On multiple agencies: when do things matter?

ABSTRACT

The late twentieth century sociology began to recognise the performative role of technological artefacts in human lives. These objects enact their non-human agency by actions that human users cannot completely control. This paper critically assesses existing approaches that investigate the relation of human and non-human agencies (actor-network theory, the ventriloqual perspective on communication, contemporary affordance theory). The main focus of this article is the challenge of describing the performative influence of routine and invisible objects. By analysing existing approaches that employ the concepts of inscriptions and attachments, the paper argues that the ventriloqual perspective on communication is human-centered because it assesses the relevance of an object by pointing to a person’s attitude to it (attachment). In turn, actor-network theory is object-centered as it emphasizes the visible performativity of technologies (inscriptions) and ignores the action possibilities provided by them. Meanwhile, contemporary affordance theory helps to extend the agency of things to their potential performances. Despite the shortcomings and merits of existing approaches, each of these frameworks employ multiple types of agencies without full acknowledgement. Using the examples of several empirical studies, the author shows that there is a lack of conceptual clarity when trying to account for the agency of routine and invisible objects. By reconciling the inscription and affordance perspectives, the author delineates four types of agencies that material objects can enact. In the conclusion, theoretical and methodological implications for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Human and non-human agency
• actor-network theory
• ventriloquism
• inscription
• affordance

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Nils Klowait and anonymous reviewers, whose valuable edits and comments made this paper comprehensible both in content and language. “This article was written as part of the “Social cognitive science: integrating cognitive research and social sciences” research project by the Center for Sociological Research of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (2018).”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Maria Aleksandrovna Erofeeva is senior research and teaching fellow of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. As a theoretical sociologist, her primary focus are Actor-network theory, Object-oriented ontology and related frameworks of the ontological branch of Science and Technology Studies. She is also currently investigating ways to reconstitute the Goffmanian school of microsociology in light of the material turn.

ORCID

Maria Erofeeva http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0874-5272

Notes

1 The term ‘material semiotics’ usually denotes an early attempt of ANT to account for the agency of non-humans by applying the semiotic toolset to a social world (see especially Akrich & Latour, 1992). This does not exhaust ANT’s project, though some researchers may equate them (see Law, 2009). Although I tend to distinguish these lines of research in ANT, this paper is mostly concerned with material semiotics (or the ‘script approach’ [see Jarzabkowski & Pinch, 2013]) as it was contrasted with affordance theory. Therefore, I use labels ‘material semiotics’ and ‘ANT’ interchangeably.

2 This stabilization is not localized at the macro level, since ANT seeks to avoid a separation of macro and micro (see Latour et al., 2012; Latour, 2014).

3 In this paper, I defined these patterns by juxtaposing the visibility of an object’s action with its constitutive or performative role in an interaction. I do not claim that it is the only (or best) way to determine them.