Turning aggression into an object of intervention: Tinkering in a crime control pilot study

Grommé, Francisca. 2015. Turning aggression into an object of intervention: Tinkering in a crime control pilot study. Science as Culture, 24(2), pp. 227-247. ISSN 1470-1189 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Real-world experiments that test new technologies can affect policy and practice by introducing new objects of intervention through tinkering; the ad hoc work of realigning relations in the face of frictions, surprises, and disturbances that occur when introducing a technology. In a pilot study on aggression detection, tinkering moved aggression in and out of the human body. In the end, the pilot defined aggression as a set of acoustic-physical variables representing the aroused human body, alongside other signals of aggression. How aggression as an object intervention was shaped by tinkering is relevant because it involved inclusions and exclusions by the authorities who identified aggression, the methods they applied, and mandate for intervention. A focus on relations that are tinkered within a real-world experiment permits critical engagement with this format. Although the real-world experimental format is credited with producing knowledge about a technology's ‘actual’ performance, actors and events at the pilot study location were made only selectively relevant. Analyses of real-world experiments should therefore explain how experiments selectively make the world relevant, giving only particular objects of intervention a truth status.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2014.992331

Keywords:

aggression, real-world experiment, sound, pilot study, crime control, tinkering

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Sociology

Dates:

DateEvent
2015Published

Item ID:

15986

Date Deposited:

08 Jan 2016 12:01

Last Modified:

29 Apr 2020 16:13

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/15986

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