Conceptual Framework Supporting the Case Studies

A conceptual framework (see Figure 4.2) developed from Feng and Feenberg (2008) was used to guide the research and explore key concepts and ideas. The framework understands schemes to be the product of technical codes or cultural horizons which act to shape design and implementation processes. Technical elements and functional attributes (primary instrumentalization), which tend to have relatively little bias and form the basic ingredients of technical practice, are actualized in the city though an assemblage of forces effected largely by institutional actors, policies and processes

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(secondary instrumentalization). It is here that schemes become integrated into specific practices, are connected to other devices, and are ascribed specific meanings and use. The feedback loop connecting the actualized systems with processes of secondary instrumentalization is an adaptation to the original framework as developed by Feng and Feenberg (2008) and allows for the impact of environmental contexts on the ongoing development of the systems. The broken line including primary instrumentalization in this process acknowledges that even the choice of basic technical elements can have a valuative and/or political aspect, however minimal.

Figure 4.2: Conceptual Framework

Source: Adapted from Feng & Feenberg (2008)

The particular constructs which comprise both instrumentalizations and which contributed both theoretically and methodically to the coding and interpretation of data collected are described below.

Primary Instrumentalization: Functionalization

This instrumentalization consists of four moments of technical practice. The first two relate to characteristics of the object and approximate to Heidegger’s notion of a

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decontextualized ‘revealing’, while the latter two define the subject and are sympathetic to Habermas’ concept of Communicative Action i.e. they suggest the intrusion of a functionalist or technocratic rationality into the ‘life world’.

Decontextualization - Reduction

Decontextualization and reduction are interrelated steps which capture the processes by which objects are essentially separated from their natural environment for the purposes of utilitarian, technocratic evaluation. Together, they operate to negate those attributes and qualities which might otherwise meet socially relevant goals.

“Inventions such as the knife or the wheel take qualities such as the sharpness or roundness of some natural thing, such as a rock or tree trunk, and release them as technical properties from the role they play in nature. Technology is constructed from such fragments of nature that, after being abstracted from all specific contexts, appear in a technically useful form.” (Feenberg, 1999: 203)

In effect, these processes of objectivication simplify artefacts in order that may be integrated into technical networks and systems. Feenberg calls what remains ‘primary qualities’; primary that is from the standpoint of the technical subject for whom they are a power base.

“The tree trunk, reduced to its primary quality of roundness in becoming a wheel, loses its secondary qualities as a habitat, a source of shade, and a living, growing member of its species. To the extent that all of reality comes under the sign of technique, the real is progressively reduced to such primary qualities.”

(Feenberg, 1999: 203)

Primary qualities may include anything about objects that makes them amenable to control, formalization and quantification (weight, size, shape and so on). In this sense decontextualization and reduction resonate with Heideggerian substantivism; the contraction of all of technology’s potential to the most abstract and instrumental capacities and, in the process, the sacrificing of those secondary qualities which have social and ethical value.

Autonomization - Positioning

These concepts are the antithesis of reciprocity and involve a separation of technical subject from the object of control making redundant the natural feedback loop that typically mediates and conditions such a relationship.

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“The subject is largely unaffected by the object on which it acts, thus forming an apparent exception to Newton's law...Administrative action too, as a technical relationship between human beings, presupposes the autonomization of the manager as subject, who must neither fear nor pity the laid-off worker. Their relationship must be functional.” (Feenberg, 1999: 203)

The technical subject situates or positions itself strategically to navigate among its objects and control them. This positioning is highly characteristic of the technocratic control one sees in modern, hierarchical organisations and is marked by an indifference to the social and environmental consequences of the pursuit of optimization and/or self-perpetuation. Feenberg proposes the design of artefacts is complicit in this process by inducing workers and consumers to fulfil pre-existing programs that may otherwise have not chosen. This reaffirms technology’s positional character.

Secondary Instrumentalization: Realization

Secondary instrumentalization is also defined by four moments. While primary instrumentalization defines the basic technical orientation of the object and subject, a process of secondary instrumentalization is required to integrate a device or system into a real-world context. Though highly constrained under a technical rationality, this recontextualization process offers an opportunity to embed the technology in a multitude of technical and social networks through mediations that are cognisant of normative and aesthetic considerations. In this sense it offers the potential to compensate for the reifying effects of primary instrumentalization. Therefore, each moment of the secondary instrumentalization can be seen to as a foil or counterpoint to those outlined above. Again, the first two concepts relate to the object and the latter two to the subject.

Systematization - Mediation

Systematization and mediation are processes through which the artefact can be recontextualized and designed with multiple contexts and use cases in mind. In the vernacular of ANT, they represent the “enrolment” of an object in a network (Latour, 1992) where the artefact or system assumes a multitude of technical and cultural identities and meanings. The technically underdetermined way this is accomplished

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allows for the intervention of socially relevant interests and values and the moral and ethical imperatives of a broader spectrum of user groups. When supported by the appropriate valuative mediations, systematization can harness the inherent capacities or ‘secondary qualities’ of technology to inset it seamlessly into a new social context. Characterized by commodification under a neoliberal orthodoxy, these processes retain the capacity to give the concretized or realized object an additional dimension and redefine not only its ‘function’ but its ‘meaning’. Feenberg’s examples of online education platforms and the Minitel system, which demonstrate the capacity of goal- oriented systems to assimilate the concerns and interests of affected communities, are illustrative in this regard.

Vocation – Initiative

These processes speak directly to the democratic interventions described in Chapter 2. It is through the modalities of vocation and initiative that such interventions can mediate and reconfigure the effects of autonomy characteristic of primary instrumentalization. In so doing, the technical subject is no longer isolated from objects of control but is reshaped by their relation to them. This reciprocity accounts for the co-constitution of subject and object.

"Vocation" is the best term we have for this reverse impact on users of their

involvement with the tools of their trade. The idea of vocation or "way" is an essential dimension of even the most humble technical practices...but tends to be artificially reserved for professions such as medicine in most industrial societies.” (Feenberg, 1999: 206)

When motivated by a sense of vocation, tactical actors (implicated publics and institutional subordinates for example) can mobilize initiative to circumvent the strategic power of executive, instrumentally-oriented decision-makers. As previously described, such agency may take many forms such as resistance, advocacy, collaborative design, and collegiality.

“Collegiality is an alternative to bureaucratic control in modern societies with

widespread if imperfect applications in the organization of professionals such as teachers and doctors. Reformed and generalized, it has the potential for reducing alienation through substituting self-organization for control from above.” (Feenberg, 1999: 203)

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It is through such interventions that the tension between conservation of hierarchy and democratic rationalization can be productively resolved. Table 4.1 below illustrates these concepts and the relations between them.

Table 4.1: Instrumentalization and associated concepts

Functionalization Realization Objectivication (Technology) Decontextualization Reduction Systematization Mediation Subjectivication (Human) Autonomization Positioning Vocation/identity Initiative Source: (Feenberg, 1999: 208)

In keeping with the critical paradigm, the concepts defined above were not applied prescriptively, but instead used as a means to support a critical reflection of the substantive issues impacting the relationships between society and technology.