tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post3043944220441245301..comments2023-07-16T04:38:04.407-05:00Comments on Spinuzzi: Reading :: Acting in an Uncertain WorldClay Spinuzzihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-78289680321461140252011-03-10T20:21:24.047-06:002011-03-10T20:21:24.047-06:00This helps me a lot too. Your characterization of ...This helps me a lot too. Your characterization of my approach seems accurate to me. My label of "insignificant actant" ( for your fingers, food, or keyboard for instance) is used in the context of significant translations, mobilizations, mediations or transformations. The foreground is what process comes between the backgrounded things. I run much deeper in psychology than sociology and that may distance me from objective phenomena and fascinate me with subjective perceptions, understandings and interests. This helps me sort out the strange way (in my view) that Latour characterizes enrollment. <br /><br />Thanks for all these clarifications, Radhika.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-67883402122456360922011-03-10T16:44:42.138-06:002011-03-10T16:44:42.138-06:00Okay - now I see where we are at cross purposes. Y...Okay - now I see where we are at cross purposes. You are focused on how you understand phenomena, on the process of understanding, on your perceptions, whereas I am focused on the phenomenon itself. I don't see the act of calling some actors intermediaries and mediators as 'slapping a label' thing at all - just a matter of tracing the emergence and understanding the participation of different actors in assemblages how things emerge in assemblages. I don't think intermediaries are dismissed as 'impenetrable black boxes' at all, but rather the understanding of their role as 'intermediary' is arrived at through empirical work. I don't see this as any different to your label of 'insignificant actor'. Curious how different labels grab us!Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-34895605243187352402011-03-10T15:07:31.633-06:002011-03-10T15:07:31.633-06:00Thanks Radhika! Now that you mention it, I had pon...Thanks Radhika! Now that you mention it, I had pondered that distinction between mediators and intermediaries deeply. I eventually dismissed it as inappropriate for ANT which is why it's no longer in my mind. In my view, those non-mediator intermediaries have assemblages of interests in being that way, have been enrolled in not mediating, got translated by mediators or intermediaries to be non-mediators, etc. <br /><br />To dismiss them as impenetrable black boxes is, in itself, functioning as an intermediary. A genuine mediator would transform intermediaries by enrolling them in mediating by showing an interest in their assemblage of interests, not by slapping an " Danger- Un-mediator Inside" label on their black box. <br /><br />I wasn't considering insignificance as an attribute of the actants, but rather a characterization of my perception (map, text, sociology etc) - which is, as you're saying, emergent and temporal, but facets of my outlook.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-49282286476186084662011-03-09T23:53:31.281-06:002011-03-09T23:53:31.281-06:00Tom - excellent - very thought provoking. Latour (...Tom - excellent - very thought provoking. Latour (in Reassembling...) says something like 'intermediaries just sit there and do nothing' - in that they don't translate or change anything. Mediators, on the other hand, do things and leave traces. <br />I think the issue with significant/insignificant actants is a temporal matter - significance (or insignificance) being not inherent properties of actants, but empirically realised, emergent properties.Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-12802226727993863382011-03-09T20:48:22.337-06:002011-03-09T20:48:22.337-06:00Hi Radhika: Yes to how I'm using "wonder&...Hi Radhika: Yes to how I'm using "wonder".The phrase "begin and end with wonder" is a Whitehead quote I found in "The Prince of Networks - Bruno Latour and Metaphysics" by Graham Harman. Being free of Modernism and Post Modernism leaves one open to trace connections without preconceptions, separations or models. Wonder seems like a great word for that receptivity. <br /><br />There is no difference between mediators and intermediaries in my mind. Teach me what you're discern with that difference. The possibility of nodeless networks linking empty places has captured my imagination and "insignificant actants" fits that possibility. Insignificant actants also fits my shallow grasp of Whitehead's advice to avoid the error of "misplaced concreteness". It also fits the premise of Gestalt psychology's reversing figure/ground or foreground/background to replace chronic problems with sustainable solutions. Within those contexts of mine, "significant actants" become Modernist, components of networks linking enduring objects, misplaced concreteness and a gestalt for chronic problems. <br /><br />I look forward to your next thoughts.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-78811550654125646702011-03-09T16:56:54.408-06:002011-03-09T16:56:54.408-06:00Hmm. Could we not see the 'significant/insigni...Hmm. Could we not see the 'significant/insignificant actant' as the difference between a mediator and an intermediary? 'Wonder,' it seems, is your way to describe how we apprehend/understand what has occurred - I have to think how this sits with ANT's performative/co-production accounts...Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-63788539388633979432011-03-09T09:03:18.236-06:002011-03-09T09:03:18.236-06:00Hi Radhika - I wonder how you could say such a thi...Hi Radhika - I wonder how you could say such a thing? By my wondering like that, I'm likely to discern the assemblage which translated what I wrote into what you wrote. You must have eaten some food that gave you the energy to think what to say and then to type your thoughts. What you ate is an actant and insignificant in my view. Giving you energy is a translation within an assemblage -- which I deem significant. The food exhibits asymmetric power as none of the other actants in your assemblage can give you this metabolic energy. You must have fingers and a keyboard or voice recognition software -- to have typed out your thoughts into these words. The translation of your thoughts into words on a screen is significant. What actants enabled that translation is not. The food has inferior power in the context of getting your words typed out on a screen. You must have an Internet connection for what appeared on your screen to appear here. What connection you use is another insignificant actant. Translating words on your screen to this remote location is very significant in my view. The power to transmit your words digitally is also asymmetric with food and keyboard/software which are powerless to get that done. <br /><br />Now I'm wondering how I could say such a thing in response to what you wrote? To wonder about my own assemblage is symmetric with yours. Neither of our assemblages, inquiries or words are privileged over the other. My learning increases significantly when my wondering extends beyond a seemingly isolated instance. Yours may also. Wondering translates unknowns into inquiries and knowns into expanded possibilities. <br /><br />I discern my similar assemblage of insignificant actants and significant translating to show up here with these words. I wonder where your assemblage ends and mine begins and whether the two are really disconnected when translating becomes the foreground to the background of separate food, computers and Internet connections. I wonder what will come of having seen and said all this? My food, keyboard and ISP may be wondering the same.<br /><br />Thanks for keeping this going!Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-71227008834234074472011-03-09T02:39:00.813-06:002011-03-09T02:39:00.813-06:00Hi Tom - interesting - not my reading at all. We m...Hi Tom - interesting - not my reading at all. We may wish away differences in power etc but I think without differences in power, there would be no assemblage at all. Besides it would be a great disservice and offence to those who suffer the consequences of differentials in power to insist that there are no differences in power. The criticism of the 'first wave' ANT (criticism I don't agree with) is that it focused on 'those in power' as in Pasteur - that the 'actors' that were 'followed' were the 'powerful', at the cost of the 'silent' or worse, 'silenced'. Later ANT studies focused on multiple modes of ordering rather than merely the one that is privileged. I don't see Latour at all as denying that inequities occur in power - what he says, I think, is that power in not an inherent characteristic of any actor - it is aquired relationally. I am not sure at all about this idea of 'focus on the relations and ignore the actors'- without actors there is no assemblage. The concept of 'wonder' to me invokes individual cognition and I cannot relate it to any ANTish ideas.<br />I can see that this conversation will continue awhile!Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-28626947814727735102011-03-08T07:41:43.202-06:002011-03-08T07:41:43.202-06:00@Clay Thanks Clay! Good luck with your SXSW gig on...@Clay Thanks Clay! Good luck with your SXSW gig on Friday.<br /><br />@Alex Thanks for giving us some ANT food to chew on. As I've read Latour's Reassembling the Social, he regrets his prior emphasis on actors/actants. He is seeking to flatten all privileged positions and asymmetric relations. That revision tells me to render actors/actants as insignificant as if that stops making something out of nothing. It's in this sense that I invoked Whitehead. Latour suggests viewing power dislocated from those "in power" and expertise (sociology, pedagogy, etc.) as evenly distributed among actors. Then a figure/ground reversal can occur where what's in between becomes the significant figure and objects become insignificant background. Apprehension of those interrelations begins and ends with wonder, not with categories, frameworks or hierarchies. Process becomes something while misplaced concreteness (reifications, delusional constructs, labels, etc.) gets rendered as nothing. Learning could only a verb that appreciates distributing cognition without a model of distributed cognition or framework of learning as a thing/noun.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-36171918674213695312011-03-07T21:38:45.032-06:002011-03-07T21:38:45.032-06:00I would think an ANT approach to learning would be...I would think an ANT approach to learning would begin with an ANT theory of thought, which in turn would not be limited to humans. Tom mentioned Whitehead, which would perhaps take us toward panpsychism, but I don't think that is necessary. Instead, following on the distributed cognition model, I would look for thinking (and hence learning), like agency/activity, to emerge from relations among actors.<br /><br />I suppose it also depends on what is meant by learning, which is a rather nebulous term. Sometimes we use learning to mean something like sensing or recognizing. One might also call the laboratory activities so well accounted in ANT as learning activities. If learning refers to a classroom or other institutional/programmatic setting then one is looking at a fairly complex network, but I would think its activities could be approached in an ANT-like way.Alex Reidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12670768776987240055noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-73763691358296330072011-03-07T20:31:48.522-06:002011-03-07T20:31:48.522-06:00Ah, now I have to read Jasanoff and probably revie...Ah, now I have to read Jasanoff and probably review Stengers. So many things to do. <br /><br />Tom has a <a href="http://growchangelearn.blogspot.com/2011/03/migrating-from-silence-to-voice.html" rel="nofollow">nice elaboration of his thoughts</a> on his blog too. With puppets!Clay Spinuzzihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-28501970738243373892011-03-07T02:04:27.239-06:002011-03-07T02:04:27.239-06:00Hi Clay - thanks for this - I am new to blogging b...Hi Clay - thanks for this - I am new to blogging but I find the format allows for specific focus and pointed discussion which is very good - though of course there are all sorts of tangents that present themselves as well.<br />LOTS of questions came up after reading Tom's post - for instance, how can one tell is learning has occurred or not? I feel that exapnding the notion of individual to take in the 'surrounds' is not adequate - I think I am much more comfortable with collectives working out how to go on together or solve a problem etc. (a la Stengers' ecologies of practice). That is the sense I got when doing my work on policy - statisticians and policy makers and others try to work out ways to get a grasp on their worlds and make sense of things and look for answers to policy problems. I think a clear expalanation of this is in Jasanoff's 'civic epistemologies' - collective understandings of what counts as authoritative knowledge, what kinds of proof are acceptable and trustworthy, what kinds of accountabilities ought to be demanded and so on.Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-77019899761796755642011-03-06T20:22:37.884-06:002011-03-06T20:22:37.884-06:00Sorry to weigh in late, all, I've had my hands...Sorry to weigh in late, all, I've had my hands full with other things today. Looks like you had a great discussion without me, though!<br /><br />Just a few quick comments. We can think of learning in at least three ways.<br /><br />One is the what we might call the Nurnberg Funnel model, the "drill-and-spill" model that represents a wholesale transfer of reified knowledge from one mind to another. It's best illustrated in the way Neo "learns" Kung Fu in The Matrix, by having skills directly implanted in his mind. This notion of learning is what Graham reacts against (I think). It's asocial - and as far as I can tell, untenable.<br /><br />Much more popular these days is a more social model, based on folks such as Vygotsky. In this model, learning is essentially and intensely social, culturally embedded, and not reified. <a href="http://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2010/08/reading-cultural-nature-of-human.html" rel="nofollow">Barbara Rogoff's work</a> provides a good example of this notion of learning. It comes in various flavors, some of which tend to assume an unproblematic paternalism, some of which expressly critique such paternalism. This model underpins much of the work in activity theory.<br /><br />So far so good. But when we get to ANT, the focus is very different. In fact, Latour famously became fed up with asymmetric cognitive explanations for human abilities, and called for a moratorium on cognitive explanations until other ones had been exhausted. (I forget the cite, but it's somewhere in my book Network.) A few years later, he enthusiastically reviewed Hutchins' book Cognition in the Wild, which interpreted cognition within an entirely symmetrical account (with cognition stretched across humans and nonhumans). <br /><br />So here, it seems that an account of ANT-based learning (as some sort of cognitive development on the individual or social level) is really not tenable. That doesn't mean that Latour thinks people don't learn. It means that ANT simply doesn't have an account of that learning, because an account of learning is not terribly useful, and probably interferes with, the account that ANT is trying to provide of how activities happen. ANT doesn't have a theory of learning for the same reason that it doesn't have a theory of color or gravity. Or at least that's more or less what I concluded in Network.<br /><br />But Callon et al. do seem to be actually talking about learning. And not just in an abstract systems sense, but actual human beings, getting together, finding out what scientists say and why they are saying these things, with an endpoint of being able to understand, contend with, and amplify or critique those things. This account seems to be modeled on a well known ANT-described process - translation. So I wonder: can translation anchor an ANT-ish theory of learning? Can translation prescribe rather than simply describe? Or are Callon et al. pushing beyond the until-recently-accepted boundaries of ANT? I'm not sure of the answer, and I wonder if I am reading too much into Callon et al's account. But I like the direction the discussion is going!Clay Spinuzzihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-2911009427179209442011-03-06T17:26:08.026-06:002011-03-06T17:26:08.026-06:00@Radhika- I like your connecting of translation pr...@Radhika- I like your connecting of translation processes with knowledge practices. I presume there is often no learning, translating or mediating processes occurring when we are being or acting in the world. I've written much on my blog about "closed minds" as a metaphor for those instances. Within that metaphor, learning does not result from opportunities to learn, but from receptivity to those opportunities. Receptivity is far more likely when we imagine living in an uncertain world inviting our wonder, curiosity and further discoveries than living in a certain world of facts, figures and objective evidence. <br /><br />Similar to your saying "individuals are collectives" I imagine individuals as getting translated (mediated, negotiated, transformed, contextualized, etc.) by immediate and remembered surroundings. The student struggling with long division is getting influenced by the particular seat in proximity to other students amidst varied activities, sounds and sights. The experience of learning long division individually could be very different next to a fountain in a plaza, on a log in a forest, in a chair at home or inside a circle where the class is observing the process.<br /><br />I hope Clay weighs in on this too!Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-81513937776845175182011-03-06T14:42:20.059-06:002011-03-06T14:42:20.059-06:00Does this mean 'being' or 'acting'...Does this mean 'being' or 'acting' in an uncertain world is the same as 'learning' in an uncertain world? Or does learning imply some other specialised concept/activity/change? <br />In my thesis (under examination as we speak), I conceptualised what goes on through the processes of translation, negotiation etc - in other words, relational processes - as 'knowledge practices'. I was studying policy assemblages - and that made eminent sense. Where I trip up is when I think of 'learning' on the level of an individual (image of me working one-on-one in a classroom with a kid struggling with long division comes to mind - I spent many years as a primary school teacher) - but of course, the moment I realise that 'individuals' are collectives, things begin to clarify (momentarily). <br />Thank you very much for the really helpful clarifications, Tom.Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-51988330197692470262011-03-06T12:06:26.563-06:002011-03-06T12:06:26.563-06:00When "learning" is used as a noun, it...When "learning" is used as a noun, it's clear that learners are learning and their teachers, tools and friends & relations are not learning. We're acting in a certain world where things can be concretized and objectified without losing validity, credibility or value. We learn but our tools and other mediators do not. Mediated activities are a one way street. <br /><br />When "learning" is used as a verb, these immaterial processes encompass other processes which may appear as teachers, tools and related individuals. Through the interrelations, everything is getting mediated together while evolving separately, not only the objectified learners. We're acting in an uncertain world where concretizing and objectifying things results in the loss of validity, credibility and value. The processes that can be trusted are ephemeral and elusive to empirical reductions. The outcomes of those processes emerge from complex, non-linear interactions which sponsor more wonder, curiosity and discoveries, not more certainties. <br /><br />That's how I see learning in my ANT-informed, relational worldview that has evolved with Clay's very helpful writings.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-40238975771221288452011-03-06T07:48:11.990-06:002011-03-06T07:48:11.990-06:00'Learning'has become really problematic to...'Learning'has become really problematic to understand. Having taught in schools for nearly three decades, this is seriously discombobulating! I was really interested to hear Estrid Sorensen present her work on the materiality of learning - where she talks of learning being not only relational but in the relations - but I am still worked up about who or what learns. <br />Jasanoff's notion of civic epistemology works as societal learning in the sense you are talking about (mutual consensus) - but what if this mutual consensus was a really detrimental, a poor choice?Radhikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07409852972558672557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-28622363796550213972011-03-05T17:45:49.958-06:002011-03-05T17:45:49.958-06:00Thanks, Graham. I think you're right that ANT ...Thanks, Graham. I think you're right that ANT doesn't lend itself to a trajectory of learning (although I wouldn't characterize learning as conveying nuggets of reified knowledge in any case). At the same time, Callon et al do seem to be pointing us to a process or trajectory of translations that lead to developing a mutual consensus. Maybe "learning" isn't the right word - development? Clearly I'll have to revisit this question!Clay Spinuzzihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-13100099672914290022011-03-05T16:29:58.864-06:002011-03-05T16:29:58.864-06:00Hi Clay - I have read your posts off and on, and e...Hi Clay - I have read your posts off and on, and each time I have found them so useful and wonderful. Thank you.<br />With the warning that I am still a PhD student and have read little and know even less, I want to venture that 'learning' might imply a 'correct' thing - nugget of knowledge - already out there, whereas ANT focuses on relational ways in which something comes to be seen as 'correct' or 'knowledge' comes into being...Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909161155233157721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-58051126928852405592010-07-14T11:17:11.173-05:002010-07-14T11:17:11.173-05:00Chill dude! Googling "misplaced concreteness&...Chill dude! Googling "misplaced concreteness" will be enough of dose of A.N. Whitehead for us mere mortals. Meanwhile, I've ordered Acting in an Uncertain World through the inter-library loan system here in Colorado. As I reread your exploration of the book, I realized I have to read it pronto. Thanks again, Clay.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-30518470519384954262010-07-14T10:06:03.516-05:002010-07-14T10:06:03.516-05:00Aw thanks. But now I will have to put Whitehead on...Aw thanks. But now I will have to put Whitehead on my reading list! I think I can fit him in sometime in late 2011 or early 2012 ...Clay Spinuzzihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13356273383001825508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33273315.post-77099297722651872752010-07-14T09:50:52.601-05:002010-07-14T09:50:52.601-05:00Clay: Thanks for this veritable feast of food for ...Clay: Thanks for this veritable feast of food for thought in this review and the other four new ones! Thanks also for adding more dimensions to my appreciation of ANT and your transparency about your varied struggles with the texts. You have a wonderful sense of how to make elusive understandings more accessible.<br /><br />On ANT's lack of an account of learning - I've been wondering if ANT dismisses learning from the same premise as Latour's refutation of sociology, princely accumulation of power, and scientific research in isolation. I suspect those refutations spring from Whitehead's injunction to avoid misplaced concreteness. Making a thing of learning disconnects it from intermediaries and our continual exploration without limiting preconceptions. Perhaps ANT could integrate learning (as a verb) much as it uses verbs like translating, tracing and transforming. To tie into to your insights here, learning would occur in dialogic spaces, when interrogating and interacting with any actor or actant. That infers that I'm learning as I write this comment and you're learning as you read it :-)Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.com