Abstract
In this contribution, I will first draw upon the other chapters of this book to summarise what are in my opinion the essential elements of their discussion on the concept of agency and on Actor Network Theory. Then I will argue the need to come to understand the process of invention and innovation and present some ideas about why this topic has not generally been given the importance that, in my eyes, it merits. Finally, I will try and develop a perspective that might indeed help us understand the process of intention and innovation, based on some of the ideas about agency presented in this book.
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- 1.
I am not referring to modern industrial means, where tools create objects (Ingold 1988).
- 2.
In my view, the sense in which Lane uses ‘scaffolding structure’ is a direct extension of the way in which I use it here and refers to its social and material instantiations.
- 3.
The non-linear nature of the search for a perspective is explained by the fact that in order to cognise change, it is necessary to perceive change in the rate of change.
- 4.
Figures 2.8 and table 2 have been adapted from van der Leeuw 1980.
- 5.
Although this is the case for the vast majority of workshops on Negros, the full range of organisational forms is represented, from the single potter who only makes pottery every once in a while via the single individual who makes pottery full time, all the way to the workshop industry and the full industrial factory. Indeed, it is a characteristic of the Negros case that the potters have been able to adapt their toolkit, know-how and organisation in a relatively short period to mass production by inventing new technical and organisational solutions to the challenges posed by the original pottery making tradition. The Michoacan potters have not done so.
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van der Leeuw, S.E. (2008). Agency, Networks, Past and Future. In: Knappett, C., Malafouris, L. (eds) Material Agency. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74711-8_12
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