Material Parts in Social Structures

Elder-Vass, Dave

doi:10.1515/jso-2015-0058

Cited by 34 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Critical realist theorists have problematised the notion of constitutive entanglement of the social and the material featured in sociomaterialist and similar approaches, and highlight their relative inattention to social structures and their effects (Elder-Vass, 2017;Mutch, 2013). In particular, they critique the flat ontologies that reduce social structures to individual-level phenomena (Elder-Vass, 2017: 92;Mutch, 2013: 36), which are implicit in the conceptualisations offered by both Davidson and Vaast (2010) and Nambisan (2016).…”

Section: Ontologising Digital Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

2018

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Digital entrepreneurship is presented in popular discourse as a means to empowerment and greater economic participation for under-resourced and socially marginalised people. However, this emancipatory rhetoric relies on a flat ontology that does not sufficiently consider the enabling conditions needed for successful digital enterprise activity. To empirically illustrate this argument, we examine three paired cases of UK women digital entrepreneurs, operating in similar sectors but occupying contrasting social positionalities. The cases are comparatively analysed through an intersectional feminist lens using a critical realist methodological framework. By examining the relationships between digital entrepreneurship, social positionality, and structural and agential enabling conditions, we interrogate the notion of digital entrepreneurship as an emancipatory phenomenon producing liberated workers.

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Section: Ontologising Digital Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

2018

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“…But most technological objects do not become parts of us in this way. Bicycles do not become parts of cyclists who ride them, and clothes do not become parts of the people who wear them (this assumes an ordinary language definition of part; for a more subtle discussion of the criteria of parthood, see (Elder-Vass, 2017). Throwing bodies together with objects that do not become parts of us in the same sentence merely confuses the issue (and of course the sentence also conflates the diachronic and the synchronic in the way I have criticized above).…”

Section: Sociomaterialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Materialising social ontology

Elder-Vass¹

2017

Cambridge Journal of Economics

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Social theorists increasingly recognise that material things often play vital roles in the causation of social events. However there is substantial disagreement on how to theorise these roles. Several members of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group have made important contributions in the form of their work on the ontology of technological objects. This paper builds on their work to develop an ontology of socio-technical structures: social entities composed of both humans and technological objects, with causal powers that depend on how these parts relate to, and interact with, each other. The implication is that material things are not just significant in their own right, or as parts of technical complexes, but that they can play a central role in social structures themselves. Indeed many of the most important and consequential social structures in contemporary societies, and in particular in contemporary economies, are socio-technical structures.

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“…….structures not only constrain but also enable action, i.e. make it possible by providing coordination and stability… " (Geels, 2004) The MLP literature is also centrally concerned with the artefactual aspect of sociotechnical systems − something that has also been emphasised by critical realists (Elder-Vass, 2016;Gorski, 2016) but is largely missing from the sociological debate on agency and structure (including Giddens). This is crucial, since the physical constraints imposed by long-lived artefacts and infrastructures provide a primary explanation for the stability and inertia of sociotechnical systems (Table 3).…”

Section: Structure and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Sociotechnical Transitions: A Critical Realist Perspective

Sorrell

2017

SSRN Journal

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This paper identifies and evaluates the explicit and implicit philosophical assumptions underlying the so-called multilevel perspective on sociotechnical transitions (MLP). These include assumptions about the nature of reality (ontology), the status of claims about that reality (epistemology) and the appropriate choice of research methods The paper assesses the consistency of these assumptions with the philosophical tradition of critical realism and uses this tradition to highlight a number of potential weaknesses of the MLP. These include: the problematic conception of social structure and the misleading priority given to intangible rules; the tendency to use theory as a heuristic device rather than causal explanation; the ambition to develop an extremely versatile framework rather than testing competing explanations; the relative neglect of the necessity or contingency of particular causal mechanisms; and the reliance upon single, historical case studies with insufficient use of comparative methods. However, the paper also concludes that the flexibility of the MLP allows room for reconciliation, and provides some suggestions on how that could be achievedincluding proposing an alternative, critical realist interpretation of sociotechnical systems.

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Material Parts in Social Structures

Cited by 34 publications

References 15 publications

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

Emancipation through digital entrepreneurship? A critical realist analysis

Materialising social ontology

Explaining Sociotechnical Transitions: A Critical Realist Perspective

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