Factors to Actors: Implications of Posthumanism for Social Justice Work
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Contexts, tools, and other nonhuman factors are central to the practice and scholarship of technical communication, particularly communication design. But viewed through the lens of posthumanism, these considerations shift from factors to actors: the hierarchy between humans and nonhumans flattens, and the agency of nonhuman actors and assemblages of actors can be explicitly recognized and accounted for. Planning for the agentive capacities of human and nonhuman actors is a strategy with particular promise for work in social justice. This paper demonstrates how posthumanism can contribute to social justice research in technical communication: presenting two strengths of posthumanism for informing this work and two concerns which may threaten the goals of social justice. Illustrating these points, we present data from a study of transit-dependent bus riders’ experiences, demonstrating how posthumanism expands considerations for design. We conclude with three implications to guide scholars in viewing social justice issues through lenses of posthumanism.
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Factors to Actors: Implications of Posthumanism for Social Justice Work
- 1. Factors to Actors: Implications of Posthumanism for Social Justice Work @emmarosephd Rebecca Walton, PhD Utah State University rebecca.walton@usu.edu @rebeccawwalton2 Emma J. Rose, PhD University of Washington Tacoma ejrose@uw.edu
- 2. bus bus rider bus stop paper ticket bus driver smart card backpack homeless man mobile phone CD player bus schedule social worker plastic seat window children air conditioning doctor steering wheel homeless shelter interaction designer plastic baggie policy consultant popsicle city outreach staff swimming pool can of beer
- 3. bus bus rider bus stop paper ticket bus driver smart card backpack homeless man mobile phone CD player bus schedule social worker plastic seat window children air conditioning doctor steering wheel homeless shelter interaction designer plastic baggie policy consultant popsicle city outreach staff swimming pool can of beer
- 4. An overview • The shift to social justice • Posthumanism: Concerns and strengths • Experiences of transit dependence • Implications & limitations
- 7. Social justice seeks to eliminate structural inequalities that lead to unjust power imbalances, usually among people, that is, human actors.
- 9. Inclusive purposes Civic engagement: such as Moore 2013 Action/Activist: such as Grabill 2009
- 10. Inclusive approaches Community Based Research: such as Walton, Zraly, and Mugengana 2014 Service Learning: such as Scott 2008
- 11. Inclusive theoretical approaches Feminist: such as Lay 1991 Critical Race: such as Haas 2012
- 12. POSTHUMANISM
- 13. Posthumanism is diverse facilitates new understandings of what it means to be human rejects binaries
- 14. Concern Strength
- 16. Ascribing responsibility when agency is further distributed Better accounting for context Concern Strength
- 22. Ryan
- 24. bradleyolin
- 26. Wonderlane
- 27. bus bus rider bus stop paper ticket bus driver smart card backpack homeless man mobile phone CD player bus schedule social worker plastic seat window children air conditioning doctor steering wheel homeless shelter interaction designer plastic baggie policy consultant popsicle city outreach staff swimming pool can of beer
- 28. bus bus rider bus stop paper ticket bus driver smart card backpack homeless man mobile phone CD player bus schedule social worker plastic seat window children air conditioning doctor steering wheel homeless shelter interaction designer plastic baggie policy consultant popsicle city outreach staff swimming pool can of beer
- 29. bus bus rider bus stop paper ticket bus driver smart card backpack homeless man mobile phone CD player bus schedule social worker plastic seat window children air conditioning doctor steering wheel homeless shelter interaction designer plastic baggie policy consultant popsicle city outreach staff swimming pool can of beer
- 30. bus bus rider bus stop paper ticket bus driver smart card backpack homeless man mobile phone CD player bus schedule social worker plastic seat window children air conditioning doctor steering wheel homeless shelter interaction designer plastic baggie policy consultant popsicle city outreach staff swimming pool can of beer
- 31. Consider the transfer ticket…
- 32. Consider the Ride Free Area
- 34. • Need a picture to sum up this section Photo by hobvias sudoneighm
- 36. Matter matters, but people matter more. ConcernStrength
- 37. Design disrupts. Be vigilant and humble ConcernStrength Visible inequalities: improved but insufficient.
- 38. ConcernStrength Design disrupts. Be vigilant and humble.
- 39. Implications and limitations 1. Matter matters, but people matter more. 2. Visible inequalities: improved but insufficient. 3. Design disrupts. Be vigilant and humble.
- 41. Thank you. @emmarosephd Rebecca Walton, PhD Utah State University rebecca.walton@usu.edu @rebeccawwalton2 Emma J. Rose, PhD University of Washington Tacoma ejrose@uw.edu
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Emma We thrilled to be here today to share with you our paper on posthumanism. I’m Emma Rose and this is Rebecca Walton. We’ll have lots of time at the end of for questions. Hook (:02) Emma The shift to social justice (:03) Rebecca Posthumanism: Concerns and strengths (:07) Rebecca Ethnographic data: Riding the bus (:10) Emma Implications & Limitations (:06) Rebecca/Emma Conclusion (:02) Emma
- Emma I’d like to consider this list. This is a list of people and things implicated in our work For many of us working in Technical Communication with an interest in social justice, our work is centered on people.
- We look at this list and our thoughts go to the people. So our question to you, is does matter matter, do things matter, why should you care about stuff when as a field, as writers, rhetoricians and user centered designers, we tend to focus on people. We hope that at the end of our talk, that you’ll see things, that is matter, differently.
- Emma
- Emma Impetus for this work. Last year at SIGDOC in Colorado Springs, we were sitting in a session much like this one, where Brian McNely was presenting his lovely paper (McNely and Rivers 2014) “All of the things: Engaging complex assemblages in communication design” which explored why new materialism was an approach that had much promise for our field. We were intrigued and inspired by the presentation and the theory, but had concerns. We both work in spaces where social justice is of primary concern. A tenant of new materialism specifically, and post humanism in general, flattens the hierarchy between humans and nonhuman actors. It ascribes agency to both human and nonhuman. This made us think about the potentially possibilities for post humanism in our work, we were persuaded, but also it also raised some concerns. To work through those concerns, we thought what if we could “try it out” apply these theories to a space where social justice is a central concern. So that is what has brought us here, to share with you, our exploration of posthumanism to attempt to reconcile the theory with practice, and reveal some of the tensions along the way.
- Rebecca
- Rebecca
- Rebecca Despite dominate themes of efficiently and effectiveness, the field of Tech Comm has long been humanistic: not just instrumental or concerned with clarity of message but also respect for difference in knowledge and background ethical implications of our work and potential complicity in preserving inequitable power structures.
- Rebecca
- Rebecca
- Rebecca Collections of theories…read the definition of (Hawk and Mara?)
- Three things: Collection of theories and positions (not single coherent philosophy) Reconceptulaizing what it means to be human Rejection of binaries (human/non-human – subject/object), what it means to be human changes over time
- Rebecca
- Rebecca Concern: Instead of privileging human perspectives, post humanists call us to hear when objects speak rather than silencing their voices by being attuned only to the communicative interest of humans Flatten the hierarchy between humans and non-humans. Difference between sentient and non-sentient matter is a question of degree, more than kind We believe that extreme positions that put all matter on equal footing, equal not only in in the sense of noticing or accounting for, but also equal in the sense of ascribing worth and value can distract from and dilute a focus on human experience of inequalities. Strength Freedom to, not freedom from Bergeson's view of Freedom characterizing acts not people, free acts express who we are and transform us If freedom functions through activities in which people express and transform their own being, then activity becomes the site of potential freedom. Activity becomes a primary focus of designers, for the purpose of facilitating freedom.
- Rebecca Concern Agency is not intentionality, but the ability to make a difference to matter to have an effect in the world. When agency is broadly distributed, not only human actors, but also non human and assemblages, the questions of responsibility becomes very complex This complexity can be concerning in SJ work because without clear responsibility, it’s even more difficult to direct disruption and or negotiate a shared vision for change. Subsequent passivity engendered by the inability to assign responsibility Characterization of agency as distributed and emergent makes it difficult to see the durable and monotonous predictabilities of systematically reproduced structural inequalities. Strength Human intentions and the effects of objects make their mark upon the same world Hand off.
- Emma In order illustrate how the concerns and strengths of posthumanism plays out for social justice in communication design, we present data from a qualitative study of urban public transportation
- The setting for the study was the urban area in Seattle, Wa in the US
- The study looked at the experience of people who are transit dependent. Transit dependent means that don’t own a car and rely on public transportation to get around. Some people are dependent on transit by choice, meaning they have the means or access to a car but choose to ride for environmental, philosophical or personal reasons. The research was not about them. The research is about the people who don’t have the choice and rely on transit because it is their only means to get around. Why is transit important from a social justice perspective: It connects people to other resources, like employment, health care, social networks Why is transit important from a communication design perspective: Digitization of daily life ICTS, schedules, signage, all are designed and used
- Methods: design ethnography: collection of methods used to examine context in order to generate ideas for design inspiration. It is different from traditional ethnography which focus is to understand context and culture for the purpose of description and knowledge creation. Design ethnography is interventionist, to describe and understand context and culture to inform decisions about design. Methods included semi-structured group interviews of connected family and friends, ride-alongs, and video diaries. One final note about context: The study occurred during a time of transition for transit agencies in this region. The two main shifts that were taking place during the time of the study (2010-11) were the elimination of the ride-free area in downtown Seattle and the transition to an electronic smart card-based system, called the ORCA card, which was part of a broader effort to streamline fare collection. These policy and technology changes represent a shift in the structure of the system and provide an opportunity to explore the experience that all riders have, but particularly transit-dependent bus riders.
- The themes have been used to build theoretical frameworks, which are reported elsewhere [61]. In this paper, we reconstitute a subset of data into two narratives, or scenarios, that provide insight into the lived experiences of people in the study. The scenarios are based on study data; however, some details across participants have been combined to demonstrate multiple themes within a cohesive narrative—a use of scenarios that is common practice in user experience. We extend that practice here by using scenarios to demonstrate the study themes. So let me tell you a story about one of the riders…. His name is Ryan.
- Read Ryan’s story: The Disappearing Ride-Free Zone
- So let’s return to our list of actors, some human, some non-human. Ian Bogost refer to this technique as a Latour Litany: identifying all of the human and nonhuman actors in play in a scene technique useful for comprehensively and complexly accounting for context This list demonstrates a posthuman approach to accounting for actors in play within these scenarios.
- So let’s start with a socio-cultural perspective focusing on human actors.
- So let’s start with a socio-cultural perspective focusing on human actors. We see Ann, her children, her boyfriend, we feel the presence of other riders, during Ann’s shame and embarrassment. We see Ryan, his social network, his friend Cynthia, his sister living out of town We see the traces of people out of view … the designers of the smart card and the paper tickets … the impact of the policy makers in transit … social workers and healthcare providers We see the benefit of a posthuman view of agency: that is, not limited to intentionality but rather effects in and on the world. We may not know the intentions of people designing the transit policies or the technologies that support them, but we can see their effects. We can see a design decision to make a non-working card trigger a different sound cue than a working card, a paper ticket system that turned out to be easily hackable, the requirement of payment to ride. While we can imagine the intentions of the designers, without studying them, we can see only the effects of designs and policies. In other words, the agency of human actors is made apparent in the assemblages of which they are a part. In being attuned to context, that is the assemblages of human and nonhuman actors comprising the transit system, we are better positioned to understand human experience that is relevant to communication design, which in this case is the experience of transit-dependent bus riders.
- So let’s widen our scope beyond the humans, we can incorporate into our analysis the nonhuman actors that inhabit these scenarios in particular and the lives of transit-dependent riders in general. The missing masses within the space of transit dependence are varied. The nonhuman actors we are particularly concerned with in this picture are the ones that are designed or could be designed otherwise, such as the information and communication technologies: the ORCA card, the transfer ticket, the CD player, the cell phone.
- From a social justice standpoint, it is possible to see structural inequities: for example, where Ryan contemplates the elimination of the ride-free zone. Because the ride-free zone is crucial for many people, a solution recently was implemented called the circulator bus. Provided by a local non-profit organization for vulnerable populations without the means to pay for transportation, the circulator bus travels around downtown between homeless shelters, clinics, and social service offices. Although it offsets instrumental transportation needs—it gets people from point A to point B without their having to pay—it also causes problems. Whereas before Ryan could blend in and be like everyone else on the bus, listening to his headphones, getting where he needs to go, now he has to wait at a bus stop that is designated for the poor.
- As he waits, he may feel stigmatized. As he rides, his body’s being in the world is mediated by a technology that marks him as Other [50]. Those who use more mainstream technologies—e.g., private vehicle, paid public transit—to navigate the world and move their bodies around the city are also technologically embodied, but their interdependence draws no special notice [50]. In other words, the circulator bus may provide the same service, but by riding this bus Ryan is separate and not equal to others who move around the city. The circulator bus creates a separate tier of services, further disenfranchising those it seeks to serve. Could considering the agency of the ride-free zone, the transfer ticket, the circulator bus, the bus stops, and their effect on vulnerable populations have helped designers or policymakers see or seek different solutions?
- Three things: 1. Harvey – we can only see their impact when Until real bodies go out into the absolute spaces of the streets, just like we can only see the impact of a design/technology once it’s been designed/released into the world. In other words, possible outcomes become possible only when they are realized. 2. Always working from partial knowledge and understanding of the relationship of the material world and the actors within it. 3. Our original concerns about post humanism had to do with agency and what it means for humans if we recognize the agency of matter/things/nonhuman. But agency is not the same as intention. Instead it is the ability to have an affect. It’s clear from Ryan’s story that things to matter and the things in the story have a clear affect in the world. ------------ Looking at nonhuman actors reveals structure in more detail. When we pay attention to the humans who are struggling with the collection of human and nonhuman actors that are impeding their agency, we see how the structural inequities become re-instantiated in our physical and material world. Broadening our gaze to see the nonhuman actors brings a granularity to our focus. Looking specifically for the ways in which an object enacts its agency provides a new way to see structures. Social justice researchers are concerned with the inequities present in society and how marginalized and vulnerable populations are further alienated by structure. Studying structure and designs that inhabit the world of resource-constrained (human) actors shows us where nonhuman actors (e.g., technologies and their corresponding policies) are designed in ways that can further inequality and can cause problems for people. Just as Harvey claimed that we cannot fully appreciate human rights, political power, and access to public amenities of a city “until real bodies go into the absolute spaces of the streets” [32, p. 114], we can see the impact of a design or technology only after it has been designed and released into the world. In other words, “possible outcomes” become possible only when they are realized [29]. So what are we, as designers and researchers concerned with social justice, to do? If we acknowledge the fact that matter matters, we should agree that ignoring it is unacceptably risky. After all, objects can further enforce inequities, but they can also positively provide for action and opportunity. We see within posthumanism a core of humility: humans are not the only powerful actors, and it is through collectivity that action occurs. This core is congruent with design to support social justice. For example, it is the specialized expertise and object-mediated, dynamic lived experience of transit-dependent participants in connection with that of designers that informs the recommended interventions from this study. Theories of posthumanism decentralize power and emphasize the necessity of collaboration: not only in terms of accounting for nonhuman actors, we would argue, but also of human collaboration.
- Rebecca
- Rebecca 1. Matter matters, but people matter more. ● Strength: Understanding larger contexts and taking matter seriously exposes oppression in all its forms (see Young’s five faces of oppression: powerlessness, violence, exploitation, marginalization, and cultural imperialism [77]). ● Concern: While posthumanism directs us to ascribe status and agency to things, our main concern remains on the impact and effect on people. We are interested in things because they inhabit spaces and exert agency on people and have material effects.
- Rebecca 2. Visible inequalities: improved but insufficient. ● Strength: When we explicitly account for nonhuman actors, we have a more complex, more complete view of context. Being attuned to the role of nonhuman actors better positions us to anticipate, explain, and account for forces of oppression and to explain some ways in which nonhuman actors play a role in further marginalization. ● Concern: Making nonhuman actors visible is not the same as intervening and taking action. Exposing injustice or marginalization is only one step. Not only must we bear witness but also work for social justice, which requires collective action.
- Emma 3. Design disrupts. Be vigilant and humble. ● Strength: Acknowledging the agency of nonhuman actors and their impact on assemblages can equip us to look for moments to intervene and creative ways to shift assemblages to open up greater degrees of freedom: allowing for actions that both express and transform. ● Concern: We must be humble about our limits of power and foresight: knowing that acts, even well-intentioned ones, can disrupt assemblages in unanticipated or pernicious ways.
- Three main takeways
- Emma Still it’s people we return to…the people we research with and for…. To account for current and possible human action, instead of a humans-only perspective of agency, we espouse Grosz’s [29] conception of freedom. In focusing on the degree of humans’ freedom to take actions that express and transform themselves [p. 157], we can keep the human experience of structural inequalities in view while opening up design thinking to encompass different, more equitable futures.
- Thank you for the gift of your attention. We’re happy to answer your questions.