Techno-Anthropology

At the School of Engineering and Science, Aalborg University: Bachelor and Master programme in Techno-Anthropology (cand.scient.)

What is Aalborg University (AAU)?

• Situated in the northern part of Jutland in DK, with campuses in Aalborg, Copenhagen and Esbjerg.

• Founded in 1974 on the premises of the old engineering high school.

• 20.000 students and 3000 scientific staff.• The ‘Aalborg model’ = Project and Problem

Based Learning (PoPBL).

Who am I?

• Lars Botin – MA and PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of Development and Planning. Faculty of Engineering and Science. AAU

• MA in art history with specialization in theory and philosophy (Aarhus University and University of Rome).

• PhD in Art, Science and Technology: A Humanist in the Hospital. Cultural Assessments of Electronic Health Records. (Faculty of Engineering and Science, AAU)

What is Techno-Anthropology?

• Inter-disciplinary study and research• Partners: Department of Learning and

Philosophy (40 %), Department of Development and Planning (30 %), Department of Health Technology (20 %) and Department of Energy Technology (10 %).

What is Techno-Anthropology?• Techno-Anthropology studies technology with the tools

of anthropology and combines knowledge of engineering, social science and humanities, focusing on particular themes including:– health technology,– Planning– Energy technology– biotechnology,– clean-tech, – food technology, – ICT, – building construction etc.

Technological man

• “Man knows himself to be more and more free, for technique has eliminated all natural forces and in this way has given him the sense of being master of his fate. The new man being created before our very eyes, correctly tailored to enter into the artificial paradise, the detailed and necessary product of means which he ordains for himself – that man is I” (Ellul 1964:227).

The 6 “e”’s Techno-Anthropology

(6E)• engagement • empowerment • emancipation • enactment • embodiment• empathy

Technique and the bridging – the mender.

• “Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges the specializations because it produces a new type of man always and everywhere like his duplicate, who develop along technical lines” (Ellul 1964:132).

Heidegger and the bridge

• “Thus the bridge does not come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge” (Heidegger 1971/2001:152).

• This means that the banks that are linked by the bridge changes character and content through the bridging. Techno-Anthropology is a bridging in between disciplines where the various technological disciplines and anthropology are altered and become multistable.

Techno-Anthropology – a model

Børsen and Botin 2013

Techno-Anthropology

Technology Anthropology

Social responsibilityand ethics

Interactional expertise

Making, modifying and using tools, machines, techniques and methods of organization to solve problems.

In-depth examination of context, cross-cultural comparisons, and participant-observation or long-term, experiential immersion in the area of research.

What is interactional expertise?

Collins and Evans 2007

Techno-Anthropological – research questions

• What shapes Techno-Anthropological identities? (self-reflexivity and authentification – Ihde/Verbeek)

• What does it mean when scientists, engineers and technologists learn, and how does it impact on their practices? (Communities of Practice - Wenger)

• How do scientists and technology experts develop, implement and exercise civic responsibility? (the question concerning historicity and continuity - Jonas)

• How are users affected by, and how do they shape, technology? (co-constitution - Ihde)

What is Hybridization in Techno-Anthtopological Perspective?

• hy brid (h ı brid) n. 1. the offspring of animals or plants of different ′ ̄ ′varieties, species, or genera; a cross-breed or mongrel. 2. any product or mixture of two heterogeneous things (The Webster Handy College Dictionary 1956).

• Hybridization is human-technology associations (Ihde 1990/Verbeek 2011).

• Hybridization is combining scientific knowledge and technical skills with cultural understanding, or empathy (Jamison, Christensen and Botin 2011:11).

• Hybridization is design (of) today (where), engineering, programming, science, language and art converge” (Williams, R. 2002:57).

• Hybridization is artful integration (Suchman, L. and Trigg, R. 1993).

The constitution of hybridity

• “In our technological culture, humans and technologies do not have separate existences anymore but help to shape each other in myriad ways” (Verbeek 2011: 16).

• “People-and-things, which are the same as people-and-society cannot be separated in any meaningful practical sense” (Bowker and Star 1999:300).

Post phenomenological reflections on hybridity and hybrid imagination.

• The dissolution of subject/object absolutism.• The overcoming of nature and ‘things in themselves’, and subjects as

detached sovereign readers and interpreters of the real, e.g. hybridity of in-betweeness (or meta-humanism).

• The co-construction of reality, things and subjects. • Hybrid imaginations are characterized by an intentionality of multistability

and contextualized variegated approaches to problems of the real. • Hybrid imaginations are cross-fertilizers, change actants and multi-

dimensional.• Cultural role of technology is subtle and ambivalent. (Verbeek 2005:144) • …sites where both the objectivity of the world and the subjectivity of

those who are experiencing it and existing in it are constituted (Verbeek 2005: 111-113)

Use and users in a responsibility perspective

• Users are created through our methods. (Wyatt 2012)• Use and practice is relational and as “humans we

learn about and human-machine dispositions new composite intentionalities are transforming organization of work, workplace identities, as we “interpret and act on the object of our actions” (relational agency). (Hasse 2012)

• Ideal use is described in manuals – what does that mean in relation to embodiment, engagement and learning?

Love song of Hybridity• The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity,

intermingling, the transformation of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world, and I have tried to embrace it. The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love-song to our mongrel selves [Rushdie, S., 1992, p. 394].

• Fusion: (I/technology) -> world

Responsible (and political) Technological Innovation

• Superflex and Supergas.• Superflex started the project in 1997 and it is still in progress. • Supergas was originally a cooperation between DANIDA,

SURUDE (Sustainable Rural Development) and Superflex. DANIDA supplied funds and expertise on projects in developing countries, SURUDE is a cooperation between a Tanzanian university and a local farmer organization (NGO) and Superflex is a Danish art-corporation consisting of artists, lawyer, accountant and engineer. It is as well a classical stockholder company registered in the national register of companies. (Aktieselskabsregisteret).

DANIDA

• Danish International Development Agency– Freedom, democracy and human rights– Growth and employment– Equality– Stability and fragility: the question concerning

indigenous, endogenous and exogenous technology.

– Environment and Climate

Supergas

• As Supergas has spread to other developing tropical and sub-tropical areas in the world it has kept its focus on interaction with the local context, which means that appropriation and internalization through social and cultural habitus has been central when local actors were identified and engaged.

• Diverse range of medias are involved in the dissemination: news paper cartoons, technical drawings and models, social sites on the net and so forth.

Superflex – Supergas.(1997- )

Supergas Tanzania 1997

Supergas Cambodia 2001

What it involves to become a Techno-Anthropologist

What is a Techno-Anthropologist?

What is a Techno-Anthropologist?1. Can find relevant scientific and technological knowledge2. Can use and apply anthropological tools and concepts3. Can describe and define cultures of technical expertise4. Can map groups’ and organizations use and conception of

new technology and how technology influences them on its behalf

5. Can establish dialogue between experts and users6. Can assist decisionmakers in producing ethical based actions7. Can be integrated part of teams that works with user driven

technological innovation and value sensitive technological design

Talk to me with more questions

• Lars Botin – botin@plan.aau.dk