Reconstitution of Sociotechnical Arrangements: Agency and the Design of Artifacts

ABSTRACT

This article regards artifacts as sociotechnical arrangements. Likewise, it views the concept of agency—traditionally defined as a human capacity for having needs and preferences and for seeing possible actions—as not independent of sociotechnical arrangements, but rather emerging from and potentially transforming those arrangements. In other words, the design of an artifact is actually the design of a sociotechnical arrangement, from which emerges new agency. We support this view with our fieldwork in the areas of open data, integrated learning, and local currency.