Following and Analyzing an Artifact

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the theoretical and methodological challenge of assuming that artifacts are carriers of culture channeling human behavior according to the social discourses and world visions they embody. As Bruno Latour's sociology of interobjectivity suggests, focusing on the artifacts and the material design of the ordinary and institutional context where praxis is deployed is a way to empirically illustrate how knowledge and praxis create each other. Artifacts anticipate paths of action, project possible identities for the users and contribute to defining the institutional or ordinary character of the situation. The chapter presents empirical examples from each cluster of cases and illustrates how to analyze them. Dealing with the analysis of artifacts in a given social situation implies taking a stance toward two of the most tricky, debatable and debated issues in social sciences: the notion of context and the related notion of point of view.

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