Critical approaches to information systems research and development

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Mediation

The notion of gathering implies that a technological object represents and in some cases hides the techniques that were not only present in the design of technology, but also in its functioning. The central and powerful role technology plays within the network could also be seen in the way it mediates and translates. Technology mediates when it comes in between other entities in the process of relating them to each other. The ―essence of a technique is the mediation of the relations between people on the one hand and things and animals on the other‖ (Latour, 1995:272).
Mediation is the process through which properties are interchanged between humans and things.
Technological mediation is a form of detour (Latour, 1996a:219). The technological gathering is part of a programme of action through which certain purposes are achieved. It is realised that the purpose cannot be achieved without the employment of technology such as when the Portuguese realised that they could not reach the Indies without the technology of the vessel. Although technology appears to be an instrument through which predetermined purposes are achieved, employing technology constitutes, however, a detour. In order to achieve the purpose, you first need to go another route.
It seems to me that it is more adequate to speak about technologies in the mode of the detour than in that of instrumentality. Technology is the art of the curve, or what, following Serres, I have called ‗translation‘. (Latour, 2002a:251) As a detour, or a mediation, technology changes what it conveys. The detour represents a shifting out and down, a displacement. With reference to a classification system, Bowker, Timmermans & Star (1996:363) discuss how classification systems ―create a displacement of interests‖. Technology is not only a means towards a predefined end, but affects the end as well so that the initial intention and purpose have been transformed.
In order to better understand this mediating role, the concept mediator must be distinguished from the concept of an intermediary. Whereas the latter transports a message with the original meaning intact (Latour, 1993:77/8), a mediator, on the other hand, changes what it conveys. Mediators are ―actors endowed with the capacity to translate what they transport, to redefine it, to redeploy it, and also to betray it‖ (Latour, 1993:81). Although Callon does not distinguish the two concepts, what he says about the intermediary applies to Latour‘s mediator. Callon (1991:135) states that intermediaries describe their networks in the literary sense of the term. And they compose them by giving them form. Intermediaries thus both order and form the medium of the networks they describe.
Because of its mediating role, technology is not simply an object, but an actant. As a ―quasi-object‖ it is imbued with ―action, will, meaning, and even speech‖ (Latour, 1993:136). The notion of a ―quasi-object‖ means that technology is not purely an object or a subject. It may seem to be an object but it also participates in a programme of action as an actant. It has to be remembered that technology is not a subject on its own, but could only act as part of a network.
Latour distinguished four meanings of technical mediation (Latour, 1999b:178ff.): interference, goal translation, composition and black boxing. In each of these we notice how techniques mediate meaning and change purposes. Interference refers to the detour that must be taken through techniques in order to achieve the purposes of a programme of action6. When it is discovered that a particular goal could not be achieved without the association with an object, a necessary detour is needed to obtain and incorporate the object. In this process the goal itself shifts according to the second meaning of technical mediation. A goal translation entails the shift from one goal to the other. As is the case with the translation of a word in English into a word in French, it consists of ―the creation of a link that did not exist before and that to some extent modifies the original two‖ (Latour, 1999b:179). This is illustrated by Latour by means of the example of a person with a gun. Such a person, or the new network, the person/gun, has different goals than the person without a gun. The person does not simply take over the ―purpose‖ of the gun by acting out the script embedded in technology. The goal of the person/gun is different from the goals of either one on their own. A new actor now appears, the person/gun, which is different from both the person and the gun prior to the association. ―They become someone, something else‖ (Latour, 1999b:180). The result is that the ―[r]esponsibility for action must be shared among the various actants‖ (Latour, 1999b:180), and ―….action is a property of the whole association, not only of those actants called human‖ (Latour, 1999b:183). The initial goals shift in unpredictable ways and cannot be related to the goals of any of the entities that are brought together. Techniques do not merely mirror social relations, but ―remake these very relations through fresh and unexpected sources of action‖ (ibid.). Techniques are not scripts that are merely acted out by people, nor is technology an instrument in the hands of purposeful humans.
The third meaning of technical mediation, composition, refers to the addition of more actants in the programme of action. ―Action is simply not the property of humans but of an association of actants‖ (Latour, 1999b:182). Actants exchange competence and offer new possibilities and new goals. The result is that none of the entities that enter the association remains the same. The last element, black boxing, will be discussed in more detail below. It refers to the enrolment of various actants and programmes of action into a single punctuated whole (Latour, 1999b:185). What is assembled only become visible if the black box breaks down. It has been indicated that the instrumentalist view of technology is pervasive in much of the critical literature. It should be clear by now that, as a mediator, technology could not be seen in an instrumentalist way such as when Ngwenyama & Lee (1997) show how email is used as a tool for the achievement of communicative purposes in order to overcome the problem of distorted communication. The same is the case with Cecez-Kecmanovic et al. (2002) who show how IS is used in democratic decision processes in the realisation of emancipatory (communicative) rationality.
Since technology is not simply ―used‖ (Monteiro, 2004:1135), as a mediator it changes what it mediates and shifts ends in unpredictable ways. The process of mediation represents a translation of identity and interests and contributes towards the enrolment of entities in a network. Technical mediation translates the interests of one entity in terms of the interests of another.

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Delegation and inscription

Inherent in mediation are the processes of delegation and inscription. Delegation refers to the transfer of functions from humans to things. ―I will define this transformation of a major effort into a minor one by the words displacement or translation or delegation or shifting‖ (Latour, 1994:229; also Latour, 1988b:299). The work of breaking down the wall each time you need to pass through it was delegated to the door and the hinge. The responsibility of the policeman to enforce the law is delegated to the speed bump (Latour, 1999b:186). The task of the human groom is delegated to the automatic door closer. Similarly, force, values, duties and ethics could all be delegated to nonhumans through the interchange of characteristics (Latour, 1999b:186). The ―matter‖ of expression is changed from a person or a sign to a material object such as concrete or steel. The actorial shifting is a ―shifting down‖ when action or meaning is transferred to a different kind of actant. Nonhumans now ―also act, displace goals, and contribute to their definition‖ (Latour, 1999b:186). The object stands in for the actor (Latour, 1999b:189). Because of the mediating role of technology, the function, message, value or meaning that is delegated inevitably changes. It is not only the mode in which the expression takes place which changes, but also the meaning itself. Form and content cannot be separated. In the process of delegation meaning is modified. The implication for IT is that it is not only the form of the communication, but also the meaning of what is being communicated which changes when IT is brought into a network (Latour, 1999b:186). Information technology is not only the conduit of information, but changes that which it conveys. Whereas substantive views of technology predict that the same changes will always happen, ANT follows the actors to establish what effects are being produced in every situation.
Inscription is a particular kind of delegation. It is the process where functions, meanings, values or interests are written into, or translated into material form (Callon 1991:143) such as technology. Human action is inscribed in technology when the actions of people who fail to close the door in spite of the written notice and moral appeals, or the porter who is unreliable, are inscribed into the automatic door groom. Competence is now shifted to nonhumans (Latour, 1999b:211).

Chapter 1 Introduction 
Chapter 2 Critical approaches to information systems research and development
1. Introduction 
2. Analysing critique 
2.1 Intention, aims and targets
2.2 Methods, processes and srategies of critique and transformation
2.3 Agent of critique and transformation
2.4 Question of validity
2.5 Basic assumptions in critique
3. The changing field of critical research in IS 
4. Structuralism 
5. Critical Interpretivism (Constructivism) 
6. Critical Theory 
6.1 Theoretical roots
6.2 Habermas
6.3 A critical social science
6.4 System and life world
6.5 Communicative action
6.6 Emancipation
7. Post CT approaches 
7.1 Basic themes
7.2 Power
7.3 Emancipation
7.4 Theory and practice in critique
7.5 Researcher
7.6 Method
7.7 Pluralism in the field of ISR
7.8 Pluralism in the field of CRIS
8. Conclusion 
Chapter 3 Conceptions of technology in CRIS 
1. Introduction 
2. Instrumentalism 
3. Substantivism 
4. Technicism 
5. Constructivism 
6. Socio-technical views 
6.1 Socio-technical duality: Structuration theory
6.2 Adaptive structuration theory
6.3 ―Perceived autonomy‖ of technology
6.4 Double dance theories: combining structuration and ANT
6.5 Sociomateriality
7. Conclusion 
Chapter 4 A perspective on ANT 
1. Introduction 
2. A research strategy
2.1 ―Follow the actors‖
2.2 Human and honhuman actants
2.3 Large and small actants
2.4 Language and reality
3. The actor-network 
3.1 Actor-network
3.2 Network
3.3 Actant
3.4 Heterogeneity
3.5 Ontology
4. Politics of the network 
4.1 Programme of action
4.2 Social processes
4.3 Change and order
5. Conclusion 
Chapter 5 ANT and technology 
1. Introduction 
2. Nature of technology 
2.1 Non-essentialism
2.2. From Technology to technique
2.3 A thing that gathers
2.4 Mediation
2.5 Delegation and inscription
2.6 Prescription
2.7 Technology ―speaks‖
2.8 Interpretive flexibility
2.9 Hybridity of technology
2.10 ICT
3. Technology and the network 
3.1 Multiplication of hybrid entities
3.2 Morality of technology
3.3 Humans and technology
4. Powerful techniques 
4.1 Technology as an actant
4.2 Programme of action
4.3 Reversible forces
5. Change and order 
5.1 Irreversibility and durability
5.2 Transforming the network
6. Conclusion 
Chapter 6 An ANT conception of critique 
1. Introduction 
2. The poverty of modern and postmodern critique 
2.1 Constructivist critique
2.2 Modern iconoclasm
2.3 Modern dualisms
2.4 Beyond modern and postmodern critique
3. Foci 
3.1 The growth of the actor
3.2 The marginalised
4. Purposes 
5. Strategies 
5.1 The researcher
5.2 Absence of theory
5.3 The Empirical
5.4 Assembly
5.5 The pin board
6. Effects of critique 
7. Democracy 
7.1 Expanding democracy
7.2 Due process
8. Conclusion 
Chapter 7 A critique of technology 
1. Introduction 
2. Conceptualising critique of technology 
3. The voice of technology 
4. Changing identities 
5. Changing work practices 
6. Complete control 
7. Due process 
8. Macro-actant 
8.1 Inflating the macro-actant
8.2 Deflating the macro-actant
9. Critical research 
9.1 Critical interpretivism
9.2 Fragmented disciplinary field
10. Conclusion 
Chapter 8 Conclusion 
1. Introduction 
2. The multiplication of narratives
3. Relating narratives 
4. Critique as care 
5. Role of theory 
6. Critical researcher 
7. Empirical critical research 
8. The agent of critique and transformation 
9. Conception of technology 
10. Critique of technology 
11. A critical reflection on ANT 
Bibliography

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