Nov 18th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Network – Ch. 6 – for Comment

Spinuzzi, Clay. Network:  Theorizing Knowledge Work in Communications. New York: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Chapter Six:  Is Our Network Learning?

Summary:

In this chapter S. discusses how the nature of work has changed fundamentally in the age of informational capitalism.  By referring to workers as “deskilled” (Haraway), “dividuals” (Deleuze), “reskilled” (Castells), and “lifelong learners” (Zuboff and Maxmin), S. points out that the worker in the informational age will be in a constant state of negotiating different tasks and demands.  This argument is laid out in more detail at the beginning of Chapter 5.  Anyhow, after illustrating that Telecorp’s primary problem is a modular-production training model (well suited for Fordist economies, but no more), S. argues that they must do more associational – or rhizomatic – training in the future.  Instead of vertical integration models of learning (it all comes from the top down), what needs to happen more is horizontal learning practices – learning predicated on associations across departments.  While S. criticizes the formal training, apprenticeship and self-learning at Telecorp, he recognizes that learning did occur – to some extent.  He categorizes that learning in the same way that he characterizes networks in chapter 2.

1. Heterogeneous – Workers at Telecorp were able to juxtapose different things – humans, individuals, nonhumans, groups, tools, belief, etc. – into assemblages that collectively perform activities.  They even learned in a heterogeneous manner through heterogeneous genres and tools.
2. Multiply linked – Because of all of the hidden passages and Hannibal’s passes at Telecorp, learning happened through multiple links to multiple people and technologies.  This learning subverted the vertical integration model.
3. Black-boxed – There was a problem with black-boxing at Telecorp.  Because the various assemblages wherein work occurred had so many facets and were changing so often, the information to that needed to be transferred between actants became too idiosyncratic and specific.  According to Spinuzzi to more effectively traverse the assemblages at work, more horizontal training in confidence-building and negotiation needed to be attended to.  This sort of training would result in the closure of some of the more problematic black-boxes in the network.
4. Transformative – Transformations are central to any network because they allow for new pressures (Actor-Networks) to be assembled.  While Telecorp did a good job transforming texts, they did not provide for a way to transform their workers (training) so that the workers themselves would be capable of working through the associations and away from siloic modularities.

Method:

• While the method has been pretty clear throughout the book, Spinuzzi again attends to Actor-Network-Theory and, to a lesser degree, Activity Theory in this section.
• Spinuzzi’s work is ethnographic.

Questions:

• I wonder to what degree Spinuzzi’s method is a rhetorical-analytical schema to make sense of an ethnographic study.  Bonnie Nardi, in her new book (forthcoming 2010) on activity theory and World of Warcraft calls her activity-theory informed research as “go-with-the-flow ethnography.”  To what extent is this work ethnography with an ANT/AT inspired data analysis sieve?
• How can we see ourselves using ANT or AT in our own work?  We’ll try to take this question up more at the end of our presentation tomorrow.

Nov 7th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Final Project – Rudy

Rudy, Alan. “Actor-Network Theory, Marxist Economics, and Marxist Political Ecology*.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 6 (2005): 85-90. Print.

• The relationship between Marxism and ANT is logical because of Marxisms longtime engagement with the historical concern with relations between natures, sciences, technologies, and societies.
• ANT is characterized as a “non-modern relational mode of analysis” that isn’t comfortable with the dualisms of modernity:  science-politics, subject-object, macro-micro, etc.  In Marxist terms, it utilizes a materialist conception of history.
• Power in ANT is a network effect – not something wielded by social individuals over objectified others or natures (87).
• Latour and ANT background many of the “sociopolitical worlds” infusing technoscience.
• ANTs goal – as articulated by Callon – is to permit “an explanation of how a few obtain the right to express and to represent the many silent actors of the social and natural worlds they have mobilized” (90).  In this sense, ANT is an exploration of political representation and the genesis of sovereignty.

Nov 7th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Final Project – Linstead

Linstead, Stephen. “Ethnomethodology and Sociology: An Introduction.” The Sociological Review 54 3 (2006): 399-404. Print.

• Ethnomethodology’s goal is to create an “alternative program to reveal social order as dynamic, contingent ‘ongoing accomplishment” (399).
• Ethnomethodology doesn’t consider the micro or the macro, rather, it tries to concern itself with the different contexts of accountability in which both individuals and institutions are given identity and reproduced.
• Ethnomethodology was first articulated by Garfinkel.  Latour references him as an American theorist working toward similar goals as ANT.

1. Garfinkel’s work looked at neither macro or micro sociology (sites); rather, because Garfinkel doesn’t study either institutions or individuals, but contexts of accountability (think the network and relations inside the network, the black box, etc.) because this is where and how social institutions and individual members are reproduced holistically” (400).

Nov 7th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Final Project – Hunter

Hunter, Shona. “Oscillating Politics and Shifting Agencies: Equalities and Diversity Work and Actor Network Theory.” Equal Opportunities International 26 5 (2007): 402-19. Print.

• This essay uses ANT to develop an analysis of Iopia, a Black woman equalities educator working in a prison in the UK in an education context.  The article hopes to demonstrate how the actor-network interacts with both human and non human objects to “challenge racism” in this particular context (402).
• The study found that Iopia moved from an initial position of being marginalized to one central to the “new” network for quality and diversity.  This network challenges and sustains narrow exclusionary definitions of diversity.
• The authors consider this a “feminist ANT analysis” and see their work interacting with more fully developed and integrated versions of critical race and critical culture theories to analyze equalities work.
• The article places an emphasis on the act of translation to see how folks can use “material objects to draw in multiple ‘others’ into their own networks.
• A fundamental tension for this article is the one that develops between the “real” work of equality and the work that many folks do – sometimes begrudgingly – toward diversity.
• ANT is used in this article to “illuminate the formalized and less formalized processes through which equality and diversity gets taken up and not taken up in organizations” (404).
• ANT is taken up by some feminist science studies.  A list includes:  Singleton 1996, 1998; Star 1991; Haraway 1991, 1997).  Perhaps you should look to these to see how feminism and ANT work together.
• This article points out some fundamental problems/debates in ANT : 1) the colonizing policy of ANT in relation to the “other,” 2) the politics of ANT, 3) the importance of ambivalence (amorality), and as a result, extensive embellishments on the original work.  (405)
• Much like Latour, the authors of the piece rely on Callon (1986) to demonstrate that the objects of the world are constituted by their relations with objects, not vice versa.  Callon’s work also demonstrates that there is no analytic distinction between human and non human actors.  Notions such as “institutions, state, class, ‘race’ or gender’ are constituted as ‘coherent, consistent, uniform across time and space’ through networks of people, ideas and objects” (406).
• Great lay definitions of the processes of gaining allies:
  • Interessement:  This is what you really want to be
  • Translation:  We are the ones who can help you become that.
  • Enrollment:  Grant your obedience by your own consent.
  • Displacement:  Ignore or pay less attention to other scenarios, make this network more durable
• Feminists such as Susa Leigh Star “suggests that one powerful way in which feminist analysis and ANT can be joined is in linking the outsider or marginalized actors characteristic of feminist work with the translation model of ANT to explore ‘the point of view that which cannot be translated:  the monstrous, the Other, the wild’” (408).  In this way, ANT can help analysts understand what “marginal actors achieve through day-to-day work and the novel ways in which organizational future may get play out as a result” (ibid).
• This article really uses ANT to demonstrate how to “coerce” or “persuade” actors through translation toward enrollment.
• This ANT work underscores the multiplicity of identities involved in ANT work by highlighting how the networks we engage in are multilayered and intersectional.  While being an enroller of different actors, one is also always enrolled in other networks.  These multiplicities point to how a single conception of the object is always woefully inadequate.  The study also highlights how non-human actors (policies in this case) have the ability to enroll actors and make things happen (they have agency).

Nov 6th 09 Posted by justin in CCR691

CCR691 – Project Proposal

Justin Lewis

Final Project Proposal

October 15,  2009

CCR691

Overview

Motivation

When I applied to Syracuse University a little over a year ago, I had every intention of working with folks who did “digital” rhetoric studies.  Though my understanding of this particular subfield of the discipline was rather malformed and deficient, I did know that Collin Brooke and Adam Banks both dealt with issues of technology in theory and practice.  Since arriving here a couple of months ago, I have had ongoing conversations with Brian Bailie about the study of networks and Actor-Network Theory as this is one of his minor examination areas.  Further, when discussing with other CCR students my interests in the function of resistance networks and the flattening of social spaces in digital forums, I am often directed to Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social.  Because I am being referred to the same concepts, theories and authors by different folks across the program and because of my interest in the “social”l in the digital age, I would like to consider Actor-Network Theory my site of investigation for this assignment.

Scope

In my investigation, I intend to cover a couple of different areas.  First, I want to concentrate on reading a seminal theoretical work concerning Actor-Network Theory.  As such, I have included Latour’s Reassembling the Social in my bibliography.  Second, I would like to see what Actor-Network Theory looks like in large-scale research practice.  To meet this desire, I’ve decided to include Spinuzzi’s Network:  Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications.  To supplement these two book-length texts, I have chosen a collection of articles that speak to ANT and networks from inside of our own discipline (DeVoss 2005, Eyman 2009, Johnson-Eilola 2005, etc.) and from outside.  The articles I have selected from outside the discipline are concerned with two areas:  1) ANT and social/ecological justice, and 2) ANT and political agency.  Because of a lack of scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition on ANT, I have chosen to include some Activity Theory scholarship from our field as the analogs between ANT and Activity Theory are many.  To account for the methodological practices of ANT, I have selected a few articles that illustrate the influence of ethnomethodology in the planning and application of ANT-based research.  Finally, on the advice of Dr. Brooke, I have included two studies of activity theory (Kaptelinin & Nardi 2006, Spinuzzi 2007) to supplement my exploration of ANT in this research project.

Parameters

In constructing my working bibliography, I often found myself excluding scholarship to ensure a focused study.  As such, there are many ANT associated theories and practices for which this project cannot account.  In the interest of specificity, this project will not address ANT in the broader context of network theory and activity theory.  Also, this study will not attempt to account for the interplay between Latour’s theorization of ANT and Mark C. Taylor’s explanation of complexity theory.  Finally, as this project hopes to more fully realize the connection between ANT and CCR, my work will not account for the rich body of scholarship in Sociology concerning ANT with the exception of sociological studies focused on issues of social justice (i.e., no management and leadership studies).

Key Questions

1. What is Actor-Network Theory as articulated by Bruno Latour?
2. What important thinkers/theories/texts contributed to the development of Actor-Network Theory as offered by Latour?
3. How is Actor-Network Theory put into practice in the fields of cultural rhetoric, writing, and sociology?
4. How can Actor-Network Theory contribute to real-world qualitative or quantitative research?
5. What is ethnomethodology and how does it work in the context of Actor-Network Theory?
6. How can Actor-Network Theory be used to understand and construct active networks for social justice and sustainable living?
7. How does Actor-Network Theory account for agency and truth?
8. What enduring questions confront the field of Actor-Network Theory now and in the near future?
9. What are the relationships between ANT and Activity Theory?  How has Activity Theory been theorized in Rhetoric and Composition?

Rationale

I am confident there are a couple of different ways that this project will contribute to my overall development as an emerging scholar in the field.  First, as I am interested in the rhetoric of technology and the development and spread of social networks, this study will allow me to expand my familiarity with scholarship concerning these subjects in the disciplines of rhetoric and composition.  In addition, I hope to propose a lesser examination in network theory or the rhetoric of technology.  Working on this project will provide an opportunity to enhance my conversance with the scholarship in these two areas.  While I haven’t spent a good deal of time thinking about my dissertation topic yet, I am fairly certain that I will have to account for agency in my work.  As such, a thorough exploration of Actor-Network Theory will allow me to spend some time assessing the validity of the theory in the context of agency.  Finally, I know that Collin Brooke uses Latour and Actor-Network Theory as a theoretical underpinning in some of his own scholarship.  I hope to eventually work with Collin in preparation for exams, the dissertation and on collaborative scholarship.  With this goal in mind, I believe a deep understanding of the core concepts and problems of Actor-Network Theory would allow me to pitch myself more effectively as a dedicated student and collaborator[1].

Working Bibliography

DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole, Ellen Cushman, and Jeffrey T. Grabill. “Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New-Media Writing.” College Composition and Communication 57 1 (2005): 14-44. Print.

Elder-Vass, Dave. “Searching for Realism, Structure and Agency in Actor Network Theory.” The British Journal of Sociology 59 3 (2008): 455-73. Print.

Eyman, Douglas, Stephanie Sheffield, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. “Developing Sustainable Research Networks in Graduate Education.” Computers and Composition 26 1 (2009): 49-57. Print.

Holifield, Ryan. “Actor-Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political Ecology.” Antipode 41 4 (2009): 637-58. Print.

Hunter, Shona. “Oscillating Politics and Shifting Agencies: Equalities and Diversity Work and Actor Network Theory.” Equal Opportunities International 26 5 (2007): 402-19. Print.

Johnson-Eilola, J. “Living on the Surface:  Learning in the Age of Global Communication Networks.” Page to Screen:  Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era. Ed. Snyder, Ilana. London: Routledge, 1998. 185-210. Print.

Kaptelinin, Victor, and Bonnie A. Nardi. Acting with Technology Activity Theory and Interaction Design (Acting with Technology). New York: The MIT, 2006. Print.

Kemp, Thomas Barker and Fred O. “Network Theory:  A Postmodern Pedagogy for the Writing Classroom.” Computers and Community:  Teaching Composition in the Twenty-First Century Ed. Handa, Carolyn. Portsmouth: Boynton Cook, 1990. 1-27. Print.

Koschmann, Timothy. “Chat, Ethnomethodology, Distributed Cognition, Actor-Network Theory: Pick One.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 15 4 (2008): 361-65. Print

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social:  An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. New York Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.

Linstead, Stephen. “Ethnomethodology and Sociology: An Introduction.” The Sociological Review 54 3 (2006): 399-404. Print.

Potts, Liza. “Using Actor Network Theory to Trace and Improve Multimodal Communication Design.” Technical Communication Quarterly 18 3 (2009): 281-301. Print.

Rice, Jeff. “Urban Mappings: A Rhetoric of the Network.” RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38 2 (2008): 198-218. Print.

Richardson, Pamela. “Agricultural Ethics, Neurotic Natures and Emotional Encounters: An Application of Actor-Network Theory.” Ethics, Place & Environment 7 3 (2004): 195-201. Print.

Rivers, Nathaniel A. “Some Assembly Required: The Latourian Collective and the Banal Work of Technical and Professional Communication.” Journal of Technical Writing & Communication 38 3 (2008): 189-206. Print.

Routledge, Paul, Andrew Cumbers, and Corinne Nativel. “Grassrooting Network Imaginaries: Relationality, Power, and Mutual Solidarity in Global Justice Networks.” Environment and Planning A 39 11 (2007): 2575-92. Print.

Rudy, Alan. “Actor-Network Theory, Marxist Economics, and Marxist Political Ecology*.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 6 (2005): 85-90. Print.

Spinuzzi, Clay. Network:  Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.

— “TEXTS OF OUR INSTITUTIONAL LIVES: Accessibility Scans and Institutional Activity: An Activity Theory Analysis.” College English 10.2 (2007): 189-201. Print.

Trauger, A. “Social Agency and Networked Spatial Relations in Sustainable Agriculture.” Area 41 2 (2009): 117-28. Print.

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[1] While the project I am working on in Collin’s CCR601 class deals tangentially with Actor-Network Theory, the real focus of my work in his class this semester is a genealogical tracing of Taylor’s complexity theory, Heideggarian being and the kairotic moment.  As such, I won’t be duplicating much, if any, work between CCR601 and CCR691.