Habituated: A Merleau-Pontian Analysis of the Smartphone

Abstract

This paper offers a phenomenological account of our relationship to our smartphones rooted in the work of philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and Drew Leder (1954. We argue that the nature of this relationship has implications for the ways we conceptualize and promote information literacy in the era of mobile ubiquity. After reviewing recent LIS literature on mobile devices in libraries, we discuss Merleau-Ponty's notion of the habit body and Drew Leder's development of the Merleau-Pontian concept of incorporation. We then apply these concepts to our use of smartphones, paying particular attention to the incorporation of the smartphone in our bodily habit and what this means for our relationship to the information we access on this device. The paper concludes by considering how the insights from this analysis of the smartphone could be integrated into existing information literacy conversations through the lens of dispositions.

Information experience as an object of LIS research: a definition based on concept analysis

“…This is, in turn, followed by the conception based on the objective view of information and the phenomenological view of experience, which understands information experience as lived experience of interacting with human communication products and environments (e.g. Keilty and Leazer, 2018; Howard and Bussell, 2018).…”

Mobile apps for visual research: Affordances and challenges for participant-generated photography

“…Along the same lines, research should also examine mobile apps as material objects. While studies have explored the impact of smartphones (e.g., Howard & Bussell, 2018) and tablets (e.g., Burford & Park, 2014) upon information activities, there has been little focus on the ways in which apps, as physical artefacts, enable and constrain the enactment of information practices. Future research should examine the sociomaterial dimensions of mobile information practices in more detail, including the ways in which apps function as boundary (Star & Griesemer, 1989) or epistemic objects (Knorr Cetina, 2001) that shape or coordinate information activities.…”