Thank you, Fernando Mendes. Following you, I have discovered this thread. And it looks like a fascinating place of vivid discussions. Thanks to Lars, Ken, Francois, Klaus and many more for sharing your thoughts.
The possibility of ‘designing with agency’ sparked my curiosity a couple of years ago. At that time I was working as a service design practitioner. Since, it led me to engage in the PhD I am doing now at Kyoto University. Which is to say I am fairly new to the realm of design theory!
At first, I explored the notion of agency rather intuitively. I expanded the scope of design practice from designing for ‘consumers’ to ‘users’ to ‘agents’. I did not approach the topic from the angle of accountability then. The trigger was the recurrent discourse I heard from companies I worked for. They often saw ‘people as a problem’. The ‘problem’ was not that consumers or users were mis-understanding or mis-using the product or service. The problem came from the fact that these ‘people’ were hacking it, making their own, relying on other means to get the same service. ‘People’ had become ‘agents’ in my understanding.
Inhabited with the designer ethos, I thought it meant the agency was getting distributed among ‘people’. ‘Empowering people’ was less of an equipment and service design thing. It had more to do with ‘distributing agency further’ by all means. Or said otherwise, reducing the agency imbalance…
When I pitched this idea and some related methodologies to my clients of the time, the reply was cold. Large and small organizations, governments bodies, all replied that they cannot afford to rely on ‘amateur agents’. They either employ or hire the agents they need to build, deliver, maintain their particular servicescape. ‘People’ are never reliable, are they?
Still, platform forms of organization were getting more attention back then. Peer-to-peer, business-to-business, service-for-service, all seamed excellent cases of building and delivering service by distributing agency. So I went on for a PhD studying these non-professional agents engaging in peer-to-peer platform works.
I have to say, my research on designing for agency pointed back to my own quest of multiplying my agency as a designer.
The concept of agency is widely debated depending on which discipline you step in. As it was written in the previous posts of this thread, cognitive psychologists see agency as related with an intention. In the institutional logic perspective, agency is pervasive within an institutional arrangement. Remains the question of how agents may infer a change in the institutional arrangement that drives their actions in the first place. The Service-Dominant logic approach builds on institutional arrangements and has left this question of agency a bit aside so far. Recent papers tried to tackle the ‘dark side of agency’ (Mele et al., 2018) for instance or Kjellberg chapter in the recent SAGE Handbook of Service-Dominant Logic.
Since Giddens, sociologists cannot dissociate agency from structures, as both are the 2 sides of the same coin. Agency and structure are not dialectically opposed. They are temporary outputs of an on-going process embedding both. Like light is particle and waves, not one or the other. According to Giddens already, agency is not about intention but rather about ‘capacities to do’.
I discovered that since Giddens, Bourdieu and other significant thinkers, sociology studies have evolved to be less uniquely sociological, and account for the agency of tools, objects, institutions, regulations, laws or money for instance. With the co-evolution of technics and forms of organizations, sociologists now consider the ’socio-material world’. Objects do not resume to their bare materiality. They are socially constructed, and made durable in ‘hybrid collectives’ of people, institutions or materialities. Appadurai has a great story about the ‘social life of things’. Zelizer's account on the social meanings of money is fascinating. And Latour, Law, or Callon's work on Science and Technology Sociology and Actor-Network Theory are still promising.
Take, for instance, the bullet which was mentioned in this thread. It has no intention, just massive inertia when propelled through the air. It does act along its ballistic trajectory, but this action has no meaning by itself. Just inertia. Be it flying through a forest, the forest may not be able to produce meaning as it experiences bullets flying through it. A human, a chimp, or even a bird perhaps, may make sense of it eventually.
The bullet does not exist out of the blue. Because it is assembled by humans, tools or organization, it exists only within this socio-material world. The bullet is a complex socio-material entity in the first place. So its agency is inherently linked to its human world. It is made, purposely, intentionally, and carry along with this intention even if it is a stupid piece of metal. It is triggered and propelled through space in one particular direction with intention, and again, carries this intention along. So if agency requires intention, the bullet as a socio-material entity does carry some actually. And so do walls, phishing emails, etc.
So agency would inherently be linked to the human world. Viruses, for instance, started to carry agency when Pasteur revealed their presence and functioning. Viruses physically roamed around before, but Pasteur made them cognitively part of our world. Before that, the black plague killed, made people die. At that time, the plague was more of an immaterial entity, a curse from the devil or so. Not yet the agency of an invisible, yet physical, Yersinia pestis bacteria carried by flees to humans.
A volcano is an interesting example too. The volcano is a material thing, a more or less active mouth of a magmatic chamber if I’m correct. If you walk in the landscape, new to it, you may not ‘notice’ the volcano. A volcano becomes a social entity when the energy that flows through its mouth leaves traces on the landscape. Human settlements for instance learn to draw conclusion that this puff of smoke above the big hill over there, that hill that has been named ‘volcano’, this is forewarning of fire, storm, ash rain, loss, etc. Human groups might then associate meanings to that event, as you said. Even for ‘modern’ and ‘rational’ contemporaries, when the entity named Eyjafjallajokull erupts in Iceland, clouds of ashes cover Europe and for safety reason governments ban flights for 2 weeks or so. The governments closed the airspace, not the volcano. But a volcanic activity altered the material composition of the airspace, to the extend that our flying tools became unfit to fly through it safely. Human groups politically argued about that exact fact, how safely could engines function given the new composition of the air. Our flying socio-material world did not account for Icelandic volcanos before, but now our socio-material world does. Like microbes are made social since Pasteur, etc. In Japan for instance, I have hear people speak of the Fukushima nuclear reactor n°1 as “Daiichi-chan” or of the new coronavirus as “corona-san”. ‘’-chan’ and -san’ being particles to name someone. Little Daiichi and Mr Corona.
In ANT, STS or Market-assemblage perspectives, agency is unevenly distributed among a network of material and intangible entities, human and non-human entities. Among these interacting entities, you find things like objects, regulations, algorithms, fairy tales, Popeye, firms, money, etc. All of them ‘act’ as soon as their ‘effects’ on other known actors are tangible and acknowledged. For instance for Trump who does not recognize the effect of 410ppm CO2 atmospheric concentration, the change of climate regime is not a thing in itself but a ‘hoax’. Framed as a ‘hoax’, that thing shall have less tangible socio-political effects. Framed as a sum of ‘scientific facts’, other political formations increase its ‘effectivity’, both physically and socio-politically. What to account for in our socio-material worlds is an on-going discussion.
From the readings I discovered so far, I kind of understood that:
* Agency is not only a human property. Bullets, phishing mails, speed bumps, any other socio-material entity may exercise agency. I think it is relevant for designers to look at reality as socio-material world. Bullets, phishing emails or speed bumps do not exist in the void. Their materiality is made durable by a network of actors, human and non-human, like organizations, rules, discourse, ... These assemblages produce agency: they make do, and react or evolve given the feedbacks of the effect of the bullet, phishing etc.
* Agency is about “make do” (‘faire faire’ in french). If you ‘do’ something, something might be making you do it. Else you are making something do. For instance, the plague makes people die, whether they are materialized as an immaterial curse or physical bacterias.
* One step further, agency is an enactment. Something or someone does not have agency, agency is not owned or possessed. It is performed, exercised, enacted.
* Agency is a capacity to act and to give meaning to the action. It can neither be contained in a human being nor localized in institutions, norms, values, and discursive or symbolic systems. It is distributed among a network of actors of all sorts. Action, including its reflexive dimension that produces meaning, takes place in hybrid collectives.
Therefore, reconfiguring an agency means reconfiguring the socio-technical assemblage that produces it. And here we touch upon the idea of ‘designing’ agency as an enactment of re-balancing the distribution of agency.
Having walked that path, I am back to question the designer’s agency. It is distributed within a network of tools, beliefs, icons, products, business models, participatory communities, client organizations, or event design theories. Lilly Irani recent study on the role of designer in making ‘entrepreneurial citizen’ was enriching to me. Similarly, the perspective delineated by Anna Tsing from her studies of assemblage of activities sprouting on fields exploited by and abandoned by capitalism.
If what we account in our socio-material worlds ‘make do’, then the discussion is what to account for and what to leave aside. Indeed designers would benefit from reflecting on what hybrid collectives make them durable. Then they could question their ability to ‘make do’, and their accountability to do so. My guess is that, compared to other hybrid collectives like policymakers or engineers, designers are ‘mutagens’. I reuse Carlo Ratti’s words to coin that designers are agents that precipitate mutations in existing processes. Those mutations have ongoing effects. Accountability would start with monitoring the tangible effects, as well as developing tools to reveal imperceptible effects. Accountability would lead to participate in the collective reconfiguration of our crafted socio-material world, materially as much as politically.
My apologies for this supper-way-too-long email. But indeed that topic is very rich and super interesting to me. I am looking forward to read your thoughts and reflexions too.
Best regards,
Marc Chataigner
PhD student in economic sociology,
East Asia Sustainable Development program,
Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University.
070-4451-9069
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京都大学経済学研究科
経済社会学の博士課生
シャテニエ マーク
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I share some readings here, in case it may be of interest for some of you. Please feel free to share your readings too. I’d be delighted to explore further.
Appadurai, A. (Ed.). (1988). The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press.
Battilana, J., & Casciaro, T. (2012). Change agents, networks, and institutions: A contingency theory of organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2), 381-398.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency?. American journal of sociology, 103(4), 962-1023.
Giddens, A., & Pierson, C. (1998). Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making sense of modernity. Stanford University Press.
Irani, L. (2019) Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Latour, B. (1999). On recalling ANT. The sociological review, 47(1_suppl), 15-25.
Mele, C., Nenonen, S., Pels, J., Storbacka, K., Nariswari, A., & Kaartemo, V. (2018). Shaping service ecosystems: exploring the dark side of agency. Journal of Service Management.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
Zelizer, V. A. (2017). The social meaning of money: Pin money, paychecks, poor relief, and other currencies. Princeton University Press.
On Aug 6, 2020, at 5:15, Krippendorff, Klaus <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dear Francois
Yes, in common language we say that the knife cut my finger or the wall stopped my movement.
But common language Can be misleading, diverting the blame of untoward event to something that can’t be blamed for bad intentions.
When you cut you finger it is you who isn’t careful. Of course it is possible for a designer to invent something that makes cutting yourself unlikely. But this is another issue. However it is your actions that guided the knife to were you didn’t want it to be. you were not carful, not the knife.
Similarly, a wall has most likely been designed by an architect and constructed by a builder. Whatever their motivation you ran into it and hurt yourself.
When a designer is no longer around to be held accountable, you can blame the for something
You don’t like but no longer hold him or her accountable for what was realized. The designer is an agent but what is realized is not.
I think we should not confuse physical causality with human actions. A volcano can be the cause of mass destruction but this doesn’t make it an agent? unless you believe everything is God’s doing but if you do believe this, you can’t hold God accountable. He or she doesn’t answer your question of why this happened.
True, most designs, once realized, have unintended consequences. Designers ought to minimize harming users. But once a physical artifact is realized it works in a way physics describes. Once the bullet leaves the barrel of a gun it can no longer be manipulated by the shooter. It is no more mediated than an earthquake. People can wear bullet proof west’s, build a shelter, or move away.
Common language may confuse the distinction between agency and physical causality, but designers should not perpetuate this confusion.
Klaus
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 3, 2020, at 6:12 AM, Francois Nsenga <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
?Dear Klaus
You wrote:
"As designers, we need to expand our discourse to cope with the ever more
complex consequences of what we propose. To be able to be accountable for
the consequences of our proposals is the biggest challenge we are facing."
Again in my understanding of this issue of agency, no one contests at all
the fact that agency is foremost a human phenomenon, implicating choice and
accountability, primarily of designers, those who conceive those artifacts.
Facts around make it that we all agree on this.
However there are also other facts 'telling' us that there is another
phenomenon, perhaps in need of a deeper understanding: the phenomenon of
mediated agency, the designer(s) not being present, immediately accessible
near her/his artifact. I was expecting to hear from you, also on this
latter (half??? mid???) phenomenon.
In common language, in addition to saying that so and so killed so and so
with a bullet, we also say that (such a particular bullet, if we analyse
deeper like in cases of forensic science) the bullet 'killed' so and so;
this knife 'cut' my finger; she/he was 'hit' by a car; this wall would
'protect' better from cold; the road bump of such a hight will 'damage' the
car, etc. etc. All these are 'actions', or effects as you so correctly say,
in these examples DIRECTLY performed by artifacts, according to
their...specifications, thought and embeded by designers, by
delegation/procuration. There are many other examples where actions-effects
are performed (re Barad's development of this concept of 'performance')
also by other living entities, non-humans: birds, dogs, earthworms, etc. Or
even, in certain several cases, actions performed by other humans (a
toddler throwing a stone to a car, a stone given by an intentional grown up
around...) but not these latter being the ones eventually accountable.
Until a certain time when, if necessary, we'll find or mint another word to
convey the concept of this factual phenomenon of mediated/instructed
performance, a phenomenon that we - not yourself included, thus far!! -
call "agency", for the time being, temporarily.
On human 'instructions' or specifications, in daily reality things act,
only par procuration. And responsibility and accountability remain and
befalls to ONLY human agents. That is the rampant truth!
I therefore invite you and all participants to this list to focus more on
this issue of our concern: artifactual effects or...this kind of agency
delegated by designers; or agency performed through artifacts. How shall we
call it?? No question about it, with necessarily and inevitably input
borrowed from psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists, who
exclusively study the human being and human agency.
Again, I understand and entirely agree with your point of view and
development, but I do not agree with your only focus on humans. In the
issue of our concern, that of artifacts 'embodying' or making, in order to
'perform' better, we humans delegate or expand our agency into those
artifacts we make. Certain animals do the same, at a certain lower level.
But this is not our concern here, neither we are biologists nor
veterinarians!
Also, as said in my previous post, the issue of animism is another topic
for other exchange, in a non-designers forum.
From this corner of the world, I can also elaborate on this!
Best Regards,
Francois
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