Research questions and hypotheses, theoretical approach and methodology

To test this hypothesis, ASMOG is organized under different work packages (WPs). The WPs are a way of structuring the project’s thematic areas and responsibilities; the collaboration with different project participants; and of organizing our dissemination of the result. The WPs will intersect and cross-fertilize each other.  The WPs are structured around the following research questions, which have been formulated in collaboration with the partners:

1. Automation, simulation and human-machine interaction:

1.1

How are different stakeholders working to address challenges brought about by the automation shift in the maritime offshore industry? What are the most effective human solutions to overcome these challenges?

1.2

How can humans in some specific cases, like during simulations, learn from interaction with machines and how can machines be “trained” by human factors? 

1.3

What kind of knowledge about human-machine interaction or fully automated new vessels (in tandem with digitalization of traditional industry) can this research create?

2. Labor, industry and society:

2.1

How do the partners on this project - academia, industries and the public institutions  - discuss and analyze the complexity of risk, safety and labor? How do the come to implement solutions to overcome challenges related for instance to skepticism, the fear factor, ethical questions and lack of knowledge related to the automation shift?

2.2

How do seafarers respond to automation initiatives, and how do they conceptualize labor safety and risk?

2.3

What is the significance of relational, socio-cultural and hierarchical dimensions of advanced technological operations?

3. Green technology:

3.1

Can this new type of collaboration and the theoretical and practical outcomes that will derive be used to develop guidelines and precedents which will be key inspiration models to other similar contexts?

3.2

Can we learn more about energy transition by carefully analyzing the paradox of greentech being developed in the largest energy industry in the world namely that of oil and gas?

3.3

In what ways are developments and learning methods within the automation shift made relevant for green energy initiatives and solutions?

4. Conceptualizing the automation shift:

4.1

In what ways does the automation shift actualize different values and understandings, conceptual and ethical frameworks related to labor and risk?

4.2

Is the theorization of labor and risk in this particular context (automation in the maritime industry) useful for the creation and implementation of practical ways to tackle challenges and uncertainty in the different sectors?

4.3

Is the theorization of labor and risk in this particular context useful to safeguard and strengthen workers’ rights in a fast-changing industry? What are the consequences of the automation shift for legal and ethical norms guiding the industries?

The theoretical approach of ASMOG is explorative and grounded in anthropological theories. 

We pay particular attention to how technologies are part of, and produce, a social universe of meaning, hierarchies and power.

At the core of the automation shift are reconfigurations of risk assessments and labor relations. We approach risk as a multi-dimensional concern; in terms of physical risk for the seafarers; operational and financial risk for the industries; and environmental risk. Drawing on anthropological studies of labor (Harris 2007, Harvey & Krohn-Hansen 2018) we explore changing labor relations and risk management at the interface between new technologies, increased labor specialization and precarious labor. We propose that notions of labor are both negotiated, contested and re-invented at this interface.

In our innovative focus on learning processes in automation and simulation trainings, ASMOG draws on the anthropology of the senses, phenomenology, and embodied learning (Bourdieu 1996, Ingold 1993, Muller 1996). Humans learn not only through language and vision, but by and through the body and the senses. These dimensions are important also for the use of highly advanced technologies – and especially the simulation trainings will enable us to make important observations in this regard. The simulation trainings facilitate a close-up and hands-on study not only of learning processes but also of the knowledges produced through human-machine relations (Latour 1991, Haraway 1994); i.e., how knowledge is produced, acquired, communicated and shared, and not least how the machines “learn” from humans. Rather than seeing human-machine interaction as an individualized phenomenon, we pay attention to relational, socio-cultural and hierarchical dimensions of technological operations and learning processes. Important to explore is for instance how hierarchies play out in automation and simulation trainings, i.e., given the highly internationalized working environment of the Norwegian maritime industry and considering its historically gender-specific character. ASMOG’s emphasis on sociality in human-machine interaction facilitates our study of safety and risk assessments as socially embedded processes (Das 2018). This is vital for the understanding of safety and risk considerations as they are actualized at the complex interfaces between virtual and offshore operation management.

We analyze automation initiatives as a complex machine-society-nature system that generates new frames for interaction between technology, seafarers and managers; between sea and mainland operations and relations.

Focusing especially on navigation at sea, we explore navigation not only as technological tool but as a complex relationship producing particular social relations, embodiments and envisionings of both virtual and material landscapes. With automation, offshore operations take place at increasingly complex crossroads between sea and mainland, real-life and the virtual. This raises new questions about communication between automated vessels and mainland headquarters. ASMOG draws here on anthropological perspectives on technology’s role in the production of space, i.e., by seeing space as produced through social – and technological – practices (Lefebvre 1991). We are hence concerned with understanding human-machine interaction not as an isolated phenomenon, but as part of the production of virtual and “real” space, spatial boundaries, and interconnections, both discursively (Brosius 1999) and materially (West et al. 2006). In this manner, ASMOG explores the production of spatial boundaries and interconnections at the crossroads between the virtual and material landscapes of offshore operations. We are interested in how these virtual and material landscapes may produce also particular mainland relations and identities. In studying these interconnections, we propose that Morton’s hyperobjects can be considered as extended global infrastructures of technology-energy-transport relations, and that maritime hubs like Haugesund can be studied as a node in such a globalized system.

1.4          Novelty and ambition

ASMOG is an ambitious and unprecedented project. Pushing the research frontier forward, this anthropological project examines the various dynamics unfolding with the automation shift in the maritime sector. With UiB as project owner, the project unites the expertise, both theoretical and practical, of a world-known leading shipping company (Knutsen OAS); a seafarers training and simulation training provider (Simsea); a specialized team on the use of technology (AVO Consulting); the NMA and the Municipality of Haugesund. The project proposes a novel theoretical and methodological approach to investigate the relationship between humans and automation processes in the maritime sector, by using simulation training for seafarers as a site for data collection and a tool for sharing and developing new knowledge.

1.5          Methodology

Long-term ethnographic fieldwork will be the key method deployed by ASMOG’s research team. Our ethnographic and multi-sited fieldwork will be conducted in the two industries (Simsea and Knutsen OAS); in the industrial port and the urban area of Haugesund; at vessels and in simulation trainings, and will involve a three-way approach: a) participant observation (i.e. immersion, observation and participation in the field) among seafarers and groups working or affected by the automation shift in the maritime sector; b) semi-structured interviews (with individual stakeholders, but also focus group interviews with the industry partners and other relevant groups); c) secondary source review (the collection and analysis of documents related to the automation shift also among other relevant archives like those of International Maritime Organization (IMO), industries working in technological innovation like Simsea and Knutsen, and other simulation suppliers and schools like Simwave and the Maritime Institute Willem Barentz in the Netherlands).

ASMOG builds on our experiences with well-established methods of participant observation in social anthropology, which involves immersion into the everyday experiences of the interlocutors and on-site observation of interaction, communication, and relations. Participant observation is particularly apt for exploring our research questions related to automation, as it involves engagement with interlocutors over long periods of time and can, through in-depth and on-site participation, identify important as well as subtle dimensions, challenges and possibilities related to the automation shift. In this regard, social anthropology provides the fieldwork experience and hands-on method necessary for this form of collaboration between social science and the industries – and to make use of on-site observations during operations as well as to make sense of social interaction and communication.

While hence relying on well-established methods of participant observation, ASMOG is also highly methodologically innovative especially in that it will experiment with simulation trainings – and will be using these encounters as field data, as described below. Through participant observation we will produce ethnographic descriptions and analysis through community involvement and direct observation. ASMOG’s participant observation will also involve working together with people employed in the industry, e.g., by participating in, holding and/or co-holding a simulation training to seafarers at Simsea; by joining Knutsen OAS seafarers on the vessel during a maritime operation; by assisting the NMA or the Municipality of Haugesund in their activities and network involved with maritime issues; and by working with the specialized team in maritime digitalization in AVO Consulting. In so doing, the project will increase understanding on how automation, digitalization and innovation changes how business models operate and the effect it has on people, culture and organization.