First-person perspective and sociomaterial decentering: Studying technology from the standpoint of the subject

Abstract

The article argues for systematically including human subjectivity and the first-person perspective in the theoretical and methodological framework of the social studies of technology. The first part of the analysis explores how the subjective dimension of human life is conceptually articulated in science and technology studies and discusses efforts within this field to overcome the dichotomy between human beings and technology. On this basis, the case is put for refining the conceptual inclusion of human subjectivity and agency, showing why this requires the first-person perspective and offering an outline of guiding principles for studying technology from the standpoint of the subject. The argument illustrates how a first-person perspective can overcome individualistic positions and opens up a situated, decentered and social-symmetrical epistemology that also embraces the analysis of the power and materialized action of technological artifacts.When research addresses the connection between human beings, technology and society, and the significance of material artifacts in the conduct of everyday life, the question arises of how one can overcome the widespread dichotomy and discrepancy between human beings and technology. Human beings create technological things and use them in their everyday life; yet, conversely, technological things also shape human beings and their experiences, thoughts and actions. Without the human being, there would be no technology, and without technology, there would be no human beings.r

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'May I please tell you a little anecdote?' Inter-professional decision-making about inclusion in the borderland between general and special schooling

“…In these approaches, both children and adults are conceptualized as participants, whose actions both determine and are determined by the societal and institutional structures in which they are situated. In order to understand the structural conditions, therefore, we must analyse them from the standpoint of the subject in relation to what they mean for those who are at the same time under their influence and also influencing them (Holzkamp, 2013;Schraube, 2013). This research tradition differs from other theoretical approaches, such as labelling theory, because of the intention to grasp the subject as a person who contributes to the production of the social world through participation across different social practices and among other participants (Dreier, 1997(Dreier, , 2008Lave, 2011Lave, , 2012; and noted in labelling theory by Gill and Maynard, 1995).…”

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