Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The meshing of impersonal and personal forces in technological action.
AU - Mackenzie, A.
N1 - RAE_import_type : Journal article RAE_uoa_type : Sociology
PY - 2006/8/1
Y1 - 2006/8/1
N2 - Many critical approaches ascribe a deficit of meaning to technology. The theory of technological action developed in the paper treats technology as an important, eventful terrain for collective life. Drawing on Michel Foucault's idea of problematisation, it places contemporary technological actions in settings suffused by power relations. It finds in the work of Gilbert Simondon ways of explaining how technological action overflows social norms, forms, identities and structures. Based on analysis of processes of abstraction and concretisation in a spectrum of symptomatic examples, it contends that cultural theory should develop understandings of the potentials that give rise to technological acts as a way of being with others. The paper suggests how cultural theory can engage with the specificities of these actions.
AB - Many critical approaches ascribe a deficit of meaning to technology. The theory of technological action developed in the paper treats technology as an important, eventful terrain for collective life. Drawing on Michel Foucault's idea of problematisation, it places contemporary technological actions in settings suffused by power relations. It finds in the work of Gilbert Simondon ways of explaining how technological action overflows social norms, forms, identities and structures. Based on analysis of processes of abstraction and concretisation in a spectrum of symptomatic examples, it contends that cultural theory should develop understandings of the potentials that give rise to technological acts as a way of being with others. The paper suggests how cultural theory can engage with the specificities of these actions.
U2 - 10.1080/14735780600961775
DO - 10.1080/14735780600961775
M3 - Journal article
VL - 47
SP - 197
EP - 212
JO - Culture, Theory and Critique
JF - Culture, Theory and Critique
SN - 1473-5784
IS - 2
ER -