Merchant Marine Deck Officer Agency Through Performative Acts

I bring together ethnographic interviews with deck officers, studies in actor-network theory, explicit and tacit knowledge theory, and performativity theory in this work. I prove that bridge technologies produce what are called mimeomorphic (repeatable with some variation) actions that contain no deck officer collective tacit knowledge. I argue that deck officer bridge watch situated actions are mostly polimorphic (actions can vary depending on social context), and these actions are in fact performatives (in an Austin sense) derived from a more oral than literate performance production process. These performatives constantly build the mariner's identity within the maritime deck officer community and their successful performatives give deck officers agency in the form of an oppositional view to deskilling. These same performative acts are the value of the mariner's experiential technological knowledge within the ship's bridge technology framework.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Science and Technology Studies

Department dc:contributor.department

Science and Technology in Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Clark, Donald

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Schmid, Sonja
• Brown, Shannon A.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Abbate, Janet E.
• Allen, Barbara L.

• Actor-network Theory
• Tacit Knowledge
• Commedia Del'Arte
• Deskilling
• ECDIS
• Experiential Technical Knowledge
• Marine Navigation
• Merchant M Deck Officer
• Mimeomorphic
• Performative Act
• Performativity
• Polimorphic
• Situated Action

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:8758

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/72884