The notion of sociomaterial practices speaks to a view of routine work in which people and materials are always already entangled. This implies that the commonsense tendency to treat concrete materials and social activity as separate analytical categories may actually muddy more than illuminate our understanding of practices. Engaging work from science and technology studies, this broad view of materiality refers not only to the physical properties of machines but also to software and algorithms, electrical grids and other infrastructure, buildings, human bodies, ecological systems etc. Despite remarkable enthusiasm, the conversation about sociomaterial practices occasionally has devolved into philosophical turf wars, engendering pleas for pluralism. All too often, such lofty conceptual debates lose sight of pragmatic concerns such as technology design work or humanitarian action. This essay traces both issues to a tension between adopting a grand philosophical Ontology, versus undertaking detailed empirical studies of particular concrete work practices. I argue that studies exploring the practical specifics of particular sociomaterial practices should be granted room for silence with respect to some theoretical commitments, on the grounds that this will afford a more lively pluralism. For ethnomethodologists, this re-orientation to grand theory is a matter of methodological rigor and theoretical sophistication. For pragmatists, room for silence has to do with the dilemma of rigor or practical relevance. This is not to say that key concepts are unnecessary—they can provoke us to look beyond narrow disciplinary confines and standard assumptions about the scope of field studies. Through an account of the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, I show how these conceptual debates matter for empirical research and for design practice. In this case, complex technical and biosocial processes made a concrete difference in the course of the outbreak and the humanitarian response to it. For practitioners no less than for researchers, this case throws into sharp relief the real human stakes of grasping how the material world gets caught up in workaday human activity.

中文翻译：

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沉默的空间：埃博拉病毒研究，多元化和社会物质实践的务实研究

社会物质实践的概念代表了一种日常工作的观点，在这种观点中，人们和物质总是已经纠结在一起。这意味着将混凝土材料和社会活动视为单独的分析类别的常识性趋势实际上可能比说明我们对实践的理解更为混乱。通过对科学技术研究的投入，这种广泛的实质性观点不仅涉及机器的物理属性，而且还涉及软件和算法，电网和其他基础设施，建筑物，人体，生态系统等。尽管有极大的热情，关于社会物质实践的讨论有时演变为哲学领域的争斗，引发了对多元主义的呼吁。很多时候 这种崇高的概念性辩论忽视了诸如技术设计工作或人道主义行动之类的务实问题。本文将这两个问题都归结为采用盛大的哲学本体论与对特定的具体工作实践进行详细的实证研究之间的紧张关系。我认为，探索某些特定社会物质实践的实践细节的研究应给予一些理论承诺以沉默的空间，理由是这将提供更加活跃的多元性。对于民族方法学家来说，对盛大理论的重新定位是方法论上的严格性和理论上的复杂性。对于实用主义者而言，保持沉默的空间与严格或实际相关性的困境有关。这并不是说关键概念是不必要的，它们可以激发我们去超越学科研究范围的狭窄学科范围和标准假设。通过介绍2013-2016年西非埃博拉疫情，我展示了这些概念性辩论对实证研究和设计实践的重要性。在这种情况下，复杂的技术和生物社会工艺制成在爆发并给它的人道主义反应的过程中的具体区别。对于从业人员和研究人员都不少，这个案例使掌握物质世界如何融入工作中的人类活动的真正意义重大。