Anders Albrechtslund and Louise Nørgaard Glud have published the article Empowering Residents: A Theoretical Framework for Negotiating Surveillance in Surveillance and Society.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to develop an understanding of negotiation as a proactive user behavior in response to persuasive, surveillance-enabling technologies. We work with a case where the ambition is to use maps to persuade residents in marginalized residential areas to take co-ownership of the future of their neighborhood. However, we argue that by negotiating persuasive technologies, residents can domesticate and “reconfigure” these, thus we need to broaden the dominant understanding of persuasion (Fogg 2003) to include the process of negotiation. Inspired by Actor-Network Theory, we argue that we need a framework that takes into account negotiations of other actors than the persuasive designer to bring a more nuanced and active understanding of responses to surveillance technologies. This article suggests that negotiation can be both user empowering as well as a productive measure in an ongoing designer-user relation. While the designer persuades, the user negotiates, and this dynamic relation contributes to potentially better technology development.

You may download this article (open access) at www.surveillance-and-society.org

This paper discusses two approaches to “the sociotechnical”, one coming from the Tavistock tradition and the other from actor network theory. These two differ in important ways and from the latter it follows that what patient safety means must be scrutinized and unpacked. The paper thus rudimentarily discusses central contributions to the problematization of patient safety. Last, it is argued that patient safety does not exist apart from the sociotechnical practices that seek to accomplish it, but is constructed in and through them, which is why it is pertinent to reflect on how those practices constructs what comes to qualify as patient safety.

You can purchase access to the paper at the IOS Press website.

Abstract: Aktør-netværk-teori udgør en interessant ramme for analysen af et samfund, hvor det tekniske og det sociale i stigende grad konvergerer. Hverken den (moderne) kritiske sociologi eller den (postmoderne) socialkonstruktivistiske sociologi synes at kunne beskrive denne konvergens fyldestgørende. Derimod synes aktør-netværk-teorien at tilbyde et perspektiv hinsides det moderne og postmoderne, som på én gang er universalistisk og relativistisk, hvilket artiklen skal redegøre for.

Fra det redaktionelle forord: "Kasper Schiølin foreslår i sin artikel, at aktør-netværks-teori byder sig som en værdig arvtager til den socialkonstruktivistiske sociologi. Dette er, ifølge Schiølin, sociologiens opgør med de postmodernistiske tanker og en tilbagevenden til en mere universalistisk tilgang. Med udgangspunkt i antropologen Latour samt sociologerne Law og Callon forsøger Schiølin at inkorporere såkaldte handlende ikke-mennesker, eksempelvis mobiltelefoner, i aktør-netværks-teorien. Dette tillader teorien at fungere i vores moderne, højteknologiske samfund."

Artiklen (pp. 15-23) kan downloades i boksen til højre, tilgåes på Semikolons hjemmeside eller rekvireres i trykt bogform forskellige steder i Nobelparken.