Micro-level Changes in our everyday practices
Macro-level Changes to our societal institutions
Social structure Organized patterns of relationships rules & ‘rule
arrangements’ that govern how people interact &
live together
Culture Shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values,
symbols, rituals, attitudes
Values & beliefs Forces that shape social order
Norms Expectations of how one should behave
Practices Patterns of behavior normatively expected for
certain social positions
Rituals Habitualized behaviors & can include objects that
are symbolic (carry meaning & thus value)
Social order ‘Rules’ that order society
Social change When individuals successfully & collectively produce
a new social order
Duality of structure Structure & agency as mutually constitutive
Social structures Enable & constrain human action: provides rules &
resources for meaningful action
Agency Individuals produce & reproduce social structure.
They are knowledgeable, rational actors w/
- Capacity for ‘reflexivity’: capacity to reflect
on the social structure & their role as
reproducing agent in it
- Capacity to act ‘intentionally rational’: to
modify their behavior in line w/ certain
goals that they can reasonably justify as
being worthy of pursuit
Apparatgeist Logics prescribed by technology that direct human
behavior. Not in a deterministic way, rather by
providing humans w/ both a ‘rationality of means’ &
‘constraint upon possibilities’
Technology according to Orlikowski Product of human action, while it also assumes
structural properties
Moving target problem Technologies that persist are constantly updated
Affordances Possibilities for action
Tree threshold criteria to be an affordance - Neither the object nor a feature of the
object
- Not the outcome
- Has variability
Technological affordances Social ‘structures’ built-into technology that make it
logical to do things in a particular way
, L2: NETWORK LOGIC
Flexibility Ability to be agile, to adjust in response to the
environment.
Scalability Ability to expand/shrink in size easy, low effort & low
cost.
Survivability/reconfigurability Ability to survive through recombining elements.
Due to a de-sequencing of time, time becomes - Flexible
- Compressed
- Fragmented
Place Geographically situated locales
Space Global activities, unbounded by spatial dimensions
Disembedding mechanisms needed for time-space - Symbolic tokens: ‘exchange media’ that
distanciation heave meaning & value across time & space
- Expert systems: systems of expertise that
allow the stretching of time & space
Little boxes Place is a clear boundary that demarcates what
interaction you are in.
Glocalization Time-space boundaries more blurred, but
interactions are still tied to place.
Networked individualism Place no longer (strongly) demarcates the
interaction.
Blurred boundaries If you can take up social roles independently of time
& place, boundaries between social roles can easily
blur.
Absent presence Physically present, but absorbed by a technologically
mediated world of elsewhere.
L3: RATIONALIZATION & DISINTERMEDIATION
Traditionalism We do things a certain way because that is the way
things are.
Calculability Knowing what input leads to which output.
Methodical behavior Procedures
Reflexivity Thinking about how to improve the procedures
The enlightened mindset To become ‘master of the world’, to achieve
progress, we need to approach te world with
(scientific) rationality.
Bureaucracy Rational-legal authorities that have legitimacy to
determine rules & procedures to do certain things.
Disintermediation The removal of intermediaries in all kinds of
processes.
Micro-coordination Real-time arrangements of the logistics of day-to-
day interaction.
Mid-course adjustment Redirecting travel (that may have already begun)
based upon info that can be requested/received
along the way.
Iterative coordination Progressively refining an activity, like deciding on a
gift.
Softening of schedules Providing info on one’s status helps relax implicit
contracts around time without breaching manners.
Flexible alignment The ability to look up online information irrespective
of the time & place, and allows them to respond &
adapt to this information in a rapid & flexible
manner.