Analyzing material practices:
Conceptual and methodological issues

Advanced course on ‘Theories of praxis’ (IPRT), IT University of Copenhagen, Fall 2007

Course manager:

Kjeld Schmidt <schmidt (at) itu.dk>

Literature (mandatory)

Berndtsson, Johan; and Maria Normark: ‘The coordinative functions of flight strips: Air Traffic Control work revisited’, in S. C. Hayne (ed.): GROUP’99: International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 14-17 November 1999, Phoenix, Arizona, ACM Press, New York, 1999, pp. 101-110.

Carstensen, Peter H.; Carsten Sørensen; and Tuomo Tuikka: ‘Let’s talk about bugs!’ Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, vol. 7, no. 1, 1995, pp. 33-54.

Carstensen, Peter H.; Kjeld Schmidt; and Uffe Kock Wiil: ‘Supporting shop floor intelligence: A CSCW approach to production planning and control in flexible manufacturing’, in S. C. Hayne (ed.): GROUP’99: International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 14-17 November 1999, Phoenix, Arizona, ACM Press, New York, 1999, pp. 111-120.

Grinter, Rebecca E.: ‘Recomposition: Coordinating a web of software dependencies’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing. vol. 12, no. 2, September 2003, pp. 297–327.

Heath, Christian C.; and Paul Luff: ‘Collaboration and control: Crisis management and multimedia technology in London Underground control rooms’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal. vol. 1, no. 1-2, 1992, pp. 69-94.

Pettinari, Catherine; and Christian C. Heath: Notes Towards an Applied Ethnography, Kings College London, 1 May 1998.

Ryle, Gilbert: ‘Knowing how and knowing that’ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1946). In G. Ryle: Collected Papers. Volume II: Collected Essays, 1929-1968. Hutchinson & Co, London, 1971, pp. 212-225.

Ryle, Gilbert: ‘Thinking and saying’ (Rice University Studies, Summer 1972). Text ed. by K. Kolenda. In G. Ryle: On Thinking. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1979, pp. 79-93.

Schmidt, Kjeld: Modes and Mechanisms of Interaction in Cooperative Work, Risø National Laboratory, Roskilde, Denmark, 1994. – Risø-R-666(EN).

Schmidt, Kjeld: ‘Of maps and scripts: The status of formal constructs in cooperative work’, Information and Software Technology. vol. 41, 1999, pp. 319-329.

Schmidt, Kjeld: ‘Remarks on the complexity of cooperative work’, Revue des sciences et technologies de l’information. Série Revue d’intelligence artificielle (RSTI-RAI). vol. 16, no. 4-5, Hermes/Lavoisier. Paris, 2002a, pp. 443-483.

Schmidt, Kjeld: ‘The problem with “awareness”: Introductory remarks on “Awareness in CSCW”’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing. vol. 11, no. 3-4, 2002b, pp. 285-298.

Schmidt, Kjeld; and Ina Wagner: ‘Ordering systems: Coordinative practices and artifacts in architectural design and planning’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing. vol. 13, no. 5-6, 2004, pp. 349-408.

Schmidt, Kjeld; Ina Wagner; and Marianne Tolar: ‘Permutations of cooperative work practices: A study of two oncology clinics’, in T. Gross, et al. (eds.): GROUP 2007: International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 4-7 November 2007, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, ACM Press, New York, 2007, pp. 1-10.

Schmidt, Kjeld: ‘The discipline of steel: On the material art of coordinative practices’, Forthcoming.

Strauss, Anselm L.: ‘Work and the division of labor’, The Sociological Quarterly. vol. 26, no. 1, 1985, pp. 1-19.

Suchman, Lucy A.: Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987. [Chapter 8]


Literature (recommended)

Fundamental issues in studies of human practices

Bourdieu, Pierre: Le sens pratique, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1980a. – English translation: The Logic of Practice, translated by Richard Nice, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990.

Button, Graham, et al.: Computers, Minds and Conduct, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995.

Coulter, Jeff: Rethinking Cognitive Theory, Macmillan, London, 1983.

Goody, Jack: The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977.

Pickering, Andrew: The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel: Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought, University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1972. (Paperback ed., 1993).

Ryle, Gilbert: The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson’s University Library, London, 1949.

Schütz, Alfred: Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt; eine Einleitung in die Verstehende Soziologie, J. Springer, Wien, 1932. — English translation: Schutz, Alfred: The Phenomenology of the Social World, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1967. Transl. by G. Walsh and F. Lehnert.

Turner, Stephen P.: The Social Theory of Practice: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge and Presuppositions, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig: On Certainty (Manuscript, 1949-51). Transl. by D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Text ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Basil Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1967, 2nd ed. 1981.

Socio-economic context

Berger, Suzanne: How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today’s Global Economy, Doubleday Publishing, New York, 2005.

Best, Michael H.: The New Competition: Institutions of Industrial Restructuring, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990.

Castells, Manuel: The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996, chapter 3, pp. 151-200.

Fligstein, Neil: The Transformation of Corporate Control, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993.

Lazonick, William H.: Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1990.

Lazonick, William H.: Organization and Technology in Capitalist Development, Edward Elgar, Aldershot, England, 1992.

Lynn, Barry C.: End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, Doubleday Publishing, New York, 2005.

Theories of work practices and technology

Button, Graham (ed.): Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction, and Technology, Routledge, London and New York, 1993.

Dourish, Paul: Where the Action is: The Foundation of Embodied Interaction, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2001.

Engeström, Yrjö, and David Middleton (eds.): Cognition and Communication at Work, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.

Heath, Christian C., and Paul Luff: Technology in Action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.

Nardi, Bonnie A. (ed.): Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1997.

Sellen, Abigail, and Richard H. R. Harper: The Myth of the Paperless Office, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2001.

Schmidt, Kjeld; Christian C. Heath; and Tom A. Rodden (eds.): Awareness in CSCW, [special theme of] Computer Supported Cooperative Work. The Journal of Collaborative Computing, vol. 11, no. 3-4, 2002. — All papers are available via ITU's library (DADS).

Suchman, Lucy A.: Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987.

Computer-supported cooperative work: general

Baecker, Ronald M. (ed.): Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Assisting Human-Human Collaboration, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, Calif., 1993.

Greenberg, Saul (ed.): Computer-supported Cooperative Work and Groupware, Academic Press, London, 1991.

Greif, Irene (ed.): Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: A Book of Readings, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, Calif., 1988.

Olson, Gary; M.; Thomas W. Malone; and John B. Smith (eds.): Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, 2001.

Schmidt, Kjeld; and Liam J. Bannon: ‘Taking CSCW seriously: Supporting articulation work’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal, vol. 1, no. 1-2, 1992, pp. 7-40.

Basic collaborative technologies

Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel (ed.): Computer Supported Co-operative Work, John Wiley, Chichester, England, 1999. Available at no cost from http://www.lri.fr/~mbl/Trends-CSCW/

Bentley, Richard; Uwe Busbach; David Kerr; and Klaas Sikkel (eds.): Groupware and the World Wide Web [special issue of] Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Cooperative Computing, vol. 6, no. 2-3. Also availbale as separate volume under the same title, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.

Greenberg, Saul, Stephen Hayne, and Roy Rada (eds.): Groupware for Real-Time Drawing: A Designer's Guide, McGraw-Hill, London, 1995.

Hills, Mellanie: Intranet as Groupware, John Wiley, New York etc., 1997.

Leuf, Bo, and Ward Cunningham: The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web, Addison-Wesley, Boston, Mass., 2001.

Udell, Jon: Practical Internet Groupware, O'Reilly, Beijing etc., 1999.

Analysis of cooperative work and design of CSCW systems

Carstensen, Peter H.; and Carsten Sørensen: ‘From the social to the systematic: Mechanisms supporting coordination in design’, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): The Journal of Collaborative Computing. vol. 5, no. 4, 1996, pp. 387-413.

Færgemann, Louise; Teresa Schilder-Knudsen; and Peter H. Carstensen: ‘The duality of articulation work in large heterogeneous settings: a study in health care’, in H. Gellersen, et al. (eds.): ECSCW 2005: Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 18-22 September 2005, Paris, Springer, Dordrecht, 2005, pp. 163-183.

Harper, Richard H. R.; and John A. Hughes: ‘What a f—ing system! Send ’em all to the same place and then expect us to stop ’em hitting: Managing technology work in air traffic control’, in G. Button (ed.): Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction, and Technology, Routledge, London and New York, 1993, pp. 127-144.

Hughes, John A., Dave Randall, and Dan Shapiro: 'From ethnographic record to system design: Some experiences from the field,' Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). An International Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, 1993, pp. 123-141.

Luff, Paul; Jon Hindmarsh; and Christian C. Heath (eds.): Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.

Lutters, Wayne G.; and Mark S. Ackerman: ‘Achieving safety: A field study of boundary objects in aircraft technical support’, in: CSCW 2002: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 16 - 20 November 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, ACM Press, New York, 2002, pp. 266-275.

Normark, Maria; and David W. Randall: ‘Local expertise at an emergency call centre’, in H. Gellersen, et al. (eds.): ECSCW 2005: Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 18-22 September 2005, Paris, Springer, Dordrecht, 2005, pp. 347-366.

Schmidt, Kjeld, and Peter Carstensen: Arbejdsanalyse: Teori og praksis, Risø National Laboratory, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark, June 1990. [Risø-M-2889]. - Download pdf-version.

Sommerville, Ian, Tom Rodden, Richard Bentley, and Pete Sawyer: 'Sociologists can be surprisingly useful in interactive systems design,' in A. Monk, D. Diaper, and M. Harrison (eds.): Proceedings of HCI'92, York University, September 1992, People and Computers, vol. VII, 1992, pp. 341-353.


CSCW: Other sources

ECSCW: The European CSCW Conference, 1989 ff.

Proceedings published by Springer (previously Kluwer Academic Publishers), Dordrecht.
Content listings of past proceedings can be found at http://www.ecscw.org/

CSCW: The North-American CSCW Conference, 1986 ff.

Sponsored by ACM. Proceedings published by ACM Press, New York.
Past proceedings are available via ITU's library (DADS).

GROUP: Conference on Supporting Group Work, 1997 ff.

Previously called COOCS and OIS. Sponsored by ACM. Proceedings published by ACM Press, New York.
Past proceedings are available via ITU's library (DADS)

JCSCW: Computer Supported Cooperative Work. The Journal of Collaborative Computing, Springer (previously Kluwer Academic Publishers), 1992 ff.

The only dedicated CSCW journal. Past volumes are available via ITU's library (DADS)

Last modified 14/1/08, 11:53 AM