Marja Vehilainen and Tuula Heiskanen
Studying Information and Communication Technologies Through and Within Practices

People, of particular gender, age, locality and educational background, produce and interpret information technology at schools, work places and in many other everyday life settings. What are the spaces of multivoiceness in the world of global technology? How are the spaces of local knowledge and experiences constructed?

Technology

People -- of particular gender, age, class, race and locality – live and act in the society. On the one hand, they, as members of the society, share common realms, e.g. those of global economy and the threads of ecological disasters. On the other hand, people’s knowledges and interpretations of the social phenomena, and even those of global economy and environment, are shaped in their local settings, within their life histories and in their bodily, gendered lives.

The agency of people connects to their interpretations and situated knowledges. People, who represent various social differences, various social and gendering orders, various political subjectivities and identities, act from particular varying starting points. The activities and practices related to information technology vary accordingly, and thus the approaches of studying information technology should take local situated knowledges and interpretations seriously. They should acknowledge the social differences and concrete practices of actors. Furthermore, the approaches should acknowledge the possibility for change and transformation. Technology, or even any part or aspect of it, should be seen beyond the space of (social) activity and transformation. Although technological artefacts are fixed and touchable, they have grown in social processes. We would like to avoid – not too differently from Grint & Woolgar (1997) - the technicist core of technology, the core beyond social analysis.

Many of the approaches which study the relationship between society and technology, however, fail here. This is, of course, most evident in the approach of technical determinism where it is the technology that guides the development of society. There is hardly any space for social transformations within technology. Although researchers rather seldom commit themselves to this model, it still goes strong in everyday thinking and – paradoxically! – in societal planning (at least in Finland). In some measure, the problem exists even in the wide family of the social shaping of technology approaches. They see technology as intertwining sets of artefacts, knowledge and social practices, or as a dialogue of social and technical, as in socio-technical approaches (used both in UK and in Nordic working life democracy projects). There is room for concrete social practices and agency. Yet, there is a tendency for a separate technology part that intertwines with the social but still somehow slips partially beyond the social. And according to Grint and Woolgar, the same is true even with the actor-network-theory although it specifically sets out to blur the borders of human and non-human. The feminist critiques, furthermore, argue that actor-network theory has limited room for political agency and resistance, for transformations (e.g Omrod 1995, Moser 1999).

Approaches that see information technology as a textuality provide further alternatives for studying information technology. Dorothy Smith’s (1990a, b) work on social organisation of knowledge and institutional textualities makes a good theoretical starting point. She studies concrete texts, for example laws and rules made in state institutions, jobs descriptions in work organisations, or psychiatric accounts. She studies how these texts are "put together" within social and materially organised processes. Textuality consists of texts as well as processes of producing and interpreting them. Texts, after they have been produced, have life of their own in "textual time" and in "intertextual relations".

Smith’s work has inspired information technology research, as for example Grint and Woolgar (1997). Within "Smithian" frame, Marja Vehviläinen (first 1991) has developed an approach or a methodological device, where information technologies are considered as textualities. Computer programmes, computers, e-mail messages, net discussions are texts which are produced and interpreted by people. Production and interpretation are socially-organised: they are material practices of actual, particular people. Information technology textuality consists of texts, the practices related to them, and the social and material relations embedded in the practices. The organising relations can be textually mediated but even those have material orders. The approach is focused on the persistent orders but it also gives credit to the flexible nature of information technology. Both development and use of technology can be seen both as interpretation and as production of texts. The boundary between development and use is blurred. There are elements that become fixed during the design but there are options for (re)design within use practices as well. Furthermore, the approach has room for the definitions of one’s own, for the transformations.

Information technologies and social relations which organise them have a "life of their own" and can organise practices of several groups of people, in different times and places. Information technology texts are material and can be moved to another place or time. Yet, they are accessible to people, including researchers, only through human practices. The interpretation and production of information technology texts are concrete practices among people’s daily activities. As practices they are organised by social relations. It is the practices that are in the centre.

Practices

Social practices make a methodology where people’s daily activities are examined in the connection of larger social relations of the society. Practices are organised within social relations embedded in people’s activities. In practices people produce social relations and simultaneously social relations organise people’s practices. This understanding of social reality has been proposed by several sociologists, for example, by Dorothy Smith and Anthony Giddens.

Wanda Orlikowski takes up Anthony Giddens' theory (Orlikowski 1988, 1989). She makes a distance to positive, natural science type of theory and looks for the interaction between social action and social structures. She introduces Anthony Giddens' structuration theory (Giddens 1984) and develops a structuration model of technology (see figure 6.1)(Orlikowski 1990).

Figure 1. Structuration Model of Technology (Orlikowski 1990).

According to her model, information technology (in figure 1) is a product of human action, for example development and modification (arrow a in figure 6.1). On the other hand, information technology is a medium of human action, it facilitates and constrains human action through interpretive schemes, facilities and norms embedded in them (arrow b). Since human action always takes place at particular institutional settings, for example in organisations, there are institutional properties that condition the interaction with information technology by giving development standards, professional norms and resources (arrow c). Finally, human interaction with information technology has consequences to the institutional properties of organisation, through reinforcing or transforming the systems of signification, domination and legitimisation (arrow d). (Orlikowski and Robey 1990)

Within the model Orlikowski focuses on the interaction of human action and institutional properties, which she examines through Giddens' conceptual apparatus. Systems of signification, domination and legitimisation within institutional properties in figure 1 (arrow d) are the three structures (structuring properties) that Anthony Giddens introduces as the constituents of human action (Giddens 1984). The structures of signification, domination and legitimisation are, on one hand, constituted within human action using interpretative schemes (meaning), resources (power) and norms (moral). On the other hand, human action is conditioned with these same structures. Orlikowski applies this by exploring separately the sphere of structures and separately the sphere of human action. She looks at the systems of signification, domination and legitimisation within the information systems and institutional properties of organisation: how do they shape human action. Then, she looks at human action (development and use of information systems) by using interpretative schemes, resources and norms: how does it construct information systems and institutional properties.

Orlikowski uses her theoretical model to study an organisation that is introducing computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools for its workers, consultants. A group of technical consultants are developing CASE tools for the consultants. By examining, one by one, the components of her model, Orlikowski makes several interesting observations on information systems. She, for example, shows that technical determinism - "the impact" of information systems - is socially produced. She shows how consultants make their clients accept the screens that CASE tools produce. Yet, she does not explain this with causal laws of technical imperative. Instead she looks at institutional properties: "consultants, pressured as they are by their project managers' schedules, put pressure on clients to accept those designs that are automatically generated by tools". It is the institutional structures constituted in social action that construct the "technical imperative".

Another useful insight within Orlikowski’s model is a perception that time in information systems is continuous rather than a sum of separate pieces of "development time" and "use time". She observes that "technology can be seen as an ongoing product and medium of human action". There might be a period when development is more intensive, but in her model, there is no need to mark the end of development processes. Information systems as institutional properties are reproduced constantly, the use of information systems becomes intertwined with the development. Although there are reasons to analyse the two periods separately, Orlikowski's model gives room for the flexibility of information technology. The users of technology have a real possibility for human action, within the frame of information technology. They are capable human beings who are able to evaluate and develop their settings.

Orlikowski's model is a useful tool for the explication of both social structures and human action within information technology. The conceptual apparatus of Giddens takes up various phenomena of social order and social structures, those concerning meanings, power as well as norms. Orlikowski is able to go back and forth within social action and structures.

Different groups have different interpretations about the social reality. This is, however, present in Orlikowski's work only partially. In her model, there is no explicit place for different interpretations. By following Giddens (1984), Orlikowski (1990) does not pay systematic attention to differences between groups. In her paper with Robey (1990) she builds separate models to the users and to the developers of the information technology: human action varies as well as structures. She, however, does not develop her analysis to explore the connection between the social structures of the two groups.

Walsham and Han (1990) argue that Orlikowski gives a central role to technology rather than to human agent, and her work still lacks analysis of the dynamics between development and use and dynamics between action and structure. Orlikowski focuses on technology, and it is only for that purpose that she explores human activity and institutional properties. She, for example, has no direct link from human act to institutional properties of organization, but only takes into account the human action that constructs the structures within information technology, and through that shapes also the institutional properties of organisation. There exists, however, human action that constructs organisational properties, for example division of work, which shapes the developing and use of information technology but not through the development or use as such. In Orlikowski's model this type of action might be seen as a part of structures, but not in a realm of human action. This problem seems to arise more from Orlikowski's interpretation of Giddens than from Giddens' theory itself. If Orlikowski would follow Giddens' theory of structuration more carefully, she would give more emphasis on human action and social practises. For Giddens the social practices are the starting point where all the analysis starts: it is only through social practices that we can say something about structuration. Limiting social practices to certain particular ones, to development and use of information technology, makes a risk not getting the full understanding of social structures either.

Giddens (1991) himself comments that out of his theoretical work, it is most important to understand the idea of structuration, the interaction between social action and structures. The conceptual apparatus concerning rules, resources and meaning are only secondary important. The latter can be applied where suitable, but there is no idea to transfer it as such to any research. By taking Giddens' conceptual model as given Orlikowski has a tendency not to give room for the actual social practices. The social reality becomes objectified through Giddens' concepts, which is opposing to Giddens' original thinking.

Another question, which relates to Walsham's and Ham's criticism on the lack of dynamics, is Orlikowski's decision to explore structures and human action separately. Although Orlikowski says that the separation is only an analytical one, it, however, make her structures static. They start to have a life of their own independently, although they are supposed to exist only through social practices. In Giddens' theory structures do have life beyond individual people, but they do not have life independently from social practices. This is, however, something quite confusing in Giddens' theory. Giddens theory remains very much on ontological level (Bryant and Jary 1991), and gives very few advice for concrete research work, how to actually start from concrete practices and from the concrete groups of actual people.

Standpoint

Dorothy Smith(1987, 1989, 1990A, 1990B) agrees with Giddens on many ontological premises: starting point in actual social practices, actual people in actual time and place, and the materiality of social world. She, however, develops also epistemology and methodology to do research that starts from actual people’s practices. The researcher has to take a standpoint, and it is only through this standpoint that social relations are available. The social relations found through the standpoint are real and have a material basis, but they may look different from different standpoint.

Dorothy Smith examines how the social world is put together, how everyday experiences and practices are articulated in social relations (Smith 1987, 126): "A socially organized reality is known as such not as 'objective', but as an ongoing practical matter of accomplishing presence by and among subjects". This understanding of social relations comes from Marx (Smith 1990b, 94): "For Marx, social relations are the actual coordinated activities of actual people in which the phenomena of political economy arise. Relations are not norms, concepts or structures apart from activities, determining and being expressed through activities: processes of action among persons ... in time". Although Marx was speaking mostly about economic relations, Smith has developed the notion of social relations to analyse all kinds of human activity.

Social relations as coordinated activities connect Dorothy Smith also with ethnomethodology, but she makes a further distinction with ethnomethodologists who use the notion of social relation more like an entity, e.g. turn-taking relations in conversations (Sacks et al., 1974). For her, social relations are activities or methods of analysing different kinds of practices among people. Social relations are constant dialectics between active subjects and the particular relation "itself": On the one hand, social relations are possible only through active subjects who formulate their own practices as sequences of action. On the other hand, social relations also have power over subjects and go beyond the reach of any particular individual: they are reproducible regardless of individual goals (Smith 1990b, 114).

Dorothy Smith's theory connects social relations to the epistemological questions of standpoints of particular people and to the locations of the researchers themselves. To understand social relations, the researcher starts from everyday practices (cmp. Ethnomethodology e.g. Garfinkel 1967, Giddens 1984) and from where she or he is located by carefully listening to people in the research. Distinct from ethnomethodology, Smith thinks that all the social constructs organising people's practices are not available as such, but it is the researcher's work to explicate them. For this purpose, Smith introduces the concept "everyday life as a problematic", to describe the difference of plain "everyday life as a phenomenon". The constructs underlying everyday life must be problematised and explicated (Smith 1987, 159). Taking a standpoint means starting from the actual lives of particular people, and looking for social relations which make the life understandable. Compared to the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens (1984), Smith emphasises the epistemological significance of standpoints. Social relations cannot be described as objective "bird's views" but are available to the sociological inquiry only through standpoints of particular groups.

Smith's notion of standpoint joins with other feminist standpoints (Harding 1986) on major political aims: Smith is doing sociology for women. As grounded on the actual practices of people it, however, also differs from them, e.g. from the standpoint of Hilary Rose, which is based on women's heart work. For Smith, standpoint does not mean essential womanhood or other static relations but is open to any appearance of actual people and practices. It expresses Canadian experience. Numerous groups of people born abroad live together in the Canadian society and various stories are heard and encouraged. All "truths" are challenged by other groups. Dorothy Smith has developed a theoretical approach that allows each group to have its own point of departure to social reality.

Locating the researcher

Dorothy Smith writes that the researcher should locate oneself in the social relations that she or he is studying. One needs two starting points, that of the standpoint and that of the researcher. The people whose standpoint is used should not be dealt with as "objects" or "them", which the researcher could represent because of her or his "membership", for example in feminism or womanhood (cmp. Omrod 1995 sites Game 1991), but the researcher needs to make her own position in the research process visible.

According to ethnomethodology "social phenomena arise for the sociological observation only in an interactive act" (Smith 1990b, 87). As members, we have developed knowledge of how things work in our society. On the basis of that, we are able to interpret phenomena around us. When we describe our interpretation we include our "own touch" and assume that readers are able to reconstruct the knowledge we have used in the description. We assume that the readers share our membership in the society. And this is what also has to been taken seriously in research work. As researchers, we "enter ourselves into relations we are concerned to explicate as methods or practices", and when we start from the everyday practices of actual subjects "we have to transform 'members' practices into our own practices as members, or rather, to discover how to take up methods of inquiry in which the method itself is explicated as an integral aspect of inquiry" (Smith 1990b, 91).

"Entering into the relations ourselves" means that we have to explicate our relationship as researchers to the relations we are looking at. In addition to taking a standpoint, it means locating ourselves in the actual relations we are exploring. Smith speaks about the Copernican shift, where one objective perspective has been replaced and where the researcher must explicate her location, and thus her or his point of view, in relation to the people studied. The researcher "had no longer a fixed, central position but had to be seen as located in a position itself in motion in relation to what she observed" (Smith's 1987, p.99). This is something different from what ethnomethodology assumes. From the point of view of ethnomethodology (Sacks et al. 1974) a researcher shares the members' knowledge, and does not have to bother in explicating her or his own location any further. In ethnomethodological description, there is room for the voices of the people studied, but there is no space for the voice of the researcher. A researcher is claiming to do an "objective" interpretation about social relations based on member activities. Smith, however, argues differently. "We can explore our own knowledge of how those practices structure what becomes (for us) the original of the description" (Smith 1990b, 103). It is our own (tacit) knowledge grown in the social relations of the researcher's life and in the description process that takes part in the interpretation we do as members, and it is that tacit knowledge that has to be explicated in order "to locate ourselves in the social relations" we are interested in.

Locating oneself in research processes is now required in many traditions of feminist (e.g. Krieger 1991) and qualitative research, e.g. in oral history and autobiography studies (Bertaux 1981, Interpreting 1989, Women's Words 1991). When Smith points out that a researcher needs to locate herself in the social relations to be examined (Smith 1990b, 63), Krieger (1991, 41-48), for example, has emphasised that also subjective states, one's emotions, and one's biographical histories take part in knowledge formation, and should not be ignored in writing.

Agency

How is one’s agency constructed? If we start from particular practices of particular people, what are the particular people and their practices like? Aren’t they constructed as well?

Dorothy Smith's standpoint theory (1987) starts from actual people, their accounts and experiences, by giving a voice to particular and situated groups, their ways of seeing and knowing, and only then, mapping out social relations and connecting their knowing to power relations. There is space to examine particular women’s or any other groups’ ways of doing technology from their own point of view without essentialising or individualising people involved.

French (e.g. feminist) thinkers as well as postmodern discourse have, however, made experiences and voices as problematic. On the one hand, bodily desires have been taken up in the context of knowing, as something to be taken into account, on the other hand, the body and experiences are seen as social and textual constructions (e.g. Butler 1990, Weedon 1987). Both of these appear in Donna Haraway's image of the cyborg, where a human is intertwined with an animal and with a machine. Inspired by Haraway, Ferguson speaks about mobile subjectivities and Braidotti about nomadic subjectivities. In a cyborg world we can, and we should, struggle for various voices recognising that voices come from subjectivities that already have a machine (technology, artefacts, texts) built in themselves. There are no authentic voices available but rather, voices are something where the bodily and situated "own" intervenes with the "strange" of the social, e.g. technical world. All women's and men's voices are voices of cyborgs, of technical subjectivities. This makes the agenda of situated voices (of various social differences, e.g. gender) on technology even more important. The question of technology is not only a question of power and social relations in people's homes or work places but it is also a question of one's subjectivity. By making their voice on technology, people also define their own subjectivities.

Subjectivity is fractured and connects with others, but Haraway does not lose the agency - as often happens in postmodern discourse. "Acknowledging the agency of the world in knowledge makes room for some unsettling possibilities, including a sense of the world's independent sense of humor" (ibid, 199). Such an agency does not connect with a humanist tradition, but is a "post-humanist view of subjectivity", as Braidotti (1994, 23) puts it. It does not require pre-formed unitary beings, individuals beyond social and textual relations, but is based on the particularity of subjects (cmp. Game 1991, 40, Omrod 1995). Subjects are located in particular social and textual - and also material relations and practices. It is there that divergent consciousnesses are coordinated and the subjects make their active presence (Smith 1995). The question of agency moves towards the social and textual construction of the subjectivity (cmp. Omrod 1995), but in the manner of the "coyote as a witty agent" (Haraway 1991, 201).

The cyborg vision opens the subjectivity of people, to be connected to the very same plane of social organization. It allows us not only to collect (e.g. women's) experiences but also to examine how experiences have been constructed in the social and textual, or technical, world. It allows us to dig out how technology, with its discourse and power relations, has intervened in the thinking, acting and practices of people, in their subjectivities. It also allows us to understand the meanings that people make in social settings in their societies. It allows us to develop ways of empowering local (e.g. women's) voices in current societies and to develop more sophisticated politics.

Writing through a cyborg vision is far from an easy way of doing research on information and communication technologies in the society. It requires both sensitivity to the subjective sense and major efforts to explicate various large scale social settings. Yet, there are other challenges to be faced. So far the cyborg frame has not included bodily experiences and identities, as it should have done. And after having addressed the transformations and mobility of the subjectivities, it is also time to take up the counter thought. Ellen Mortensen (1995) argues that we should not only speak in terms of the dynamics and potency of the subjects, of the exhausting speed of the subjectivity, but notice the inactivity and passivity in us.

Cyborg vision makes a starting point for the redefinition of concrete practices of agency in information society, too. It challenges the liberal view of giving "equal access" to technology by pointing out the simultaneous global and local social relations embedded in "equal access". It gives way to situated and socially constructed citizenship where one of the challenges lies in the struggle and responsibility of building and bridging borders between the local and bodily, and the global and "worldish". This makes a major research question for the studies of information and communication technology in the early third millennium.

University of Tampere
Work Research Centre
marja.vehvilainen@csc.fi, tttuhe@uta.fi

Return to top of page

Page developed by Christine Hine
Page maintained by Marike van Harskamp
Contents current at 13th September 1999