engleski

"Reflexive Sociology" as "Reflexive Techno-Science"

The vitality and importance of a social scientist's work can also be assessed through its potential for application in new and different contexts. This paper discusses the insights that can be gained from the application of Bourdieu's concept of habitus in the interdisciplinary field of artificial agent modelling. In this field, conceptions based on the notion of habitus have been suggested as an extension of the personality structures of the already developed autonomous agents, in order to add to them the component of social believability. Applications such as this can be viewed as an operational test of the validity of Bourdieu's theory. Technical limitations in the process of designing embodied artificial intelligence reduce Bourdieu's theories to essentials expected to stand a rather simple test of their appropriateness: believability in the context of what is referred to as "artificial" (exclusively machine) or "hybrid" (human-machine interaction based) societies. As soon as the criterion of believability is introduced, the elements of social reflection re-enter the essentially technical process of modelling artificial agents. The concept of "techno-science", introduced by Latour, combined with the elements of Bourdieu's "reflexive sociology" could be labeled as "reflexive techno-science". This particular application of insights based on Bourdieu's theory not only has implicit repercussions on our understanding of contemporary society (by way of comparison of "artificial" and "real" societies), but also affects our assesment of the range of phenomena covered by Bourdieu's elaborations. For instance, the current discussions of Bourdieu's theory of habitus in artificial agent modelling are based on the concepts that are still considered to be too high-level and "abstract" by the practitioners in the field. It becomes clear in this context that Bourdieu's notion of the habitus as inscribed on the body needs to be complemented by precise semiotic protocols, listed with such a degree of precision as has been done by the author himself when he described the elements of taste.

reflexive sociology; techno-science; artificial agent modelling

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