Classifying marginalized people, focusing on natural disaster survivors

The marginalization of people through classification schemes results in inadequate access to information about these people when the context is, for example, a bibliographic classification system. When the context is the classification of the people themselves, they themselves are underrepresented, for instance, by society and government support. Taking the case of the natural disaster survivor, this paper explores appropriate steps to devising an accurate classification scheme of the survivors

Characterizing Knowledge Work: A Theoretical Perspective

The new economy, which has emerged in the last two decades, is critically dependent on the capacity to generate, process and efficiently apply knowledge. Yet, with notable exceptions, knowledge work has not been seriously addressed in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to understand the internal characteristics of knowledge work. Our analysis is concerned with the concept and nature of knowledge work rather than the philosophical questions that underlie it. We interpret knowledge work is as work that is based on a body of knowledge, usually entails working on representations of the objects of work, stipulates typically a deep understanding of the objects of work, and the outputs of which entail knowledge as its essential ingredient. These elements are used in characterise knowledge work. The paper also discusses how this analysis contributes to the development of a theoretical model of knowledge wor

Knowledge structuring-Knowledge domination. Two interrelated concepts

“Sociology for me is not only about the big institutions, such as governments, organizations, business firms or societies as a whole. It is very much about the individual and our individual experiences. We come to understand ourselves much better through grasping the wider social forces that influence our lives.” ( Anthony Giddens, published at www.polity.co.uk, a leading social science and humanities publisher. ) This quotation helps identify one reason for integrating ideas about knowledge management with concepts from Anthony Giddens structuration theory in the theoretical framework that I use as an analytical tool in this research. Structuration theory concerns itself with the “social forces that influence our lives” and these forces interest me. In the same article Giddens continuous: ”We live in a world of quite dramatic change…There are three major sets of changes happening in contemporary societies and it is the task of sociology to analyze what they mean for our lives today. First there is globalisation….The second big influence is that of technological change. Information technology is altering many of the ways in which we work and in which we live. The nature of the jobs people do, for example, has been transformed….The third fundamental set of changes is in our everyday lives. Our lives are structured less by the past than by our anticipated future”. In this paper I agure that there is a continous structuring going on in society. I therefore concern myself with a pair of twin concepts that are interrelated. The first one is knowledge structuring; the second is knowledge domination. These two concepts are of vital importance when trying to understand, assess and monitor implications of transformations of work processes and tools at work.Knowledge structuring; knowledge domination; knowledge management; structuration theory; cognitive theories; transformations; information technology; globalisation.

Analyzing equivalalences in discourse: are discourse theory and membership categorization analysis comptatible

Facing a crucial leap from political philosophy to empirical analysis, the approach to discourse analysis that arose in the aftermath of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and that is currently known as the Essex school of discourse theory (DT), has in recent years repeatedly been accused of suffering from a methodological deficit. This paper examines to what extent membership categorization analysis (MCA), a branch of ethnomethodology that investigates lay actors' situated descriptions-in-context as practical activity, can play a part in rendering poststructuralist DT notions such as articulation and equivalence analytically tangible in empirically observable discourse. Based on a review of Laclau and Mouffe's foundational text as well as on Glynos and Howarth's recent exposition of the framework (2007), it is argued that MCA empirically substantiates many poststructuralist claims about the indeterminacy of signification. However, MCA consistently falters - and willingly so - at the point where DT would articulate emerging equivalences between identity categories as part of a second-order explanatory concept, such as Glynos and Howarth’s notion of political logic. Nevertheless, MCA also contains the kernel of an "endogenous" notion of the political that comes fairly close to DT’s all-pervasive understanding of the concept. To support these arguments, a variety of empirical sources are mobilized, ranging from the transcript of a political talk show, a newspaper report regarding a discrimination case in a dance class, to data drawn from earlier research on the way that minority members are treated by the Belgian criminal justice system

Plans as Situated Action: An Activity Theory Approach to Workflow Systems

Within the community of CSCW, the notion and nature of workflow systems as prescriptions of human work has been debated and criticised. Based on the work of Suchman (1987) the notion of situated action has often been viewed as opposed to planning work. Plans, however, do play an essential role in realising work. Based on experiences from designing a computer system that supports the collaboration within a hospital, this paper discusses how plans themselves are made out of situated action, and in return are realised in situ. Thus, work can be characterised as situated planning. This understanding is backed up by Activity Theory, which emphasises the connection between plans and the contextual conditions for realising these plans in actual work

Inscription, prescription, sanction : les " entre-faire " d'une norme dans le processus d'informatisation du dossier de soin

International audienceInscription, instruction, sanction: The 'in-between' doing of a norm in the process of medical record computerization In this communication, we focus on the practical and agency of the norm rather than on the institutional dimensions by which it is usually studied. In doing so, we propose to question the norm's specificities that makes it a source of what Latour (1994, 2000) names the 'making-do' [le faire-faire]. As such, the norm is both the object of people's agency - what they act upon - and an agent that makes people act - what they deal with. The term of 'making-do' suggested by Latour underlines this dialectic dimension of agency. Following Souriau, we propose therefore to explore the 'in-between' of the doing of a norm, identifying the way it acts and the way people act under and possibly upon the norm.This communication is issued from a collective research program between two research teams, namely CERTOP - ECORSE in Toulouse, and ComSanté, in Montréal. The norm under study was enacted by the French National Healthcare Authority (Haute Autorité de Santé, hereafter HAS). This norm is nowadays the basis for the certification of French healthcare establishments, whose activities depend on this agreement. This communication is based on a longitudinal long-term case study, engaged in 2008, in a French hospital (and more specifically wards dedicated to oncology), involved in the process of computerization of medical records. Our observations began six months before the first implementation, that took place step by step, wards after wards, during nearly a year, with a follow up since then. For this paper, we will focus on an in-depth interview with a head nurse involved in the project team. This hour-and-a-half filmed interview has as main subject the evolution of clinical records, from the previous paper records and related practices to the current electronic ones, with demonstration and specific focus on main transformations all along the overall process of computerization. This process considered as a whole took place during more than ten years.Based on a discourse analysis, we have chosen to follow up the manifestation of one of the HAS' norms, that is the medico-legal reporting. With the computerization of medical records, the norm and its enactment have gained a renewed materiality that gives rise to an improved agency. To question this evolution, we rely on the notion of inscription as developed firstly in Science and Technology Studies, and mobilized thereafter in Organizational Studies (Akrich, 1992; Joerges & Czarniawska, 1998; Latour, 1993; Verbeek, 2006, Taylor & Van Every, 2000, 2011). We will focus more precisely on the forms of textualization of the norm that take place in the electronic medical records. The notion of inscription is useful here for analyzing the way the norm is textualized (or even more, in this case, instrumentalized) in the electronic medical records; this focus highlights the writing practices (who writes, when, where, how) involved in the medical record computerization as well as the authoring issues that the HAS' norm puts forward.The norm as textualized in/by the toolThe HAS advice specified in its certification handbook and followed up by the experts in charge of auditing provided the main arguments for medical record computerization. These arguments refer to an 'ideal' way of producing information, with great emphasis on a single registration of information, and on the continuity and control of data flows. According to this, the paperless wards and the computerization extended to the totality of the activities was seen as guarantying a good information treatment (Harper & al., 1997; Sellen & al., 2001). The medicolegal norm is put forward to legitimate the computerization, with a related argument concerning the potential legalization of the patient-practitioner relationship. A law published in France on March 2002 has strengthened the possibility for the patients to get access to their medical record. The patient is thus one of the quoted figures to legitimate the implementation of the electronic tool. The underlined quality of the tool is its capacity of strictly registering who wrote a specific information, who is the author and therefore the responsible for the medical act; so doing, the tool enables to decide who accounts for and who is accountable for.Because of the renewed materiality of the norm, of its inscription in the form of the computerized medical record, the norm's agency appears to be less visible, it seems more neutral, its origin is decontextualized, its authority is blurred. The apparently main agent is neither the norm nor the accreditation process, it is a supposed-to-be-neutral entity - that is to say, the technology - that is meant to treat the information efficiently and insure the accurate follow up of the patients. The enrolled norm is formally detached from its author; it is hidden behind the computerization process.Meanwhile, this norm gives form to the tool, setting up the framework of the dedicated software and databases, designed and operationalized according to the legal definition of employee territories and of tracking requirements. The related objective of the tool deals with being able to account for responsibilities through inscriptions. The incorporated norm prescribes the territories of agencies, their relations, and the people who are held responsible. So doing, it renews a traditional and legal hierarchy according to which the physicians are the writing masters.Writing practices and authoring issuesIn the hospital we studied, the computerization process is seen as an opportunity for the staff and the project team to select the authorized practices, to sustain the 'best' ones, and to bring back each employee to his/her authorized professional territory. Physicians are legally the exclusive authors of medical decisions. When implementing electronic medical records, the project team took this opportunity to specify who is authorized to write according to the type of documents and information that is required for the patient's follow-up. This writing practice in the electronic medical record strongly links an author/authority and a domain of information. Access codes and parameters play as filters to reallocate the roles and authorized practices to employees according to legal texts and registered protocols.In so doing, the link is strengthened between the norm, responsibility and potential sanction. The equipped norm helps specifying the practiced territories and related authorities. It aims at countering the inscriptions that were previously crossing the barriers, setting up forms of inter-relation and translation. Such translations and relations are set up to facilitate cure and care practices through the reconstruction of patient stories. However, part of these practices was infringing the legal rules. With the electronic tool, such practices are not possible anymore. This is more specifically the case of an element of the paper medical record that has been excluded from the electronic version.Conclusion: From authoring traces to de-authored texts... a broken promise of the power of the norm?The computerization of medical record has been stated as a guarantee against gaps between legal authority and daily practices. It was supposed to supply a continuous tracking of activities in the case of potential sanction through identifying responsibilities.It was supposed to be a magic and powerful tool, capable to tell who does what, where and when. However, effective practices partly escape from this close-meshed net. The problem the tool was supposed to solve reoccurs somewhere else. Moreover, the main issue deals with sense making, with the meaning of the global text and its accuracy for care and cure.The produced text is made of a diversity of locally registered and signed writings. Taken as a whole, it can be seen as a de-authoredtext (Taylor & Van Every, 2011), the product of a collective writing (Callon, 2002), where authoring/authority is distributed and sometimes blurred in the mechanics of the computerization process. In the electronic tool design, a great concern as been devoted in identifying the local inscriptions and their authors. Yet the question of the overall sense making of the patient stories stays unanswered, as well as the plots discussed during the passing on (Boudes & al., 2005; Browning, 1992). With the focus dedicated to reallocating each employee in the limits of his legal territory, it seems that there is no possibility left to related stories, discussed plots, and translations. These plots and related stories give way to new forms of writing, which are non-authorized ones; they are also shared in conversations. Therefore, they escape from the tool and weaken the tracing project, the very reason for equipping the norm through a supposed to be omnipotent tool.Dans cette communication nous proposons d'appréhender la norme, non pas tant d'un point du vue institutionnel que du point de vue de l'action. Il s'agit alors de s'interroger sur les spécificités de la norme qui font d'elle une source de faire-faire (Latour, 1994): ce sur quoi on agit mais qui en même temps nous fait agir. L'expression faire-faire comme le suggère Latour (2000) souligne le caractère dialectique de l'action redoublant les deux maîtrises, celle de la norme et celle de ceux qui la mobilisent. À l'instar de Souriau nous proposons ainsi d'explorer les entre-faire de la norme afin d'y déceler ce qu'elle fait et ce qui en est fait. Cette communication s'inscrit dans un programme de recherche associant deux équipes, l'une en France l'autre au Québec. La norme envisagée est celle qui est édictée en France par la Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), et qui sert désormais de base à la certification des établissements de soins. Au fil du temps, cette certification est passée du statut de démarche recommandée pour améliorer la qualité et la sécurité des soins et pour faire preuve de ce travail de maîtrise, à une obligation qui conditionne pour les établissements concernés le fait de pouvoir poursuivre leur activité dans le domaine pour lequel ils ont été accrédités. L'étude porte sur un établissement de soins en France plus particulièrement sur des services de cancérologie Il s agit d une étude qualitative longitudinale initiée mi 2008 soit six mois avant le premier déploiement d'un dossier de soins informatisé (80h d'observations dans les services, 10 réunions ou séances de formation, 18 entretiens). Dans le cadre plus spécifique de cette communication, nous mobiliserons un entretien filmé mené auprès d'un cadre de santé qui rend compte de la composition des précédents dossiers patients sur supports papier, des pratiques associées et de certains éléments clé de leur transformation au fil de leur informatisation. À partir d une analyse de discours nous retraçons les manifestations d'une des normes édictées par la HAS, la norme de reporting médico-légale. Le processus d'informatisation du dossier de soins met en relief les modes d'action associés à la matérialisation de la norme et ses usages. Afin d'aborder ces questions nous mobilisons la notion d'inscription développée à l'origine par les Science and Technology Studies et ensuite traduite dans les études sur les organisations (Akrich, 1992; Joerges Czarniawska, 1998; Latour, 1993; Verbeek 2006; Taylor Van Every 2000, 2011). Nous nous penchons plus particulièrement sur les formes de textualisation de la norme dans le processus d'informatisation du dossier patient. La notion d'inscription nous permet dans le cas étudié de centrer l'analyse sur la mise-en-texte (ou plutôt ici la mise-en-outil) de la norme dans le dossier de soins informatisé, les modalités d'écriture (qui écrit, où, quand et comment) et la question de la signature, des thèmes qui ressortent de notre analyse.La norme mise-en-texte dans par un outilL'informatisation est argumentée sur la base des recommandations de la HAS, qui dans son manuel de certification et par la voix des auditeurs qu'elle envoie dans les établissements, fait référence à un idéal de saisie unique de l'information et de continuité des flux d'informations dans une acception selon laquelle le tout informatisé et le zéro papier seraient la condition de félicité d'un bon traitement de l'information (Harper al 1997; Sellen al 2001). La légitimation de l'informatisation prend ainsi appui sur la référence à une norme de reporting médico légal ; un argument associé concerne la possible judiciarisation de la relation de soins. La loi du 4 mars 2002 ayant renforcé le droit des patients d'accéder à leur dossier, le patient fait partie des figures invoquées pour légitimer le recours à un outil permettant d attribuer chaque écrit à son auteur pour être à même d'en rendre compte et de rendre des comptes. La matérialisation de cette norme voire son inscription dans le dossier informatisé vient d'une part neutraliser son agir, elle décontextualise son origine, brouillant les traces de l'auteur. Il ne s agit plus de la norme de reporting médico-légal, ni du processus d accréditation, il s'agit d'une entité présentée comme neutre - la technologie - qui assure le traitement adéquat de l'information et en bout de ligne le suivi du patient. La norme inscrite se détache de son auteur et d'une certaine manière se rend invisible, masquée par le processus d'informatisation. D'autre part, l'inscription de la norme dans cet outil technique vient aussi cadrer les modalités du système informatique, un système conçu et opérationnalisé en termes de définition des territoires et de traçabilité : "qui fait quoi et comment" étant la prémisse qui le sous-tend. La norme inscrite prescrit l'agencement et les aires d'action ainsi que les responsables. Ce faisant elle recrée une hiérarchie dans laquelle le médecin devient le maître écrivainLes modalités d écriture, la question de la signatureDans l'établissement étudié, l'informatisation est l'occasion de faire le tri, de dire ce que sont les bonnes pratiques et de ramener chacun sur son territoire autorisé d'intervention. Les praticiens ont l'exclusivité des décisions médicales. L'informatisation est l'occasion pour l'équipe projet de préciser qui est autorisé à faire quoi sur les documents - qui en est l'auteur - et de finaliser le paramétrage des documents et leur mode d accès en référence aux décrets et réglementations spécifiant les rôles des différents professionnels. En cela le lien entre la norme, la responsabilité et la possible sanction est renouvelé, renforcé. La norme équipée par l'outil vient repréciser les territoires d'auteur-autorité et contrer les écritures qui pouvaient traverser les frontières pour assurer des traductions Ces traductions étaient justifiées parce qu'elles facilitaient les pratiques de soins. Mais dès lors qu'elles contreviennent à la norme, elles ne sont plus autorisées. C'est le cas d'un élément du dossier patient qui a été exclu de la version informatisé et dont nous suivrons les transformations.Conclusion : Des traces signées aux textes sans auteur... une promesse non tenue de toute puissance de la norme L'informatisation est présentée telle une garantie contre les ruptures dans l'autorité, et dans les traces mobilisables en cas de sanctions pour faire état des responsabilités. L'outil se voit attribuer un caractère magique de toute puissance, qui lui permettrait de tracer qui a fait quoi à quel moment et où. Mais les pratiques s'avèrent pour partie échapper à ce filet aux mailles pourtant étroitement tissées. Le constat est celui de listes diversement administrées, d'un déficit de traçabilité. Le problème que le dispositif technique était censé résoudre resurgit sous une autre forme. Plus encore, c'est la question même du sens du texte global ainsi produit qui est soulevée. Ce texte est fait de multiples contributions locales signées, mais pris dans sa totalité c est un texte sans auteur (Taylor, Van Every, 2011), le produit d une écriture collective (Callon, 2002). Dans ce texte collectif tout est fait pour réindividualiser les parties du texte en les assignant aux individus qui les ont produits. Mais la question des transmissions et du sens global des récits reste sans réponse (Browning, 1992). Tout se passe comme si, en réassignant chacun aux limites de son territoire, ce qui faisait traduction et mise en récit ne trouvait plus place dans le dossier officiel et devait chercher de nouvelles formes d'expression, au travers d'inscriptions non autorisées ou d'échanges oraux, échappant ainsi à la traçabilité exhaustive qui justifiait l'équipement de la norme par un outil supposé omnipotent

The internet gaze

PostprintNon peer reviewe

Making the Links: Domestication of ICTs in the Global Knowledge Economy

This paper considers the historical, social, economic, and political context of information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in our everyday lives. Under the pretext of engaging with a supposedly transforming new economy, society, or epoch, we are urged to be on-line everywhere and anywhere signifying new ways of living, loving, being governed, and educated. This paper critiques these perspectives through an investigation of the domestication of ICTs in families and households in the United Kingdom and draws on an empirical study of gender and home e-shopping as an illustration of the gendered consumption of ICTs in UK households. Studies of the domestication of technologies have developed from those concerning technologies of household maintenance to considerations of technologies for leisure in the home. In the so-called global knowledge economy, however, the domestication of ICTs and how they are embedded into the family and households today is a neglected area of research and one that is often rooted in flawed views of technological determinism and gender neutrality. This paper calls for analysis of the domestication of ICTs in the global knowledge economy to be placed in context rather than falling into faddish hype or unwarranted dystopia