Muhle2024

From emcawiki
Jump to: navigation, search
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
City
Month
Journal Frontiers in Sociology
Volume 9
Number
Pages 1260823
URL Link
DOI 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1260823
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

Download BibTex

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