Читать книгу Role Playing Materials - Rafael Bienia - Страница 10

Having addressed what I did to select data when I followed materials to the three sites, the next question is how I selected and presented the results of data analysis. This is a question of how to talk about data. I suggest actor-network theory to solve the problem, because it is also considered an infra-language that helps us to talk about data in an alternative way.

2.2.1 Actors, or various sites of action. The book that you hold in your hands or the text on a screen before you is the work of different elements that came together at certain sites. When I look around the book’s place of birth, my desktop, there is the Oxford Short Dictionary, Latour’s Reassembling the Social, Copier’s dissertation, printed articles and book chapters on actor-network theory, books on role-playing games, but also everything I need to actually write these words: a keyboard under my ten fingertips, a mouse, an LCD display, a personal computer, a modem, pencils, and scrap paper.

For the past four years, the goal has been to make all these elements collaborate and submit the result in form of a dissertation. Some of them were easy to work with, such as pencils and scrap paper, while others disobeyed from time to time, such as my computer when the system crashed while I was writing, because there was an update of the operating system. The content of the articles and books on my table was more volatile. Sometimes, I had to reread a sentence, page, or the entire book to understand. Of course, understanding itself was a mental process of linking new information to what I knew. Just like the audio book producer in the Introduction, however, I pretended to be someone who could write a dissertation and experimented with materials. I assembled books and dedicated a set of writing tools only for the dissertation. Thus, I added materials to the mental processes that were part of reading about the topic and writing this book.

One example for how even words change is the “correct” spelling of role playing. The Oxford dictionary standing on my desktop tells me to hyphenate the verb “to role-play,” the adjective “role-playing” in role-playing games, and also the noun “role-playing” (Brown, 1993, p. 2618). However, in 2012, the Oxford Online Dictionary changed the spelling of the gerund, omitting the hyphen (2012). Someone who is role-playing is written “role player” without a hyphen. Thus, I have retained the hyphens for the verb and adjective, but write the gerund form “role playing” and “role player” without a hyphen.³

The book next to the dictionary is Latour’s (2005) Reassembling the Social. I use it as my tour guide in working with actor-network theory. Actor-network theory roots in the work of Callon (1986a), Latour (1987, 2005), and Law (1987, 2004) from the fields of science, technology, and society studies. It is in the tradition of social constructivist studies that do not primarily answer the question “What is technology?” but rather seek to trace the process of “how to make technology” (emphasis in original, Bijker, 2010, p. 63). Following these roots, this study does not aim to answer what role playing is in general or what a role-playing game is in particular, but aims to answer the guiding question how materials make role playing work. To answer this question, this study required qualitative empirical data and links its results to specific sites instead of generalizations. The focus is on role playing as a process. Actor-network theory helps to reconstruct how processes came into being, and to recognize how they changed in order to produce role playing. Role playing comes into being in and by a collective of heterogeneous actors. With the word heterogeneous I stress the point that any element can be an actor when it effects social change, be it the fictional world, game rules, or materials.

Although actor-network theory scholars emphasize the agnostic position of a researcher towards preconceived notions of processes and ask that the researcher start the study by following the actor, there is a small group of “concepts”. I present the following concepts in more detail, because I want to create a bridge to readers from game studies who might not be familiar with actor-network theory. The first difficulty of actor-network theory is that it is less a theory than a methodology (follow the actors) or a language. The following concepts—actor, network, agency, mediator, and intermediary—are not definitions but words that can refer to empirical phenomena. They are empty shells without empirical evidence that the researcher has to gather in field work (Latour, 2005; Sayes, 2014; Venturini, 2010). Therefore, I put concepts into quotation marks, because they are words. These words form an infra-language or vocabulary with which the analyst can describe an empirical phenomenon, such as role playing, because “they don’t designate what is being mapped, but how it is possible to map anything from such a territory” (Latour, 2005, p. 174). In this regard, actor-network theory continues the tradition of social constructivism in that it provides a vocabulary for methodology. Moreover, the legacy of post-structuralism in actor-network theory becomes apparent with the necessity to reflect language when it connects concrete reality with abstract ideas. Law (2009) suggests that “actor-network theory can also be understood as an empirical version of post-structuralism.” (p. 6). Thus, the examination of concepts as words is one methodological step, because the relation between words and what is being mapped should not be taken for granted. Before I can use a word as an analytical tool, I need to establish a relation to an empirical fact and reflect instead of looking for data that fits to established concepts.

The book Reassembling the Social leans against my computer monitor that stores most of my notes, data samples, and previous versions of this book. I say “most” because in 2012 I began to draft my chapters with pencil and paper. What happened was that my writing slowed down. I am a fast writer with a typewriter or computer keyboard, but writing by hand forced the word count to drop. I gained time to think more before I wrote down the words. This new collaboration—hand, pencil, and paper—changed the way I was writing the book. In its core, this example of writing makes a point about an “actor”.

An actor makes a difference to other elements. Actor is a word that refers to an element that is part of a process, for example a pencil in the process of writing. Again, actor is a word that requires empirical evidence to be of analytical value, because an actor ties to a process that the researcher observes at a specific site. A researcher can only speak of an actor when there is empirical evidence of its action. Evidence or trace of an action is observable, because “anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor” (Latour, 2005, p. 71). Thus, it remains uncertain what an actor is unless there is a trace of action. When there is a trace, it is not because there is an actor, but because an actor works.

Because of this uncertainty, actor-network theory is not a theory in the sense of a stable framework that answers ontological questions, such as what an actor is, but a mode of inquiry or a tool that encourages rethinking whether the phenomenon is what it seems to be. In the example of writing with pen and paper, is it the human who is the sole actor responsible for the process of writing, or could it be otherwise?

An actor is “something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in general” (Latour, 1996b, p. 375). The pencil is an actor, because it made me write differently. The paper itself can be an actor, too. But actor-network theory makes me aware that effects do not originate in an intrinsic essence of one element but result from the collaboration or cooperation of actors (Latour, 2011). It is the pencil, paper, and hand that change my writing compared to typing on a keyboard.

An actor has a recognizable identity only through its actions in collaboration with other actors. I can speak of the pencil as an actor in relation to hand and paper when they write together. At this point, the inter-relation between vocabulary and empirical data becomes apparent. When I sit at my desktop and remove one of these collaborators from the process, writing does not work anymore. The pencil does not write without paper or hand, the paper does not show traces of words without pencil or hand, the hand does not write without a writing device or a piece of paper. I cannot talk about a collaboration of actors anymore, because the identity-giving action of writing is missing here, and it is the identity-giving action in a collective that allows me to speak of actors, be they pencils or (later) materials in role-playing games.

This is the reason why actor-network theory does not define an actor as an element that has an intrinsic essence. An analyst refers to a pencil as a material actor, when there is a trace of action. When the graphite core that is part of the pencil collaborates with the paper and follows the movements and pressure of the hand. Non-human actors, such as pencils, “are endowed with a certain set of competencies by the network that they have lined up behind them,” for example the graphite that makes the pencil, and at “the same time, they demand a certain set of competencies by the actors they line up, in turn” (Sayes, 2014, p. 138). The pencil demands from the hand the competency to write. This competency is not inherent in a hand but is the result of years of training.

Before I introduce “network”, which refers here to the inter-relation of pencil and hand, in more detail, I need to explain how it is possible to say that unconscious elements like pencils demand something.

Human, non-human, and material actors. Above, I wrote that an actor is any element that acts in relation to other elements. This understanding works to recognize actors that act, but are non-humans. So far, players, designers, and researchers have understood role playing as a human endeavor, as I will elaborate in more detail below. But if non-human actors can be part of action, this study needs not only to explore how the group of non-human actors cooperate with other actors in role-playing processes, but also how to talk about this process without replacing anthropocentricism with materialism.

Actor-network theory does not claim “that objects do things ‘instead’ of human actors” (Latour, 2005, p. 72). The point is to examine how action emerges as a process in and by heterogeneous relations. This is the reason why I wrote in Chapter 1 that it is not enough to solve the ontological problem of what role playing is in general, and how materials collaborate. The inclusion of heterogeneous actors, referring also to non-human actors, addresses the epistemological level of the problem, how to know about role playing. When I use the adjective heterogeneous, I refer to a group of actors that includes different actors, be they human or non-human. The point is not to replace human action with non-human action to understand role playing, but to start with the assumption that anything could be part of the process. To avoid the dichotomy that the word “non-human” evokes, I use the word material.

The group of material actors includes “things, objects” (Latour, 1993, p. 13), “microbes, scallops, rocks, and ships” (Latour, 2005, p. 11), tools and technical artifacts, material structures, transportation devices, texts, and economic goods (Sayes, 2014, p. 136). Material actors include the scale between objects and raw materials. Objects designate elements that are physically constituted, spatially defined and functionally determined. Examples in this book are paper, computers, and clothes. Some of them can be labelled as toys, but the word toy as well as object does not help, because I want to look at raw materials, too.⁴ Raw materials, such as rocks, water, or metal, lack a predefined functional determination.

When I refer material actors or materials, I have observed action on the physical level and noted a trace of their actions. The pencil, for example, might have a nostalgic meaning for me, because it was a present from my former employer, but when I speak of the pencil as a material actor, I refer to the physical actions of the pencil. The pencil has a certain weight, shape, and durability, because the pencil consists of other material actors that are lined up behind it.

I do not use the word object, because I refer in this study to elements that do not have a defined function. For example, the leather that makes a costume in live action role playing is a component. Using the term material allows me to refer to players themselves as material actors, because players last and consist of matter that could be part of role playing, such as skin, hair, etc. Thus, material actors differ from symbolic, emotional, and similarly abstract actors, not because they are not able to act in these ways, but because the focus is on their physicality.

Material action does not mean that I refer only to action that the laws of causality can express, but physical action that can collaborate with mental processes. Formulating sentences and physical gravity might seem unconnected, but they need no longer be when I think about a sentence and use a pencil that leaves graphite traces on paper. The gain is an alternative understanding of writing as a process that involves material and mental action alike, where the mind/matter dichotomy dissolves because such a dichotomy is not helpful to understand how a graphite core cooperates with the rephrasing of a sentence.

The inclusion of non-humans as potentially equal actors in social processes has been a significant contribution of actor-network theory to studies of the social (Sayes, 2014). The task is to avoid reductionism that words like materials or matter might carry. “To make this possible, we have to free the matters of fact from their reduction by ‘Nature’, exactly as much as we should liberate objects and things from their ‘explanation’ by society” (Latour, 2005, p. 109). To mark that I go beyond the dichotomy between physical matters of fact and socially explicable objects or things, I use the word materials instead of physical actors or objects. Thus, I do not understand actor-network theory “as a sociology ‘extended to non-humans,’” (Latour, 2005, p. 109) because I keep material actors open on a symmetric level until field work shows what clothes, rain, computer hardware, and light account for. Thinking about social processes beyond solely human actions, expands the understanding of role playing as a social process between players to a social process between actors.

The question remains, why actors act in the way they act, when they do not need or “have” an intrinsic essence or a human consciousness. An actor effects social change, but the point is that this capacity to change is not rooted always in a conscious human decision, but emerges from a relation to other actors, which can be other elements that do something. Therefore, I name elements as actors when they do something, when they make a difference in a network.

2.2.2 Network or action at a distance. A network is a gathering, an assemblage, a group of actors that act together. A network gains its stability when actors repeat their actions in a certain manner. When I refer to a role-playing game as a network, I refer to the collaborative work of heterogeneous actors.

Actor-network theory points out a capacity of non-human actors that highlights a spatial and temporal capacity of action. Callon (1991) ascribes the capacity of gathering actors over time and space to non-human actors, better known in the formula “acting at a distance” (Latour, 1987, p. 222). Stability in a network is gained when non-human actors, such as role-playing materials, repeat an action of a temporary gathering. For example, I want to say the word “network.” I do not want to repeat the word myself, so I write the word with a pencil on a piece of paper. The paper bears the graphite marks that show the word “network.” I do not have to say “network” anymore, because the paper repeats the action, saying the word network, of the temporary gathering of me, pencil, and paper.

Thus, materials can “allow an actor that is no longer present to exert a palpable influence” (Sayes, 2014, p. 140). A palpable influence is what makes a difference, although the word “influence” can be misleading when influence is not understood as a process emerging from inter-relational actions. However, the preserving of a relation over space and time is one of the actions that humans desire of non-human actors. What I aim to examine is what happens when materials transport desired actions, or to reformulate the guiding question in this context, how does role playing change over space and time when materials become part of the process?

Actor-network theory as a constructivist paradigm within science, technology, and society studies allows multiple truths instead of one, multiple truths that are constructed by and between actors. Thus, what is studied and how, is a responsibility of the actor-network analyst. It is relevant that an actor-network refers to what is studied, in this case role playing, but it is also a tool to study role playing.

Ontology and epistemology. Network has two meanings according to Latour (2011):

You see that I take the word network not simply to designate things in the world that have the shape of a net […] but mainly to designate a mode of inquiry that learns to list, at the occasion of a trial, the unexpected beings necessary for any entity to exist. A network, in this second meaning of the word, is more like what you record through a Geiger counter that clicks every time a new element, invisible before, has been made visible to the inquirer. (p. 799)

The ontological meaning of network is the network as a collaboration of heterogeneous actors. Until now, I have referred to this meaning when I talked about actors. The epistemological meaning of network is the network of relational processes that become visible when the inquirer recognizes, thinks, and writes them down. The network helps to reveal material actors, because it is an epistemological tool that helps to grow a sense of what is involved in a process. In this sense, researchers like Mol (2010) refuse to apply actor-network theory as a theory, and treat it more like a sensibility to approach a phenomenon while increasing one’s understanding. This twofold understanding of a network is the reason why actor-network theory is apt to answer the two levels of this dissertation’s problem: the ontological, what is role playing, and the epistemological, how to know about role playing.

It is not enough to re-think role playing as a phenomenon that includes narrative, ludic, and material actors. Tracing relational work between these actors, actor-network theory aims to change how a researcher learns to know and justify this knowledge about collaborating actors. Instead of referring phenomena back to concepts, I use words that have emerged from inside field work. The vocabulary at the end of this chapter is the result of my field work. It has changed in the past years when I refined it to keep my preconceived notions at bay. When I observed and analyzed what happened during game sessions, my understanding changed from role-playing games that some define as games with, for example, the mindset of role playing, to role-playing games as processes, as actor-networks that gather diverse actors and make them work together at specific sites. Using network as a mode of inquiry provides the researcher with a methodological toolbox that at the same time changes the theoretical framework. Thus, a theoretical framework is less a context than a toolbox. With the tool mode of inquiry I localized role playing in the process between actors. In this regard, the theory adds itself as an actor to the researcher’s work, and as an actor, it changes its own work of constructing ontological meaning. Having explained the two meanings of network, I now return to the process, the “making a difference,” because it also explains the how actors gather, or organize, other actors to form networks that last over time.

2.2.3 Agency, or making a difference. Actors “can be made to act through the agency of a magic wand, a dwarf, a thought in the fairy’s mind, or a knight killing two dozen dragons” (Latour, 2005, p. 54). Latour does not refer here to fantasy role-playing games, but to actors that they share with fairy tales. He points out that actors act on behalf of sometimes surprising actors. Agency is the word used when referring to heterogeneous actors that act according to the same goal, such as role playing. The difference between actor and agency is that the actor does something and agency explains “the different ways to make actors do things” (Latour, 2005, p. 55).

“Making a difference” is conceptualized as agency, which is a much contested concept in social theory, but in game studies is defined as a human capacity (Wardrip-Fruin et al., 2009). While this different definition shares the understanding of agency as ability, it differs in explaining how this ability comes into action, whether it is possible to think of agency as ability, and whether the ability is an inward power, or rather a relational effect. Actor-network theory diverges from these definitions by viewing agency not as a concept that the researcher has to trace, but again as a word for a difference making process that only exists when the researcher observes an empirical trace. Agency is a source for inquiry or uncertainty about what is part of what happens. Thus, agency aims at an observable capacity to act and matter and make a difference in the world, a capacity that comes into action when actors relate with each other. Instead of an inward power in game studies’ sense of agency, agency in actor-network theory refers to streamlining actions to one action. When I refer to role playing as agency, role playing is the “streamlining” action that emerges from and constitutes the inter-relational actions of heterogeneous actors. These actors’ actions form connections and when enough connections flow together, they create the role-playing game network and role playing works.

When “[a]ctors fill the world with agencies” (Latour, 2005, p. 52), how can a researcher understand the process of creating agency in the world? As there is no causal agency, “there might exist many metaphysical shades between full causality and sheer inexistence: things might authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit, suggest, influence, block, render possible, forbid, and so on” (Latour, 2004, p. 226). Agency that refers to the level of a network makes a difference to the relations between all heterogeneous actors. In this study, the agency on the level of a role-playing game network, is role playing. In order to make a difference according to the agency of role playing, all actors have to change their actions. I examine this process when I ask how materials, as one group of actors, make role playing as agency work in a role-playing game network.

When all actors have to change their actions, every actor follows its own agency before the network comes into being. Therefore the agency on the level of the network emerges when all actors abandon the agencies or “that they have lined up behind them,” because every actor is a network of other actors (Sayes, 2014, p. 138). In the example above, a pencil is an actor that consists of a graphite core and wooden body.

Agency explains the multi-sited understanding of action as an effect across multiple actors. Following actors negotiating across different role-playing game sites and forms, actors can inscribe the agency of role playing to different degrees, depending on the outcome of the negotiations between actors. “They [actors] will not only enter into a controversy over which agency is taking over but also on the ways in which it is making its influence felt” (Latour, 2005, p. 57). A “felt” influence is an influence that the analyst can trace. Again, instead of influence, I refer to this process as “making a difference.”

2.2.4 Mediator and intermediary, or translating agency. The word mediator refers to an actor that changes what other actors do in the network. As actor-network theory speaks of processes, this happens during the mediator’s implementation to the network. At one moment, the mediator inscribes its agency to any degree into other actors’ processes. “Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (emphasis in original, Latour, 2005, p. 39). A mediator that transforms a game network, for example chess, is the clock. Playing against time turns the game of chess into fast chess and the clock becomes an actor that modifies how the game session works.

The word intermediary refers to an actor that spreads agency without changing it. “An intermediary, in my vocabulary, is what transports meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs” (emphasis in original, Latour, 2005, p. 39). An intermediary of fast chess, for example, could be a wooden chess board. The wood prevents the board from changes, thus the board repeats its action of presenting a field of 64 squares. Thus, the board spreads the agency of chess playing without changing it across the network of players, pieces, and so on.

The researcher remains uncertain whether to refer to an actor as an intermediary or mediator, because this uncertainty is the starting point of an actor-network study (Latour, 2005, p. 39). Latour suggests to “ask the actor” if the actor matters as a mediator or not. An additional question could be to think of an ex negativo case: imagine that there is no board in a game of chess or no costume in a live action role-playing game session.

So far, I have elaborated upon actor-network theory as an infra-language that helps the researcher to question and talk about the phenomena seen during field work. The next section returns to the methodological principle of “follow the actors” to explain how I selected qualitative data about material actors, role playing agency, and role-playing game networks.