gendered stereotypes which then produce inequality and exclusion (Van
den Brinck and Benshop 2011; Martin, 2003; 2006).
In our final contribution, we will discuss our findings from a scientific, but also political point of view. Results will
further complement the existing quantitative approaches on the construction of independence from a qualitative
perspective (Sandström & Hallsten, 2008; Van den Besselaar & Sandström, 2015; Wenneras & Wold, 1997).
It’s about numbers: a critical perspective on measuring gender equality. The challenging issues raised by
the GenderTime project
Anne-Sophie Godfroy (Université Paris Est Créteil)
The paper is based on the outcomes of the GenderTime project, a EU funded project from 2013 to 2016, aimed at
implementing gender equality plans in seven research and/or higher education institutions. First, the paper will
present the findings of GenderTime regarding methodology to implement and measure structural changes. The
paper will question what we can be done with this data. It is very easy to count women and men with the existing
data, but it is very difficult to measure gender equality beyond specific case studies. All the relevant data to
approach how the academic landscape may be gendered is either unavailable or hard to retrieve from written
reports. Several reasons may explain this situation. We examine them in a second part. One of the reasons is the
division of the data between human resource management data and data on research and teaching. A second
reason may be the poor connections between scientometrics and gender studies. We explore in a third part a
deeper: a wrong perspective on gender and academic issues and inappropriate explanatory models. When the
tools try to capture the research activity, many elements are taken for granted but do not correspond to the actual
setting. The dominant theoretical model is the « leaky pipeline » which privileges a perspective where people stay
in the same pipeline all along their career. This model misses the dynamics of mobility between the academia and
the rest of the world, between disciplines and between institutions. The scale and the perimeter are not relevant.
As a conclusion, if we want to move beyond counting women and measure gender equality in the academia, two
research topics are priorities: first collecting new samples of data, and/or improving the quality of existing data, in
connection with scientometrics; second, exploring alternative explanatory models to better reflect the dynamics
and the diversity of the academic settings.
Challenging the norm: technologies, organisations and inclusive innovation
Patrizia Garengo (Università di Padova); Chiara Salatin (Confindustria Veneto SIAV); Giovanni Bernardi
(Università di Padova)
A shift in the global business environment is ongoing. Industrialized countries are launching different strategic
initiatives to support the development of smart factories build around the numerous innovation technologies
available. This huge phenomenon is labeled in different manners: “Industrie 4.0” in Germany, “Industrial Internet”
in USA, “Internet +” in China. Notwithstanding the labels, the underlying phenomenon is rooted in the same
technological innovation, the emerging of cyber-physical systems, i.e. computer systems able to continuously
interact with the physical system. These systems are composed of physical elements and they are able to merge
computational capacity with communication and control capabilities.
Even if the focus is often on “factory”, such radical technological innovations are affecting not only the
manufacturing process. Business models are deeply interested and accordingly the occupational structures and
required skills will change. The development of smart factories will strongly influence work and employability. As a
consequence, women’ share of “smart workers” in careers such as technology & management engineering, ICT
and digitalization, product and industrial design shall increase quantitatively and qualitatively; moreover, numerous
jobs will change configuration with a growth of employment in highly cognitive and creative jobs and low manual
occupations. In fact, to achieve the full potential of Industry 4.0, the importance of differences shall be exploited
and organizational structures shall evolve.
Empirical analysis of practical cases from Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom within the Erasmus+
project “SMART JUMP - Smart entrepreneurial skills for Creative Industries: an inclusive perspective” provides
knowledge on current and potential inclusion and how to address gendered structures in joint processes for growth
and innovation – with focus on women and young entrepreneurs in the creative industries and Industry 4.0. The
analysis employs previous research on inclusive innovation, including the Quadruple Helix model.
#62#
Track 20
The Use of Imaging Technologies in the Biomedical Field.
New Expertise, Practices and Professional Visions
Convenors: Marina Maestrutti (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Barbara Pentimalli (Università di Roma
Sapienza)
Diagnostic radiographers’ skills and radiologists competencies: boundaries and overlapping
José A. Pires Jorge (Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse occidentale)
Radiography is undergoing profound changes which represents a break from how radiographers have been
practicing their profession for decades, as a technical activity, often learned “on the job”. We posit that it is
imposed by changes resulting from the spread of digital technology and practices of standardisation and
certification (radiation protection, quality assurance, patient rights, and administrative procedures). These changes
mean that currently the work of a radiographer relies as much on communication and the handling of meanings as
it does on the handling of technical devices. Therefore, an analysis of both the language and the technical
processes employed in the actual activity of the radiographer is necessary to understand the current nature of this
work. We have implemented a methodology for the analysis of the radiographers’ clinical work in reference to the
methodological findings formulated by proponents of the Activity Clinic. Simple and crossed self-confrontation was
used to examine the professional activity. This study was carried out in medical radiology departments of a Swiss
hospital. The participants were eight volunteering radiographers, out of which three were working in nuclear
medicine, two in radiotherapy and three in radiology departments. This communication is focused in one of the
main results that shed light on radiographers playing at the boundaries of their role when dealing with questions
from patients. Filmed activity discussed by radiographers highlighted one of the difficulties faced by them. Their
technical and relational activity involved a complex posture. It had to reconcile a comprehensive management of
patient’s fears with the limitations associated with their function and role, which proscribes them from commenting
on what appears to be a provisional result on the screen. An “unease” in the denial of the diagnostic skills they
acquired through experience but which is not recognised by the status that comes with their training.
Co-operative action in complex and guided technologyenvironments: the example of X-ray technicians
Vanessa Rémery (Université de Genève); Laurent Filliettaz (Université de Genève)
The contribution of our team in the research program "Becoming X-ray technicians" focuses on the conditions for
carrying out practical training for technicians trainees and the modalities through which the transmission between
experts and novices takes place on the workplace (Filliettaz & Durand, forth.). Our communication emphasizes on
cooperative activities arising from the management of a patient in a conventional X-ray room at hospital by a team
composed of a mentor and a trainee (Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2002, 2007). We stress on the social and interactional
organization of this team whose activity is both patient-oriented and technologically mediated, to characterize the
form of cooperation that is emerging during this guided radiological examination (Heath & Luff, 1994; Goodwin,
2013; Heath, Luff & Svensson, 2005).The analysis is focused on the interactions between the technicians, who
have to coordinate themselves to deliver treatment to the patient and obtain a quality image. This support is highly
dependent on the use of technological artefacts, in a temporality adjusted to the characteristics of the patient. We
start from the video-ethnographic observation of work, and we build on the contextual analysis of interactional
organization (Filliettaz, 2014; Goodwin, 2014). The production of a radiological image requires mutual attention to
the activity of the colleague. The expert has a specific commitment because he assumes at the same time a
mentor’s role that forces him to perform guidance indexed to highly contingent practical problems that emerge
during work, and a sequential evaluation of trainee's operations with the machine. The expert's activity is
characterized by a multi-focalisation (Goffman, 1987, 1991; Filliettaz, 2005; Remery & Markaki, 2016) which is
manifested through various multimodal procedures. This contribution involves understanding on how the novice's
training transforms the realization of the work activity, and also characterizing the forms and varying degrees of
visibility of these issues over the activity.
#63#
La costruzione del senso nella produzione e nell’interpretazione delle immagini mediche in radioterapia :
una prospettiva enattiva
Marie-Charlotte Bailly (Université de Genève)
L’utilizzo delle tecnologie di rappresentazione in radioterapia capovolge la configurazione del corpo e delle
pratiche professionali corrispondenti. Queste trasformazioni pongono alcune questioni sulla produzione e
sull’interpretazione delle immagini mediche definita matching, di cui sono incaricati i Tecnici di Radiologia Medica
(TRM). Tale pratica consiste nel sovrapporre degli indicatori numerici esterni visibili con indicatori corporei interni
non visibili, al fine di stabilire un trattamento terapeutico. Tuttavia risulta impossibile ai TRM anticipare con
esattezza lo stato di un corpo vivente o replicare in modo identico una determinata immagine. Questa
presentazione rende conto di una ricerca empirica sui processi di significazione che intervengono nel matching e
delle relazioni che si stabiliscono tra i differenti elementi significativi. Tale approccio s’iscrive in un programma di
ricerca in atropo-tecnologia fondato sull’ipotesi di enaction (Varela, 1989).
Per raccogliere e analizzare il senso che i tecnici di radiologia attribuiscono al loro lavoro, abbiamo condotto una
ricerca su cinque TRM del servizio di radioterapia dell’Hôpital de Genève, basata su tre tipologie di dati:
osservazioni etnografiche, riprese video di situazioni di lavoro, trascrizioni d’interviste condotte a posteriori.
I nostri risultati mostrano come i TRM applichino degli accorgimenti: da un lato, essi costruiscono, in interazione
con «il sistema tecnico» (Simondon 1989), una struttura singolare dove ognuna delle loro azioni è amplificata dagli
indizi significativi che colgono retrospettivamente e, allo stesso tempo, da ciò che analizzano prospetticamente;
dall’altro, mettono in evidenza come il dispositivo tecnico non sia un mezzo inerte «senza origine e senza un
divenire» (Stiegler, 2010). Ogni immagine, movimento, seduta terapeutica, non sono isolate. I tecnici
rappresentano i depositari di una storia vivente che si ripete ogni giorno: essi associano tra loro l’evoluzione del
corpo, la costruzione dell’immagine medica corrispondente e le esigenze tecniche. La questione che si pone è
come sia possibile rielaborare tali acquisizioni nel contesto della formazione dei TRM, alla luce dei risultati
provenienti dall’analisi della pratica del matching.
And the winner is… Professional vision enhancement vs. algorithms in embryo selection
Serena Naim (Queen Mary University of London); Manuela Perrotta (Queen Mary University of London)
Exploring the case of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), the paper investigates two different models of professional visions’
inscription in Biomedical Imaging Technologies (BITs). This contribution stems from a research project that
investigates the case of Time-Lapse Photography (TLP) in fertility treatments, which allows professionals and
patients to see embryos at a very early stage. TLP is now available for monitoring the development of embryos
and is used as a support in deciding which embryos to transfer. The present contribution focuses on the
development and stabilization of two models:
Support Machines, supposed to enhance the embryologists’ professional vision, such as Embryoscope. This is a
special incubator that includes a camera and a computer system to visualise the embryos in the labs. The criteria
to select the best embryos are defined by each laboratory where this device is used. The assumption seems to be
that the role of the embryologists cannot be replaced by a software.
Automated Machines, which select better quality embryos through an algorithm, such as Eeva (Early Embryo
Viability Assessment). As reported on the producer’s website “the Eeva Test was designed to provide your IVF
team with reliable, objective information to select embryos with greater confidence”. In this case, the automated
selection process is perceived as more reliable than human assessment.
Our aim is to explore the contraposition between, on one hand, the use of BITs as a substitute of professional
vision and, on the other, as its enhancement. Through document analysis (producers’ and clinics’ websites,
promotional videos, patients’ and doctors’ testimonials, and newspapers’ articles) we examine how these
machines mediate the creation of knowledge about the body and its understanding.
#64#
Il corpo frammentato nelle immagini laparoscopiche
Miriam Ronca (Università di Salerno / Université de Genéve)
Tra le attuali tendenze di esplorazione endoscopica (cistoscopia, colonscopia, colposcopia, isteroscopia,
rectoscopia ecc.), basate sull’utilizzo di un tubo ottico (endoscopio) che permette la visualizzazione delle cavità
interiori del corpo, la laparoscopia è l’unica tecnica chirurgica che sfrutta un differente registro visivo. La pratica
laporoscopica realizza, infatti, una nuova cartografia del corpo, che da superficie visiva si trasforma in superficie
spaziale, ovvero in un territorio da esplorare e decodificare in rappresentazioni digitali. La profonda trasformazione
operata da tali immagini, richiede, in primo luogo, l’elaborazione e l’affinamento di tutta una nuova serie di
approcci d’interpretazione medica della materia organica: se da un lato la trasformazione in pixel e
l’assoggettamento ad algoritmi e a operazioni di tipo matematico sottopongono l’immagine del corpo a una
manipolabilità totale, dall’altro provocano una radicale destabilizzazione della materia corporea, sempre più
frammentata dai codici tecnologici. Come la laparoscopia massimizza questo effetto di frammentazione del corpo?
Come il dispositivo laparoscopico instaura una maniera di descrivere il corpo inteso come struttura organizzata
attorno ai suoi organi sessuali? Come la tecnica è concettualizzata nelle attività di comunicazione ospedaliera?
Per rispondere a tali interrogativi, si analizzerà, in primo luogo, la problematica delle trasformazioni generate
dall’utilizzo di Internet come canale d’informazione nei sistemi ospedalieri. In particolare, l’intento sarà quello di
esaminare le pagine web dell’AOU Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Policlinico "Federico II" di Napoli, il più
articolato ospedale universitario del Sud Italia, dall’elevata qualificazione e specializzazione in campo
ginecologico, nonché l’unico sul territorio nazionale a presentare, nel portail web GINEUNINA, una galleria di
immagini e video, in cui i chirurghi del Dipartimento di Science della Riproduzione mostrano e spiegano la pratica
laparoscopica, diagnostica e operatoria (http://gineunina.it/gallery).
Tale tipo d’indagine cercherà di comprendere come la laparoscopia rappresenta una mediazione tra i ginecologi e
le loro pazienti, causando delle ripercussioni sulle percezioni del corpo.
#65#
Track 21
Shaping Responsibility in Socio-Technical Environments
Convenor: Simone Arnaldi (Università di Padova)
RRI in science museums: stimulating engagement in contemporary science
Patrizia Famà (MUSE, Trento); Lucia Martinelli (MUSE, Trento)
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is the future of scientific advancement and social progress and is
changing science and innovation in Europe. It is required a new way of doing science engagement to involve as
many stakeholders as possible. Science museums, in their mission as forums for engaging the publics in science,
are best locations where elaborating suitable communication/education tools to hampering the shift from science
popularization to active participation. MUSE, in its activities, has already embraced this vision as its own flag. This,
also thanks to the involvement in a number of EU projects concerning RRI, such as SYNENERGENE (FP7,
Responsible Research and Innovation in Synthetic Biology, https://www.synenergene.eu/), NANO2TRUST
(Horizon2020, Nanotechnology Mutual Learning Action Plan for Transparent and Responsible Understanding of
Science and Technology, http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/198406_it.html) and SPARKS (Horizon2020,
Rethinking innovation together, http://welcome.projectspark.com/). In working with stakeholders from across
research, the arts, industry, education, policy and civil society, we are developing strategies of bringing into
practice innovative informal science education through experiences aiming at sparking interest in science and
technology and at promoting science careers, critical thinking, creativity, science literacy and responsible
citizenship. Controversial science innovations (such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology, biomedical innovations)
are best topics to be challenged under the light of RRI and to be exploit through dialogic approaches such as
interactive touring exhibitions, theatrical conferences, citizen dialogues centered on scenarios, and reversed
science café events focused on various ethical
and societal topics. We present this activity, and successes and challenges are discussed.
Responsibility as the removal of ‘communicative’ barriers: the example of border
controls
Robert Gianni (Université de Namur); John Pearson (Université de Namur)
During the last decades, the historical development of the economies in Europe has led to the promotion of the
production process and management schemes according to innovative and sustainable imperatives. In this
respect, the EU Commission has recently merged the categories of research and innovation with the one of
responsibility in order to re-launch the economy by addressing broader societal needs with a faster and cheaper
investment (Owen et al. 2013; Jacob et al 2013; EU Commission 2012).
The concept of responsibility is meant to fulfil the different but related needs of the economy and society because
of its breadth and flexibility, i.e., thanks to the polysemy of its understanding. Accountability, liability,
blameworthiness or care, are all semantic layers of an overarching concept of responsibility, which enables its
adoption in several social contexts and in different domains of application (Hart 1968; Jonas 1979; Beck 1992;
Ricoeur 2000; Vincent et al., 2012; Grunwald 2013). If it might appear understandable how to detect responsibility
at a personal level, it is still difficult to determine assessment criteria for responsible practices in socio-technical
and thus plural scenarios.
The aim of this contribution is to highlight that the actualisation of responsibility for the development of future
technologies is beneficial for several reasons but only if we act on the institutional conditions enabling actors to
freely interact with each other. Responsibility is the deployment of inclusive practices to favour communication
amongst recognised actors in order to implement freedom of all those concerned.
The example of border controls (BODEGA Project) is just one particular example of application of responsibility to
socio-technical scenarios. Here interactions between human beings and technologies develop according to
different drivers like security, speed and fairness, implying different concomitant understandings of responsibility.
The application and implementation of RRI through the six keys, is meant to reinforce the balance amongst
different acceptions of responsibility as well as drivers through the removal of ‘communicative’ barriers.
#66#
Responsibility and realeconomiks. Technoscientific controversies on pesticides pollution in the Prosecco
wine production areas of the north-east of Italy
Andrea Lorenzet (Università di Padova)
Technoscientific controversies can be interpreted as triggering situations, in which a strong – sort of extreme – call
for responsibility is being made. Public debates and matters of concern related to technoscientific objects might be
made suddenly visible because of a perceived strong and urgent need for both responsibility and action, which is
in these particular cases considered to be lacking, at least at the level of the general public. Digital methods are
deployed here to analyse the technoscientific controversy on pesticides pollution in the Prosecco wine production
areas in the north-east of Italy (Conegliano-Valdobbiadene), in order to explore the controversial calls for
responsibility that are about to be found when respect for nATURE and the eNVIRONMENT clashes with what it is
defined as Realeconomiks, that is a strong drive for profit and the market, caused by great economic revenues.
What happens in the public sphere when Realeconomiks in the agricultural sector ends up in stimulating a public
debate on pollution and the environment is described, a situation in which official expertise and public authorities,
as allies of responsibility, are strongly challenged by Realeconomiks demanding needs. Popular actor-networktheory concepts are mobilized, and in particular the actant one, by building a description of the call for
responsibility enacted in a semi-digital context (online local news and other websites). Through digital methods,
the complex interaction among the general concept of responsibility present at the public level, Realeconomiks,
wine industry, technoscientific objects such as the prosecco wine, pesticides and designation of origin
certifications is about to be unveiled.
A national law as an actor-network: how Guatemala’s general electricity law of 1996 shaped the
environmental conflicts over hydroelectricity
Renato Ponciano Sandoval (Università di Padova)
In this article, the role of 1996’s Guatemala’s General Electricity Law (GGEL) in the social conflicts regarding
hydroelectricity is studied under the ANT approach, particularly the methodology of controversy mapping [Latour
(2005); Venturini (2009); Neresin & Lorenzet (2014); Pellizoni (2011)]. At first, it’s discussed how an array of actors
–right-wing political parties, private sector lobbyists, droughts leading to an energy crisis, and the international
wave of privatization- came together and stabilized in a bill intended to bring modernization to Guatemala’s energy
market and ease the transition to a more sustainable energy matrix. Then, how the actions and motives of the
network that promoted it, were translated in the GGEL and how it enrolled other actors (research institutions,
renewable energy activists). And finally, how GGEL became an actor on its own, exerting an influence beyond –
and even against- its stated original purposes. Now, twenty years later, GGEL has become a relevant actor on the
social conflicts surrounding the development of new hydroelectricity projects. But contrary to what was expected, it
has fueled controversy, rather than decreasing it. The reason is that GGEL indirectly imposes restrictions on what
can be negotiated among the stakeholders of a particular project, because the law forbids selling energy to third
parties. Therefore, it deprives both developers and communities of a strong asset to negotiate with. By
establishing clear responsibilities on the electrical network, thus shifting the burden of commercialization from the
producers to other entities, GGEL also has weakened their position. This shows how translation becomes central
in a network as it transforms the objectives of the actors to a new set of rules provided by a non-human actor; and
how those rules not necessarily advance the initial goals of the former.
#67#