| 1. |
- Björkman, Jan, et al.
(author)
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”Att resa tillsammans” – Kunskapsnätverken i Blekinge
- 2003
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I denna uppsats diskuterar vi samverkan mellan högskolan och företagen genom olika berättelser. Den första berättelsen hämtar inspiration från begreppen ´triple helix´ och ´distribueradkunskapsproduktion´. Med hjälp av dessa begrepp kan vi åstadkomma en berättelse som syftar till att fånga in en övergripande samhällsdiskurs och därmed en mer abstrakt berättelse om hur relationerna mellan akademin och företagen kan omformuleras och omprövas. Den andra berättelsen landar i Blekinge och tar sin empiriska utgångspunkt från att presentera historia och nutid för två kunskapsnätverk som drivs i samarbete mellan Blekinge tekniska högskola och två företagsbranscher, nämligen tillverkningsindustrin och callcenterföretag. I vår historiebeskrivning och analys hämtar vi inspiration och verktyg från Actor-Network Theory (ANT) och dess vidareutveckling, Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTA). Den första analytiska blicken omfattas av hur ´samverkansdiskursen´ och de befintliga regionala nätverken deltar i pågående förhandlingar/processer där olika förståelser av kunskap står i centrum. Den andra analytiska blicken riktar vi mot nätverkskoordinatorn, anställd av högskolan. På vilket sätt initierade koordinatorn som talesman de övriga deltagarna till projektet? Hur tydlig var ´invitationen´? Vilka förväntningar hade de olika nätverksdeltagarna? Utöver människor finns det också icke-mänskliga aktörer, som till exempel tid och pengar. Hur agerade de? Med vilket kunskapsperspektiv gick högskolan in i nätverksarbetet? Vilka kunskapssyner hade de deltagande företagen? Kan vi förstå kunskapsförhandlingar genom att utgå från två samexisterande kunskapsperspektiv: teoretisk kunskap och praktisk kunskap? Hur förhöll sig högskolan respektive de deltagande företagen till dessa perspektiv? Den andra blicken riktar vi oss mot kunskapsnätverkens stabilitet. Hur stabila är de existerande kunskapsnätverken? Vad innebär stabilitet? Har nätverkens ursprungliga mål och innehåll förändrats under tidens gång? Är stabilitet alltid något eftersträvansvärt eller kan det finnas negativ stabilitet? Vi syftar till att genom de lokala tillämpningarna kunna förstå på vilket sätt samarbete mellan akademin och företagen kan växa fram så att samarbetet kan bli givande för bägge parter. Vi syftar också till att synliggöra de kritiska punkterna för samarbetet mellan akademin och företagen. Parallellt med detta syftar vi också till att se vilka faktorer som kan bidra till att samarbetet blir meningsfullt och kraftfullt.
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| 2. |
- Dittrich, Yvonne, et al.
(author)
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Making e-Government Happen. Everyday co-development of services, citizenship and technology.
- 2003
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In a joint research project concerning the use and design of IT in public services, we are using a simple figure of on-going, design-oriented interactions to highlight shifting foci on relationships of codevelopment of services, citzenship and technology. We bring together a number of concrete examples of this on-going everyday co-development, presented from the different perspectives that we, as researchers from different disciplines and traditions, represent in the project. The article explores and discusses wokring relations of technology production and use that we see as central to what is actually making e-government happen - or not happen. The main challenge in this area, as we see it, concerns making visible, and developing supportive infrastructures for, the continuing local adaptation, development and design in use of integrated IT and public services.
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| 3. |
- Ekelin, Annelie, et al.
(author)
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KomInDu : A Small Project about Big Issues
- 2004
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In: The proceedings from the biennial Participatory Conferences (PDC)2004. - Toronto : CPSR. - 1581138512
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this short paper, we present glimpses from an interdisciplinary research and development project aimed at enhancing local democracy by developing ICT support for the consultation process around the comprehensive plan of a municipality. For the participating researchers, the project offered the opportunity of combining and comparing approaches and methods from two different design traditions that share democratic ideals and ambitions of nurturing citizen/user participation in design processes. This proved to be more challenging than we had originally anticipated. Differences in perspective gave different interpretations of the design context as well as of how participatory the processes actually were.
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| 4. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo
(author)
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Angels in Unstable Sociomaterial Relations : Stories of Information Technology
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I have explored spaces, where negotiations of border transgressions take place and where issues of technology and politics mingle. We meet a diversity of actors in the world of information technology (IT): political texts, people and technology participating in numerous sociomaterial relations. Time is the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, 2000. Years, when IT occupied the western world and created its own fuzzy discourse. Years, when IT stole the biggest newspaper headlines and years, when IT became a mundane everyday part of our work practices. Years, when we learned to live in heterogeneous worlds. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTa) provide analytical and methodological perspectives when working with the empirical material. I present a chronological exposé of some of the key concepts of ANT and ANTa. I also discuss how the classical ANT perspective has changed during the last few years from being a theory of networks to become a methodological and analytical approach to other kinds of spaces such as fluid and fire. The heart of the thesis consists of six empirical cases. My aim of writing stories of information technology has been to investigate the black box of information technology. Investigating includes also efforts of opening. Concepts that are taken for granted, such as the very notion of information technology in my case, can be explored, questioned, transgressed, blurred and opened up. Each of the diffracted stories is specific and unique, with its own actors, context, location and situatedness. But the stories are also connected through ANT, and feminist technology and technoscience studies. Case number one, ‘Discourses and Cracks – A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context ’, is about a project, where questions concerning discourses of information society with a special focus on citizenship are discussed and where global and national politics are translated to local and situated practices. Case number two, ‘Translating and Negotiating Information Technology ’, consists of two main parts. The fi rst one is about a regional library project. The analysis of the project is based on the classical Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach that invites the study of the heterogeneous and negotiable shaping of IT. The second part is about librarians developing web-based services. The analysis is inspired by the later development of ANT (called ANTa in the thesis) in order to include more invisible actors, relations and negotiations. Case number three, ‘Negotiating Information Technology: Politics and Practices of The Public Sector Web Production’, is about work practices of a municipal web developer, through which creation of sociotechnical relations of everyday information technology practices is analysed and also mirrored to national and local IT politics. Case number four, ‘Making e-Government Happen – Everyday Co-Development of Services, Citizenship and Technology’, is presenting the same web developer as in the third case, but now his everyday practices are connected with an expanded and wider circuit of co-constructors of information technology. The text is a co-production of a multidisciplinary research group aiming to describe, analyse and problematise connections when creating practices, where technology and society collaborate. Case number fi ve, ‘Citizenship at the Crossroads of Multiple Layers of Sociotechnical Relations’, enrols technology as an active actor in the construction of citizenship in an IT context in Sweden. The perspective emphasising the active agency of non-humans both enhances and challenges the Scandinavian approach of systems development by suggesting a direction towards a cyborgian approach towards technology design. Case number six, ‘Between Stability and Instability – a Project about e-Democracy ’, takes its point of departure from a small-scale project having as its goal the development of e-democracy in a municipal context. In the text the focus is on the stabilisation processes in shaping the technology (‘e’) and democracy parts of the project. I also discuss what kinds of spaces exist in between (the hyphen in e-democracy) and ask if integration between technology and democracy is possible as a whole. Finally, my intention is to step further into stories and practices not yet existing. Inspired by the French philosopher Michel Serres, I introduce the fi guration of an angel as a cartographer, intermediator and (co-) constructor of sociomaterial relations. Angels are needed to sew the separate fi elds of technology, politics and everyday practices to a rich seamless tapestry. They are the ‘artful integrators’ (Suchman).
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| 5. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo, et al.
(author)
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Discourses and Cracks : A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context
- 2000
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In: Women, Work and Computerization. - Boston & Dordrecht & Lonfon : Kluwer Academic Publilshers. - 0792378644 ; , s. 199-207
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper discusses information technology as political and practical discourse. The repetitive discursive model can be distinguished in global, regional and local contexts and contains an optimistic belief in technology as an independent power that automatically furthers democratic development. The second part of the paper presents empirical material and experiences from the ´Women Writing on the Net´ project. The aim was to build up a virtual space for women and use writing as aim, tool and method. This created a more complex understanding of the values of the predominant IT discourses and revealed the ´cracks´ and possibilities for feminist definitions of these values.
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| 6. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo, et al.
(author)
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Educational programs in e-government : An active, practice- and design-oriented network?
- 2004
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In: 3rd International Conference on Electronic Government (EGOV 2004). - Zaragoza, SPAIN : SPRINGER-VERLAG BERLIN. ; , s. 457-459
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In the autumn of 2004, two higher educational programs in e-government will be starting up at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Southern Sweden. One of these is a Master’s level program, while the other is a more basic, two-year vocational education. Each will be the first of its kind in Scandinavia, and both will be offered as net-based distance education. The interdisciplinary group of researchers/teachers now developing the courses for these educational programs, in co-operation with several other research groups in Scandinavia, see this co-construction of distance education as the beginning of an active Scandinavian network of competence around higher education and ongoing research and development in the e-government area. We are currently exploring the possibilities of using distance education in this area as a way of networking around on-going e-government research and competence enhancement in Scandinavia. The Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design, as well as ideas about e-government as constantly ongoing co-construction, have inspired us in our work with developing the new educational programs. A reference group consisting of representatives from a number of municipalities and various government agencies plays an important role in this work.
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| 7. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo
(author)
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Heterogeneous hybrids : Information Technology in Texts and Practices
- 2001
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- How could one understand and interpret the phenomenon of information technology, is the overall research question of this licentiate dissertation. The point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology. It is possible to identify two dominating discourses; the technical and the social. In the first paper, empirical material from the Women Writing on the Net-project is mirrored against these dominating discourses. In the second paper, the focus is on how the dominating discourses are translated into librarians´ work practices and how librarians shape and transform information technology. How could one understand librarians´ ways of talking about information technology where the two separate discourses of information technology identified in the official texts do not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? Feminist theories, feminist technoscientific studies and ´actor-network theory´ offer epistemological and analytical frames and screens necessary to understand information technology as a hybrid involving numerous heterogeneous elements. Introduction to the Papers Paper One, Discourses and Cracks - A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context, is the first paper where empirical material from a local IT project is used and discussed and where it is mirrored against the dominating discourses of information technology. The first part of this paper discusses information technology as a political and practical discourse which is in part shaped by the repetition of an exalted rhetoric. This repetitive discursive model can be distinguished in global, regional and local contexts and reflects an optimistic belief in technology as an independent power that automatically furthers democratic development. Is it really this simple? The analysis includes a discussion of the concept of ´universal citizenship´ in a context of women's experiences in Sweden. The second part of the paper presents empirical material and experiences from the Women Writing on the Net-project (this is included in the framework of the DIALOGUE project, which was partly funded by ISPO/EU). The aim was to create a virtual space for women on the Internet and to explore the writing process in terms of aim, tool and method. The method of approach incorporated reflections and discussions about empowerment, democracy and representation of women. This created a more complex understanding of the values of the predominant IT discourses, and revealed the "cracks" in, and possibilities of feminist redefinitions of these values. In Paper Two, Translating and Negotiating Information Technology: Discourses and Practices, I continue exploration of my overall research question "What is information technology?" I study the dominating discourses of information technology; these I call "the technical suit" and the "social suit." In my empirical field studies among librarians in southeast Sweden I explore how the two faces of information technology - the technical and the social - are translated into librarians´ work practices. I study a project which was defined by the librarians themselves as an information technology project. I investigate how this project complies with the social/societal definitions of information technology, and how it complies with the technical definitions of information technology. In my second empirical study, I use two case studies with librarians involved in constructing web sites on the Internet. The Internet and the web are often seen in part as an open and undefined landscape in which new actors can move freely and build new partnerships, and partly as a shadow landscape of existing structures and relationships which can close up new openings. In the concluding discussion, I state that information technology seems to be both an amoeba and a chameleon. One minute it is a very pure and complicated technical story told by technicians. The next minute, it changes and turns into a financial story told by business people. It subsequently turns out to be an educational story told by teachers. It is also, however, a household story told by computer people. I suggest that information technology is impure. It is a hybrid. Inspired by Donna Haraways´s technoscientific metaphor of cyborg I claim that information technology is a cyborg in itself. In the third paper, From Networks to Fluids and Fires - A Prelude to Actor-Network Theory, I discuss a method of analysis I have tried to apply to my empirical material. I explore the notions of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTA). My point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology by stressing the technical aspects of IT; at the same time they present information technology as a motor and a driving force for many sectors of society. In my research, I have discussed with librarians how they shape and transform information technology in their own work practices. The problems of analysing this empirical material started when the librarians started to talk about people, machines and money all in one breath. How could one understand their way of talking about information technology where the two separate lines of information technology identified in the official texts did not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? How was it possible to understand the concept of information technology as it was used by the librarians, who seemed to involve all kinds of different heterogeneous elements which at first sight were very far away from information technology? It was when asking these questions that I discovered ANT and ANTA. In this paper, I present some basic ideas about these two research approaches by reading and analysing articles published between 1980 and the year 2000. In addition to the ANT and ANTA perspectives, I also introduce my own research questions: story telling and epistemological problematisations closely connected with feminist theories are, for example, closely intertwined in this paper.
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| 8. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo
(author)
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Information Technology : Are Women Outsiders and/or Insiders?
- 2003
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In: How do we make a difference?. - Luleå : Gender and Technology, Luleå University of Technology. - 9197256897 ; , s. 21-28
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In Sweden public images of information technology and gender often focus on women´s absence in education and professions in the IT sector. These presentations are numerous in campaigns and projects with the aim of encouraging women to engage in computer science and the IT sector. In my paper I create other images and representations by the use of two feminist figurations - Rosi Braidotti´s cartography and Donna J.Haraway´s diffraction. My point of departure is taken in librarians´ everyday practices when I create another map as well as other meanings than those based on women´s absence. There is a predominance of women working in libraries in Sweden. The inclusion of librarians makes sense of the image of the IT sector, but are they insiders or outsiders?
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| 9. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo
(author)
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Informationsteknik : är kvinnorna innanför och/eller utanför?
- 2002
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In Sweden public images of information technology and gender often focus on women´s absence in education and professions in the IT sector. These presentations are numerous in campaigns and projects with the aim of encouraging women to engage in computer science and the IT sector. In my paper I create other images and representations by the use of two feminist figurations - Rosi Braidotti´s cartography and Donna J.Haraway´s diffraction. My point of departure is taken in librarians´ everyday practices when I create another map as well as other meanings than those based on women´s absence. There is a predominance of women working in libraries in Sweden. The inclusion of librarians makes sense of the image of the IT sector, but are they insiders or outsiders?
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| 10. |
- Elovaara, Pirjo
(author)
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Negotiating Information Technology : Politics and Practices of a Web Site
- 2002
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper I investigate municipal web production activities in a Swedish context. I implement Gärtner & Wagners suggestion about thinking through three different arenas when studying design processes: Arena A for individual projects, Arena B for organisational layer and Arena C for the national arena. The arena C, in my case National politics, I regard as the dominating information political discourse, which draws up the ideological scene of the topics, which are available for the information technology translations at the local level. The Arena B is a municipal political IT-vision document. The arena A is an analysis of an interview with a municipal web developer. I implement the analytical tools and vocabulary of the actor-network theory (ANT). I suggest that the web design process is a network of negotiations, where political documents, web producers, private companies, software, and time meet. The messy mixture of actors reinforces the idea of understanding information technology as a hybrid of humans and non-humans, and technology and society. By understanding the complexity of the design process also enables us to think about why the everyday work sometimes seems to be complex, vulnerable and unstable.
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