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The management of material flows in societies is complex yet crucial for the sustainable coexistence of humans and materials. While industrial ecology (IE) has long examined material flows, studies acknowledging their sociomaterial nature are scarce. Consequently, the existing IE research has not yet answered why materials flow in societies as they do. This study therefore examines human–material interaction (HMI) in material flows. We build on the IE and sociomateriality literature and empirical findings from a qualitative multiple‐case study of two material flows (recycled concrete aggregate; biogas and recycled nutrients) where humans interact with materials to advance material flows in society more sustainably. We identify and conceptualize 11 HMI elements (adaptability, general acceptance, public interest, regulation, compatibility, consistency, degradability, availability and continuity, intensity, proximity, and re‐utilizability) that further divide into three categories (human‐driven, material‐driven, and equally driven HMI elements) to explain in detail the manifestations of HMI in societal material flows. Together, these HMI elements explain material flows as the physical movement of materials motivated by goal‐oriented humans who engage with materials, a process that leads to humans and materials becoming constitutively intertwined in spatiotemporal practice. To visualize our findings on this complex yet pivotal HMI phenomenon, we employ DNA as a conceptual metaphor. The study contributes to IE by uncovering the dynamic HMI in material flows and guiding practitioners on how to manage material flows in societies, acknowledging both human and material perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we critically discuss the impact of policy documents on the construction of national narratives on the provision of support for cultural-linguistic diversity in education systems in two European countries. The analysis focuses upon a selection of national policy documents that deal with the planning and provision of HLE since the 1990s. We take critical pedagogy and sociomateriality as theoretical lenses to investigate educational policies on HLE. Thus, this study critically traces the ways in which language ideologies are enmeshed with legislative, political and educational discourses by following an inductive and retroductive process, wherein key-concepts, themes and critical configurations of HLE are mapped, compared, re-assembled and discussed in terms of a complex system. The analysis shows that the (non-)provision of HLE shapes the educational space and the value references and world views that prevail and are (re)produced in it. Emerging deficit perspectives, linguistic assimilation and marginalisation processes limit the path towards more inclusive and equitable educational institutions and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how Industry 4.0 (I40) technologies support workers' engagement in soft total quality management (TQM) practices for organisational performance. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a multiple case study of six Italian manufacturing organisations that operate with I40 production and implement TQM practices. The authors concentrated on the relationship between I40 technologies and soft TQM aspects. Findings: I40 technologies provide two forms of engagement with workers. Workers can act as machine supervisors and expert assembly operators. Organisations use five soft TQM practices to involve and develop workers for TQM that vary according to automation levels. The five soft TQM practices are top management design around workers, incremental trials with I40 technologies, worker empowerment, I40 sociotechnical collaboration and individual feedback systems. Originality/value: In the literature that focusses primarily on how I40 technologies support the hard side of TQM by creating a data-driven and automated quality management system, the authors illustrate how the workforce can be engaged in I40 with five soft TQM practices to improve organisational performance. Thus, the authors complement the theory of hard and soft TQM aspects for I40 production systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Resource (HR) algorithms are now widely used for decision making in the field of HR. In this paper, we examine how biases may become entrenched in HR algorithms, which are often designed without consultation with HR specialists, assumed to operate with scientific objectivity and often viewed as instruments beyond scrutiny. Using three orienting concepts such as scientism, illusio and rationales, we demonstrate why and how biases of HR algorithms go unchecked and in turn may perpetuate the biases in HR systems and consequent HR decisions. Based on a narrative review, we examine bias in HR algorithms; provide a methodology for algorithmic hygiene for HR professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the change in the representation of disability in Beckett's work from medical impairments in the 1940s and 1950s to bodies that are limited by environmental conditions from the 1960s onwards. I suggest the term 'disability effects' to describe the condition of characters who are limited or harmed by the harsh environments of Beckett's imagination. A 'disability effect' arises from the interaction between a harmful environment and a human body through conditions such as confinement, toxic atmosphere, or extreme heat. While the social model of disability is useful for reading disability in the earlier works, it does not adequately account for the environmental pressures that lead to disability effects. Instead, the ecological–enactive model developed by Toro et al. provides a better framework that allows for a variety of subjective responses to the restrictions imposed by the Beckett's narrative ecologies. The representation of disability in Beckett's later work thus places at the centre of attention harmed bodies that are marginalised in too many discourses around the Anthropocene or held up as a warning sign for the terrible consequences of inaction, and can be read as a critique of ableist attitudes, which are also common in environmental movements. As climate change has become a present reality rather than a future danger to be averted, a rapidly changing environment is generating a range of disability and disability effects affecting whole populations and amplifying the shortcomings of the ableist social model that views disability as an exception that must be accommodated by an abled society. Beckett's work can help us come to terms with the continuity of adverse conditions, while leaving a space for the variability of personal adaptations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the terminology of border infrastructures as a way to enrich a multi-perspectival approach to territorial bordering processes that takes seriously their stratifying and racialising dynamics. Building on the analysis of migrant informal dwellings, or ghettos, which are increasingly constructed as naturalised 'black spaces' in the Mediterranean, the paper's contribution is twofold. First, it calls for more situated research into the multiple networks, connections and agencies involved in bordering processes, which often comprise complex interactions across 'formal' and 'informal', 'human' and 'more-than-human' boundaries. Second, it proposes to foreground the socio-materiality of borders-as-infrastructures by analysing how these actively reproduce a logic of separation in both a political and an ecological sense. The article pushes forward a more immersive understanding and methodology that is able to unearth the stratifying, racialising dimensions of contemporary borderwork across and within the confines of nation-state territoriality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay delves into the utilization of a negative hermeneutical approach, focusing on gaps, tensions, and the absence of elements, to enrich our comprehension of reconciliation efforts. It posits that this method aids in discerning more and less appropriate approaches to reconciliation processes. Negative hermeneutics serves as both a technique and an ongoing journey of exploration, self‐assessment, and understanding our connection with otherness. By critically engaging with perspectives, it prompts deeper questions and fosters a heightened awareness of the limitations inherent in one's viewpoint. Drawing from examples within the ongoing "Reconciliation and Beyond" initiative of the diocese of British Columbia, specifically Bishop Logan's "Sacred Journey," the essay illustrates how this approach holds potential. It demonstrates how a focus on negative aspects—those initially resistant to conventional academic scrutiny, like silence and materiality—offers valuable insights into critical practices and academic implications. Furthermore, the essay analyses how a hermeneutical process involving receiving, deconstructing, and recreating can introduce innovative perspectives for understanding reconciliation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-destination travel decisions exist due to uncertainties after arrival and the flexibility of leisure travel. Concurrently, smartphone use encourages instant information searching and communication, which promotes in-destination decision-making and plan changes. However, previous studies have provided a limited understanding of in-destination decisions, particularly when travel companions are involved. This study thus adopted sociomateriality as a theoretical tool to offer a sociotechnical perspective in examining the interactions between travelers and their smartphones in an in-destination group decision-making context. We identified three communication patterns in group decision-making during trips and four features of smartphone sociomateriality: knowledgeability, thriftiness, referenceability, and negotiability. This study responds to recent calls to extend the theoretical repertoire of information technology and tourism research, and to conduct more empirical studies on tourists' in-destination behaviors in the mobile Internet age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As people, particularly those ageing and living with disabilities, struggle with how care is enacted, integrated care has gained policy purchase in the United Kingdom. Despite integration's apparent popularity, its contribution to improved care for people has been questioned, exposing uncertainties about its associated benefits. Nonetheless, over decades a remarkably consistent approach to integrated care has advanced partnerships between the NHS and local government. Accordingly, in 2014 the Scottish Government mandated Health and Social Care Integration (HSCI) via the Scottish Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act. Emerging from an interorganisational ethnography of the implementation of a Health and Social Care Partnership in 2016, in a place I call 'Kintra', I interrogated what happened when NHS Kintra and Kintra Council endeavoured to implement HSCI according to the precepts of 'the Act'. Immersed in the everyday arrangements in the spaces of governance, I attended to how these policy actors worked to both (re)configure and held things together behind care frontiers, and away from the bodywork of direct care. I charted their efforts to comply with regulations, plan, and build governance apparatuses through documents. In following documents, I show the ways in which HSCI was materialised through documentation. I reveal how, in the mundane mattering of document manufacturing, possibilities for (re)forming the carescape emerged. I deploy a posthuman practice stance to show not only the way in which 'papery' partnerships between the NHS and local government 'enact' care, but also how they make worlds through a sociomaterial politics of anticipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of ethnization has led since the 1980s to the most important political victories of Black social movements in Colombia's Pacific region. Scholars who study this process have highlighted the notable role played by sectors of the local Catholic church in the historical formation and consolidation of these movements. These entanglements between ethnicity and an inculturated popular catholicism, have mostly been analyzed from a strategic perspective: within a juridically oriented activism this ethnic identification became crucial for the traction of Black communities' demands in national and international liberal juridical frames. Less attention has been paid to the theological and ecclesiological perspective from which the pastoral work of the local church in this region understood the need of inculturation in Black peoples' circumstances and struggles, and its embeddedness in the materiality of their territorial rootedness and social practices. Elaborating on the notion of incarnation that is crucial in this theology, this article attempts to unearth a distinctive, non-secular ontology of the social that is performed in this historical experience. The way in which this distinctive onto-theo-logy of the social conceives the materiality of collective life is put into dialogue with other important interventions in the study of popular religiosities in Latin America, which have pondered the spatial experience of the divine in ethnic communities' relation to land, or the forms of sociality among human and more than human agencies in a cosmopolitical field. Resumen: Desde los años 1980 un proceso de etnización ha llevado a las victorias políticas más importantes de los movimientos sociales afrodescendientes en el pacífico colombiano. Las investigaciones sobre este proceso resaltan el papel notable de sectores de la iglesia católica de la región en la formación de algunos de estos movimientos. Allí, los análisis de los entrelazamientos entre la etnicidad afro y un catolicismo popular insubordinado tienden a resaltar su dimensión estratégica: en un activismo orientado hacia lo jurídico esta identificación étnica se tornó necesaria para que las demandas de las comunidades negras tuvieran tracción en los marcos jurídicos nacionales e internacionales. Pero menos atención se le ha prestado a la perspectiva teológica y eclesiológica desde la cual el trabajo pastoral de la iglesia enraizada en esta región comprendió la necesidad de su inculturación en los trasegares y luchas del pueblo negro, y de su inmersión en la materialidad de su arraigo territorial y sus prácticas sociales. Este artículo elabora sobre la noción de "encarnación" que es crucial en esta teología, con el fin de desenterrar una ontología de lo social distintiva, no secular, que se dramatiza en esta experiencia histórica. La concepción de la materialidad de la vida en común en esta onto-teo-logía la abre a diálogos con otras intervenciones importantes en torno a las religiosidades populares en América Latina. Aquellas que han reflexionado sobre la experiencia espacial de la divinidad en la relación con la tierra de comunidades étnicas, o en las formas de sociabilidad entre agencias humanas y más que humanas en un campo cosmopolítico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in the complexity of socio-materiality-making activities in educational and everyday settings. Indeed, maker-centered learning is considered as a socio-materially embodied process in which artifacts and social and emotional dimensions are interconnected. The making process is also found in everyday life when children engage in specific applications – like Minecraft, where they perform activities in a virtual environment. Starting from analyzing some episodes recorded with a child aged seven, this paper aims to better understand the maker process in a virtual setting with implications for digital literacy and sustainable development education. A socio-material approach is privileged to analyze the data collected. Specifically, we will explore the maker activity as a socio-materially embodied process. The research question will be answered with the support of a case study of one child playing Minecraft. Thinking-aloud modality, observation, notes, and pictures are collected. Then, the verbatim from the semi-structured interview is collected in the same session. The entire session is audio-recorded. The three dimensions that emerged are: Resources to make digital objects; Digital Objects became Social Objects; Making digital objects became ground for literacy. From this analysis, we can retrace digital literacy in the Minecraft maker activity and some final considerations for teaching in STEM. In conclusion, students' informal activity in a Minecraft setting could become a potential green environment to ground digital literacy. However, this process needs to be scaffolded and amplified with an enriched level of abstract process, critical, and inquiry attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, digital media technologies are ubiquitous and mundane, making the relationship between digital and analog messy and porous. This postdigital condition prompts new analyses of how young children's local encounters with digital media technologies unfold, and how their relationships with digital media technologies carry on after they leave their devices. While sociomaterial approaches to literacy are apt to study how such messy literacies are enacted through singular events, they struggle to account for consistencies that emerge across events. Plugging into the concept of the refrain, we explore how felt consistencies were produced and scored two boys' friendship through and across events as they watched YouTube, played Minecraft, and played with construction playthings. We find that felt refrains of "dwelling in novelty" were enacted, referring to the set-up of conditions where materialities acted together to produce affectively intense moments of surprise. As moments accumulated, deeply felt friendships were produced over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the material complexity and relational emergence of 'teaching'. Reporting on a video-based ethnographic study of an upper secondary classroom in Norway, the paper centres on the following research questions: Which material-discursive practices 'matter' in upper secondary teaching situations, and how are participants' bodies shaping and being shaped by these practices? The paper combines sociomaterial practice theory with the agential realist concepts of material-discursivity and apparatus to trace the spatial and bodily enactment of a teaching situation. In the first part of the paper, I identify two material-discursive practices: the practice of tasks and the practice of friendship. Second, I examine the two practices' material intertwinement, proposing that they entangle and coarticulate a larger material arrangement termed the teaching apparatus that regulates the possibilities and limitations for 'doing' in the classroom. The paper offers a perspective on teaching that increases our awareness of its interconnectedness and unpredictability, allowing for a more fine-grained understanding of the embodied liveliness and material complexity of everyday teaching encounters. Finally, I propose that thinking with a spatially, bodily and relationally produced teaching apparatus offers an affirmative and agential approach to discussing educational quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of connections between learning spaces is a central dimension of music learning. However, these connections do not arise automatically, but require specific efforts from the learners. In this article, we look at these efforts, focusing in particular on the conflicts that can arise, often due to the association of places with certain genres. As an example, we attend to a classically trained cellist participating in the Wacken Music Camp, a learning space for heavy metal music. Among other things, our findings can help music educators to understand the alienation many students feel from school music lessons, and we also offer perspectives on how to address this alienation productively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article proposes the concept of “sociotextuality” to explain the accumulation of symbolic academic authority, with a specific focus on the evolving discourse of “multiliteracies.” Examining how Western academia has asserted dominance in research about multimodal literacy practices despite the rich literacy traditions of non-Western communities, the study scrutinizes the erasure of the Iranian context from multiliteracies scholarship. The article traces the phases of this erasure, from treating the Iranian context as raw data for Western theorization to rebranding borrowed knowledge as a Western product under the name of “multiliteracies”—ultimately leading to its repurposing in new forms, such as the digital turn in literacy. The analysis centers on the role of “textual materiality” as the primary medium of academic communication, exploring how intertextual connections, citations, and genre practices have contributed to the transfiguration of the multiliteracies discourse. The study also discusses symbolic (alphabetic) collaborations that strategically have helped elevate Western scholars’ status and authority within the discourse of multisemiotic literacy engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the intimacy between the situation and our agency, “situation” remains an ambiguous concept in theory. Even within the context of situated theories of cognition and agency that take the organism-environment system as central in their investigations, the notion of “situation” has been undertheorized. Yet, whether affordances are relevant depends on the situation. Therefore, Van Dijk and Rietveld argue that we must understand the practical situation in which behavior occurs in order to know how we respond to the affordances that the materials and other people offer. Taking John Dewey’s notion of “situation” as the basis for investigation, I follow Shaun Gallagher’s analysis of how we are not just part of a situation, but we understand what an action is only in relation to a situation. Situations act like large-scale affordances, but this does not mean that affordances are inviting or soliciting as such. Because of the situational transactions with the environment that an agent has, the environment pushes and pulls the agent from and toward certain actions. This means that environments have expressive qualitative features that are non-subjective emotional qualities and social gestalt. I propose four overlapping but distinct features or axes of analysis of situations that can be identified and analyzed in terms of how they shape our agency: complexity, determinedness, the establishment of expectations, and restrictiveness. Situations can be more or less complex in a spatial, temporal, or layered way. They can also be more or less determined, meaning that the agent’s actions are more or less obvious. Third, they can be characterized as socially established, meaning that certain behavior is expected. Finally, situations are more or less restricted, denoting the number of activities available to an agent.

Shared leadership has gained momentum in fields ranging from education and healthcare to information technology and sports. Given its collaborative or participatory nature, design practice should be a fertile ground for the emergence of shared leadership. Yet, previous literature on design management and leadership has primarily conceptualized leadership as an individual characteristic. To extend the existing literature, this article presents an autoethnographic exploration of shared leadership from a sociomaterial perspective. It focuses on a design project dealing with remote healthcare solutions and contributes to existing literature on shared leadership and sociomateriality. I clarify how values, individuals, and objects interact over time to evolve, stabilize, and destabilize shared leadership. This finding calls for a more granular understanding of objects. This suggests that objects influence shared leadership not just through their form and development but also by imbuing and reinforcing certain values. The findings also highlight the need to regard design leadership as sociomaterial configurations rather than solely as an individual characteristic. The article concludes by proposing further research avenues and discussing implications for design practice.

Video games represent a significant part of the digital revolution that swept over our contemporary society. Although these socio-technical artefacts can be seen as a network of human and non-human actors, STS literature on this theme remain scarce. Therefore, this Scenario aims to fill this gap by delving into gaming through a three-sided move: first, it will present a review of the few extant works that tackle, even tangentially, the theme through an STS lens; secondly, it will draw from game and media studies to highlight concepts that may bridge the different scholarships and be useful for future STS contributions on video games, but also how gaming evolved into eSports (i.e., competitive gaming) and what it means for STS; finally, it will display through the empirical example of gaming houses how an STS approach may benefit the study of gaming. Conversely, these structures where professional players gather to live and work/play together will show how gaming and its declinations may constitute a useful breeding ground for original STS conceptualisations.

Understanding the inherent characteristics of a local agricultural industry is imperative in designing policies that are responsive to the context, needs, and challenges of its stakeholders. Grounded in this premise, this study unpacked the complexities of the mango industry in the Island Garden City of Samal, an agricultural city in the southern Philippines. Specifically, it aims to understand its labor dynamics and market arrangements using a qualitative approach. This study presents an overview of the mango production cycle in the garden city, which includes the corresponding labor requirements and market of the local mango industry. In terms of labor, aside from the quantity and quality of labor needed, this paper also presents the roles of men and women that are inherent in local mango production. Likewise, the study also enumerates the different issues and challenges faced by the local mango producers. These issues and challenges were concerns related to erratic prices, labor needs, and high production costs. Moreover, the study offers explanations for the existing labor dynamics in the garden city. This includes the interplay between the material nature of the commodity and the gender dynamics in the labor force. In addition, a discussion on the varying quality standards of different target markers is also provided. Finally, this study also explained the rationale behind the prevailing contractual arrangements within the local mango industry. The results presented in this paper offer insights into designing context-based programs and policies, which could further support the local mango industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas are often seen as central sites for sustainability transformations, and in many parts of the world, cities are striving to be recognised for their sustainability initiatives. An example of a new urban district with a sustainability profile is Rosendal, in Uppsala, Sweden. Based on semi-structured interviews supported by participant-generated photographs, I let the everyday practices residents of this district associate with sustainability be the starting point for studying the different ways in which they understand and enact (un)sustainability. My analysis builds upon a practice theoretical framework, viewing practice as mundane, routinised behaviour shaped by 'materials', 'competences' and 'meanings'. By focussing on a set of practices brought forth by the interview participants, namely, growing vegetables, showering and cycling, I pay specific attention to the different roles of materials and how these are co-constitutive of the sociomaterial practices of which they form part. Based on the analysis, I contend that the sociomaterial urban assemblage enables and restricts what comes to count as sustainable, as well as which (un)sustainable practices are performed in everyday life. Further, the ability to think of alternative ways of enacting sustainability in everyday life is both enabled and restricted by present practices due to the situated nature of imagination. If urban districts are to play a central role in sustainability transformations, I argue that living environments should be planned in ways so that new ideas and practices for enacting sustainability may emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AI-enabled smart objects have rapidly become everyday commodities and do not only change the ways in which we consume but also the ethics that guide our consumption. Emerging sociomaterial perspectives viewing consumers and smart objects as assemblages have been employed to study relational aspects of consumption, as well as consumer experience in the digital reality. This article argues that consumer ethics could and should be viewed as emergent properties of such consumption assemblages. Drawing on exemplars ranging from wearables to autonomous robots, this article illustrates the potential of this perspective and outlines fruitful directions for future research on questions of consumer agency and self-determination in the face of AI and the fluidity of consumer ethics in a world of updatable smart objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how sustainable entrepreneurship on digital platforms enacts digital connectivity to capture and create value. By complementing the business model lens with sociomateriality, we theorize digital technologies as key actors that participate in the enactment of business models. We analyze visual and textual data from 19 entrepreneurial initiatives for sustainability established on the social media platform YouTube. Our findings demonstrate novel business model configurations enacted by a web of human and nonhuman (digital) actors: connecting for sustainability as part of the value proposition, forming connective spaces for socioenvironmental value creation, and leveraging connectivity for multidimensional value capture. These findings have two major contributions. First, we offer novel insights on the practices that configure business model elements of sustainable entrepreneurship on platforms. We especially draw attention to how digital connectivity of platforms is achieved and made durable by human and digital actors. Second, we elaborate on how digital agencies intervene in entrepreneurial efforts to make sustainability visible and how this affects the business models. Thus, the study contributes to and further develops the intersection of digital technologies, sustainable entrepreneurship, and business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates candidates' journey to being selected as a volunteer for the Rio2016 Games. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory, the research tracked the sociomaterial practices undertaken by candidates to become volunteers and sought to identify the actors that participate in these practices and the role the latter played in facilitating a positive (or negative) experience. A postmodern ethnography provided the basis to critically analyse candidates' experiences in applying for a volunteer role at the Games. Data were collected via internet sites, email communications, a volunteer Facebook page, interviews with volunteers (N = 17) and official Rio 2016 documents. The journey to volunteering at Rio 2016 comprised sociomaterial practices that impacted the volunteer candidate's progression (or lack thereof) through the journey to volunteering. These were qualifying as a candidate, Waiting for 'Godot', Being rejected and Getting the 'passport' to the Games. This research presents a practice-based conceptualisation of volunteer candidates' journey to selection. The findings demonstrate the centrality of sociomaterial practices in volunteer recruitment and the importance of an effective human and non-human interface. Flexible approaches to volunteer recruitment and selection that consider the diversity of interactions of actors involved can be profitably deployed to facilitate a good candidate experience and minimise the stress, tension and communication issues that potential volunteers face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a doctoral study developed in the Brazilian sociocultural context, the article reflects on the perception of misinformation among young students from public and private schools. In a society permeated by the digital world in the broader context of socio-materiality, the complexity of the terms Misinformation, Fake News, and Post-truth shows the difficulty of understanding true and false nowadays. In the capitalism of data, algorithms, control, and vigilance, misinformation is an increasingly discussed theme in digital culture due to the problems created in the political, economic, social, cultural, and political spheres. The implications of this phenomenon reverberate throughout the educational ecosystem, the teaching-learning interactions and relations in the school, and other informal and nonformal educational spaces. Grounded on the dialogue between cultural studies, media-education, and youth cultures, we seek to identify young students' perceptions of misinformation to create a formative path in the media-education perspective. The qualitative and exploratory research involved an empirical dimension conducted with young students from 14 to 21 years old in Curitiba and Colombo in Paraná, Brazil. We traced the group's profile through the European Framework for Digital competencies during workshops on media education, aiming to identify and reflect on how young students receive, understand, analyze, check, and share information. The workshop analyses suggested clues to build media competencies in the youth culture contexts and how schools can/should develop a work in the perspective of media education to build a better understanding of oneself, the other, and the world, producing and sharing messages and information with more responsibility in the perspectives of citizenship and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes the concept of assemmethodology, which combines assemblage theory and ethnomethodology. Relating to the ongoing studies in sociomateriality, this article advances our understanding of the details of social conduct and the consequentiality of materials. By explicating the role of the situation and its processual becoming, which is inherent in ethnomethodology, and by replacing the unit of analysis from the individual to the assemblage made up of heterogenous elements, this article contributes to communication research that seeks to advance our understanding of the ways in which humans are entangled with the material world. As a perspicuous case for the study of assemmethodology, this article explores situations in which screens are assembled with humans and other materials in social situations. The article uses these examples to highlight the necessity of maintaining a focus on the situated emergence of socio-material orders as a property of the activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse on digital media in physical education is largely based on a simplified concept of media. According to this, digital media are used as ‚neutral‘ tools in physical education, assuming that they support teaching processes, facilitate them in parts and optimize them. This neglects the fact that digital media become effective as mostly unnoticed actors. Using the example of filming and being filmed in physical education, this article takes a closer look at the interplay of materialities, contents, practices, knowledge systems and subject positions. On the basis of a model from media studies, case studies are used to illustrate how students are positioned as subjects of medialized physical education and how they position themselves in this interplay with one another and with the demands and scope of teaching practice. In this way, it can be shown that digital technologies in physical education play an essential role in subject positioning and meaning negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To discuss nurses' use of networks to address nursing recruitment and retention in London, UK. Design: Qualitative evaluation of the Capital Nurse programme reporting on 30 narrative interviews with executive, clinical and student nurses in 2019. Results: Executive nurses within the Capital Nurse programme recognized the importance of sociomaterial contexts in the health and social care system in London and worked strategically across these contexts to achieve change. Supported through the Capital Nurse programme, executive nurses from health organizations across London initiated collaborative working to improve recruitment and retention. Primarily by designing and delivering sociomaterial products (organizational and educational) to support nurses to build a career in London. Drawing on ideas from actor network theory, in particular sociomaterial contexts, nurses' actions at all levels to develop and sustain networks to address nursing recruitment and retention across the NHS in London are described. Conclusions: Capital Nurse supported collaborative working both within single organizations and across organizations in London. There is evidence of change in how nurses across the capital work together to improve patient care, improve recruitment and retention. Findings may resonate with nurses in other settings who seek to address the problem of recruitment and retention. They show how nurses coming together in networks to effect changes in practice can work successfully. Impact: Nurses' use of networks led to novel models of communication and action to address the problems of recruitment and retention in London. We argue that sociomateriality should be considered outside the clinical practice setting, as part of nurses' professional development and organizational practice, that is how they plan their career, how they address recruitment and retention, how they communicate across organizations about nursing issues. No Patient or Public Contribution: This was an evaluation of a staff development project in London, which sought to elicit nurses' experiences of participation in Capital Nurse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework that elucidates the microfoundations of data-driven antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs), specifically focusing on resource-constrained settings. Such settings necessitate the utilization of available resources and engagement among multiple stakeholders. The microfoundations are conceptualized as interlinked components: input, process, output, and outcome. Collectively, these components provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the development and implementation of data-driven ASPs in resource-constrained settings. It underscores the importance of considering both the social and material dimensions when evaluating microbiological, clinical, and social impacts. By harmonizing technology, practices, values, and behaviors, this framework offers valuable insights for the development, implementation, and assessment of ASPs tailored to resource-constrained environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical examination of the domain of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, with a focus on the expectations and practical implications accompanying its integration into teaching. The expectations have been propelled by two interconnected concepts: (1) the potential for AI to automate pedagogical processes, replacing teachers in certain scenarios; and (2) the notion that teachers’ insights can be augmented through AI-based analysis. Drawing on two ethnographic studies in Swedish primary and secondary schools, this paper explores the enactments of pupils, teachers and two AI-based educational technologies. The aim is to demonstrate how automation and augmentation can emerge in teachers’ practice. Utilizing inspiration from a relational epistemological problematisation of socio-technical phenomena, the paper demonstrates how rather than automation and augmentation, AI in education is an act of symmation in which automation and augmentation is co-produced by the technology and teachers’ different hidden work, in this paper conceptualised as adaptations, experimentations, compensations and confirmations. The paper suggests that the study of symmation in relation to the teaching profession can be productive in further exploring the yet limited understanding of AI in educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While intellectually stimulating, the conceptual debates found in academic articles can sometimes be difficult for lay readers to engage with. In looking to make them more accessible to a wider audience, some journals have begun to explore different modes of communication. RFG encourages authors to adapt popular articles for mainstream media, and has worked to expand video dissemination through the IQSOG program and its partnership with Xerfi Canal. The first of its kind for a management journal, RFG is now offering an article on the 2022 hyperloop project (Belinski et al. , 2022) in comic strip format to facilitate understanding of the concepts discussed in the article. While the article was already presented to Xerfi Canal in 2023, its comic adaptation aims to get students thinking about the complex issues discussed in the article, such as sociomateriality and the relationship between myths and markets. More broadly, this project responds to RFG's longstanding interest in comics as a vehicle for offering visual representations of objects of research (Grimand, 2022), and looks to expand the use of comics as a means of disseminating academic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the nuances of applying Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to autoethnography. The authors argue that ANT-informed autoethnography may broaden the understanding of how social and material networks are interrelated and can influence research. Two divergent autoethnographic vignettes are analyzed to illustrate how ANT-informed autoethnography may differ from other forms of autoethnography. ANT-informed autoethnography may be helpful when researchers wish to understand better the diverse political, social, and economic interactions and knowledge among actors and then offer insight into how these engagements affect our lifeworlds. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations for autoethnographers who utilize ANT in their research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the care environment of secure youth homes run by the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care, where youths up to 21 years old are placed according to law due to extensive care needs or sentences. Purpose: This study examined staff members' experiences of the institutional care environment within secure youth homes. Methods: Data were collected through three focus group discussions with 17 staff members at two secure youth homes. Subsequently, a thematic analysis was conducted. Results: The analysis indicated two main themes: risk management and damage control in a restricted environment and compensating and reconstructing ordinariness--trying to make the best of it; each theme had three subthemes. The care environment seems to be experienced by staff as characterized by conflicting demands, thus constituting a gap between needs and what is possible to achieve--a balancing act that constitutes a constant struggle. Conclusions: The staff members' constant struggle could be interpreted as conflicting moral and instrumental demands; they know what the youths need, but the environment of the secure youth homes demands the decorous behaviour of sociomaterial control practices-- rather than care practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the sociomaterial organization of preschool children's digital literacy activities, focusing on how participant positions are enacted and distributed. The data material consists of 70 hours of video-recorded observations in early childhood education and care in Norway. Drawing on Ethnomethodology/conversation analysis (EMCA) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), we approach digital literacy practices through the following analytical concepts: participation framework, positioning, script and mutual enactment. The analysis of a twenty-minute sequence shows how tablet activities are dynamic and shifting, where the participant framework, positions and scripts are mutually enacted. Through our analysis we show how the creation of activity frames with a joint focus of attention is important for establishing and sustaining digital literacy as a collaborative activity. It is suggested that applications with weaker scripts might also be important. Here, we show how the "owner" uses a range of interactional resources to establish and sustain control and mutual involvement in literacy activity. This also involves how the technology is enacted in multiple ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Maintenance and repair of bikes - material interventions - are essential to sustain cycling practices. In this paper we explore the role of (bi)cycle self-repair workshops (Bike Kitchens) and the practices they enable to maintain cycling practices. We connect a sociomaterial understanding of assisted self-repair to Bike Kitchens' role in transformational mobility change. Empirically, we utilize our own experiences in organizing and running a small Bicycle Kitchen in Sweden in conjunctions with observations and interviews, drawing on theories of social practice, the sociology of materiality and repair studies. We develop the position that through deliberate engagement with the cycle as an entity, assisted self-repair practices provide flexible means of representing the transformative potential of cycling materialities. This has implications for the meanings attached to the cycle, cycling, repair and other associated practices. We argue that Bike Kitchens may engender epistemic practices useful to develop human-centered visions for re-imagining mobility and sociomaterial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This hybrid article offers a glimpse into a plurality of Indigenous worldviews in the context of the contemporary art exhibition Arctic/ Amazon that took place at the Power Plant in Toronto, Canada in 2022. The article highlights the important connections between knowledge and culture in artworks by artists who translate practice, materiality, and knowledgeways into contemporary interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asylum determinations are highly complex and difficult decisions. At the heart of this decision lies a credibility assessment of the asylum claimant's narrative, which confronts the decision-maker with a seemingly straightforward question: do I believe this person's story? To uphold legitimacy of this assessment, semi-legal criteria have been established internationally. However, these criteria have been criticized for relying on inaccurate and simplistic assumptions about human behavior, autobiographical memory, and communication. In light of this contestation, I ask how the legal-administrative practice of assessing credibility of asylum applications gains legitimacy in the eyes of the public, policy-makers, and legal professionals despite resting on highly disputable assumptions? To answer this question, I draw on interviews, observations, and written judgements from the Swedish administrative courts to explore how symbolic messages are tacitly conveyed through the use of judicial language, activities, and objects. The analysis suggests that cohesive, albeit tacit, messages about credibility assessments being accurate (rather than arbitrary), objective (rather than subjective), professional (rather than lay), and just (rather than unjust) are produced to both near and distant audiences. The study contributes to the literature on credibility assessments by offering a theoretical perspective that can unpack the relationship between symbolic communication in courts and perceived legitimacy for disputed practices within asylum determinations and migration control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms research is divided into two streams namely, the architectural/information technology stream, and the management/economics stream. Despite several calls to merge them, research efforts remain limited. Examining digital platforms' architecture can provide valuable insights into the management of platform organizations, but management scholars have been inattentive to the "digitality" inherent in platforms, resulting in a research gap. This conceptual work addresses that gap by showing how three types of digital architectures (viz. Ancillary, Additive, and Autonomous) influence four types of value-offerings of a platform (viz. Applications, Physical products, Services, and Content) and their implications for the engagement of users and complementors in the platform's business model. Using sociomateriality theory, it shows how the sociomaterial properties of digital architectures (represented by their “openness” and “generativity”) result in three distinct architectural roles that have significant implications for a platform's management of four different value-offerings. In doing so, it uncovers a significant relationship between digital architectures (i.e., I.T.) and business models (i.e., Management), thereby identifying the connection between the two diverse platform research streams and introducing a framework for management scholars to examine the “digitality” of platforms. More importantly, it reveals the critical role of a platform's digital architecture in determining the products/services, business models and governance mechanisms for a platform business, and develops several propositions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of management and organization studies (MOS) regularly invokes the relational theories of Karen Barad in sociomaterial and new materialist scholarship. Taking the increasing influence of this work as our point of departure, we witness once again the deferral of difference as organizational scholars grapple with Barad's oeuvre but gloss the work's feminist, queer, and decolonial impetus. As a consequence, relational scholarship in MOS circulates without its commentary on gender, race, sexuality, and related axes of inequity. This article recenters these aspects of relational approaches in three steps: (1) identifying the scholarly practices through which they disappear, (2) "re-relationalizing" relational theory in its radical roots, and (3) envisioning scholarly practices that better actualize the potential of relational theories. Our goal is to cultivate the constitutive relations of MOS such that we cease the deferral of difference, both in the study of power and in studies of "generic" organizational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers great potential in organizations. The path to achieving this potential will involve human-AI interworking, as has been confirmed by numerous studies. However, it remains to be explored which direction this interworking of human agents and AI-enabled systems ought to take. To date, research still lacks a holistic understanding of the entangled interworking that characterizes human-AI hybrids, so-called because they form when human agents and AI-enabled systems closely collaborate. To enhance such understanding, this paper presents a taxonomy of human-AI hybrids, developed by reviewing the current literature as well as a sample of 101 human-AI hybrids. Leveraging weak sociomateriality as justificatory knowledge, this study provides a deeper understanding of the entanglement between human agents and AI-enabled systems. Furthermore, a cluster analysis is performed to derive archetypes of human-AI hybrids, identifying ideal–typical occurrences of human-AI hybrids in practice. While the taxonomy creates a solid foundation for the understanding and analysis of human-AI hybrids, the archetypes illustrate the range of roles that AI-enabled systems can play in those interworking scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]