Abstract
Drawing on writings within the CSCW community and on recent social theory, this paper proposes that the adoption of speech act theory as a foundation for system design carries with it an agenda of discipline and control over organization members’ actions. I begin with a brief review of the language/action perspective introduced by Winograd, Flores and their colleagues, focusing in particular on the categorization of speakers’ intent. I then turn to some observations on the politics of categorization and, wiith that framework as background, consider the attempt, through THE COORDINATOR, to implement a technological system for intentionaccounting within organizations. Finally, I suggest the implications of the analysis presented in the paper for the politics of CSCW systems design.
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Suchman, L. (1993). Do Categories Have Politics? The language/action perspective reconsidered. In: de Michelis, G., Simone, C., Schmidt, K. (eds) Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 13–17 September 1993, Milan, Italy ECSCW ’93. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2094-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2094-4_1
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