Things to think with: words and objects as material symbols

Roepstorff, Andreas

doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0015

Cited by 36 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Ethnography highlights the importance of this as it aims to link a zoomed in perspective on concrete situations, or interviews based on individual’s lived perspective, to the regularities at the level of the sociomaterial practice as a whole; i.e., to what we have called a zoomed out view on the form of life. Ecological psychology could thus benefit from including ethnographical methods and social sciences that thematize the patterned practice of the form of life (e.g., Roepstorff, 2008). That way we can get a clear view of the richness of the landscape of available affordances offered by our evolving sociomaterial environment (e.g., Malafouris, 2014) as it persists and changes within cultures, communities, and behavior settings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework

2017

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Social coordination and affordance perception always take part in concrete situations in real life. Nonetheless, the different fields of ecological psychology studying these phenomena do not seem to make this situated nature an object of study. To integrate both fields and extend the reach of the ecological approach, we introduce the Skilled Intentionality Framework that situates both social coordination and affordance perception within the human form of life and its rich landscape of affordances. We argue that in the human form of life the social and the material are intertwined and best understood as sociomateriality. Taking the form of life as our starting point foregrounds sociomateriality in each perspective we take on engaging with affordances. Using ethnographical examples we show how sociomateriality shows up from three different perspectives we take on affordances in a real-life situation. One perspective shows us a landscape of affordances that the sociomaterial environment offers. Zooming in on this landscape to the perspective of a local observer, we can focus on an individual coordinating with affordances offered by things and other people situated in this landscape. Finally, viewed from within this unfolding activity, we arrive at the person’s lived perspective: a field of relevant affordances solicits activity. The Skilled Intentionality Framework offers a way of integrating social coordination and affordance theory by drawing attention to these complementary perspectives. We end by showing a real-life example from the practice of architecture that suggests how this situated view that foregrounds sociomateriality can extend the scope of ecological psychology to forms of so-called “higher” cognition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework

2017

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“…After all, extended cognition marks the role of language, as well as the importance of other objects as material symbols [18,44] -from ancient writing devices to maps, clocks, and typewriters. Tools are part and parcel of our perception, memory, computation abilities, planning and decision-making.…”

Section: What Is An Extended Moon?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Consider the Moon. Human-Computer Bricolage of Extended Objects

Rughiniș

2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Our minds are extended through tools -from pencils on paper to clocks and computers. 'Extended minds' have gained acclaim in digital times, but have also stirred fear: do objects become smarter at our expense? We propose a new approach to help cultivate auspicious cognitive relationships with things: the 'extended object'. If our thoughts are extended through things, things can be symmetrically and methodically extended through our thoughts -in conversation, and in time. Let us consider the Moon: Can it colonize us?

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“…The signifi cance of these fi rst steps lies in the subsequent infl uence they had on the course of human evolution 29 Se også Johannsen 2010;Johnson-Frey 2004;Roepstorff 2008;Roepstorff et al 2010. itself. I suggest that the more that these hominins ... did something to the environment by way of intervening with natural processes -in this case, artifi cially increasing the daily hours of exposure to light -the more they dampened the effect of the environment on themselves.…”

Section: H V I L K E T S C E N a R I E O M M E N N E S K E T S E V O mentioning

confidence: 99%

Om religion og evolution: En introduktion

Geertz¹

2011

RvT

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Things to think with: words and objects as material symbols

Cited by 36 publications

References 32 publications

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework

Consider the Moon. Human-Computer Bricolage of Extended Objects

Om religion og evolution: En introduktion

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