Submitted manuscript, 189 KB, PDF document
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Bodies, technologies and action possibilities: when is an affordance?
AU - Bloomfield, B P
AU - Latham, Yvonne
AU - Vurdubakis, T
PY - 2010/6
Y1 - 2010/6
N2 - Borrowed from ecological psychology, the concept of affordances is often said to offer the social study of technology a means of re-framing the question of what is, and what is not, ‘social’ about technological artefacts. The concept, many argue, enables us to chart a safe course between the perils of technological determinism and social constructivism. This article questions the sociological adequacy of the concept as conventionally deployed. Drawing on ethnographic work on the ways technological artefacts engage, and are engaged by, disabled bodies, we propose that the ‘affordances’ of technological objects are not reducible to their material constitution but are inextricably bound up with specific, historically situated modes of engagement and ways of life.
AB - Borrowed from ecological psychology, the concept of affordances is often said to offer the social study of technology a means of re-framing the question of what is, and what is not, ‘social’ about technological artefacts. The concept, many argue, enables us to chart a safe course between the perils of technological determinism and social constructivism. This article questions the sociological adequacy of the concept as conventionally deployed. Drawing on ethnographic work on the ways technological artefacts engage, and are engaged by, disabled bodies, we propose that the ‘affordances’ of technological objects are not reducible to their material constitution but are inextricably bound up with specific, historically situated modes of engagement and ways of life.
KW - affordances
KW - body
KW - disabilities
KW - sociomateriality
KW - technology
U2 - 10.1177/0038038510362469
DO - 10.1177/0038038510362469
M3 - Journal article
VL - 44
SP - 415
EP - 433
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
SN - 0038-0385
IS - 3
ER -