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Dave Elder-Vass
Dave
Elder-Vass
Material parts in social structures
Loughborough University
2016
Causal powers
Critical realism
Distributed cognition
Social structure
Sociomateriality
Socio-technical systems
Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified
Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified
2016-11-11 09:32:36
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Material_parts_in_social_structures/9475199
There has been much debate on whether and how groups of human agents can constitute social structures with causal significance. Both sides in this debate, however, implicitly privilege human individuals over non-human material objects and tend to ignore the possibility that such objects might also play a significant role in social structures. This paper argues that social entities are often composed of both human agents and non-human material objects, and that both may make essential contributions to their causal influence. In such cases the causal influence of social structures should be attributed to the emergent causal powers of socio-technical entities.