Yurij Castelfranchi

Dep. of Sociology

Federal University of Minas Gerais(UFMG)

ycastelfranchi@gmail.com

Audiences are agents, not patients:

technoscientific citizenship today

Michel de CertauL'invention du quotidien (1980)

In “The Practice of Everyday Life”, de Certeau studies the layman, a “common hero”.

People modulate and modify utilitarian objects and street plans, rituals and laws, language and technology, in order to make them their own and to cope with problems and conflicts

Distinction between the concepts of strategy and tactics. Certeaulinks "strategies" with institutions and structures of power who are the "producers", while individuals are "consumers" acting in environments defined by strategies by using "tactics".

Certeau's argument: everyday life works by processes of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products.

Strategies are deployed to institute a set of relations. Tactics are employed by those who are subjugated, and are by their very nature defensive and opportunistic

At InCiTe we call this recombination… and hacker politics

“Kluge” to solve practical

problems...

Either using a body as part of

your assemblage...

...or changing the function of

an object in relationship to

your body...

Artist: Cao Guimarães

Source: “Essay on gambiarra”,

by Helena S. Assunção (UFMG)

“Kluge” may “resist”

programmed

obsolescence and

consumerism

Artist: Cao Guimarães

Source: “Essay on gambiarra”,

by Helena S. Assunção (UFMG)

“Kluge” in-sist (exist

inside) design

making what you can

not buy

Artist: Cao Guimarães

Source: “Essay on gambiarra”,

by Helena S. Assunção (UFMG)

Context means

Of course different people living in different place, with

different problems and goals, have diverse “lay knowledge”.

But there’s much more than this: culture means also

entire different epistemologies, values, and even

physiological perceptions. Culture (and context) mean

different ways to give order both to social and natural world

(natures-cultures)

…Cultural diversity also means power relationships and

social inequalities.

Context means

Thinking about “audiences”, “engagement” and “inclusion”

means thinking culture, power and citizenship.

And this means (for example, in Brazil):

Urban peripheral areas, its places (morros, favelas) and

its peoples (imigrantes: nordestinos, bolivianos, peruanos,

haitianos…)

Rural areas, rivers, rainforests areas and its peoples

(ribeirinhos, quilombolas, caiçaras....)

Large land-owners and small-farmers

Urbam middle classe

Indigenous people

Etc. Etc.

Solidarity and cultural

production and diffusion in

favelas… music, art, resistance,

sports, leisure, parties…. and

fight for rights

Solidarity in favelas… parties… culture production…

sport, leisure, music, art, resistance and fight for rights

…but also violence, drugs, corruption, paramilitary

groups….

“Low literacy”? Or a different

cosmology, and different ontology?

“Lay” knowledge?

… Or a different kind of complex expertise?

…Or a different cosmology, sacred values and

prohane practices, mixing

informations+knowledge+values (a “wisdom”)?

People who know how to live here and

give meaning to this world…

How do we treat as “audiences” what is, in fact, our agents?

How to manage as “a public” something that is actually

embedded with “private” life and entangled with politics.

Hot to call “lay” people who are, in facts, such diverse social

collectives with ontologies, epistemologies “cultures” and

“natures” so different from our one?

“Cultural difference” means taking into account social

inequalities. Power relationships.

TACTICS AND RESISTANCE

By solving problems, deciding the goods they buy, the

politicians they vote for, downloading music, enjoying their

leisure time or figuring out how to cope with goals they

need to achieve within the moral, legal or technological

constraints they live in, consumers and users can act as

producers or inventors (“ProduSers”).

Environmental or patient groups may produce new scientific

data, or pose new constraints or challenges both to

methods and organization of science. Indigenous

knowledges also act as complex factors.

Empirical evidence is great that tactics and micropolitics can

have effects and contribute for recombination in

technology and policies (Epstein , 1995; Wynne, 1996;

Callon et al., 2009).

What is “Citizenship”

NOT ONLY a set of practices or attributes of the individual

NOT ONLY a list of rights and duties

Being a capacity to act in a framework of constraints, we

can treat citizenship as a particular kind of power: not simply

something one can have, conquer or lose, not a substance or

attribute “inside” the individual, but also a dynamic relationship

modulated by subjects that are constrained by strategies,

norms, environmental limitations or possibilities.

What is “Citizenship”

If a citizen is not simply equipped with rights and duty, if he/she

performs and practices citizenship through tactics and

interactions, than citizenship is not merely about guaranteeing or

conquering rights. It is also a conflictive field of invention of rights:

a territory in which rights that did not exist are invented or

redefined within contested boundaries.

In this sense, duties and rights are the consequence of agency

and citizenship, not only its conditions of possibility.

Is technical citizenship possible?

People may contribute, by figuring out what to do, by

buying, using, voting, desiring different things, to transform

technology and modulate markets or policies.

They can re-signify or reinvent technical objects or

processes

Insistence

“Insistence”: a hacker politics, in which we do not see technology,

capitalism and domination as above us, or external. We live

inside the political and technological blackboxes we try to open.

If we live inside them, conceptual and epistemological hacking

(and recoding) as well as political hacking (and recombination)

can be seen as concrete possibilities for political action.

How do we do this?

How to take all this into account?

Children magazine, children radio, children television… made (in part) by and with children

Challenge people, but not only toward OUR goals… find local goals for real challenges

Museum: who is the guide?

Textbook: novel codes

Emergence, self-organization, complexity: still under developed and badly explored, both in museums and in PCST…

How do we do this?

How to take all this into account?

Museums BY the indians. Favela’S museum: not only ABOUT, or FOR, or WITH indigenous and favela…

Reception studies: ethnographical, too

Identities

Ontologies and epistemologies at play

A labyrinth which shape is made by the trajectories of visitors

Exhibit that not only interact with people, but in which the interaction IS the interaction between visitors (not between visitors and exhibit)

What do children see (and

draw) in our museum?

Not everything is

“interactive”...

What happens when we do not

search for what children DO NOT

know?

What to people actually do with the news?

What they CONSTRUCT

with information?

“Scientific American” Facebook Page

Friendship relationships

In a Facebook

community on “science

popularization”

Point= user

Link = friendship

Colour = community

(modularity)

Diverse, distant

communities:

people coming

from different

realities, “using”

information

“Superinteressante” popular

science magazine

Colors = “communities”

(network modularity)

Body modification extreme

“Body modification

extreme” Facebook

page

This is nice! Most shared: want to

show it to you, guys

“outside”

Body modification extreme

More Commented posts

(photo) beauty non beauty…

2nd most commented: is

this beautiful? Debate,

politics, normative

emergence

Body modification extreme

More Commented posts

(photo) professional, non

professional

Most commented:

bad practice?

Norm emergence

and regulations...

Fibromialgy help group

Red = user

Blue = post by page

Green = post by user

Link = either “likes”, “shares” or

“comments”

Size = “engagement”

Help group

User

Post by page

Post by user

Link = either “likes”, “shares” or

“comments”

Size = “authority”

Chron and colon disease help group

User

Post by page

Post by user

Link = either “likes”, “shares” or

“comments”

Size = “lkes”

“An interesting study reveals that sleep

measures predict next-day symptoms in

women with irritable bowel syndrome. […]

Self-reported sleep disturbance predicted

exacerbation of next-day symptoms in

women with IBS.

Chron and colon disease help group

User

Post by page

Post by user

Link = either “likes”, “shares” or

“comments”

Size = “shares”

Chron and colon disease help group

User

Post by page

Post by user

Link = either “likes”, “shares” or

“comments”

Size = “comments”

“ […] The current definitions about IBS don't

really address this. Can you relate? What

treatment options have you tried in this

situation?”

NatGeo

“SuperInteressante” Facebook Page

Science communication between peers

in a mutual-help community

Science communication between peers in a mutual-help community

Most popular posts

Science communication between peers in a mutual-help community

Most active users

Science communication between peers in a mutual-help community

Size = number of comments (by users or in a post)

“Decided to stop

today!”

Photo album

against smoke

Science communication between peers in a mutual-help community

Size = number of “like”

Links to pages:

infos

Photos and

infographics

People asking for

help, mutual aid

and support...

Conclusive remarks

People do not either “accept” science and technology, or

“resist”. People actually INSIST: they exist inside, and in-between

S&T. They perform and embody knowledge, the circulate,

appropriate, mutate information and they transform it in

knowledge or wisdom, as well as practical action

If we want to make “inclusive”, “dialogic” communication and

“engagement” we have to understand how do people INSIST, with

their own knowledge and values, on science communication

processes and how to catalyze empowerment and real exchange.

Marching in Noel Kempff Mercado

National Park

with the help of a guarayo indian

Walking with an guarayo man

in Noel Kempff Mercado National Park

An amazonic Venus at midday

(not my real photo: I could´t see it, nor take a picture...)

Obrigado!

AKNOWLEDGMENTS: FAPEMIG

GRANT – EDITAL UNIVERSAL

Yurij Castelfranchi

Dep. de Sociologia

Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

(UFMG)

ycastelfranchi@gmail.com

Public studies: how to study it

Just some few examples

Children’s drawings in and of the museum

“Narrative illustrated focus groups”

Appropriation processes

Desenhos do museu

50%

27%

8%

6%4%

3% 2%

Exhibit ou seções desenhadas

Planetário Mesa Multitoques Crânio Aleph

Evolução Humana Observatório Fases Geológicas

Desenhos do museu

19%

81%

Quantidade de vezes em que foi retratada presença humana

Sim Não

Desenhos do museu

7%

93%

Indicadores de interação humana

Sim Não

O que as crianças

retratam?

Impacto do objeto em si

O que as crianças

retratam?

Impacto do objeto em si

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Para “fazer sentido”...

O que se sabe, mais

do que se vê

Dissonância cognitiva

(impactos do exhibit)

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Processos, fluxos,

narrativas

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Processos, fluxos,

narrativas

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Mensagens, histórias,

vivências

O que as crianças

acrescentam?

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

Pessoas,

interações,emoções

Exemplo:crianças

e ciência

• Homem• Branco/ocidental• De jaleco (“Como posso desenhá-lo?” “Fácil: bota nele um jaleco branco!”)• De óculos (“tem que observar muito/estudar muito”)e/ou roupa “maluca”• Tem um laboratório• “Alienígena”, “maluco”...• “Muitas mãos”

• “De cabelos malucos” (“Tem todos cabelos explodidos porque quando faz experimentos ele queima e fica assustado”)

Cientista é...

Cientista é...

Mulher?

“Ela tem pai/tio cientista...”“Ele é homem e mulher, não tem sexo...”

Cientista é...

Transformador:

•“Ela tem gaiola com passarinho... Quer transformá-lo em algo diferente”•“Ele pega um bicho, talvez um rato... Transforma em um hamster”

Transforma o skateboardquebrado em um novinho

Neo Cortex apanha ratos no esgoto e transforma-los

em exércitos

a cientista Gennyfaz as poçoes

Cientista é...

Quase um bruxo:

•“Ele faz poções”•“Tem um raio mágico”•“Tem que confiar nele, porque ele é tipo mágico”

Inventor:“Inventa umas rodas/óculos/pistolas...”

“O cientista é mágico. Aliás, não”....

Resultados

Diferente da Itália. Pouca familiaridade com cientista e ciência,

mesmo crianças mais velhas.

Imaginário midiático, estereotipado.

Cientistas “buscam”, “estudam muito” e “conhecem”.

Resultados

Uma diferença marcada no acesso à informação científica

e tecnológica

Grande diferença escola privada

Resultados

Conotação predominantemente positiva

Grande curiosidade

A visão positiva da ciência é anterior, e em parte

desacoplada, do acesso à informação e conhecimento.

Resultados

-

1.Imagens e ícones da ciência e do cientista

Em todas as narrações orais, e em uma fração consistente de

desenhos, as crianças recorreram a elementos icônicos clássicos para

representar o cientista: bancada de laboratório, lupa, microscópio ou

outras ferramentas de observação, jaleco, óculos, tubo de teste (muitas

vezes fumegante e frequentemente chamado de “poção”, veja

parágrafos posteriores sobre elementos mágicos e conotações de

perigo).

Resultados

-

Resultados

-

Resultados

-