Table Of ContentMedien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation
Clemens Eisenmann · Kathrin Englert
Cornelius Schubert · Ehler Voss Editors
Varieties of
Cooperation
Mutually Making the Conditions of
Mutual Making
Medien der Kooperation – Media of
Cooperation
Series Editor
Erhard Schüttpelz, Philosophische Fakultät, Universität Siegen, Siegen,
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Digital vernetzte Medien werden als kooperative Werkzeuge, Plattformen und
Infrastrukturen gestaltet, die bestehende Öffentlichkeiten transformieren und
neue Öffentlichkeiten ermöglichen. Sie sind nicht mehr als Einzelmedien zu
verstehen, sondern verlangen eine praxistheoretische Auffassung der Medien
und ihrer Geschichte. Alle Medien sind kooperativ verfertigte Kooperations-
bedingungen. Ihre Praktiken und Techniken entstehen aus der wechselseitigen
Verfertigung und Bereitstellung gemeinsamer Mittel und Abläufe. Darum ver-
läuft die Erforschung digitaler Medien quer zur gängigen wissenschaftlichen
Arbeitsteilung und verlangt eine gezielte Engführung von Medientheorie und
Sozialtheorie.
Digital network media are designed as cooperative tools, platforms and infras-
tructures which transform existing publics and give rise to new ones. Digital
media can no longer be understood as individual media, but demand a practice-
theoretical perspective on media and their history. All media are cooperatively
accomplished devices of cooperation. Media practices and techniques evolve from
the mutual making of shared resources and joint processes. That’s why the study
of digital media disturbs our scientific division of labour and remains a challenge
for the intersections between media theory and social theory.
Clemens Eisenmann · Kathrin Englert ·
Cornelius Schubert · Ehler Voss
Editors
Varieties of Cooperation
Mutually Making the Conditions of
Mutual Making
Editors
Clemens Eisenmann Kathrin Englert
SFB Medien der Kooperation Arbeitsbereich Erwerbslosigkeit und
Universität Siegen Teilhabe
Siegen, Germany Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-und
Berufsforschung
Cornelius Schubert Nürnberg, Germany
Universität Siegen
Siegen, Germany Ehler Voss
Universität Bremen
Bremen, Germany
ISSN 2520-8349 ISSN 2520-8357 (electronic)
Medien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation
ISBN 978-3-658-39036-5 ISBN 978-3-658-39037-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39037-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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Contents
Introduction
1 Mutually Making the Conditions of Mutual Making.
An Introduction .............................................. 3
Clemens Eisenmann, Kathrin Englert, Cornelius Schubert,
and Ehler Voss
Prescriptum
2 Reinventing the Wheel of Media Theory ........................ 21
Erhard Schüttpelz
Part I Implementing Information Systems
3 Meta-Infrastructure: Pneumatic Tube Systems,
Infrastructural Entanglements and Cooperation
in Enterprises from the Late 19th to the 21st Century ............ 45
Laura Meneghello
4 Patents and Licences: Basic Elements of Cooperation
in the Early History of Electronic Data Processing in Europe ..... 67
Christian Henrich-Franke
Part II Doing Dasein
5 Intimate Pictures: Mediating Absence and Presence
in Senegalese Transnational Relationships ...................... 83
Simone Pfeifer
v
vi Contents
6 Mainstreaming Zoom: Covid-19, Social Distancing,
and the Rise of Video-Mediated Remote Cooperation ............ 99
Axel Volmar, Charline Kindervater, Sebastian Randerath,
and Aikaterini Mniestri
Part III Cooperating Corpora
7 The Passport as a Medium of Movement ....................... 137
Asko Lehmuskallio and Paula Haara
8 Entangling Bodies and Objects in the Air ....................... 167
Larissa Schindler
Part IV Participating and Privacy
9 Information Control and Trust in the Context of Digital
Technologies ................................................. 189
Thilo Hagendorff
10 Mutually Designing Domestic IT Applications with Older
Adults ...................................................... 203
Claudia Müller, Marén Schorch, and David Struzek
Introduction
1
Mutually Making the Conditions
of Mutual Making. An Introduction
Clemens Eisenmann, Kathrin Englert, Cornelius Schubert,
and Ehler Voss
The “varieties of cooperation” empirically investigated in this volume shed light
on historical formations, essential foundations, stabilisations and consequences
of mutual accomplishments in cooperative practices. Considering the histories of
technological artefacts and infrastructures, such as the passport or the pneumatic
tube system, as well as the current use of widespread everyday media practices,
such as video conferences, air travel or domestic IT applications, we under-
stand cooperation in a broad and yet very specific sense: as any form of mutual
makings, in which common goals, means or procedures have to be achieved in
concrete practices of concerted activities (Schüttpelz, 2017). From this analytic
perspective “practice takes precedence over all other (social or technical) explana-
tory variables” (Schüttpelz & Meyer, 2017, p. 156; own transl.). This radical
praxeology allows us to investigate media, technologies and infrastructures with
regard to two central and foundational dimensions. Firstly, it makes it possible
B
C. Eisenmann ( ) · C. Schubert · E. Voss
SFB Medien der Kooperation, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
C. Schubert
e-mail: [email protected]
E. Voss
e-mail: [email protected]
K. Englert
Arbeitsbereich Erwerbslosigkeit und Teilhabe, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-und
Berufsforschung, Nürnberg, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
E. Voss
Contradiction Studies, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 3
GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023
C. Eisenmann et al. (eds.), Varieties of Cooperation, Medien der Kooperation –
Media of Cooperation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39037-2_1
4 C.Eisenmannetal.
to explain how even “relatively finished objects” (Garfinkel et al., 1981, p. 135)
are achieved in mutual makings in situ and how “the question of what is pro-
duced as media in use thus depends on the situation and opportunity, the goals,
interests or even the problem” (Thielmann, 2012,p.96f.;o wn transl.). Secondly,
empirical historiographic and ethnographic investigations of the cooperative pro-
duction of media as media enable us to show how cooperative media are the
result of mutual achievements and simultaneously produce the very conditions of
cooperation itself: mutually making the conditions of mutual making.
This volume originated from the conference “Varieties of Cooperation.
Mutually Making the Conditions of Mutual Making” (2017) organised by the
Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the Uni-
versity of Siegen, Germany. The CRC brings together researchers interested in
studying the diverse realisations of cooperative media and cooperative practices
from a variety of scholarly backgrounds. From the exchanges of goods or infor-
mation to the interactions between bodies or organisations and the coordination
between colleagues, competitors, friends or foes. Mutually making the conditions
of mutual making entails mediating heterogeneous interests, negotiating conflict-
ing values and articulating distributed activities. On the one hand, the individual
contributions of the volume cover different notions and concepts of cooperation
in diverse fields of study: from the mundane cooperation of everyday life to col-
lective endeavours within specific domains and institutions. On the other hand,
they share a focus on the practices of making cooperation possible through coop-
eratively creating the conditions for cooperation itself. Seeing cooperative media
as both a condition and a consequence of cooperation, the volume sheds light
on a general feature of media, technologies and instruments that both enable
and constrain the collaboration between heterogeneous social worlds, with and
without consensus.
The contributions in this volume follow and refine the approach of the Collab-
orative Research Center in Siegen, which, in studying media against the current
background of pervasive networked media, moves away from the overemphasized
role of “individual media”. Instead, considering how the production, distribution
and reception of digital media constantly overlap and are intertwined with data
practices, our perspective emphasizes the role of practices preceding the media
that always emerge cooperatively through and in specific practices. Thus, it allows
us to mediate between the past and the present and invites multidisciplinary
research as represented in this volume. This not only involves historiography,
anthropology, sociology, (socio-)informatics and media studies, but also uses
ethnographic perspectives that highlight the incremental processes and in situ
accomplishment of cooperation (cf. Schubert & Röhl, 2019).
