Bundle Theory

PLEASE NOTE: TRANSLATION OF THE BUNDLE EXPLORER INTO ENGLISH IS IN PROGRESS. CURRENTLY, THE TEXTS IN THE CATEGORY ‘TOUCHING BODIES’ ARE STILL MISSING.

The Bundle Explorer: Touch offers a means to explore the diversity of forms of touch and situations in which touch occurs in digital childhoods – by engaging with filmic ‘prepared specimens’. These are the result of camera-ethnographic attentive filming and analytically-focused editing. Thus, even nonverbal practices can be studied. The Bundle Explorer: Touch is the prototype of a newly developed research tool. The Bundle Explorer tool has been conceived to open up paths of discovery and inspire thought trajectories in relation to disparate kinds of practices and subject fields. These paths traverse between viewed material (camera-ethnographic film scenes in the case of the Bundle Explorer: Touch) and their thick description as situated practices in the framework of a Wittgensteinian language-game (‘touch’ is the term that is investigated in this way in the prototype tool.)
Explorers are instructed to “Choose one …” from an array of 12 photos representing 12 films. Doing so leads to a window presenting the chosen film, and another one as well. Curiosity might be awoken: Why these two, together? The juxtaposition opens up a trail for investigation.
Descriptions and questions about the film scenes are offered. On self-selected paths through the Explorer, comparisons, differentiations, and classifications arise, leading to the (tentative) identification of categories, overlapping and boundary cases. Identifying the bundle within which practices are interwoven sheds light on how each respective practice is situated; recognising the wider spectrum of potential situations, in turn, offers the basis for a praxeological contouring of ‘touch’ as a practice and a term.
In the case of the prototype Bundle Explorer: Touch, the aim is to generate a new understanding of situated sensory practices in digitalised everyday worlds, beginning with the context of digital childhoods. The Bundle Explorer offers space for those who engage with it to note and contribute their own observations, thoughts, and reflections, participating thereby in the ongoing evolution of the Explorer.

From a praxeological perspective, practices can be seen to be enacted in bundles with other practices as well as in practice-arrangement bundles. According to Schatzki, “Practices and arrangements bundle in that (1) practices effect, alter, use, and are inseparable from arrangements while (2) arrangements channel, prefigure, and facilitate practices” (2011: 4). Camera ethnography (see Mohn 2023) proposes a methodological and theoretical expansion of Schatzki’s practice-arrangement bundles to include the bundling of practices with practices. Thus, situations can be understood as thick interrelationships of mutually constitutive practices and their environments: these bundles indicate how a respective practice is situated. The Bundle Explorer offers a means to study the ways in which practices are enacted in bundles with other practices, as well as how their environments and material settings participate. Furthermore, it posits situated practices as cases within the context of a semantic field (‘touch’ in this Bundle Explorer), which can then be mapped or “contoured” through testing and questioning as a Wittgensteinian “grammatical investigation” (cf. Griesecke und Kogge 2022). In the process, the Bundle Explorer offers a multimedia script that can help to guide the temporal and spatial arrangement of the material under investigation, in the sense of a zeigende Grammatik (Mohn 2023: 160).

The Bundle Explorer was developed by Bina Elisabeth Mohn, Astrid Vogelpohl, and Pip Hare as part of the camera ethnographic research that they conducted together from 2016 to 2023 in the project “Early Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation” led by Jutta Wiesemann; a subproject within the collaborative research centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen, Germany.
We offer the Bundle Explorer tool as an innovative contribution to praxeological research methodology. Its development has drawn theoretically on Wittgenstein’s language-game approach (grammatical investigation/perspicuous representation) and the camera ethnographic adaptation of that into a “zeigende Grammatik”. In 2023, the research project published an anthology and held an exhibition, both entitled “Re-Inventing Touch”, on the topic of sensory practices in digital childhoods.

References

Griesecke, Birgit/Kogge, Werner. 2022. Mit Wittgenstein arbeiten. Ein Methoden Manual, in: Collaborative Research Center 1187 Media of Cooperation (eds.), Working Paper Series.

Mohn, Bina Elisabeth. 2023. Kamera-Ethnographie. Ethnographische Forschung im Modus des Zeigens. Programmatik und Praxis, transcript, Bielefeld.

Mohn, Bina Elisabeth et al. 2023. Berührung neu erfinden. Sinnespraktiken in digitalen Kindheiten. Ein Blicklabor an 10 kamera-ethnographischen Szenen (Reinventing Touch. Sensory Practices in Digital Childhoods. Diverse perspectives encounter 10 camera ethnographic scenes), in: LIT Book Series Camera Ethnography, Berlin, Münster, Wien, Zürich, London

Schatzki, Theodore R. 2011. “Where the Action Is. On Large Social Phenomena Such as Sociotechnical Regimes”, in: Sustainable Practices Research Group (eds.), Working Paper 1. 

Schatzki, Theodore R. 2016. „Praxistheorie als flache Ontologie“, in: H. Schäger (ed.), Praxistheorie. Ein soziologisches Forschungsprogramm, Bielefeld, 29-44.

Funding

Subproject B05 “Early Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation”. Financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of   the collaborative research centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation”, University of Siegen. Project number: 262513311.