The government of things: acknowledging non-human agents in institutional design

Alexandru Stefan Dincovici

Chapter 7 in Governing Differences, 2025, pp 153-171 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter challenges conventional assumptions about institutions, societies, and governance, especially in the context of contemporary debates on technology and artificial intelligence. It scrutinizes two prevailing premises: the notion that differences among people are primarily cognitive or abstract, and the anthropocentric view that institutions are solely the product of human cognitive processes. Drawing on anthropology and science and technology studies, the author argues for a more nuanced institutionalist perspective that acknowledges the role of non-human agency, including natural agents, infrastructures, artificial intelligence, and human-made objects. By adopting the concept of cognitive assemblage (Hayles, 2017), the chapter aims to better explain how institutional work occurs through the entanglement of humans and non-humans. The first section critiques the idea that differences among people stem solely from cognitive processes, proposing instead that these differences are also distributed within the body and environment. This argument is supported by the perspective of embodied cognition, heavily informed by anthropological research. The second section extends the notion of agency to non-human actors, both natural and artificial, through various social science approaches categorized under the "ontological turn", while urging to rethink the subject-object divide and reconceptualize institutional work. The final part examines case studies that intersect with the institutional analysis and development framework, offering insights that could enhance this approach.

Keywords: Embodied cognition; Institutional analysis and development; Science and technology studies; Cognitive assemblage; Material culture; Technology; Agency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035348572
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