The Use, to Use and the User: A Production of “Uses” from Action to Actor

• In Event: Interrupting Open Science: Use, Reuse, and Misuse of Research Data and Code

Abstract

In this presentation, I would like to review what is called, in French, “la sociologie des usages”. The sociology of uses was developed to understand technologies of communication in opposition to both technological and social determinism. This social study of uses was a way to rethink the relationship of technic and society based on a non-mechanistic epistemology (Jauréguiberry and Proulx 2011, p. 23). From a technical device to an agent doing something with it (de Certeau 1980), from conception to utilization (Akrich 1993), from a subject-object definition to the consideration that a user is acting something out during his experience (Jouët 2000, Voirol 2011, Granjon 2014), we are moved from a study of uses as phenomena observed materially to actions (dis)embodied and making sense for the “user”. How are researchers making sense of that movement today? Is there a regeneration of the sociology of uses by young French researchers? How is the sociology of uses in the "information and communication technologies" (ICT/TIC) positioned towards the study of uses in STS in general? The particular goal of this review is to conceptualize the figure of the user as a major actor participating in the production of “uses” and to understand how it might help to define different social roles and statuses of users and non-users in open science (such as expert/layperson, professional/amateur, producer/consumer, designer/builder/subscriber, etc.). The case will be illustrated with figures taken from a thesis project about users of Hubble Space Telescope’s images.

Author

• Maxime Harvey, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)