Rethinking psychology of technology for future society: Exploring subjectivity from within more-than-human everyday life

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Abstract

Current psychological conceptualizations of the human–technology relation still fail to seriously take into account technology’s central role in constituting modern subjectivity and everyday life. Accordingly, we face a fundamental discrepancy between the world of technology and the human ability to meaningfully conceive its implications. This discrepancy manifests itself in psychology’s failure to address the current societal and ecological crises that humanity faces. The chapter therefore argues for a conceptual reformulation of the science of subjectivity along four lines: (1) From a disembodied, dissecting and individualizing scientific vision toward an embodied conception of the internal relationship between humans and the more-than-human world; (2) from an external and artificially distancing “view from above”, including a subduing research practice, toward restructuring research from a situated standpoint of the human subject; (3) from quick-fix methodical recipes toward content-based methodologies enabling the exploration of the complexity and conflictuality of the internal relationship between humans and the world; and finally (4) from conceptualizing technology as neutral instruments for controlling world toward grasping technological artifacts as contradictory and political forms of everyday life. Crucially, psychological concepts must be able to grasp subjectivity as both being decentered and dependent on more-than-human worlds, and simultaneously as concretely situated within the embodied experiential realm of human everyday life.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPsychological studies of science and technology
EditorsKieran O’Doherty, Lisa Osbeck, Ernst Schraube, Jeffery Yen
Place of PublicationCham
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
Publication date2019
Pages49-76
ISBN (Print)978-3-030-25307-3
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-030-25308-0
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019
SeriesPalgrave studies in the theory and history of psychology

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