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Dossier thématique

On the Trail of Preparations

Preparing, Rehearsing, Setting Up for Things to Become
Sur la piste des préparations. Préparer, répéter, mettre en place pour que les choses adviennent
Tras la pista de la preparación. Preparar, ensayar, poner en su sitio para que las cosas advengan
Den Vorbereitungen auf der Spur. Vorbereiten, wiederholen, in Gang setzen, damit Dinge geschehen können
Loïc Riom et Mylène Tanferri
Traduction de Loïc Riom et Mylène Tanferri
Cet article est une traduction de :
Sur la piste des préparations [fr]
Autre(s) traduction(s) de cet article :
Den Vorbereitungen auf der Spur [de]
Tras la pista de la preparación [es]

Résumés

Cet article introductif vise à montrer que suivre la piste des préparations à l’action permet de prolonger et d’enrichir conceptuellement et empiriquement tant les théories de l'action que l’anthropologie des connaissances. Dans un premier temps, nous distinguons les préparations à l’action de l’action planifiée. Pour ce faire, nous inscrivons notre intérêt pour les préparations à la suite les travaux qui, de la sociologie du travail à l’étude des organisations, ont étudié les plans, les prescriptions et la constitution d’habitudes. Dans un deuxième temps, nous esquissons à partir des neuf articles qui composent ce dossier cinq axes de réflexion : les préparations comme embarquement sur le terrain ; le rapport à l’imprévu ; les savoirs des préparations ; les dispositifs des préparations ; et les collectifs que les préparations contribuent à (trans)former.

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Texte intégral

1This special issue of the Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances (RAC) aims to foster renewed attention to preparations for action. Here, we use the term broadly: set-ups, tests, rehearsals, training, established procedures, or any other resource considered by the actors as preparations for carrying out a future action. Our approach aims to combine, in a single analytical framework, both the activities and the knowledge – or expertise – that preparations produce and rely on. In doing so, we intend to open new avenues that may enrich and extend both theories of action and the anthropology of knowledge. We also intend to provide some responses to their most common criticisms. Drawing on the pragmatist conceptions of inquiry, we hypothesize that by studying preparations, we can replace specific questions regarding action, such as its context or structure, in the actors’ hands rather than the analyst’s. Furthermore, while watchwords calling for redirections or to get into action are multiplying, we assume that by following preparations, we may find productive ways of questioning anew what our actions are about and what they hold on. Thus, preparations could help us (re)think about the collective and negotiated dimensions of action.

  • 1 This tradition is particularly rich in France and has contributed to several research currents, whi (...)
  • 2 Apart from a few texts, including an article by David Kirsh (1990) on robotics and another by Berna (...)

2Numerous studies have focused on professional, domestic, or institutional activities aimed at preparing an upcoming action, whether it's a one-off event or, on the contrary, one that is repeated over time. We can cite, in no particular order, the set-ups and rehearsals before a performance (Finnegan, 2007; Riom, 2021; Schmidt, 2018; Vinck, 2019; Vinck & Tanferri, 2020) or a technological demonstration (Rosental, 2019); the organization of a tour during a working day (Cholez, 2008; Denis & Pontille, 2020); the setting up of a space for sale (Cochoy, 2011; Grandclément, 2004) or consumption (Mears, 2023); the installations for a movie shoot (Grimaud, 2003; Rot, 2019) or for an exhibition (Dominguez Rubio, 2020; Kreplak, 2014, 2020); the caretaking of childbirth (Gouilhers, 2017); or the exercises designed to train business school students (Lezaun & Muniesa, 2017). From the elaboration of conventions (Becker, 2010; Thévenot, 2006) to the learning of gestures (Bessy & Chateauraynaud, 1995; Kaufmann, 1997; Leroi-Gourhan, 1964; Poitou, 1999) via organized work (Bidet et al., 2006; Bidet, Datchary & Gaglio, 2017; Cooren et al., 2011), much of the sociology of work and professions has dealt, without necessarily naming or isolating them, with preparations.1 However, while the idea that understanding action through the study of its preparation is not particularly original, this path has not already been thoroughly explored.2

3Observing preparations, as they unfold, in different activities, we would like to examine a range of somewhat rudimentary questions: how does one go on to taking action? How do actors prepare, refine, and plan their actions? And what happens during these moments? The fruitfulness of these questions became apparent during our respective investigations into archive digitization (Tanferri, 2021; 2022; Tanferri & Vinck, 2013) and concerts (Riom, 2021). These fieldworks led us to shift our gaze from the fleeting activity we sought to describe to the work it requires to happen. We both carried out an attentional transfer” (Denis & Pontille, 2022), focusing on what counts for the actors as they prepare to act. During our investigations, these moments of assembly, rehearsal, or set-up have become ways of accounting for both the activity to come and the collectives that these moments help to (re)define and (re)adjust. As such, this special issue is resolutely aligned with the interest of both science and technology studies in boring, mundane and invisible things (Bowker & Star, 2023; Denis & Pontille, 2022; Latour & Hermant, 1998; Star, 2002; Star & Strauss, 1999; Woolgar & Lezaun, 2013), and the sociology of work for behind-the-scenes, shadow, or dirty work (Arborio, 1995; Becker, 2010; Bidet & Schoeni, 2011; Hughes, 2010).

  • 3 While we share particular concerns with these authors – notably regarding the production and formal (...)

4Our bet could be summed up in these terms: what happens to the analysis of action when we investigate preparations and, by doing so, placing back in actors' hands the stakes of action? Starting from their own scope of practices, we propose to explore what enables them to act without assuming a priori a form of determination or elements of socialization that would explain their actions. Following this resolutely pragmatist approach, we would like to consider both the analytical and methodological fertility of the moments when actors prepare an activity. However, we do not aim here for a general theory of preparation. On the contrary, adopting a classic approach, at least since Everett C. Hughes (1996), this special issue is, first and foremost, a collection of studies of practices and activities. Close to our fieldwork experiences, the authors of this edited issue return to the operations, challenges, and moments that appear to the actors as the necessary surroundings for the activity they are preparing for. As such, this issue moves away from the idea of preparedness, where preparations are planned regarding potential external and uncertain events (e.g., natural disasters, pandemics, nuclear accidents, computer attacks, economic crises...).3 Indeed, we intend to link the question of preparedness less to prevention or resilience than to action.

5Five articles make up the first part of this special issue. Gérard Dubey examines the moments preceding a surgical operation, starting with the patient's descent into the operating room and working up to the elaboration of an operating strategy. In another medical setting, Claire Bodelet describes the work of hospital clowns. She looks at the steps they devise to put themselves in the right conditions to perform. Changing settings, Célia de Pietro immerses herself in the preparations for action of Extinction Rebellion's (XR) climate activists. She examines the “doing being” that these preparations enable activists to train. Mathilde Lagrola looks at cleaning and tidying processes in cheese production. She introduces other conditioning modalities, such as those involving the microbes whose contribution is indispensable to cheese-making. Anna Dupleix-Marchal and Pascale Moity-Maizi analyze the steps involved in veil-free beekeeping. They shed light on how bees and humans adjust to the preparations that make such encounters possible.

6A second section of this edited issue, composed of four additional articles, will be published in the December 2024 issue of the RAC (vol. 18, no. 4). In this second section, Jean Danielou follows the activity of an intermediary who prepares investment projects for a multinational energy company. He shows how sites and their resources are captured during this prospecting exercise. Sophie Tabouret reports on implementing a varietal experiment in the wine industry. She describes how the experimental space is redefined to incorporate new elements (cooperatives, regional climatic conditions, markets, etc.). Maxime Le Calvé is interested in surgical gestures but from a training angle. His article reports on a project to produce a human brain “dummy” to train neurosurgery students. Finally, Claude Rosental examines the activities of a start-up accelerator. He looks more specifically at pitch training and how these helps to materialize entrepreneurial projects.

7The remainder of this introduction is divided into two parts. First, we will consider the notions of situated and planned action to clarify what we refer to as preparations for action. In doing so, we will attempt to position our understanding of preparations within several approches, such as ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, or pragmatist sociologies, which have proposed different conceptions of action. Then, we will suggest that by following preparations we can encounter fruitful avenues for discussing, extending, and enriching these traditions. To this end, we will draw some possible lines of inquiry for future investigations based on the nine contributions of this edited issue.

From planned action to action preparations

8Before engaging fully on the trail of preparations, it can be worthwhile to clarify our intentions by distinguishing between action preparation and planned action. This distinction allows us to work out at least three clarifications. Firstly, the register of preparations covers a broader range of practices than planning. It also allows us to move beyond debates centered on intentionality and to consider preparations as any other action. Secondly, by broadening our focus, an interest in preparations offers productive articulations between knowledge and action and avoids the sometimes-sterile opposition between routine and improvisation. Thirdly and finally, preparations helps to envisage situations in which actors commit themselves to turn an action into becoming without necessarily being ensured to succeed. In this respect, we propose to bring preparations closer to pragmatist conceptions of inquiry.

Planning-as-activity, recovering a productive intuition

  • 4 In France in particular, much research has been inspired by American work on this subject (see, for (...)

9For over fifty years, from ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism to pragmatist approaches, science and technology studies, and situated cognition, social sciences have paid particular attention to activities in their contingent, situated, interactional, and material dimensions.4 This attention to action has positioned itself as a strong response to dominant explanatory paradigms based on a conception of the social world in terms of structures, orders, intentions, or institutions. The course of action, or activity in the making, thus became its own frame of reference: its structure (or final form) would emerge from it without pre-existing it, translating into as many specific situations (see Goffman, 1964; Quéré, 1997). From the sociology of social movements to the sociology of work and the study of organizations, these approaches have explored the driving forces of action and developed various conceptual apparatuses for grasping action as it unfolds, change course, and is subject to uncertainties, often insisting on its contingent nature.

10Within these reflections, the mobilization of plans, instructions, or any other procedure in a given situation has been the subject of abundant work oriented towards both empirical studies and theoretical elaborations (see, for example, Conein, 1990; Conein & Jacopin, 1994; Kirsh, 1999; Quéré, 1997). Largely inspired by Lucy Suchman's (1987) famous work Human-Machine Reconfigurations – Plans and Situated Actions, this strand of research has led to distinguishing between two conceptions of action: planned action and situated action. Planned action conceives action and its meaning as the result of underlying plans (mental and individual) considered as their cause. From this point of view, planning is decoupled from action. It would pre-exist and prescribe action. To this first conception, which has largely guided research in the cognitive sciences embedded in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics projects, Suchman sought to oppose. This second conception – inspired mainly by ethnomethodology – sees action as a phenomenon emerging in and through a situation to which actors adapt. It would, therefore, be difficult to envisage an autonomous system that would only act according to an original plan without accounting for contingencies. This argument helped Suchman to consider human specificities that are difficult for AI to reproduce from an exclusively mentalist representation of action.

  • 5 In the second edition of her book (Suchman, 2007), she collects the responses she composed followin (...)
  • 6 Suchman (1993, p. 75) explains: “To reach that understanding [of how plans arise out of situated ac (...)

11To illustrate this opposition, Suchman (1987) used the example of canoeing down rapids: while the canoeist may have a plan – an idea of how she wants to get through the rapids - when she finds herself immersed in them, her plan would become of little use, and she would have to rely primarily on her embodied skills. This illustration was subjected to various criticisms. The main one suggested that plans do not disappear completely or become entirely ineffective during an action (Sharrock & Button, 2003). Suchman herself nuanced her position on several occasions.5 To clarify her understanding of plans in situations, she has offered, in particular, to distinguish the following elements: planning-as-activity; the results of it in the form of artifacts (she specifies conceptual, linguistic, or otherwise); and the subsequent activities to which these artifacts are meaningfully linked (Suchman, 1993)6. For her, the main question concerns the role played by these artifacts in action: how are they mobilized? How do they help to inform the action as it unfolds? In her subsequent work, Suchman (2011) has built on this line of inquiry, particularly by examining what she describes as “prescriptive representations.” Suchman's proposals have provided the impetus for a great deal of work focusing on the role of plans in situations. However, the activities shaping these representations have not received the same attention.

  • 7 Suchman (2011) cites work in the field of history about the constitution of train schedules in the (...)
  • 8 Unfortunately, this special issue does not sports, which is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating (...)
  • 9 On this subject, see the work on amateurs (Hennion, 2009; Hennion & Teil, 2004; Teil, 2004); on ren (...)

12These debates have indeed focused our attention on the activity of putting plans into practice. Studying preparations allows us to return to the path opened by planning-as-activity and to extend it in at least three ways. To begin with, the situated production of artifacts for later use (plans, procedures, prescriptions) deserves an ethnographic interest.7 Moreover, to prepare is not restricted to such production. With the notion of preparations, the lexical register of the inquiry is expanded: set-ups, training, rehearsals, and so on. As such, preparations are not necessarily visible in the subsequent action as prescriptive representations. Athletes speak of an “invisible work” to describe everything contributing to their performance, from nutrition to physical preparation through sleep.8 Secondly, from a situated perspective, preparations cannot be reduced to intentions or exclusively mental or discursive phenomena. They consist of practices and gestures aimed at arranging spaces and preparing bodies but also at smoothing out obstacles that could prevent action. They can even sometimes consist of learning to let go, give up, or do nothing.9 Even before they become matters of organization and coordination, preparations involve investigating the conditions and circumstances deemed indispensable to action-taking. Following preparations thus, devises an inverse movement than the one which focuses on plans mobilized in a situated action. In other words, preparations is also about resolving the problems that might stand in the way of carrying out an action, securing local support, and providing the conditions for its completion. Finally, preparations are operative: they constitute a category of activities that actors distinguish from their main activity, which often occurs behind the scenes. Rather than attempting to differentiate between preparation and action arbitrarily or theoretically, we propose to follow the actors in what enables them to make a distinction or, on the contrary, to envisage continuities between preparation and action. In this respect, preparations can be the subject of discussion, simulation, controversy, or conflict.

Re-articulating action and knowledge, routines, and improvisation

  • 10 Which plays on a double-entendre: it means figuratively “getting to know each other” but literally (...)

13Preparing indeed involves what philosopher Vincianne Despret (2002) calls “faire connaissance.”10 Jean-Pierre Poitou (2007, p. 3) had already engaged this path by sketching out a possible anthropology of knowledge. The preparation practices were among the long list of elements he considered useful to grasp knowledge-in-action. Through notions such as “savoir-y-faire” and “savoir-s'y-prendre” (know-hows), Poitou was already suggesting that preparations point towards the knowledge of action, be it formalized knowledge or, on the contrary, more informal experiential, or embodied knowledge. In the same way, studying preparations invites us to question the inscription of such knowledge in technical devices through various equipment practices (Vinck, 2006; 2011) or spatial setups (see Lynch, 1991; Zarama & Vinck, 2011).

  • 11 It's always surprising to see authors who claim to draw on ethnographic methods use fictional examp (...)
  • 12 We say imagine because neither of us has ever competed in canoeing. Yet, this comment is informed b (...)

14From this point of view, reintegrating the question of knowledge into planning activities allows us to redefine its relationship to action. As we have seen, Suchman points out that, once in the thick of the action, the canoeist relies above all on her embodied skills. As Alonso Vera and Herbert Simon (1993) mention, while Suchman's minimal description of the canoeist's skills may correspond to those of an amateur, it is enough to follow an Olympic competition to appreciate the depth of the skills involved in preparing for a race11. After a meticulous route reconnaissance, competitors prepare at length for the descent, rehearsing it mentally several times before launching into the race. Integrating ways of reacting in the rapids, orienting oneself, and steering one's boat is undoubtedly part of preparing for a race. It's even possible to imagine that certain gestures have been worked out in anticipation of a particular passage or, at the very least, a difficult type of passage.12 Opposing, a priori, the work of preparation with the skills and knowledge of the participants seems to deprive this work of one of its essential components: these skills are, themselves, prepared, trained, or exercised. On this point, Louis Quéré (2016) observed that our grip on objects relies not only on haptic skills but also on constituted and trained habits that enable us to project a future action.

  • 13 This remark also leads us to consider that the work aimed at an identical reproduction of, for exam (...)

15The formation of habits has been extensively discussed in routine studies. Distinguishing between patterning and performing routines, this strand of research proposes to capture the activity of sustaining a routine as well as the one of examining or modifying it (Feldman et al., 2016; López-Cotarelo, 2021; Redaelli & Carassa, 2018). To underline the interdependent nature of these two modes of action, these authors show that routines are both a source of organizational stability and change (see also Quéré, 2022). From the perspective of preparations, routines can be understood as the result of an attempt to overcome each situation's ever-uniqueness and produce order, or at least to manage disorder. As Martha Feldman and colleagues (2016, p. 507) note: “Ironically, doing the same thing can be more difficult than doing something different.”13 Conversely, the same idea leads to following the work that aims to produce as little “seriality” as possible or to arrive at something unique. Linking preparation to skills and knowledge enables us to move away from the sterile opposition between routine and improvisation. Indeed, many debates have sought to distinguish mechanical actions, devoid of volition, from creative, improvised actions, which are often more valued (Bachir-Loopuyt et al., 2010). Yet, as Suchman (2011, p. 28) points out:

Routines presuppose unremarkable acts of improvisation. The difference between routine and exceptional situations is not one of kind, in other words, but of degree, and is itself an effect of practices of boundary-making, of identification of what falls within, or outside, the bounds of the “normal” case.

16We might add, in jest, that improvisations presuppose unremarkable routines. Jazz is an exemplary case in point (Faulkner & Becker, 2011; Hennion, 2010; Sudnow, 1993).

  • 14 On the search for the surprise effect, see Zimmermann (2015) or Riom (2022).

17Preparations offer a fertile avenue for reconsidering either of these movements (routinization or improvisation) as the result of actors' relationships to the action they seek to achieve. Preparing, thus, is more than just a matter of adapting along the way in response to contingencies. It also means working to give these contingencies a more or less important role in the action to come. Taking the canoe descent as an example, if the athlete prepares more seriously than the amateur, it is also because she envisages this action very differently. As a top-level athlete, she aims for marginal gains and can't leave anything to chance! This pragmatic twist is not without consequences. It puts specific issues – such as establishing regularity, being open to the unexpected, or the extent to which one invests in an action - back in the hands of the actors (see Bidet & Gayet-Viaud, 2023). In other words, the idea is not to know whether this contingency can be mastered in practice or, indeed, whether it can be mastered at all. Instead, it is about observing how participants integrate it into their preparations and whether, normatively, it is important to them to be able to restrict this contingency, welcome it, or even provoke it.14

Making action become

  • 15 We take this expression from Didier Debaise and Isabelle Stengers (2021). Drawing on the radical em (...)

18We have suggested that preparations should be seen as a series of operations that go far beyond the production of plans. From this point of view, preparations precede action (as indicated by the prefix pre-) and produce it (parare in Latin, which could come from the Indo-European per: to give birth to, to produce). Insisting on this point allows us to pursue the shift we have started. Indeed, we want to “thicken”15 action, to envisage preparation as a moment when something becomes: “moving into action” is not only matter of practices and knowledge but also of a passage, the emergence of new associations (Hennion & Monnin, 2020; Hennion & Sintive, 2016). From this point of view, preparations allow us to examine action not simply as an unfolding but rather as the superimposition, piling up, and even skillful intensification of multiple layers of preparations worked on by the actors. As Antoine Hennion (2018) points out, under a pianist's fingers, there are not only the keys of her instrument but also her solfeggio, her scales rehearsed for hours on end, and a piece often played over and over again. Therefore, we might consider describing the transformations produced by an action as much as what it causes to happen, as a result, or consequence, as in terms of what it calls for through its preparation.

19Considering preparations as a moment when things become allows us to consider preparations as an experience. The previous RAC issue proposed a discussion of lived experience (Rix-Lièvre, Cahour & Guibourdenche, 2024), i.e., how a participant (and not an outside observer) can describe their activity as it unfolds and document, at least in part, their perceptions, feelings, cognitions, and actions. Investigating preparations offers a partial, albeit unexpected, solution to the study of lived experience. By focusing on the upstream side of action, preparations shed light on what counts for the actors in this experience and what they seek to bring about by creating the conditions to act.

20The term becoming is important for at least two reasons. Firstly, it nuances the idea that there is, a priori, a strong subject of action by underlining that it is not always clear who, in acting, acts on whom and that, sometimes, the challenge is to let oneself be acted upon by something (Gomart & Hennion, 1999; Hennion, 2009). Secondly, the term becoming leads us to consider the relationship between preparation and action in a particular way. On the one hand, it underlines the effort required to make a situation happen. On the other hand, it emphasizes the thick, uncertain, open-ended, “in the making” character of action to borrow a famous phrase from Williams James (1998). It is in this sense that preparations make action become. It is not a matter of conditioning or explaining it but of making it possible.

21In this way, we suggest moving away from action’s hic et nunc to follow, over a more extended period, the continuities and ruptures between its preparation and its completion, and to replace this distinction in the hands of the actors rather than those of the analyst: how do actors envisage action from its preparation? To what extent are preparations integrated into, or detached from, action as such? How do they conceive or avoid making such distinctions? Can we observe the moments when transitions take place? What limits are set or, on the contrary, absent? Do we switch smoothly from one to the other, or conversely, is it an effort or a boundary that impose itself, for example, between a rehearsal and a public performance? The actors we follow in the settings presented in this special issue are all mobilized by these questions and seek to establish the circumstances that will enable them to take action.

Inquiring into preparations

22Now that we have replaced the notion of preparation in perspective, we propose to develop several research avenues based on the articles gathered in this special issue. The diversity of the settings brought together (health, agriculture, business, the arts, activism) allows us to establish a series of observations that, we hope, will pave the way for future investigations into preparations. We choose to organize these observations around five thematic axes: getting embedded in the field through preparations; relationships to the unexpected; preparations’ knowledge and expertise; preparatory devices; and the collective consistency of preparations.

Getting embedded through preparations

23Studying preparations is often a bet, sometimes even in the eyes of the participants. Why take the time to pay attention to moments that seem peripheral to the generally more visible or spectacular activity that the inquiry focuses on? The articles presented here demonstrate that this bet pays off: following preparations closely leads to exploring sites and temporalities other than those of the action under study, which the inquiry could easily overlook. In this respect, we may ask whether analyzing preparations can be another methodological trick, such as breakdowns (Bourrier & Nova, 2019; Latour, 2010) or breaching experiments (Garfinkel, 2009).

  • 16 It is an experience we have also had in our respective fields.

24However, accessing preparations is not a matter of course. Sometimes, it is a matter of circumstances beyond the ethnographer's control. Gerard Dubey tells us that he became aware of the preparatory work only by spending time between operating theatres. Anna Dupleix-Marchal and Pascale Moity-Maizi, as Claude Rosental, also mention the importance of time spent in the field. In other situations, access is provided by the functions assigned to the researcher (Jean Danielou or Claire Bodelet) or by the small tasks entrusted to them (Sophie Tabouret or Mathilde Lagrola). In Maxime Le Calvé's article, a research device - drawings - facilitates it. Of all situations, Célia de Pietro's article on XR activists is the most telling example: accessing preparations results from a commitment to the field16.

25The authors of this special issue all have in common the decisive choice to get embedded in the activity they were seeking to describe. However, what is at stake in this embeddedness is not so much what is generally attributed to the term (see Bourrier, 2017). It is not a matter of evaluating the conditions of access to the field with a slightly suspicious eye to gain objectivity but of giving oneself the means to be taken by it (Favret-Saada, 1977; Hennion, 2015) to “be there for real” (Riom, 2021) or to question more precisely the moments and activities in which the investigator is led to participate actively (Tanferri, 2021). From this point of view, as Anna Dupleix-Marchal and Pascale Moity-Maizi illustrate remarkably well, preparations are, for ethnographers, moments during which they can construct common problems with the actors.

26Preparations are not just a methodological device but also a narrative one. It is hard to talk about preparations if one does not know what is at stake in the prepared activity. To convey the importance of the preparations, a pedagogical effort is required to get the reader on board. This is the case, for example, in Claude Rosental's article: by going through pitch preparation, he explains how this exercise is fundamental to an entrepreneurial project. In this way, he can give an account of what happens in a “startup accelerator.” This pedagogical effort requires taking expected results and/or prepared products into account while describing activities that, as in the example of surgery (Dubey and Le Calvé), can occur in distinct places and times. In other words, recounting preparations helps to produce an ethnographic totalization (Dodier & Baszanger, 1997), i.e., the possibility of restituting the collected materials into a single, coherent whole.

Integrating the unplanned, provoking the unexpected

27The preparations described in this special issue are more or less marked by trial and error and discussion or, on the contrary, the fruit of well-established protocols. The relationships with uncertainty and/or instability run through the contributions, although they appear differently. The clowns followed by Claire Bodelet prepare themselves to adapt to the reactions of their spectators and integrate them into their performance. To do so, they rely on well-established action sequences (such as the red/white clown division) or details gleaned from care teams. Other articles describe a different approach to uncertainty. Mathilde Lagrola points out, for example, that the cheesemaker responds to the spontaneity of microbes by organizing her space and her gestures in such a way as to guarantee the quality of her production. Through her cleaning routines, she does not so much plan the action of microbes as simply make it possible.

28While the clowns described by Claire Bodelet and the cheesemakers accompanied by Mathilde Lagrola follow relatively straightforward and stabilized protocols, other articles report on much less assured preparations. In Maxime Le Calvé's article, the dummy prepared for simulation in neurosurgery is still only a prototype whose production is only starting to be standardized. The designers are progressing step by step, testing, for example, the animal material best able to reproduce the tactile sensation of cutting into a brain. They hope to be able to stabilize this innovation and bring it to the market soon. The same applies to the varietal experimentation described by Sophie Tabouret. Actors are devising and trying to agree on a protocol to integrate the wine industry and its commercial stakes. If procedures are not always consolidated, it is sometimes an element of surprise that is sought or provoked. Secrecy thus plays a central role in the preparation of the actions of the XR activists presented by Célia de Pietro. It guarantees not only the success of the action for the public but also the safety of those taking part. Each of the preparations described in this special issue brings a definition of uncertainty and its qualities, whether considered to be desirable or, on the contrary, to be limited. Paying attention to these points reveals how preparations engage a conception of the action to be taken.

Preparations’ knowledge

29The various articles in this special issue also describe an intense epistemic activity. Its richness goes far beyond the production of plans. A vast array of embodied skills, expertise, and knowledge overflows from these preparations. How do participants know the right way to prepare and set up? Who are the preparation professionals, and what do they do? From gathering information and reading documents and images to preparing a workspace, this expertise is based not only on knowledge of the action but also on how to prepare it successfully.

30The preparations thus, make visible a range of embodied skills and the training of dispositions. These are developed through simulations, exercises, and role-playing. Part of XR activists' preparations for “doing being rebel” involves bodily experimentations with the techniques used to respond to law enforcement interventions. These simulations also lead them to explore and tame their emotions. In this way, preparing can be understood as acting on an experience as the participants work on it and organize it (Bidet, 2008; 2011).

31Depending on the field, these skills and know-how are more or less valued and recognized as such. They can take the form of stabilized knowledge circulating extensively. Consider, for example, the knowledge of the cheese technician described by Mathilde Lagrola. He disseminates hygiene “best practices” to cheesemakers. Yet, this expertise can be the subject of disagreement or controversy: how to prepare for varietal experimentation must reach a consensus, as described by Sophie Tabouret. Agronomists, winegrowers, and government authorities disagree on the form this experimentation should take. Here, preparations lead to the roles played by less local prescriptions and to knowledge not directly elaborated by the actors followed during fieldwork. We are thinking not only of French legislation on varietal experimentation (Tabouret) but also of the procedures formulated by Ballot-Flurin in her beekeeping manual (Dupleix-Marchal & Moity-Maizi) or the XR objectives published on a website (de Pietro). These situations question how such prescriptions are taken up during preparation work.

32In this respect, the quality of preparations, whether at a local stage or regarding broader prescriptions, is a recurring theme in this special issue. For example, quality is at stake in the preparations of the simulation described by Maxime Le Calvé: can it faithfully reproduce the experience of a brain operation? To what extent can a stable enough device be produced to be marketed? This asks how to evaluate preparations and who is responsible for it. Who decides on the quality not only of the results, but also of how tests or set-ups are carried out? These questions align partly with the work on preparedness (see, for example, Collier, 2008; Deville, Guggenheim & Hrdličková, 2014). They open up the authorization processes that certify the quality of what has been prepared and shift the question of the preparations’ success beyond their actual results.

  • 17 Case studies in business schools are a particularly good example (Lezaun & Muniesa, 2017; Muniesa, (...)

33Preparations can even be seen as a specific activity area in some settings. The articles by Claude Rosental and Jean Danielou illustrate this point. The various training courses offered by the incubator, as described by Rosental, are run by actors who could be described as “preparation pros.” In Jean Danielou's article, Marcus can also be presented as a preparation professional. His job is to prepare for the redeployment of a major multinational energy company. The article highlights the importance of strategic and bureaucratic activities within preparation practices. These support activities also appear occasionally in various contributions (block assistants in Dubey or cheesemaking technicians in Lagrola, for example). Following maintenance studies (Denis & Pontille, 2022; Graham & Thrift, 2007; Strebel, Bovet & Sormani, 2019), these examples suggest the existence of little-studied professional continents and a veritable preparation economy, ranging from consulting and training to the publication of manuals and the sale of equipment. Indeed, we might wonder if preparations might be, in part, the opposite side of what some authors have called the “performance society” (McKenzie, 2002; Muniesa, 2018; Stark, 2020) or the “demonstration society” (Rosental, 2019). These new demands on both individuals and collectives lead to better preparation, training, and education.17

Preparation devices

34Another striking aspect of the various articles in this special issue is the presence of multiple devices contributing to preparations. These “ordering devices,” to use Lucy Suchman's (1987) terminology, are numerous: Excel spreadsheets or meeting minutes (Tabouret); schedules or intervention diagrams (Dubey, Le Calvé); PowerPoints (Rosental); transmission notebooks (Bodelet); or reports (Danielou). If an interest in such devices is not particularly original, entering through their preparation allows us to give them specific attention. Not only do they play a role in action, but we also gain a better grasp on how they are produced, remodeled, and adjusted, as well as the know-how that goes with them.

35From this point of view, Danielou's investigation is particularly telling. By following the writing of the reports that will enable a multinational to position itself on renewable energy production projects (in this case, bio-combustion), we can grasp the constitution of these organizational devices in the making rather than their mobilization in the course of action. What will later appear as a resource for all actors is still in the making. In other situations, preparations involve more unexpected devices. This is the case, for example, with the beehives in the article by Dupleix-Marchal and Moity-Maizi. Whether Warré, Kenyan, or Dadant, their architecture matters. It prepares the encounter between the beekeeper and the bees and may facilitate it by influencing the swarm's behavior. This example underlines the fact that preparations often contribute not only to setting up spaces but also to stabilizing gestures and postures. Considering material aspects and embodiment in action is already a well-developed line of interest (Denis & Pontille, 2010; Hutchins, 2020; Lave, 1984; Marres & Lezaun, 2011; Streeck, Goodwin & LeBaron, 2011; Vinck, 2012). Nevertheless, the articles in this special issue extend these questions by examining how spaces, times, and bodies are organized.

  • 18 On such a rethinking of temporality, see Alač and colleagues (2011) asking “when” a robot is social (...)

36These passages through the “posterior regions” of action, to borrow an expression from Ervin Goffman (1973), reveal different relationships to the role played by the environment. The question thus becomes more about “when” the environment determines action rather than a once-and-for-all answer18. For example, the workspace is an essential resource in cheesemakers' routinized hygiene, cleaning, and storage practices (Lagrola). It orients, guides, and facilitates the various operations carried out, specifically by separating “clean” from “dirty”: clean instruments belong in one part of the sink, the dirty ones in another. It is important not to get confused. The author shows, however, how this space is precisely thought out and reworked by professionals, for example, during a new installation. Preparations thus create spaces and temporalities for action, organizing them and helping to put them in order (Law, 1993; Mol & Law, 1995). As such, the articles presented here suggest that preparations create “productive” or “generous” constraints (Gomart & Hennion, 1999) that enable action to come to fruition. These practices resonate with verbs such as “make do,” “make sure that,” or “put oneself in condition to,” which clearly underline the difficult task of orienting things so that a specific form of action can occur.

Forming a collective

37One final point emerges from the articles gathered in this special issue, and we would like to conclude with it as an opening gesture: each of the preparations described here involves a collective. These collectives can take very different forms. They can be more or less extensive, whether they concern a beekeeper in front of his apiary or a varietal experiment mobilizing a large part of a region's economic sector. They can be ephemeral, like a duo of clowns getting together for a day, or long-term, like the investment by a multinational energy company in a strategy to redirect its business. As we have seen, these collectives can also be more or less professionalized, heterogeneous, or consensual.

38This point brings the preparations even closer to the pragmatist conceptions of inquiry (Cefaï, 2016; Cefaï et al., 2015; Dewey, 2010). We find the same collective effort to move from an indeterminate situation to one whose description, roles, and places make sense for its actors. In this respect, preparations are ontographies, following Michael Lynch (2013). They correspond to a moment when a collective works to produce its existence and establish what defines it to know itself better. The case of the startups described by Claude Rosental is exemplary in this respect: entrepreneurial projects exist not least because the individuals behind them have trained themselves to “pitch” them. The pitch is an essential part of the foundation on which their consistency relies. The contributions to this special issue examine several compositions of disparate elements taking shape over time and space, distributing roles, attributing qualities, and calling on a whole range of expertise.

39The articles assembled here also demonstrate that taking action puts such collectives to the test: Have things been agreed upon well enough, and does there seem to be enough consensus? Who is working together to make things happen? Preparations are also the time of testing everyone's and everything’s suitability for a project. Tracking these processes enables us to identify what is reinforced or, to the contrary, abandoned from one rehearsal or adjustment to the next. For example, working in the apiary involves paying a different attention to bees and detaching oneself from specific equipment or devices to create an alternative form of beekeeping (Dupleix-Marchal & Moity-Maizi). Studying preparations reveals the various forms of this compositional work and underlines what contributes to (or limits) collective action.

40We believe that this special issue demonstrates the value of following action through its preparations. We would like to thank the authors for accepting the invitation we launched as a challenge. In doing so, they have offered many extensions to our interrogations by paying attention to the fragile and challenging activity of preparing. We hope that others will seize upon these avenues to pursue them and make them fruitful, helping to prepare original encounters between activity analysis, science and technology studies, and pragmatist sociologies.

We would like to thank the editorial board of the Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances for their trust, as well as the thirty-five internal and external reviewers, without whom the publication of this special issue would not have been possible. This special issue also benefited from the financial support of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Finally, we thank Alexandra Bidet, Solène Gouilhers, David Pontille, Géraldine Rix-Lièvre, Pascale Trompette, and Dominique Vinck for their invaluable feedback. We are unreservedly responsible for the arguments presented here and their flaws.

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Notes

1 This tradition is particularly rich in France and has contributed to several research currents, which this journal is largely heir to.

2 Apart from a few texts, including an article by David Kirsh (1990) on robotics and another by Bernard Conein on cooking (1990), very few articles deal explicitly with preparations.

3 While we share particular concerns with these authors – notably regarding the production and formalization of knowledge or testing – this type of preparation has already been studied extensively (see Bidet, 2015; Collier, 2008; Deville, Guggenheim & Hrdličková, 2014; Lakoff, 2007; Laurent, Saraç-Lesavre & Violle, 2019).

4 In France in particular, much research has been inspired by American work on this subject (see, for example, Barbier, 2000; Bidet, 2012; Bidet et al., 2006; Bidet, Datchary & Gaglio, 2017; Pharo & Quéré, 1990).

5 In the second edition of her book (Suchman, 2007), she collects the responses she composed following collective readings of the first edition (see Koschmann, 2003; Norman, 1993). Human-Machine Reconfigurations additionally goes back to these misunderstandings in a series of footnotes, illustrating the breadth of the debate and its theoretical importance.

6 Suchman (1993, p. 75) explains: “To reach that understanding [of how plans arise out of situated activity and how they are subsequently brought to bear on it] will require an account of the relation between planning-as-activity, the artifacts of that activity, and the subsequent activities to which those artifacts (conceptual, linguistic, or otherwise) are meaningfully related.” Chapter 11 of Human-Machine Reconfigurations provides an extensive list of these artifacts.

7 Suchman (2011) cites work in the field of history about the constitution of train schedules in the US to justify that she did not herself revisited their production, but rather their uses in action.

8 Unfortunately, this special issue does not sports, which is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating fields through which we could approach preparations for action, as it as extensively theorized and developed this notion. In Comment gagner un match de foot? journalists Raphaël Cosmidis, Julien Momont, Philippe Gargov, and Christophe Kuchly (2021) carry out a fascinating investigation into the quest for performance in a soccer club. They describe the depth of knowledge, systems, and the professionals involved in optimizing the first team's performance during the ninety minutes of a match. See also Michel Récopé, Stéphane Héros, Simon Boyer, Simon Flandin and Géraldine Rix-Lièvre (2024) or Thibault Kerivel, Julien Guibourdenche, Magali Prost and Cyril Bossard (2024) in the previous RAC issue.

9 On this subject, see the work on amateurs (Hennion, 2009; Hennion & Teil, 2004; Teil, 2004); on renunciation, see Monnin (2023).

10 Which plays on a double-entendre: it means figuratively “getting to know each other” but literally “doing knowledge.”

11 It's always surprising to see authors who claim to draw on ethnographic methods use fictional examples. While such borrowings and metaphors can sometimes be heuristic, they always run the risk of simplification or even aporia. For the case of theater as a metaphor, see, for example, Atkinson (2006) or Vinck and Tanferri (2020).

12 We say imagine because neither of us has ever competed in canoeing. Yet, this comment is informed by our practice of different sports, notably fencing. On the preparation of the athlete's gesture, see also Hennion (2010).

13 This remark also leads us to consider that the work aimed at an identical reproduction of, for example, mass-produced objects or standardized food items in industrial production is a particularly complex task aimed at stabilizing courses of action that preparations could help to account for. See, for example, Riom (2023a; 2023b) on the concert in the music industry.

14 On the search for the surprise effect, see Zimmermann (2015) or Riom (2022).

15 We take this expression from Didier Debaise and Isabelle Stengers (2021). Drawing on the radical empiricism of William James (2005), Debaise and Stengers invite us to resist the thinning of the world, that is, the reduction of the plurality of relations between beings and the heterogeneity of existences. From this point of view, we consider that some theories of action, when they reduce it to a chronological sequence (A, then B, then C), tend to thin rather than thicken the world. If accounting for an action seems to be an essential step, it's not for its own sake but for what it enables us to unfold.

16 It is an experience we have also had in our respective fields.

17 Case studies in business schools are a particularly good example (Lezaun & Muniesa, 2017; Muniesa, 2020).

18 On such a rethinking of temporality, see Alač and colleagues (2011) asking “when” a robot is social, or Bruno Latour (2013) on the two moments of organizational existence.

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Loïc Riom et Mylène Tanferri, « On the Trail of Preparations  »Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances [En ligne], 18-2 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 juin 2024, consulté le 15 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rac/33892 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/11r9s

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Auteurs

Loïc Riom

Junior lecturer at the University of Lausanne, he teaches at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. He holds a PhD in science and technology studies (Centre de sociologie de l'innovation, Mines Paris), during which he studied the economics of intimate, secret concert formats. His current research focuses on innovation in the music industry.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5122-5590

Address: STS Lab, Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), University of Lausanne, Quartier UNIL-Mouline, Bâtiment Géopolis, CH-1015 Lausanne (Switzerland)
E-mail: loic.riom[at]unil.ch

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Mylène Tanferri

She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies (STS Lab, University of Lausanne) and is currently a Marie Sklodowska Curie postdoctoral researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on cultural and natural heritage digitization as a socio-technical process.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1650-8442

Address: Center for Climate IT (CCIT), IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, DK-2300 Copenhagen (Danmark)
E-mail: mylt[at]itu.dk

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    Paru dans Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances, 17-4 | 2023
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