Sociology 2010 Bloomfield
Sociology 2010 Bloomfield
Sociology 2010 Bloomfield
■ Yvonne Latham
Lancaster University
■ Theo Vurdubakis
Lancaster University
A B S T R AC T
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 con-
structivism. This article questions the sociological adequacy of the concept as conven-
tionally deployed. Drawing on ethnographic work on the ways technological artefacts
engage, and are engaged by, disabled bodies, we propose that the ‘affordances’ of tech-
nological objects are not reducible to their material constitution but are inextricably
bound up with specific, historically situated modes of engagement and ways of life.
K E Y WO R D S
affordances / body / disabilities / sociomateriality / technology
Introduction
S
ocial science, Dennis Wrong (1961) has argued, tends to oscillate between
‘undersocialized’ and ‘oversocialized’ conceptions of ‘man’ (sic).1 According
to many commentators, the sociology of technology is currently caught up
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416 Sociology Volume 44 ■ Number 3 ■ June 2010
in a very similar predicament (see for instance Kling, 1992a, 1992b; vs. Grint and
Woolgar, 1992). Sociological studies of technological objects, it is claimed, are
faced with an unpalatable choice between undersocialized and oversocialized
conceptions of technology – represented by technological determinism and social
constructivism respectively. This framing of the problem inevitably leads to a
quest for a ‘third way’, a conception of technology that is neither over nor under-
socialized but is – not unlike baby bear’s porridge – ‘just right’. For seekers of this
third way, Gibson’s (1979) concept of ‘affordances’ has obvious attractions. As is
well known, Gibson coined this neologism as a description for the ‘action possi-
bilities’ which a given environment presents an animal. For instance, for an object
to be graspable, that ‘object must have opposite surfaces separated by less than
the span of the hand’ (1979: 133). ‘Affordances’ reflect the co-evolution of
(human and non-human) animals and environments. They are understood as
products of the animal–environment system:
… an affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is
both if you like …[It] points both ways, to the environment and to the observer.
(Gibson, 1979: 129)
The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have
made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the ani-
mal in a way that no existing term does. (Gibson, 1979: 127)
observably available to her and she can attempt to carry out actions within the
framework that they make available. (2001a: 452)
Clearly Hutchby is right in that the unavailability of a socket that ‘looks right’
is a necessary part of any explanation of Ruth’s actions. At the same time it is
not a sufficient explanation and issues of ‘identity and authority’ are indeed
relevant. First, the mediation of the manual – here glossed as ‘reinforcing
affordances’ – means that we are not talking about (Gibsonian) ‘direct percep-
tion’. Instead, we could surmise that Ruth treats the issue as an intellectual
puzzle to which she has proved inadequate under the gaze of the technically
sophisticated observers. She therefore appears relieved when her self-image is
repaired by being authoritatively told that the task was indeed impossible:
Oh it’s not just me being thick. Thank god for that hah hah! I came in the back an’
as soon as I got round here, with the machine I looked at this and looked at that
and I thought ‘No I’m being stupid, now this is silly.’ Well I wasn’t hahahah! [Ruth]
(Grint and Woolgar, 1997: 90)
Ruth was only looking for this particular ‘affordance’ having been assured by
those ‘who knew better’ that it was there and, in a way reminiscent of Asch’s
(1951) experimental subjects, appeared to doubt herself rather than the experts.
Further, although Ruth’s everyday experiences of ‘plugging devices in’ are,
as Hutchby argues, relevant, they are, like posting letters, cultural knowledge.
Moreover, this incident differs from those everyday situations in the sense that
the action has to be performed subject to a specific set of rules and conditions
imposed by the insiders. For example, Ruth does not appear to have the option
of exploring other ‘affordances’ available in that setting, such as looking for a
different lead or changing (or asking someone else to change) the plug.
We can illustrate this last point by means of another ‘plugging-in’ story, this
one narrated by Kranz (2000) and Lovell and Kluger (1995). During the failed
Apollo 13 moon mission, astronauts had to abandon the malfunctioning com-
mand module (Odyssey) and seek refuge in the lunar module (Aquarius) for the
duration of the trip back to Earth. Aquarius, however, was designed for the moon
landing and was not suitable for lengthy habitation. For instance, the carbon
dioxide filters had a lifetime of about 40 person-hours, after which they had to
be replaced. The Odyssey filters were square and would not fit the round sock-
ets present onboard the Aquarius. The mission engineers had to somehow devise
a way of plugging the square filters into the round sockets using only objects
available on the spacecraft to accomplish this task. A pile of diverse objects was
duly collected and a connection improvised using suit hoses, cardboard covers
from on-board manuals, plastic stowage bags, all stuck together with duct tape.
The engineers then radioed instructions to the astronauts who succeeded in repli-
cating the device: ‘[T]he contraption wasn’t very handsome, but it worked’
(Lovell and Kluger, 1995). The build-up of carbon dioxide was avoided.
Ruth’s unsuccessful ‘plug-in’ and the Apollo 13 astronauts’ successful one
were both collective accomplishments. The affordances of technological objects
are typically interfered with, and modulated by, what we might call the
‘co-presence’ (Michael, 2000: 112) of other social actors and other objects.
Rather than talk of an individual encountering an object (in the manner of a
reptile encountering a stone, or a buffalo encountering a river – see Hutchby,
2001a: 447), we need to talk instead of how and, importantly, when specific
action possibilities emerge out of the ever-changing relations between people,
between objects, and between people and objects. Michael (2000: 112) uses the
term ‘cascades’ of affordances to describe such processes: ‘for example; socks
afford the easier wearing of boots which afford the attachment of crampons
which afford the climbing of snow-covered slopes which themselves become
“affordable”, that is to say climbable ….Indeed the affordances of any tech-
nology are always, at least potentially, ambiguous.’ It is easy, but rather unin-
formative, to say that object X affords this but not that, that a car affords driving
and a computer mouse affords clicking, but that neither affords eating (e.g. Dohn,
2006: 1). And yet, in 1970 Australian strongman Leon Sampson ate a car in
order to win an AUS$20,000 prize. Surely his actions are better understood in
terms of the particular social circumstances that prompted them – including
membership in a media-oriented culture that prizes the extraordinary and the
bizarre – rather than by tinkering with the list of the affordances possessed/not
possessed by the car? The ‘affordances’ of technological artefacts should, we sug-
gest, be treated as themselves topics for analysis – as Rappert (2003) indicates –
rather than as bottom-line explanations.
Affordances Revisited
One way of approaching the analysis of affordances is to ask: how, and under
what circumstances are particular ‘affordances’ made present? How and when
are different action possibilities made available – or unavailable – to specific
actors in particular settings? Such questions are particularly pertinent when we
consider how dis-abled bodies engage with, and are engaged by, technological
artefacts. Within the fields of sociology and disability studies there is an exten-
sive literature that identifies the ways in which abilities and disabilities emerge
and are allocated within specific sociomaterial arrangements, settings and situa-
tions (Law, 1994; Moser, 2005; Moser and Law, 1999; Winance, 2006).
Against this backdrop, Elaine Scarry’s (1985) work can help highlight the
ways in which technological artefacts tend to take as their referent particular
(culturally situated) versions of the human body. A made object, Scarry argues,
‘is a projection of the human body’ (1985: 281; see also Mumford, 1963). The
placing of a bandage over a wound replaces the missing skin; spectacles, micro-
scopes and telescopes reproduce the lens of the human eye while correcting for
its weaknesses. This representation of the human body in made objects is at
work not only in the objectification of various body parts, but more generally
of human attributes. For instance, the various technological artefacts associated
with the written text (books, indexes, photocopiers) replicate, correct and aug-
ment human memory. This projection of the body into made objects ultimately
recasts ‘the division between the inside and the outside of the body’ since the
It is worth noting at this point, that such processes of ‘projection’ and their artefac-
tual manifestations, such as chairs, remain nevertheless culturally and historically
situated. Large sections of humanity – in Asia, Africa and pre-conquest America –
did not use chairs nearly as much as their European conquerors. In these cultures it
was far more common to sit cross-legged on the ground on mats or cushions.
Also for many – beyond Euro-America – squatting is a restful pose (Ingold,
1996). Most Euro-Americans, however, having grown up in a world of chairs,
find this position painful to sustain over any length of time. The story of the
‘adoption’ of the chair by the great majority of humanity is therefore at the same
time a story of Occidental cultural dominance over the other. Following on
Scarry’s argument we could add that bodies are themselves, so to speak, reflec-
tions of the world of made objects as well as vice versa. A body’s abilities and
disabilities – disability researchers insist – cannot be defined independently of the
made world (including the politics of artefacts, accidental or otherwise) that body
inhabits. Drawing on Scarry, Cooper (2001: 25) argues that:
Each object – chair, cup, spoon – can never be separate and self-contained; by defi-
nition, it is always partial, a con-verse in a dynamic network of convertibilities. The
body, too, is necessarily partial, momentarily defining itself through assemblage
with another partial object.
We can then reframe the question of the affordances ‘of’ technological objects.
Such ‘affordances’, we might say, name the various ongoing exchanges of
attributes between human bodies and the world of made objects. Understood in
this manner ‘affordances’ cannot be seen as merely bundles of properties ‘pos-
sessed’ by objects (Hutchby, 2001a, 2001b) which in turn may, or may not, be
activated by corresponding ‘effectivities’ of the subject (Shaw and Turvey, 1981;
Turvey, 1992). It is rather the manner in which such attributions of ‘simple
location’ are made by actors in particular social settings that should be the
object of sociological study. In short we are proposing that ‘action possibilities’
are better understood and described via a vocabulary of processes than one of
end-states (Cooper and Law, 1995).
We started installing the equipment and soon discovered that the plug on the power
lead that connects the computer to the mains socket was the wrong type of plug. It
was slightly bigger than a domestic plug and the earth pin was horizontal rather
than vertical. We did not try to plug it into the socket as it was visually obvious that
it would not have fitted. I then asked Jim whether he had any spare plugs anywhere
and he pointed to a drawer in the kitchen which Dan opened.
Dan found a spare plug and passed it to Tom, along with a screwdriver. Tom began
to change the plug using the screwdriver and also a knife (the screwdriver was too
big for the small screws on the inside of the plug), voicing his concerns whilst doing
so of the health and safety implications involved. Once the plug had been changed
the equipment was installed with the computer on the kitchen unit along with the
keyboard, speakers and monitor; because of the lack of room the printer was placed
under a table next to the kitchen unit, on top of which was Jim’s microwave. Jim
has difficulty steadying his hands so a rollerball mouse had been ordered for him.
However, this had not arrived and when we left he was trying to use the conventional
mouse but with great difficulty.
The installation of Jim’s computer appears to neatly fit the ideal-typical ‘affor-
dance story’. Thus the computer arrives as the proverbial black box in order to
become part of Jim’s ‘environment’. Yvonne, Tom and Dan are in this version
engaged in ascertaining Jim’s ‘effectivities’ and how these match, or fail to
match, the machine’s ‘affordances’. There are constraints imposed by Jim’s
medical conditions and the fact that he would have to access the computer from
his wheelchair. Further considerations arose due to the size and spatial config-
uration of his home and the objects within it (such as the kitchen appliances,
storage cupboards and furniture) together with their ‘affordances’ – such as
whether they could accommodate the computer as regards space or load bear-
ing capabilities and so on.
On closer inspection, however, a number of significant complications
become apparent. Let’s note how the quest for the ‘affordances’ that will match
Jim’s ‘effectivities’ takes the form of re-negotiations of both the materiality and
the ‘morality of the setting’ (Akrich and Latour, 1992: 259). Consider, for
instance, the non-standard plug. In circumstances analogous to Ruth’s unsuc-
cessful plug-in, Jim’s successful one is again not a case of an individual actor
encountering the singular object. Instead we have the ‘co-presence’ of other
actors (Tom, Dan and Yvonne) who egg each other on, as well as the orches-
tration of multiple objects (substitute domestic plug, screwdriver, knife, etc.)
and their interrelationships in ‘cascades of affordances’ in the course of
attempting to make the machine use-able by Jim.
The plug’s horizontal earth pin was designed in accordance with technical
standards operative in certain industrial settings and thus incompatible with
domestic power sockets. (It will be recalled that the reconditioned computers
for the CommunITy scheme came from industrial donors.) The industrial stan-
dard for plugs or sockets is specifically meant to prevent the connection of
unauthorized equipment to an electrical supply. The mismatch between (indus-
trial) plug and (domestic) socket is therefore a material expression of particular
rules of membership and of proper conduct. On this occasion, however, the
moral order represented (and enforced) by the materiality of industrial plugs
and authorized sockets is renegotiated by Tom, Yvonne and Dan. Furthermore,
Tom’s comment about health and safety signals his awareness that changing the
plug is bound up with rules and regulations about who was allowed to do what
with particular objects. We might suggest that the ‘morality’ of the industrial
plug became subordinated to the morality of the CommunITy scheme: the (now
errant) plug had to be changed so that the computer could be set up for Jim,
and Tom and Yvonne could thereby discharge their duties – their moral com-
mitment to ‘get Jim connected’.
In contradistinction to the typical affordance story (the reptile encounter-
ing the stone, etc.), ‘affordances’ in Jim’s environment are not just picked-up
but made real. They are therefore better described through a vocabulary of
emergence and construction rather than one of (mere) discovery. ‘Construction’
here refers to the, often piecemeal, assemblage of what Scarry (1985: 285) calls
‘counterfactual structures’. An assemblage aimed to compensate for the mis-
representation of Jim’s body in the computer (Grint and Woolgar’s (1997)
‘[pre]configured user’) and to counter the latter’s accidental politics. Such struc-
tures, we have seen, carry a moral load (Akrich and Latour, 1992; Scarry, 1985)
directly mirroring the negative valuation of those of Jim’s conditions (discom-
fort, isolation) that they (aim to) ameliorate.
Counterfactual Structures
Nine months later Yvonne made a follow-up visit to Jim and was struck by
the sheer amount of bricolage that had been carried out in order make the
computer usable for Jim in his wheelchair. Jim had had a shelf (worksta-
tion) fitted onto the wall in his living room and his computer and computer
equipment, along with his telephone, were all located on this shelf. Jim had
also had a makeshift tray taped to his wheelchair. These improvisations
engineered the ‘cascades of affordances’ deemed necessary for Jim to use
the computer.
Dan: Did he have this when you came before?
Yvonne: No, I don’t think so. When I came the computer was on the kitchen unit
and everything was up on the unit. So, how did you manage when it was
like that?
D: We struggled a bit didn’t we?
Jim: Yeah (nodding)
D: But we’re sorted now.
So, Jim had had his workstation built and it seemed to ‘fit’ him well in that it
allowed access for his wheelchair. However, because of the height (in order for it to
be accessible by Jim in his wheelchair) it was impossible for him to see the keyboard.
Dan explained how they overcame this problem.
D: With the keyboard, if the keyboard was flat on there (the shelf) he can’t see it.
Same with the phone. If it’s flat on there (the shelf), with him being sort of here
(Dan points to the height of Jim in his wheelchair) he can’t see. Yeah, so we just
tilt them up.
Y: So what did you do? Is that sponge? (I point to the phone).
D: That’s just sponge.
Dan had cut a piece of sponge in a triangular wedge shape so that Jim’s phone sits
at an angle in order to make it possible for him to see the numbers. Without it Jim
would have great difficulties in making calls. Even the use of operator services
requires that the user be able to see and ‘dial’ the access number.
Y: And what’s this? (I point to the keyboard). Is this on sponge as well?
D: It’s just er.
Y: Who’s the technical guy, (jokingly) is that you?
D: Yeah, I stuck a piece of wood [wedged shaped] behind it an stuck some er, it’s
only Blu-Tack®.
With this wood, sponge and Blu-Tack® bricolage, Jim was able to see the key-
board and determine which keys to press when using the computer. As well as
these physical adaptations using assorted objects, Jim’s body was also undergo-
ing adaptation. The rollerball mouse that had been on order since the installa-
tion visit had taken some time to arrive. In the intervening period, with effort
Jim had managed to use a conventional wireless mouse, and with even
greater effort a wired mouse. In the event, when it was delivered the roller-
ball mouse had been sent back. Yvonne’s (and Dan’s) surprise at the ability
of Jim to learn to use the ‘normal’ mouse is a handy reminder of the relational
(subjective/objective, both/neither) character of ‘affordances’. In other words,
‘abilities’ or ‘effectivities’ and ‘affordances’ may be best thought of not as pre-
given but as emergent in relation to one another. We might say that in Jim’s case
the restricted movement of his body, and the discomfort he experienced when
attempting to move or assume a posture beyond his limits, was counterfactu-
ally reversed by specific – if contingent – sociomaterial (wheelchair, wireless
mouse, etc.) configurations.
Convertibilities
The representations (Scarry, 1985) of the user that are built into a computer are
not just associated with matters of physical constitution. For, not unlike
Gibson’s post-box, the functioning of the computer presupposes particular cul-
tural practices of reading and writing (e.g. reading drop-down menus and
selecting or clicking menu items). In this connection it is important to note that
Jim experiences some problems with written language. At the time of Yvonne’s
follow-up visit he had not been connected to the internet (the objective of
CommunITy). Principally this was because Dan was worried that Jim might
click on sites ‘that should be avoided’. Dan wished to uphold particular social
rules regarding the use of the technology but how could this moral order be
maintained if Jim could not recognize the dangers associated with certain inter-
net sites? A potential solution to this problem was sought in the form of
Thunder, a software package that verbalizes the computer user’s actions, some-
thing that would inform Jim about what he was doing as he went along and
that wouldn’t require an ability on his part to read the text or instructions on
the screen.
Jim began to tell us what things he thought should be added into the computer but
it was unclear what he was saying. He then began to demonstrate Thunder. This is
software that speaks (in a foreign accent) the words that are on the screen.
Each time Jim moves the mouse to a different icon or presses a button on the key-
board, which he is doing to demonstrate the software to me, the action he takes is
repeated by this robotic male voice. For instance, if ‘My Documents’ was clicked the
software would say ‘my documents’, etc.
Y: You could do with a British version couldn’t you. (laughing) He’d do your head
in him wouldn’t he? (…)
D: What we do is we get books and he just sort of copies out of books. Like Dick
Whittington.
Jim clicks on the Dick Whittington text and the Thunder software says ‘Dick
Whittington script initialized’. Jim is talking, it’s unclear but he’s indicating that he
cannot find the document he is looking for.
D: When he types stuff it reads what, as he’s typing it, it reads each letter.
Y: Right, so you know you’re spelling it right?
D: Yeah and then when you’ve done a line it will read the line back.
Y: Right, so do you find it really useful Jim?
J: I do.
D: Really it’s for people who can’t see very well.
(…)
D: It’s a bit annoying after a bit isn’t it? It does help though.
Y: Yeah.
Jim is speaking here about the Thunder software but it’s unclear.
Y: It would help with the internet though wouldn’t it? Until you get familiar.
bed, put him in his new wheelchair, and turn the computer on and off for him.
He can only get out of bed, he explained, on ‘a good day’.
For Ron, as for the others, we might say that what the computer afforded
(or not) was dependent on the co-presence (or absence) of various other people
and objects. For us then, situations such as those of Jim, Kathryn, Linda, Ron
and the rest, draw attention to the diverse human and artefactual elements that
typically have to be configured for a technology’s ‘affordances’ to emerge.
Conclusion
If there is a common pattern that we can infer from the cases discussed here, it
is that the ‘affordances’ of technological objects cannot be easily separated from
the arrangements through which they are realized in practice. Drawing on
Engestrom (1990) then, we must ask not only what a given ‘affordance’ is, but
for whom and when?6
‘[I]n the empirical moment of engagement between a human and a techno-
logical artefact’, argues Hutchby (2001b: 194), ‘both may be treated as equally
stable for all practical purposes’. For us it is the ‘may’ that deserves the empha-
sis. For most CommunITy members, the empirical process of engagement
involved considerable renegotiation and problematization of – what followers
of Gibson often describe as – (human) effectivities and (machine) affordances
(e.g. Shaw and Turvey, 1981; Turvey, 1992). Stabilization, when it occurred,
was a local, perhaps temporary, and often fragile, accomplishment. A number
of aspects of these sociomaterial explorations and renegotiations are particu-
larly relevant to the present discussion. First, and in order to understand the
processes by means of which particular action possibilities were realized or
foreclosed in a given setting, we need to look beyond the (individual)human /
(individual)machine dyad. We have therefore sought to remain aware of the
ways in which technological ‘affordances’ were catalysed by or interfered with,
by the ‘co-presence’ (Michael, 2000) of other people and other objects. Second,
these renegotiations are not conducted ex nihilo and do presuppose shared
understandings of, and reliance upon, material enablements and constraints
(Hutchby, 2003). At the same time, as many researchers within disability stud-
ies and the sociology of technology would insist, such enablements and con-
straints do not make sense without reference to the social practices and cultural
conventions that cohere to them. The ‘affordances’ of, say, a chair, a post-box
or a cigarette are not reducible to their material constitution but are inextrica-
bly bound with specific, historically variable, ways of life. We therefore need to
better acknowledge what lies beyond the here-and-now timeframe adopted by
most analyses conducted in terms of affordances. Often the only other time-
frame invoked in such analyses is that of evolution, the long process of mutual
attunement between the natural environment and the human sensorium. Yet,
the emergence and ongoing transformation of the made environment, including
whatever we might mean by ‘culture’, falls between those two temporal frames.
Partly as a result, Gibson’s affordances appear undersocialized and in need of
further socialization (Costal, 1995).
In this article we have attempted a critical exploration of the concept of
‘affordances’ (proposed by Hutchby) as an analytical tool for the social study
of technology. It should be apparent that what we find useful in the concept is
its relational character, something affirmed, but not always faithfully adhered
to, by Gibson or Hutchby. What we consider least useful is the suggestion that
‘affordances’ can be invoked as a way of settling the properties of the techno-
logical artefact in advance of its immersion into social life and interactions.
Since this article has not been conceived as being primarily a theoretical contri-
bution to the ongoing sociological and philosophical debate on technology, we
can only briefly indicate why we think this is not a promising path to take.
Hutchby (2003: 582) proposes that the concept of ‘affordances’ is a much-
needed corrective to the, perhaps endemic, ‘prioritization of representation in
[anti-determinist/anti-essentialist] analyses of given technologies’. Hutchby
implicitly assumes that the technological artefact always comes first and its rep-
resentation afterwards so that the pertinent question is by what means the
material properties of the former constrain the latter (2001a: 447). However, in
what Mumford (1963) calls the ‘neotechnic’ era, the technological artefact and
its representation can be said to have a recursive relationship. The technologi-
cal artefact, in other words, may be equally said to be a materialization of its
representation (a design document, a list of specifications, a blueprint, a
description, etc.). As a temporal sequence, the architectural plan, for instance,
comes before the building and dictates (sometimes with the force of the law
behind it) how it should be built. Even fictional representations of non-existent
artefacts (such as Star Trek’s ‘Replicator’ – see Green et al., 1999) may be
taken up and orient subsequent attempts to realize them (e.g. Kaku, 2008).7
Representation and matter-realization are therefore perhaps best viewed in terms
of different moments in the unfolding biography of the artefact (Bloomfield and
Vurdubakis, 1994).
Following this line of reasoning, we might view ‘representation’ as some-
thing other than a superstructural layer, something that comes to adhere to
the ‘material substratum’ of the technological artefact as Hutchby (2001a:
452) implies. Instead, as in Scarry’s work (1985; see also Cooper, 1993;
Latour, 2002; Mumford, 1963), representation can be said to describe the
ongoing folding(s) of the body and the made world into one another. It is
therefore a process through which the body comes to grant particular affor-
dances to the (made) world and conversely, the world comes to be ‘mirrored’
in the effectivities or action capabilities of the body. ‘Sociality’ and ‘material-
ity’ appear irredeemably entangled with one another. Drawing on this we
might argue that the relationship between ‘sociality’ and ‘materiality’ in tech-
nological artefacts is a Derridean (1976) one of mutual (in)determination and
supplementarity.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Maggie Mort (Sociology, Lancaster University) who com-
mented on an earlier version of the argument presented here. Thanks also to the
various individuals who gave freely of their time and granted access to their homes
as part of fieldwork discussed in this article.
Notes
References
Brian P. Bloomfield
Yvonne Latham
Is a doctoral student in the Centre for the Study of Technology & Organisation (CSTO)
within the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology at Lancaster University.
Her research revolves around conceptions of disability and the potential role of new
technologies in facilitating disabled people’s participation in social life. She is particularly
interested in how the connections between bodies and subjects, and technologies and
objects can be understood as a social accomplishment.
Address: Department of Organisation, Work & Technology, Lancaster University,
Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK.
E-mail: [email protected]
Theo Vurdubakis
Is Professor of Organisation and Technology and director of the Centre for the Study
of Technology and Organisation at Lancaster University, UK. His research interests
include the role of technological practices and artefacts in the performance of social
organization.
Address: Department of Organisation, Work & Technology, Lancaster University,
Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK.
E-mail: [email protected]