Muhle2024
| Muhle2024 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Muhle2024 |
| Author(s) | Florian Muhle |
| Title | Robots as addressable non-persons: an analysis of categorial work at the boundaries of the social world |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Social theory, Membership Categorization Analysis, MCA, Non-human agency, Communicative AI, Humanoid robots, Human-machine interaction, AI Reference List |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2024 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | |
| Journal | Frontiers in Sociology |
| Volume | 9 |
| Number | |
| Pages | 1260823 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1260823 |
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Abstract
Prompted by the material turn in the social sciences and the development of novel interaction technologies, lively debates in social theory have arisen regarding the agency of non-human entities. While these debates primarily involve exchanging theoretical arguments against the background of different theoretical positions, ethnomethodological membership categorization analysis (MCA) provides an empirical approach to questions of non-human agency. The article discusses the debate on non-human agency, demonstrates how MCA can be used to investigate categorial work at the boundaries of the social, and presents the example of an encounter between two museum visitors and a humanoid robot to show how the robot is categorized in a specific way as an ‘addressable non-person.’ In this way, it becomes clear that social-theoretical debates and empirically oriented MCA can mutually inspire each other and how the ‘basic categorization apparatus’ addresses new alterities.
Notes
