Association of Information Systems forms new Special Interest Group on Pragmatist IS research

Special Interest Group on Pragmatist IS research (www.sigprag.org)

In the IS field there is a growing recognition of the importance of theorizing the IT artifact and its organizational and societal context from a pragmatic and action-oriented perspective. Over the years, a number of events and journal special issues have been devoted to this topic (e.g. the Language/Action Perspective workshops 1996-2005 and special issues of CACM and Data and Knowledge Engineering, the Understanding Sociotechnical Action workshops and special issue of IJTHI, the Action in Language, Organizations and Information Systems conferences and EJIS special issue, and the Pragmatic Web conference). The aim of SIGPrag is to provide a much needed centre of gravity and to facilitate exchange of ideas and further development of this area of IS scholarship.

In summary, pragmatist IS research rests on the following set of assumptions:

• Human life is a life of activity.
• Humans do things that effect changes in their environment and/or within themselves.
• Doing permeates thinking, conceptualizations and language use.
• Human consciousness is a practical one that is in constant interplay with interventive, investigative, and evaluative actions.
• Practical consciousness is formed by experience from previous actions and participation in social contexts.
• IT and information systems are fundamentally symbolic language systems.
• Linguistically expressed collective presuppositions, norms and categories (such as those embedded in IT and information systems) serve human activity and life.
• The true value of IT and information systems lies in their potential to support human communication and collaboration central to human activity and life.
  

Contact:

Prof. Pär J. Ågerfalk (President)
Dr. Mark Aakhus (Secretary)
Dr. Mikael Lind (Treasurer)