Oddelek za predmete: Antropologija: razumevanje svetovnotvornih praks

Pogoji za vključitev v delo:

Za vključitev v delo ni posebnih pogojev. Priporoča se predhodno poznavanje osnov antropoloških teorij in metod.

Vsebina:

Človek in tehnologija sta v sodobnem svetu prepletena na vseh družbenih področjih, od družine, šolstva in zdravstva do ekonomije in politike. Tehnologijo pogosto dojemamo kot orodje, ki ljudem omogoča doseči določene cilje, na primer cilj komunikacije, transporta ali proizvodnje. Antropologija, zlasti v povezavi s sorodnim področjem družbenih študij znanosti in tehnologije (Science and Technology Studies), tehnologijo obravnava širše, kot del družbenih praks in kulturnih vrednot. Različne tehnologije niso samo orodje v rokah ljudi, temveč postanejo akterji, ki na različne načine vplivajo na družbene prakse in odnose ter celo identiteto posameznic in posameznikov. Poleg tega tehnologije niso nevtralne, ampak tako odražajo kot oblikujejo družbene hierarhije, ideologije in razmerja moči. Sem spadajo tudi načini, kako se lahko spolne in rasne pristranskosti vtkejo v tehnološke sisteme, na primer v algoritme ali uporabe umetne inteligence, ki reproducirajo ali celo okrepijo obstoječe družbene neenakosti.

Študentke in študenti obravnavajo primere etnografskih raziskav iz različnih področij, od zdravja do migracij in reorganizacije dela, in se seznanijo z metodami antropološkega raziskovanja tehnologije. Cilj predmeta je razviti kritično razumevanje tehnologije kot kulturnega pojava, sposobnost analize tehnoloških praks v širšem kontekstu ter občutljivost za etične in politične razsežnosti tehnološkega razvoja. Predmet je primeren za vse, ki jih zanima presečišče med kulturo, družbo in tehnološkimi spremembami, raziskoval pa bo med drugim naslednje teme, ki vključujejo različne vrste tehnologij, od vsakdanjih predmetov do najsodobnejših digitalnih tehnologij:

• Zgodovina antropologije tehnologije,
• Osnovne teorije STS,
• Tehnološke in podatkovne infrastrukture,
• Tehnologije skrbstva in zdravja,
• Nosljive tehnologije in nadzor,
• Algoritmi, umetna inteligenca in roboti,
• Spol, rase in razmerja moči,
• Tehnologije in delo.

Readings:

Zgodovina antropologije tehnologij

• Bruun, M. H., & Wahlberg, A. (2022). The anthropology of technology: the formation of a field: introduction. In The Palgrave handbook of the anthropology of technology (pp. 1-33). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
• Escobar, A. (1995). Anthropology and the future: New technologies and the reinvention of culture. Futures, 27(4), 409-421.
• Ingold, T. (1997). Eight themes in the anthropology of technology. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 41(1), 106-138.
• Pfaffenberger, B. (1988). Fetishised objects and humanised nature: towards an anthropology of technology. Man, 236-252.
• Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Social anthropology of technology. Annual review of Anthropology, 491-516.

Osnovne teorije STS

• Latour, B. (1993). ‘‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of Mundane Artifacts’’. Technology and Sociology, 151.
• Haraway, D. J. (1985). A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. Posthumanism.
• Law, J. (2008). Actor network theory and material semiotics. The new Blackwell companion to social theory, 141-158.
• Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press.
• Mol, A., Moser, I., & Pols, J. (2010). Care: putting practice into theory. Care in practice: On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms, 8, 7-27.
• Suchman, L. A. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions. Cambridge university press.
• De Laet, M., & Mol, A. (2000). The Zimbabwe bush pump: Mechanics of a fluid technology. Social studies of science, 30(2), 225-263.
• Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In: W. Bijker and John L. (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society, Studies on Sociotechnical Change. MIT Press.
• Schneider, T., Brenninkmeijer, J., & Woolgar, S. (2022). Enacting the ‘consuming’ brain: An ethnographic study of accountability redistributions in neuromarketing practices. The Sociological Review, 70(5), 1025-1043.
• Mather, C. (2014). Avian influenza multiple: Enacting realities and dealing with policies in South Africa’s farmed ostrich sector. Journal of Rural Studies, 33, 99-106.
• Jasanoff, S. (2015). Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power, 1-33.

Tehnološke in podatkovne infrastrukture

• Larkin, B. (2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual review of anthropology, 42(2013), 327-343.
• Nair, V. (2021). Becoming data: biometric IDs and the individual in ‘Digital India’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 27(S1), 26-42.
• Adams, V. (2016). Metrics: What counts in global health. Duke University Press.
• Srinivasan, J. (2022). The political lives of information: Information and the production of development in India. MIT Press.
• Abram, S. (2022). Electricity as a field for anthropological theorising and research: Electricity. In The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology (pp. 741-755). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.

Tehnologije skrbstva in zdravja

• Ahlin, T. (2023). Calling family: Digital technologies and the making of transnational care collectives. Rutgers University Press.
• Aceros, J. C., Pols, J., & Domènech, M. (2015). Where is grandma? Home telecare, good aging and the domestication of later life. Technological forecasting and social change, 93, 102-111.
• Hoeyer, K. (2023). Data paradoxes: The politics of intensified data sourcing in contemporary healthcare. MIT Press.
• Ong, A., & Collier, S. (2005). Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Ruckenstein, M., & Schüll, N. D. (2017). The datafication of health. Annual review of anthropology, 46(1), 261-278.
• van Voorst, R. (2024). The medical tech facilitator: an emerging position in Dutch public healthcare and their tinkering practices. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 11(2), 1-23.

Nosljive tehnologije in nadzor

• Lupton, D. (2013). Quantifying the body: monitoring and measuring health in the age of mHealth technologies. Critical public health, 23(4), 393-403.
• Lupton, D., & Jutel, A. (2015). It’s like having a physician in your pocket!’A critical analysis of self-diagnosis smartphone apps. Soc Sci Med, 133(2015), 128-135.
• Schneider, T., Brice, J., & Eli, K. (2025). Digital eating. Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(6), 797–809. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2025.2584037
• Tamminen, S., & Holmgren, E. (2016). The anthropology of wearables: The self, the social, and the autobiographical. In Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (Vol. 2016, No. 1, pp. 154-174).
• Zuboff, S. (2023). The age of surveillance capitalism. In Social theory re-wired (pp. 203-213). Routledge.

Algoritmi, umetna inteligenca in roboti

• Forsythe, D. E. (1993). Engineering knowledge: The construction of knowledge in artificial intelligence. Social studies of science, 23(3), 445-477.
• Forsythe, D. (2001). Studying those who study us: An anthropologist in the world of artificial intelligence. Stanford University Press.
• Seaver, N. (2022). Computing taste: Algorithms and the makers of music recommendation. University of Chicago Press.
• Schüll, N. D. (2012). Addiction by design: Machine gambling in Las Vegas. In Addiction by design. Princeton university press.
• Pols, J., & Moser, I. (2009). Cold technologies versus warm care? On affective and social relations with and through care technologies. Alter, 3(2), 159-178.
• Wright, J. (2023). Robots won’t save Japan: An ethnography of eldercare automation. Cornell University Press.
• Keane, W. (2025). Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination. Princeton University Press.
• Hasse, C. (2022). Humanism, posthumanism, and new humanism: how robots challenge the anthropological object: posthumanism. In The Palgrave handbook of the anthropology of technology (pp. 145-164). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.

Spol, rase in razmerja moči

• Arora, P. (2024). From pessimism to promise: Lessons from the Global South on designing inclusive tech. MIT Press.
• Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Polity Press.
• Couldry, N., & Mejias, U. A. (2019). Data colonialism: Rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject. Television & New Media, 20(4), 336-349.
• M’charek, A. (2013). Beyond fact or fiction: On the materiality of race in practice. Cultural anthropology, 28(3), 420-442.
• Wright, J. (2019). Robots vs migrants? Reconfiguring the future of Japanese institutional eldercare. Critical Asian Studies, 51(3), 331-354.
• Wylie, C. (2019). Mindf* ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s plot to break the world. Profile Books.
• Madianou, M. (2019). Technocolonialism: Digital innovation and data practices in the humanitarian response to refugee crises. Social media and society, 5(3), 2056305119863146.

Tehnologije in delo

• Hoeyer, K., & Wadmann, S. (2020). ‘Meaningless work’: How the datafication of health reconfigures knowledge about work and erodes professional judgement. Economy and Society, 49(3), 433-454.
• Del Castillo, A. P., Galanos, V., Stewart, J. K., Ekbia, H. R., Nowotny, H., Ulnicane, I., … & Mandinaud, V. (2024). Artificial intelligence, labour and society.
• Ritter, C. (2023). Digital ethnography: Understanding platform labour from within.
• Bruun, M. H., & Krause-Jensen, J. (2022). Inside Technology Organisations: Imaginaries of Digitalisation at Work: Organisation. In The Palgrave handbook of the anthropology of technology (pp. 485-505). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.

Digitalna ethnografija – metode

• Ahlin, T., & Li, F. (2019). From field sites to field events: Creating the field with information and communication technologies (ICTs). Medicine Anthropology Theory, 6(2).
• Albris, K., Otto, E. I., Astrupgaard, S. L., Gregersen, E. M., Jørgensen, L. S., Jørgensen, O., … & Schønning, S. (2021). A view from anthropology: Should anthropologists fear the data machines?. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211043655.
• Gray, P. A. (2016). Memory, body, and the online researcher: Following Russian street demonstrations via social media. American Ethnologist, 43(3), 500-510.
• Hobbis, S. K., & Hobbis, G. (2024). A Sociotechnical Approach to Smartphone Research: Outline for a Holistic, Qualitative Mobile Method. Media International Australia, 1329878X241253011.
• Palmberger, M. (2025). The Digital Diary: A Mobile, Multimodal, and Participatory Method and Part of Digital Ethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 24, 16094069251329262.
• Pink, S., Horst, H., Lewis, T., Hjorth, L., & Postill, J. (2015). Digital ethnography: Principles and practice.
• Pype, K. (2023). Four Ways of Not Saying Something in Digital Kinshasa: Or, On the Substance of Shadow Conversations. In: Cryptopolitics: Exposure, Concealment and Digital Media. V. Bernal, K. Pype and D. Rodima-Taylor (Eds.). Berghahn, pp. 24-50.

Cilji in kompetence:

Namen predmeta je študentom in študentkam predstaviti  antropološko in interdisciplinarno proučevanje tehnologije kot kulturnega, družbenega in političnega pojava. Osnovni cilj je razviti široko razumevanje, kako se tehnologije vključujejo v družbene prakse in kako jih oblikujejo vrednote, razmerja moči in zgodovinski konteksti ter kako same vplivajo na družbene odnose, prakse in identiteto posameznikov in skupin.

Študenti in študentke bodo na višji ravni razumeli:

• Kako antropologija in STS razumevata tehnologijo ne le kot orodje, temveč kot nekaj, kar se aktivno vključuje v odnose, prakse in identiteto ljudi.
• Kako tehnologije vplivajo na neenakosti, vključno na področju spola, rase in socialnoekonomskih razredov.
• Pomen etnografskih metod pri analizi tehnologije v vsakdanjem življenju.

Splošne kompetence:

• Kritično in interdisciplinarno mišljenje o vlogi tehnologije v družbi.
• Samostojno akademsko raziskovanje in interpretacija empiričnega gradiva.
• Jasno in koherentno akademsko pisno in ustno izražanje.

Predmetno-specifične kompetence:

• Razumevanje ključnih antropoloških in STS teorij o tehnologiji.
• Uporaba etnografskih metod pri analizi tehnoloških praks.
• Kritična presoja kulturnih, etičnih in političnih razsežnosti tehnološkega razvoja.
• Prepoznavanje, kako tehnologije odražajo in oblikujejo družbene kategorije, kot so spol, rasa in razred.

Predvideni študijski rezultati:

Po končanem predmetu bodo študentje in  študentke lahko:

• analizirali tehnologije kot del družbenih praks in kulturnih vrednot.
• kritično primerjali različne antropološke in STS pristope k proučevanju tehnologije;
• interpretirali etnografske primere v povezavi s teoretskimi koncepti;
• predstavili etične in politične dimenzije tehnologij razvoja ter njihovo vpetost v razmerja moči;
• samostojno pripravili pisno analizo izbranega primera tehnološke prakse v širšem družbenem kontekstu.

Metode poučevanja in učenja:

Oblike dela:

• Frontalna oblika poučevanja
• Samostojno delo študentov
• e-izobraževanje

Metode (načini) dela:

• Razlaga
• Razgovor/ diskusija/debata
• Delo z besedilom

Načini ocenjevanja:

• Krajši pisni izdelki 20 %
• Daljši pisni izdelki 60 %
  Javni nastop ali predstavitev 20 %

Reference nosilke:

• Ahlin, Tanja, and Anna Mann. 2024. Ambiguous animals, ambivalent carers and arbitrary care collectives:
• Ahlin, Tanja, and Anna Mann. 2024. Re-theorizing Resistance to Care Robots in a Dialysis Unit in Austria. Social Science and Medicine 365: 117587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117587
• Ahlin, Tanja, Kasturi Sen and Jeannette Pols. 2024. Telecare that Works: Lessons on Integrating Digital Technologies in Elder Care from Indian Transnational Families. Anthropology and Medicine 1-16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13648470.2024.2378726
• Van Voorst, Roanne, and Tanja Ahlin. 2024. Key points for an ethnography of AI: an approach towards crucial data. Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11, 337. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02854-4
• Ahlin, Tanja. Calling Family: Digital Technologies and the Making of Transnational Care Collectives. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (open access).
• Ahlin Tanja. 2022. The unseen care work of nurses from Kerala. In: John, Maya and Christa Wichterich (Eds.). Who Cares? Health Workers, Care Extraction and Struggles over Health Care Work in India. New Delhi: Zubaan, 276-300.
• Ahlin, Tanja. 2018. Only near is dear? Doing elderly care with everyday ICTs in Indian transnational families. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 32(1): 85-102. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12404.