Sociomaterialism

See also: concepts, distribution, assemblage

Fawns offers this definition

Sociomaterialism is a label for a wide range of theoretical approaches that see people and things as holistic assemblages that are inseparably entangled in activity (Fenwick, 2015)

And his application to learning

We do not worry about learners and technologies as independent of each other because they do not exist as independent of these entangled situations. Similarly, we are not concerned with general statements about students or technologies but are concerned with actual practices that unfold in actual situations.

Types of approaches

Fenwick (2015) fenwick-2015

Those that appear most frequently in contemporary research of educational practice and learning include actor-network theory and ‘after-ANT’ approaches, complexity theory, new geographies, ‘new materialisms’, practice theory, and activity theory.

Shared commitements

A range of different perspectives which draw on some shared commitments Fenwick (2015)

first, is a focus on materials as dynamic, and enmeshed with human activity in everyday practices ... what Orlikowski (2010) describes as the constitutive entanglement of the social and material. ‘Material’ refers to all the everyday stuff of our lives that is both organic and inorganic, technological and natural: flesh and blood, forms and checklists, electronic records and databases, furniture and passcodes, snowstorms and dead cell zones, and so forth. ‘Social’ refers to symbols and meanings, desires and fears, and cultural discourses. Both material and social forces are mutually implicated in bringing forth everyday activities. This is an un

a second shared understanding: that all materials or, more accurately, all sociomaterial objects, are in fact heterogeneous assemblages...All objects and material settings embed a history of these gatherings in the negotiation of their design and accumulated uses, whether lecture halls, presentation software, testing instruments, essays, pedagogical protocols etc. In examining particular educational practices, researchers ask how and why particular elements became assembled, why some elements become included and others excluded, and most important, and how elements change as they come together, as they intra-act.

Third, most sociomaterial perspectives – in different ways – accept the fundamental uncertainty of everyday life, as well as of the knowledge, tools, environments and identities that are continually produced in it. Unpredictable novel possibilities and patterns are always emerging....The focus is on the relations between things, how things influence and alter one another in ways that are continuously opening as well as foreclosing new possibilities

Fourth, a sociomaterial perspective tends to views all things – human, and non-human, hybrids and parts, knowledge and systems – as effects of connections and activity. Everything is performed into existence in webs of relations. Materials are enacted, not inert; they are matter and they matter. They act, together with other types of things and forces, to exclude, invite, and regulate activity. This is not arguing that objects have agency: an essay does not write itself... Any educational practice is a collective sociomaterial enactment, not a question solely of one individual’s skills or agency

References

Fenwick, T., & Landri, P. (2012). Materialities, textures and pedagogies: Socio-material assemblages in education. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 1--7. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2012.649421

Fenwick, T. (2015). Sociomateriality and Learning: A Critical Approach. In D. Scott & E. Hargreaves, The SAGE Handbook of Learning (pp. 83--93). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473915213.n8