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Interesting and enrolment

The second dimension of the translation process, interessement, consists in imposing and stabilising the identity of the other entities (notably their actions in relation to a new interest) and finding a place among them. The idea is to set up a network of alliances built by the problematisation process.

This is nevertheless performed to different degrees. If problematisation is taken up by other actors, it increases in strength and consistency. Reality is a process that moves through successive states of performance or non-performance depending on the situations, the events and tests through which the established associations pass through. If a publication is taken up and cited, it gains in reality. If a research project submitted to the science council is approved, even with several modifications, and is included in the scientific policy programme, its reality is increased. The same applies if it is translated into a public subsidy agreement and the hiring of a new researcher.

Thus actors strive to put forward problematisations, but also to make them more real, by acting in such a way that they are taken up by others. They set up schemes of intéressement so as to pull entities away from their former attachments and put them to a different use, thus making them part of the relations put forward by the problematisation. It is a question of actually shifting the associated entities within the problematics: so that company X looks into such and such a problem with company Y, so that technology 2 can be mastered, so that the customer's loyalty is gained, etc.

Argumentation is a device used in intéressement (Callon et al, 1991; Law 1983), but there are many others. Intéressement is to be understood here in the widest sense of the term; it also encompasses the idea of re-routing an entity (an object that falls or an animal that is free) from its initial movement in order to get it to go through the previously defined obligatory point of passage (OPP).

It also involves actually breaking its ties in order to keep it inside nexv associations. The nets used to capture an animal, moral discourse to bring listeners back on the right track, all kinds of captive devices, money, etc., are intéressement devices. Some technical devices (electronic mail) and certain forms of organisation (Club Med or certain companies) break the social ties of human beings in the same way and remodel their identity by holding them in new webs of relations. In the study of science and technology, it is therefore important to identify these intéressement devices and analyse their action. They help to understand what holds the new links or translations proposed by the actors together.

After intéressement comes enrolment. This is the mechanism by which a role is defined and allocated to an actor, who accepts it. Enrolment is successful intéressement. It enables the setting up, allocation and transformation of rules to be studied and understood. Unlike functionalist or culturalist sociologies, where society is made up of a list and a combination of roles and role-holders, translation sociology neither involves nor excludes any pre-established role. Roles are built at the same time as the actors are enrolled.


Date: 2016-03-03; view: 724


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