Dynamic Reconfiguration in Planetary Exploration: A Sociomaterial Ethnography

Abstract

In taking into account the ways in which material and social realms are constitutively entangled within organizations it is rhetorically tempting to say that technologies and social structures reconfigure each other. But what does it mean to reconfigure? How does one 'figure' the other and how do we fully embrace a mutually constitutive relationship when examining fluid relations? This paper delves into these questions by exploring how physical, social, material, technological and organizational arrangements dynamically reconfigure each other in the durée of organizational practice. Using the venue of space exploration, we present three empirical examples from an ethnographic engagement with a NASA mission orbiting an outer planet in the solar system to examine various configurations and sociomaterial relations. In this endeavor we suggest that theoretical and empirical traction can be gained by focusing attention on the dynamic reconfigurations between social and material realms. In so doing, we call attention the various ways that current sociomaterial perspectives have difficulty articulating the shifting, figural, asymmetric and dynamic negotiations between people, social structures, information technologies, and representational objects. This paper contributes to current discussions of sociomaterial relations in information systems research by presenting an empirical treatment of entangled and shifting re-configurations and providing language for engaging with this perspective.

The invisible work of distributed medical education: exploring the contributions of audiovisual professionals, administrative professionals and faculty teachers

“…We conducted an ethnographic study framed informed by sociomateriality (James & Rusher, 2013;Landri, 2013;Mazmanian et al, 2014;. We focused on the distributed undergraduate medical education program at Dalhousie University.…”

Sociomaterial Quasi-objects: From Interface to Experience

“…Thus, one can consider a quasi-object as creating meaning with a set of entangled configurations in "dynamic reconfigurations" (Mazmanian et al, 2014). The blind man and the stick are sociomaterial dynamic reconfigurations where quasi-objects, meanings, emerge depending on what is being done.…”

“…One can also explain this "taking it forward" as agency. Quasi-objects are entangled agency produced by sociomaterial configurations that affect the outcome of the action (Introna, 2014;Mazmanian et al, 2014;Orlikowski, 2009;Suchman, 2006). As such, quasi-objects are multiple yet single, neither social nor material, temporary yet constant, and they have implications of how an experience evolves, what meaning it has, and what direction it takes.…”

“…Existing literature suggests a separation between the user and the technology, which, in turn, results in designs that do not comply with a digitalized world that researchers have described as multiple, dynamic, entangled, and relational (Barad, 2007;Mazmanian, Cohn, & Dourish, 2014;Scott & Orlikowski, 2014). Furthermore, today, experiences, the experience economy, and customer experience management take center stage, and we can see digital technologies' becoming increasingly experiential (Yoo, 2010), ubiquitous, and embedded (Dourish, 2001).…”

“…Yet, Scott and Orlikowski (2014) note that: dynamic, multiple, and entangled. (p. 873) With this need for new ways of thinking about digitalization, scholars have introduced many interesting and valuable insights, such as how difficult it is to articulate the shifts and asymmetries between people, social structures, digitized artifacts, and other objects (Mazmanian et al, 2014) and how anonymity (Scott & Orlikowski, 2014) or self-identity (Schultze, 2012) is enacted. Digitalization opens up for questioning whether artifacts have physical and functional properties (Riemer & Johnston, 2014), such as an interface (Shneiderman & Plaisant, 2005) and usability (Nielsen & Hackos, 1993), and whether one can implement Volume 9…”