Pascale Trompette

Social Embodiment of Technical Devices: Eyeglasses Over the Centuries and According to their Uses

This article is an attempt to prepare the ground for the analysis and theorization of the connection between the body and technical devices emerging from miniaturized wearable technologies. The research object is a secular and common “body object,” namely, eyeglasses. The article reviews the social history of this artifact and analyzes its patterns of use, showing how the distributed sociotechnical networks of action containing these simple optical systems are constantly deconfigured and reconfigured. In other words, the device is not simply subject to physical incorporation. The unstable balance between the artifacts projection onto the surrounding space and its attachment to the physical body is analyzed through the heterogeneousness of bodies coming into play as the device is socially embodied. As the corporal frame and physical, distributed, and social bodies overlap, the notion of “bodies object” emerges. This covers the artifact-related and social environment, the plural nature of which could be of great value to research and development teams, helping them to diversify their representations of the user, as an agent acting in a variety of networks with a variety of bodies.

Various Corporate Citizenships in BoP Markets

‘Access to energy is a major preoccupation for the 1.6 billion people who at present live without electricity. […] By setting out its solutions for access to renewable energies, Schneider Electric is reaffirming its social commitment to contribute to the improvement of the quality of life for populations ‘at the bottom of the pyramid’ and to facilitate access to care, treatment and education (Press release: ‘Electrification of the village of Marovato in Madagascar’, June 2009). Providing clean and responsible energy solutions for populations in situations of extreme poverty, such is the radically new challenge, listed as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, taken up by a team of engineers from Schneider Electric, a global energy company specializing in industrial electrical equipment. Like other multinationals, Schneider Electric has become involved in the design of products affordable to the poorest populations of emerging countries.