SFB 1187 ›Medien der Kooperation‹ an der Universität Siegen
Werkstatt Medienpraxistheorie – “Dances with Categories: Towards the anthropology of ‘Technology’, Technicity and Technodiversity” – Workshop with Ludovic Coupaye
Wednesday, 01 February 2023, 10:00 - 11:30

The workshop is a pre-discussion of the lecture on the same topic exploring how “Technology” is a category vernacular (emic) to modernity which, when used, inscribes the phenomena it refers to within an utilitarian, rationalist and Eurocentric frame. Building on the works of the Francophone Technologie Culturelle, the paper suggests going back to Marcel Mauss’s definition of “technical acts”, focalising on the issue of “efficacy”. The paper claims that it is by taking seriously the efficacy according to the actors themselves, whether computer engineers, long yam growers or shamans, that one can built a methodological frame able to empirically analyse technical (or ritual or aesthetic) phenomena, and their profound axiological import, without sacrificing their material or conceptual diversity, or their spatial or temporal complexity. It opens up with a call for an anthropology of technicity and technodiversity which analyse the different modalities of actions and relations between humans and their milieus.

*As the workshop is an internal event, external guests please contact Dr. Johannes Schick by email for registration, indicating their academic title, full name, their institution, their official email address and the title of the event they wish to attend.

Venue

Universität Siegen
Campus Herrengarten
AH-A 217/18