1,721,083 research outputs found
Bodies Translating Bodies: Methodological Reflections on How to Tackle Aesthetic Practices from an ANT Point of View.
Full text linkSTS and 'aesthetic studies' share an interest in artifacts and the aim to describe and analyse both artifacts and their agency. The present article contributes to such dialogue, first by reconstructing the relation between Actor-Network Theory and 'aesthetic studies' and then by proposing an analytical model enabling the description of 'aesthetic practices', by considering artifacts as bodies. Such model draws on Latour’s (2004) reflection about bodies, on Ingold’s (2007) one about materials and especially on Fontanille’s (2004) semiotics of the body. To illustrate the relevance of the model, the article offers a description-analysis of the development of a prototype of an electronic circuit designed for a data glove.
 
Using mature technologies to innovate medical practices: a reflection on medical innovation taking socio-organizational issues into account
No full textThis article presents a reflection on how mature technologies can be used to innovate when they become elements of a new network of interactions, knowledge, and actors. Starting from analysis of the role of a mature technology, the electrocardiogram (ECG), in ordinary practices in the healthcare system and in a case of teleconsultancy among practitioners, this article discusses innovation in medicine by moving away from the simplistic equation “innovation = new technology“ and taking socio-organizational issues into account. In the case described, information and communications technologies (ICT) and electronic ECG provide the infrastructure with a new type of activity in which the practices of medical examination and specialist consultation are redefined by the new opportunities for interaction offered by remote consultation. Despite its low level of technological complexity, new medical practices can fill an important gap in the current configuration of healthcare systems. Connecting the General Practitioner's (GP) practical experience and the cardiologist's reading and interpretation of ECG creates a new medical practice with great potential for the risk prevention of acute cardiovascular events. The case presented provides useful insights to shift the attention from technological innovation itself to technology in use new socio-organizational configurations-insights that could also be generalized outside the medical field
Collaboration à distance dans les pratiques médicales. Un cas de téléconsultation cardiologique
No full textEn se basant sur un cas de téléconsultation entre professionnels médicaux, cet article s’intéresse aux conditions socio-interactionnelles et organisationnelles de la collaboration à distance plus qu’aux conditions technologiques. L’étude se focalise en particulier sur l’importance de la médiation réciproque dans la relation entre les opérateurs et les éléments pertinents de la pratique diagnostique. La téléconsultation cardiologique est analysée en tant que parangon d’un système à distance où les deux opérateurs ont besoin d’interagir pour avoir accès aux éléments indispensables à la définition de la situation du patient. Cette définition, impliquant une pluralité de facteurs (facteurs de risque, familiarité avec certaines pathologies, thérapies mais aussi style de vie, situation psychologique et/ou sociale, etc.), se réalise au cours de l’interaction, grâce à un processus d’alignement discursif entre les deux médecins. C’est justement cette nécessité réciproque d’une médiation, grâce à la symétrie se créant dans la distance, qui assure la réalisation de la collaboration.
Based on a specific study case of teleconsulting between medical professionals, this article not so much aims at questioning some technological circumstances, but rather aims at analysing the socio-interactional and organizational conditions to remote collaboration. This study especially focuses on the importance of reciprocal mediation between operators, as well as on the relevant elements of diagnostic practices. Cardiologic teleconsulting is regarded as a pertinent model of analysis among collaborative remote systems, where both operators need to interact in order to access the meaningful elements defining the patient's situation. This definition encompasses various factors (risk, acquaintance to some pathologies, therapies, but also life style, psychological/social state...), and is carried out during the interaction thanks to a process of discursive alignment between the two MDs. This is this very reciprocal need for mediation that ensures collaboration, thanks to the symmetry emerging from the distance between the interlocutor
Sulla produzione materiale. Qualità sensibili e sapere pratico nel processo di stabilizzazione degli artefatti
No full textNegli ultimi anni numerosi studi nell’ambito dei Science and Technology Stu- dies cercano di aprire la scatola nera del design. Questi lavori pongono attenzione alle pratiche di progettazione di architetti, designer, ingegneri aerospaziali e progettisti di tecnologia, evidenziandone la natura sociale e situata. La stabilizzazione di un nuovo ar- tefatto è il risultato emergente di negoziazioni tra differenti attori, vincoli normativi, materiali e sociali. La progettazione acquisisce, così, nuove dimensioni, coinvolgendo attori un tempo non considerati rilevanti. La presente ricerca si concentra sulle artico- lazioni di un nuovo artefatto basate sulla relazione sensoriale dei fornitori-artigiani con i materiali e le loro qualità sensibili. Attraverso la descrizione del processo di progetta- zione di un nuovo oggetto di arredo intendo ritracciare l’emergere delle sue qualità sensibili
Dalla produzione automatizzata agli ambienti tecnologicamente densi: la dimensione sociomateriale dell'agire organizzativo
No full textOn the Fringe of Parenthood: Othering and Otherness in the Italian Assisted Kinship
No full textIn the last few decades, fundamental changes have occurred in Italian society, particularly in the fields of reproduction and family models. Yet, despite these changes, the Italian law regulating assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) restricts provision of fertility treatments to “stable heterosexual couples” who are clinically infertile. Italian regulations on ARTs are embedded in the production of a new form of “othering”, through the definition of which categories of parents are acceptable and which are not.In this article, we will take into account both the process of othering as the macro-discourse that defines what can be considered a “family” and the intended parents’ individual forms of positioning in otherness. We will use the concept of othering from a double perspective: on the one hand, focusing on the macro-discourses in which power is assumed to lie in the hands of the powerful; on the other, investigating how otherness is performed by marginal persons. On the basis of the analyses of the Italian public debate on ARTs and of twelve interviews with patients who had experienced assisted kinship from the margins we will illustrate how the production of “otherness” is not only related to a legal framework, but rather to a dominant rhetoric of what is supposed to be a “real” family
Affidarsi
No full text“affidarsi” produced empowerment through the relinquishment of agency. We thought that such dynamics resonated well with what Antoine Hennion (2007; Gomart and Hennion 1999) had
shown about amateurs. We then considered “affidarsi” an interesting and positive set of dynamics that could, if proven diffused and frequent, account for the innovations that characterize “Made in Italy". We tried to translate “affidarsi” in English, but we did not find any adequate translation. Nor “to trust” or “to trust in”, nor “to count on”, nor “to rely on”, nor “to have confidence in”. Though all relevant, they do not convey the relinquishment of agency we, as Italian native speakers, sense in “affidarsi”
Sensitive translations: Sensitive dimension and knowledge within two craftsmen's workplaces
No full textIn our paper we address the issue of the relations between knowledge and the sensitive dimension by taking into account and comparing the contribution to the production of a chair deployed by two craftsmen working within the Italian design furniture industry sector. Relying on an ethnographic account of their work, we have been able to describe in detail the way in which the interaction among the bodies of the two craftsmen and those of the artifacts they contribute to develop takes place and gives way to innovation. By taking into account the role of bodies and the sensitive dimension we outline a contribution to Actor-Network Theory and its theory of knowledge. Indeed, in this article we propose a model of working knowledge in order to account for corporal interaction on the workplace. In our model there are two axes to describe the interactions among bodies. In the first one interaction moves from detail to the whole. In the second, interaction moves from an engaged position to a disengaged one. In so doing, we are able to draw a space of corporal knowledge. The craftsman's skill lies in his/her capacity to move within this space and to let knowledge grow while moving within it. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd
Knowing in a System of Fragmented Knowledge
No full textKnowing is a situated activity. Adopting a practice-based approach, this article describes a workplace characterized by technologically dense practices as a setting in which human actors and technological objects work together. The case of remote cardiological consultation is paradigmatic of how information and communication technologies (ICT) enter workplaces and reshape them as systems of fragmented knowledge: that is, learning settings in which people, symbols, and technologies work jointly to construct and reconstruct understanding of social and organizational action. Working at a distance, therefore, requires the acquisition of skills relative to the mobilization of fragmented knowledge, and the latter's alignment into a fully-fledged work practice. Knowing-in-practice is accomplished by discursive practices: Framing and postscripting, as practices that generate a space of signification for the subsequent action; footing, as the dialectic that enables people to align themselves within a predetermined frame and disrupt its coordinates; and delegation to the nonhuman, as the ability of humans to delegate the performance of clinical practice to nonhuman systems, which come to be regarded as active subjects within the remote consultation
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