Sociological Analysis of Mobile Gadjets: Pragmatic Turn (vs) Actor-Network Theory

Abstract

An author's version of the answer to the question of how sociology can study the subject with which the reader interacts every day: carries it in his or her pocket, holds it in his or her hand, and even while reading these lines he or she has this nearby – a mobile gadget, is offered in the article. Given the prevalence of such devices in the everyday life of social actors, their impact on social interaction can not be ignored. Sociologists are already studying this problem, but mostly in the framework of quantitative research. The author proposes to consider mobile gadgets in the context of social interactions through the prism of the theories of B. Latour, as well as L. Boltanski and L. Theveno. The choice of the approaches is defined as the attention of the authors to things within the framework of the sociological model, and the possibility of studying the object at macro and micro levels. The possibilities of applying these theories to the study of gadgets are also compared: whether they are contradictory, whether their simultaneous application is possible. Other questions are also considered: to what risks and problems the expansion of mobile gadgets into everyday life can lead; what new inequalities they generate and how they change the usual everyday practices.