10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17262
The future has become a common theme in governance of contemporary societies, particularly in the context of technological development. It is presented as open and uncertain, which, either as an opportunity or as a threat, demands a sense of urgency. Concretely, the future is embodied and made present through expectations, which have a performative effect in the constitution of socio-technical fields. These expectations are embedded in socio-material practices, through which they are produced, shared, shaped and contested. In this essay, I propose a framework to understand anticipation as a set of interrelated techno-scientific practices, which I call an anticipatory assemblage. This perspective has two contributions: first, it allows an in-depth understanding of phenomena such as technological hype cycles. Secondly, it frames the performative aspect of expectations in relation to governance, by considering how a series of anticipatory practices co-produce techno-scientific fields. I specify this framework using the case of two emerging technologies: graphene and 3D printing, for which I stress some of the differences in anticipatory practices and governance.
application/pdf
2038-3460
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Carla Alvial-Palavicino
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
futures
The Future as Practice. A Framework to Understand Anticipation in Science and Technology
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
6
Scenarios
2016-01-29
2023-06-19
2016-01-29
2023-08-03
135-172
TS
Carla Alvial-Palavicino
2015
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17262
135
Universidad Diego Portales and University of Twente
2038-3460
2
futures
en
172
The Future as Practice. A Framework to Understand Anticipation in Science and Technology
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17262/16121
6
                                                                            Scenario

The Future as Practice
A Framework to Understand Anticipation in Science
and Technology

Carla Alvial-Palavicino
Universidad Diego Portales and University of Twente
	
  


       Abstract The future has become a common theme in governance of con-
       temporary societies, particularly in the context of technological develop-
       ment. It is presented as open and uncertain, which, either as an opportunity
       or as a threat, demands a sense of urgency. Concretely, the future is em-
       bodied and made present through expectations, which have a performative
       effect in the constitution of socio-technical fields. These expectations are
       embedded in socio-material practices, through which they are produced,
       shared, shaped and contested. In this essay, I propose a framework to un-
       derstand anticipation as a set of interrelated techno-scientific practices,
       which I call an anticipatory assemblage. This perspective has two contribu-
       tions: first, it allows an in-depth understanding of phenomena such as tech-
       nological hype cycles. Secondly, it frames the performative aspect of expec-
       tations in relation to governance, by considering how a series of anticipa-
       tory practices co-produce techno-scientific fields. I specify this framework
       using the case of two emerging technologies: graphene and 3D printing, for
       which I stress some of the differences in anticipatory practices and govern-
       ance.

       Keywords: anticipation; sociology of expectations; governance; anticipa-
       tory practices; futures.

       Corresponding author: Carla Alvial-Palavicino, Núcleo Milenio de
       Investigación en Energía y Sociedad, Escuela de Sociología Universidad
       Diego Portales, Av. Ejército 333, Santiago, Chile. E-mail:
       carla.alvial@mail.udp.cl.



1. Living in the Future: Emergent Technologies and
Contemporary Life

    It can be argued that emerging technologies only exist in the future.
For many new technologies, what is said, shared, visualized and even
traded only exists as speculative statements about their possibilities. Yet,
	
  
TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
6 (2) pp. 135-172 - ISSN 2038-3460                2015
www.tecnoscienza.net
136                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

these promises and expectations seem to be forceful enough to create as-
sociations, promote investments and market products. In fact, this com-
pulsion to look and act in relation to the future is at the core of capitalist
dynamics and liberal democracies (Anderson 2010; Beckert 2014).
     It is for this reason that the future has become a category of social in-
quiry in and of itself. A large and heterogeneous set of literature in the
social sciences has been devoted to the study of “the future.” While tradi-
tionally the social sciences have been a past- or present-oriented disci-
pline (Brown and Michael 2003; Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Poli 2014),
in recent years scholars from diverse areas of the humanities and social
sciences have engaged actively in the study of the social, cultural and po-
litical aspects of the future (Adam and Groves 2007; Andersson and Rin-
dzeviciute 2015; Appadurai 2013; Beckert 2013).
     For contemporary societies, the future is highly uncertain. While this
might seem self-evident, it is a profoundly contemporary phenomenon to
perceive the future as empty, open-ended and unpredictable (Adam and
Groves 2007)1. Despite this unpredictability, there is an increasing need
to act in relation to the future, particularly to prevent potential risk or to
profit from big promises. This implies that an uncertain future is made
“actionable” by a set of societal arrangements, attitudes and interventions
that can be legitimized in the name of what is yet to come (Anderson
2010; Beckert 2014; Massumi 2007).
     What can or should be done in relation to the future varies across cul-
tures and historical times (Koselleck 2004). Despite their uncertain and
indeterminate nature, futures are known through a range of methods.
Modern forms of prediction are characterized by a techno-scientific ra-
tionale in which calculative and modelling practices play an important
role (Schubert 2015).2 Adam and Groves (2007) argue that there are three
forms of knowledge about the future: (1) the future as an extension of the
present, as the consequence of ongoing developments, in terms of its in-
dividual, socio-cultural or natural components; (2) the future as a contin-
uation of the past, which can be rationally grasped by scientific methods
of correlation and calculation; and (3) mapping possible, probable or
preferable futures in a non-deterministic way, as a basis for choices, deci-
sions and actions. The last two forms can be observed in modern ways of
relating to the future.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     1
      In contrast to an unpredictable future, Adam and Groves (2007) refer for
example to a “divine future” determined by the Gods, which is a future that can
be known, seen and anticipated because it is a pre-given future. This form of fu-
ture thinking was important for pre-industrial western societies.
    2
      One recent development is to move from exploratory forms of prediction
such as foresight, which are aimed at making visible the forces and assumptions
embedded in future thinking to the use of “Big Data”. This approach to predic-
tion shows – and creates – trends, without paying attention to the forces that ex-
plain their existence (Couldry 2014).
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  137
     Starting from the post-World War II period, a number of specialized
methods and institutions have been created with the purpose of knowing
and controlling the future. With the establishment of the RAND Corpo-
ration and other related institutes across the western world3, the future
was established as an object of knowledge, expertise and governance
(Andersson and Keizer 2014). These organizations developed methods
such as forecast, Delphi4 and scenarios to understand future threats or
predict the success of future technologies. The future emerged “as a field
of study, constituted by actors through a wide repertoire of instruments,
technologies and narratives, held together by their ambition to shape and
reshape the modern world” (Andersson and Rindzeviciute 2015, 5).
     This range of methods and actors contribute to building up futures as
an element of current societies. The future has become an object of gov-
ernance, a category of both scientific and political intervention (Anders-
son and Keizer 2014). However, it is not a neutral construct; instead, how
it is framed, such as what and who is included or excluded, is central to
accounting for the choices made, particularly in relation to technology
policy decisions (Skjølsvold 2014). In fact, actions in the present need to
be understood not solely as the ultimate outcome of past events, but ra-
ther as an outcome of ideas and perceptions of the future (Beckert 2014).
     The concept of anticipation captures the modes and effects of acting
in the name of the future. It refers to ways of action that are future-
oriented, in which futures are grasped, known and articulated so that par-
ticular interventions may take place (Anderson 2007, 2010). Anticipation
pays attention to the ways in which the future is constructed in the pre-
sent; it is not about prediction, but about the mutual adjustment between
future expectations and contingent dynamics.

1.1 Anticipation in Science and Technology

    Anticipation is a process through which the present is transformed, in-
tervened in and ultimately governed in the name of the future (Adams et
al. 2009; Anderson 2010; Rip 2012). It is both a cognitive mechanism and
a social process (Kinsley 2012). Schutz (1976) argues that despite the im-
possibility for social actors to predict the future, since it does not have a
pre-existing ontology, actors nonetheless anticipate what is to come and
are interested in controlling it. While anticipation itself can be considered
almost an “anthropological category” proper to all human beings (Beck-
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     3
      The development of techniques and technologies to know and control the
future is not just a feature of western democracies. Similar developments can be
found in the East, particularly in the ex-USSR in relation to the notion of cyber-
netics (Andersson and Rindzeviciute 2015; Barbrook 2007).
    4
      Delphi methodology is a forecasting method that is based on the opinions of
a panel of experts, such that opinions are expected to converge after various
rounds to the most likely predictions.
138                                                          Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

ert 2013; Poli 2014), “anticipation” as a form of governance is the result
of understanding the future as highly dynamic, uncertain and indetermi-
nate (Massumi 2007).
    Anticipation is an important part of innovation processes, particularly
for emerging technologies. It has been argued that promises and expecta-
tions play a particularly important role in shaping technological develop-
ments (Rip and Van Amerom 2010; Rip 2012). Innovation actors coordi-
nate in relation to future expectations through the creation of a shared
“agenda” (van Lente and Rip 1998). Anticipation is enabled by expecta-
tions, visions and imaginaries. For example, socio-technical imaginaries
shape the structuration of large-technical systems such as energy, in a
process in which an imaginary of a technology as well as an imaginary of
society are co-produced (Jasanoff and Kim 2009; Levidow and Papaioan-
nou 2013). Visions and more specific expectations also play an important
role in shaping technological developments; in fact, in early stages of de-
velopment, promises about a technology are often overenthusiastic, in a
process known as hype, which promotes collective action but which also
leads to over-exaggeration and disappointment (Dignum 2013; Gisler et
al. 2011; Pedersen and Hendricks 2013).
    It has been suggested that there are two contrasting forms of relating
to the future for new and emerging technologies, in the process of co-
construction of technologies and society. These two regimes have been
characterized as techno-scientific or collective experimentation (Felt and
Wynne 2007). These notions aim to capture ideal forms in which future
orientation shapes technological development. The regime of economics of
techno-scientific promises (ETP) is characterized by a linear, top-down
and centralized model of innovation. In this regime, fictions are used to
attract resources, drawing from an uncertain future that stresses competi-
tion, but these fictions do not account for the broader societal aspects of
a technology. In contrast, the regime of collective experimentation (CE)
represents a distributed, collective, and open process of innovation. In
this case the emphasis is on the democratization of technological devel-
opment and on the expectations produced through the engagement of
users and experimentation around new socio-technical configurations
(Felt and Wynne 2007).
    These modes represent two normative models of technological devel-
opment, which relate respectively to two different models of society that
are being performed. In the regime of ETP, promises and hype drive the
actions of innovation actors. In contrast, in the regime of CE, the future is
not depicted in terms of promises and expectations, but rather technolo-
gies are constructed by free, open experimenting, without attributing to
the future a steering role. While such distinction refers to ideal types, it
can be expected that empirically, future orientation and expectations play
a role in both cases, although enacted and mobilized in different ways.
Furthermore, for both cases there might be not be one but multiple fu-
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  139
tures, as this is often the result of a nonlinear process in which claims and
counterclaims are contested (Brown et al. 2000, 5).
    This normative characteristic of socio-technical innovation has been
used to develop approaches to the steering of these processes into desired
directions. One of them is known as “anticipatory governance,” which
can be defined as the capacity to rehearse future possibilities prior to
“diving into the future” (Guston 2014). Similarly, calls for “steering” the
development of emerging technologies, recently under the label of “Re-
sponsible Innovation,” are based on the capacity of actors to anticipate
how technologies will become embedded in society (Nordmann 2014). In
particular this last approach has been strongly taken up in policy cycles as
an implicitly future-oriented governance approach to emergent technolo-
gies, which steers its development towards socially desirable situations
(Simakova and Coenen 2013).
    In sum, anticipation as a way of knowing and acting in relation to the
future is a central aspect of technological development. Yet this is a com-
plex process that requires a specific arrangement of knowledge, expertise,
actors, practices, and institutions. In this process, expectations – as prom-
ises or concerns – play an important role. It is through expectations that
discourses about the future are produced, shaped and circulated. It is
necessary to make explicit the relation between anticipation and expecta-
tions: anticipation refers to a process in which ideas of the future are
made present through knowledge, affects, practices, etc.; this is broader
than just expectations, but expectations are central to the process. An ex-
tensive area of research has been developed to understand the role of ex-
pectations in technological development, known as the Sociology of Ex-
pectations (Brown and Michael 2003). In the next section I introduce the
main aspects of the study of expectations.


2. The Sociology of Expectations

    Anticipation today can hardly be separated from techno-science: on
the one hand, for every new technology, futures are imagined and mobi-
lized. On the other hand, these technologies are used to portray (and
know, and even predict) specific societal futures: they are used as political
tools (Beckert 2013; Brown 2003; Kinsley 2011). With new technologies,
expectations about the future are circulated in order to obtain resources,
and to guide and legitimize innovation processes. Within Science and
Technology Studies, an area of research named Sociology of Expecta-
tions5 has extensively discussed the role of expectations in innovation
processes.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
    5
      Brown and Michael actually introduce this area of research as the Sociology
of Futures and Anticipation (2003, 4).
140                                                         Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

    This analytical approach can be characterized “as a detailed examina-
tion of forms of action and agency through which the future is both per-
formed (as a temporal representation) and colonized (as a spatial and
temporal locus)” (Brown and Michael 2003, 5). Its focus is on the exami-
nation of the role of promises, visions and concerns, which are largely
discursive but also embedded in material practices. Expectations, in the
form of promises, visions and concerns, play a central role in shaping the
socio-technical arrangements of emerging technologies. In cases when in-
novation actors are confronted with high uncertainties and indetermina-
cies (Joly et al. 2010; van Lente 1993), these expectations shape the “con-
ditions of possibility” for emerging techno-science (Horst 2007). Expec-
tations can be defined as “real time representations of future technologi-
cal situations and capabilities” (Borup et al. 2006, 286). They correspond
to collective ideas about the future, in contrast to those belonging to an
individual or particular actor group. These collective expectations gradu-
ally become taken for granted, as if they were a self-evident statement that
does not need to be justified (Konrad 2006b). Expectations are both dis-
cursive (as narratives about desires and future states), and simultaneously
embedded in technologies, emerging actor-networks and socio material
practices (Konrad 2006a, 2). As “wishful enactments” of desirable fu-
tures, expectations are highly normative, since they embody particular
ways of considering how society should be (Eames et al. 2006; Hedgecoe
2003). These promises or concerns embody specific values, hopes and
fears (Milne 2012), which are always interrelated: just as there are big
promises, there are also concerns and fears (te Kulve et al. 2013). Fur-
thermore, their specific content tends to be a reflection of current con-
cerns, promising to solve societal challenges that are relevant to the pre-
sent. In this sense, collective expectations tell us more about how society
is understood today than about the future itself (Konrad 2006b).
    This area of research treats expectations as discursive elements that
have an effect in innovation processes. This means that expectations do
not merely narrate the future, but actually have an effect on the technolo-
gies they refer to: they are performative. More than just providing a refer-
ence point, expectations contribute to steering the innovation processes
(Borup et al. 2006; te Kulve 2011). They fulfil specific functions and con-
tribute to the configuration of the field they refer to: mobilizing actors
and resources, providing guidance and coordination, enabling sense-
making processes, and legitimizing socio-technical arrangements (Brown
and Michael 2003; Swanson and Ramiller 1997).

2.1. Performativity of Expectations

    The performative aspect of expectations refers to the fact that they are
constituent of innovation processes, particularly for emerging technolo-
gies. A well-known and extreme case of performativity, which is often
considered a self-fulfilling prophecy, is the case of Moore’s law (Merton
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  141
1948; van Lente and Rip 1998). This so-called law refers to the increasing
power of computing while reducing its cost. This expectation is largely
maintained by the ITRS, an association of semiconductor industries and
researchers that yearly forecasts and organizes the future of Moore’s law.
The success of this prophecy is the result of a highly coordinated network
of actors and the strong interdependencies between the semiconductor’s
industries and other industrial sectors (Le Masson et al. 2012; Schubert et
al. 2013; Sydow et al. 2012).
    In contrast to Moore’s law, not all expectations present such strong
and highly coordinated forms of performativity. Instead, their effect is
more diffuse: performativity can only be addressed in hindsight by tracing
back the ways in which statements about the future changed and the
world they constituted changed in relation to each other. This does not
imply in any sense a full or complete alignment between expectations and
the way technologies develop (Waterton 2010). In fact, in most cases ex-
pectations do not materialize (Bátiz-Lazo et al. 2014; Geels and Smit
2000); nevertheless, they have a strong effect in structuring and shaping
actual developments in a field (van Lente et al. 2013). Stressing the per-
formative aspect of expectations is an analytical approach which high-
lights “the ways in which techniques deployed in marshaling anticipated
futures are engaged in reflexive processes of world making” (Kearnes
2013, 459).
    Some scholars have suggested explanatory mechanisms for the per-
formativity of expectations. One of these propositions attributes the per-
formativity of expectations to the effect they have in the mutual position-
ing of actors and the creation of agendas. Van Lente and Rip (1998) have
called expectations “prospective structures to be filled by agency,” as
they show some of the effects of structures but do not have their endur-
ance and stability. They become forceful through what is called a “prom-
ise-requirement cycle” in which a promise is turned into a requirement
for innovation actors, which then leads to other promises. These cycles
are reinforced by “umbrella promises” (Rip and Voß 2013), open ended
and broad promises that are broadly shared by innovation actors. The re-
lation between umbrella and specific promises happens in a cycle of “dual
dynamics of expectations” in which the specific promise-requirements
cycles support the validity of an umbrella promise (Parandian et al.
2012).6

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
    6
      These umbrella promises are overarching ideas about the future, which in
many cases can be considered as visions. Visions are distinct from promises in the
sense that they embody general narratives about solving a specific problem that is
relevant for society at large, and they come with specific values (Dignum 2013).
For example, a vision is the “hydrogen economy,” which refers to a certain socio-
technical system that provides “clean and sustainable energy.” In relation to these
broad visions, the more specific expectations might refer to the role technologies,
institutions or certain actor groups play in fulfilling this vision.
142                                                             Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

    Such an account pays attention to the relation between expectations
as discursive elements, and the effects that the articulation of this dis-
course has in the activities of innovation actors. However, expectations
are not only rhetoric: they become embodied in artefacts, institutions and
practices. The performative effect of these expectations depends on these
material embodiments that mediate their operation, negotiation and cir-
culation, be it in the form of prototypes, standards or procedures (Borup
et al. 2006; Hyysalo 2006; Milne 2012; Wilkie and Michael 2009). As ex-
plained by Michael (2000) in his introductory work to the Sociology of
Expectations,
       The performativity of these representations does not take place in
       some abstracted, a-material domain. It is conducted in material
       settings, where bodies and texts, for example, come into contact
       or close proximity at least (ibid, 292).
    More specifically, expectations are embedded in socio-material prac-
tices. This is particularly evident in design processes, where expectations
of developers, designers, and sometimes users become embodied in pro-
totypes (Hyysalo 2006). Wilkie (2014) describes prototypes as “expecta-
tional devices” with the capacity to “reify the future in the present” as
experiments that translate the interests of implicated actors, encoding fu-
ture practices. While this performativity approach to expectations has
shown that they do have an effect in the constitution of technological
fields, and that this means that they fulfil specific functions, it has provid-
ed only scattered accounts specifically referring to the forms, practices
and materiality that constitute this process. For this reason, I propose to
look closely to the broader notion of performativity and to re-assess its
use in the Sociology of Expectations.

2.2. Some General Notions of Performativity

    To weigh the claim of the performativity of expectations it is necessary
to dig into the concept itself. While I do not intend to offer a full histori-
cal account of the use of this concept (du Gay 2010), which has also been
revitalized in the broader debate about the “ontological turn” (Escobar
2007; Pellizzoni 2015; Van der Tuin and Dolphijn 2012), I would like to
discuss its use in one area which is closely related to the study of expecta-
tions in science and technology: the study of economic processes. Callon
(1998) has drawn attention to the way in which economics, as an academ-
ic discipline, and the economy, as a phenomenon, are reciprocally consti-
tuted. The main claim is that “economics is performative.” But what does
it mean to say that economics is performative? Performativity is described
as theories contributing towards enacting the realities that they describe
(Law and Urry 2004). Within this framework, the “social” is understood
beyond the dualism agency-structure; agency is action that emerges from
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                      143
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   7
within a network in which it is embedded (Callon 1998). That is to say,
the social is not an external category, a specific type of “substance,” but
rather it accounts for the formation of linkages – the assembling - within a
network of heterogeneous elements, and it is present only as long as it is
performed (Latour 2005). In this context, agency is performed in certain
socio-technical agencements, roughly translated from French as “ar-
rangements” or “assemblages.” Agencement, with its root in the word
“agency” is not just a network; instead, it stresses the capacity of these as-
semblages to act or operate differently in different configurations. In oth-
er words, the way in which these heterogeneous elements are arranged
explains its capacity to act in the world and its effects – in other words, its
agency (MacGregor Wise 2014). An assemblage includes elements as di-
verse as meanings, discourse, material elements, actors, institutions, net-
works and practices, and involves the process of arranging, organizing
and fitting these elements together – it is a “becoming” that brings things
together (ibid).
     These assemblages explain the relation between statements and their
worlds; they have the capacity of acting differently depending on their
configurations or positions in the actor-network. The effectiveness of
statements cannot be dissociated from the position they come to occupy
in the socio-technical assemblage (Callon 2009). This approximation re-
frames the concept that ideas can be true or not true by considering in-
stead that the world described by an idea or a theory is actualized. It con-
siders the social not as given, but instead as performative, meaning that
the definition is valid as long as it is performed, and for the same reason it
has potential to disappear or change (Latour 2007). The actualization de-
pends not only on the constant adjustment of the theory, but also on the
adjustment of the world to this theory (Callon 2009).
     One can think for example that ideas such as patterns of technological
change are persistent because actors think they are persistent. From this
perspective they resemble self-fulfilling prophecies: a firm would believe
that other firms will take a certain trajectory, and for this reason they will
follow the same path (MacKenzie 1998). However, not all performativity
is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. MacKenzie (2007) proposes four types of
performativity. General performativity refers to the cases in which an as-
pect of economics, such as a theory, model or concept, is used by partici-
pants in the economic process. Effective performativity occurs when the
practical use of an aspect of economics has an effect on economic pro-
cesses (irrespective of what the exact effect is). Barnesian performativity8
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
    7
      Callon (1998) gives the example of the notion of social capital, which intro-
duces this dualism by thinking in terms of action and resources. While, instead,
he argues that the “social capital” of an actor is given by its relations within a
network and the ability to mobilize them.
    8
      Barnesian performativity is in reference to Barnes’ notion of performativity,
“I have conceived of a society as a distribution of self-referring knowledge sub-
144                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

is the most extreme case, and it occurs when the practical use of an aspect
of economics makes economic processes become more like their depic-
tion by economics. Last, counter-performativity, which also refers to self-
negating prophecies, corresponds to the cases in which a practical use of
an aspect of economics makes economic processes less like the description.9
    These definitions of performativity are useful when assessing process-
es that took place in the past, but they do not refer explicitly to emergent
processes, to the constitution of what is not yet, and might never be there
– such as the future (Massumi 2007). The question arises of how to then
assess the performativity of expectations, which can only be assessed in
retrospective. This is particularly troublesome for the study of emerging
technologies in which no stabilization has yet been achieved.
    A second aspect of this notion gives more clues in relation to how to
trace it empirically. The notion of performativity brings attention to the
materialities that comprise a certain assemblage, which explains the oc-
currence of unexpected and independent events that are beyond what is
formulated in theories or models, and yet are the performative effect of
these assemblages. The effectiveness of a theory – or a statement, or an
expectation – lies in what it does; and this does not happen by acting
alone, but it operates through its embedding in a system of institutions,
sets of information, agencies, resources, etc. (Mitchell 2007). Performa-
tivity points to the fact that for statements to be true it is not just a matter
of implementing an idea in reality, but rather, it is a question of assem-
bling and aligning diverse components and practices so that they might
operate as a more or less stable and coherent working ensemble, even if
the stability was always only ever transient. Central to that process of
forming a working ensemble, are the instruments that link or mediate be-
tween the various elements (Miller and O’Leary 2007). As such, per-
formativity is a social process, not an effect. As explained by Didier
(2007):
                                          Rome cannot be changed in a day. That is why the process is di-
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
stantially confirmed by the practice it sustains” (Barnes 1988; as quoted by Mac-
Kenzie 2007).
       9	
   The ‘ends’ of Moore’s law, that is, the expectations that at some point it will
not be possible to continue with the pace of innovation dictated by this proposi-
tion has been present since the 1960’s. This can be understood as a self-negating
prophecy. But this end has not been reached and moves every year further and
further away into the future, making “the ends of Moore’s law” a self-negating
prophecy. The performance of these self-fulfilling and self-negating processes is
achieved by active orientation and coordination of interested actors to the future;
in this case through the ITRS (Le Masson et al. 2012). Both the negating and ful-
filling sides of the prophecy reinforce each other, creating the conditions for co-
ordination to emerge. Most importantly, the emergent phenomena, Moore’s law,
is	
  more than what any actor on its own could achieve or expect; there is de-facto
governance happening.	
  
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  145
                                           luted over time, and the theory is said to act only gradually. So the
                                           world does not arise, like Athena, fully armed and shouting cries
                                           of victory; rather, it came, little by little, to conform to economic
                                           theories (ibid, 300, emphasis in the original).
    This means that to trace performativity, we need to pay attention to
the small adjustments that happen in the world, in which a statement or
an idea aligns to the reality it describes. Particularly, to the material prac-
tices and institutional conditions that enable this performativity to take
place, and that change through the process as well. This understanding
draws attention to the way in which the material and the discursive world
constitute each other.
    The materiality in which the future and the anticipation of this future
is embodied is fairly evident. In recent years, methods and actors have
emerged that are specialized in the production of expectations and the
coordination of anticipatory processes. Among these, there are consultan-
cies (Pollock and Williams 2010), specialized media providers (Morrison
and Cornips 2012), and think-tanks (Wilkie and Michael 2009). Particu-
larly interesting is the emergence of specialized expectations actors, or-
ganizations whose role is to act as intermediaries in the production, circu-
lation and performance of expectations. Pollock and Williams (2010)
have introduced the term “promissory organizations” to refer to these
consultancies, whose role is to produce expectations or knowledge about
the future, to be used by other innovation actors in emergent technolo-
gies. This type of future knowledge is of a very particular nature, since it
is associated to a type of expertise that is highly interactional and requires
the embodiment of the object studied (Evans 2007; Pollock and Williams
2015; Reichmann 2013)10.
    Such developments stress how the institutionalization of the future
has become a matter of inquiry, intervention and consequently, of gov-
ernance. This trend has been developing since the 1960s and has become
stronger in association to notions of risk (Beck 1992). This is particularly
striking for new technologies; their development is often a process of
weighting and negotiation between promises and concerns (te Kulve et al.
2013), which means that expectations are a core element of governance
processes in emergent technologies (Rip 2012). I suggest that governance
aspects can be grasped by thinking in relation to the performativity of ex-
pectations.




	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     10
      Producing knowledge about economic futures is a process in which the ex-
perts “embody,” i.e. actively represent parts of the object of study that is shaped
by the interaction with other experts. In this way, economic and technology fore-
casters can acquire knowledge about the future of the object of study by interac-
tion with other relevant experts (Reichmann 2013).
146                                                           Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

2.3. De Facto Governance of Expectations

    Governance can be understood as an analytical perspective that makes
comprehensible complicated processes of collective action at the level of
the state, the economy and society (Benz 2007; Borrás and Edler 2014). It
corresponds to forms of coordination among heterogeneous but inter-
linked actors, which involves political guidance e as well as forms of self-
control and self-regulation (Mayntz 2003). Such forms of coordination
can be characterized as hierarchies, networks, markets or negotiations
(Benz 2007; Treib et al. 2007).
    Taking a governance perspective to the study of expectations and an-
ticipation means to focus on the way expectations and associated antici-
patory practices contribute to collective action in a technology field. This
perspective has been developed under the notion of anticipatory govern-
ance, either as an analytical concept (Anderson 2010) or as a normative
framework (Barben et al. 2008). Both refer, from different angles, to the
role of “the future” in coordinating action in the present. A more specific
perspective is introduced by the notion of governance of and by expecta-
tions, which has been introduced to capture the different modes in which
expectations contribute to the coordination of innovation processes.
Governance of refers to the way in which expectations themselves are co-
ordinated by the activities of innovation actors; governance by expecta-
tions refers to the fact that expectations influence innovation (Konrad
and Alvial-Palavicino 2015). It is important to note that this is an analyti-
cal distinction, and that in reality governance of and governance by are
part of the same processes.
    Rip (2006; 2012) has argued that anticipation is proper to any govern-
ance process, and that it has in particular an especially relevant role in
shaping emergent technological fields. Expectations about particular fu-
tures can solidify into a societal agenda to govern strategic choices – what
he calls “delegation to the future.” From this angle, expectations contrib-
ute to de facto governance of innovation through this structuring effect,
by enabling and constraining, coordinating, and orienting innovation ac-
tivities, which is often an unintended and collective effect of their circula-
tion, contributing to lock-in and path-dependency (Konrad 2006a,
2006b). De facto governance refers to the patterns and structures of co-
ordination that emerge largely non-intentionally from the interaction of
many actors, through mutual dependencies of perspectives and action
(Rip and Van Amerom 2010, Rip et al. 2006). De facto governance can be
understood as a patchwork of governance arrangements. Nevertheless,
they are interrelated; in fact, intentional governance can be considered
one element of de facto governance.
    A way of thinking about governance of and by expectations is in terms
of their performativity. Performativity is about reconfiguring reality,
which has to be transformed in order to fit the models and expectations
that represent it (Voß 2014). In this respect, expectations relate to pro-
Alvial-Palavicino                                                          147
cesses of collective action by which innovation actors intentionally or im-
plicitly align their activities to future expectations. In addition to a per-
formativity perspective, a governance perspective stresses the relation be-
tween local developments and global effects, seen as coordination at the
level of society or the economy. It can either be the result of the aggregat-
ed effect of multiple local practices, as well as the result of specific prac-
tices that have the particularity of connecting local developments with the
global. For example, publishing a research paper in a high-impact journal
can potentially increase immensely the visibility of a research area and its
promises, and serve as a starting point for its expansion (Alvial-Palavicino
and Konrad submitted).




                                                                               	
  
    Fig. 1 - Gartner's hype cycle. Source: Wikimedia Commons, under Creative
                                  Commons license.	
  


    It is important to note that governance, as performativity, is a two-way
process, in which both expectations and the world they represent align to
each other through the activities of innovation actors. Additionally, ex-
pectations have dynamics of their own which are influenced by changes in
the innovation field. In fact, there are explicit attempts to “govern” ex-
pectations, as reflected by the development of future-oriented methodol-
ogies, and the emergence of specialized expectations actors (Pollock and
Williams 2010). These developments reflect the active and reflexive ac-
tion of innovation actors, who are aware of expectations, their dynamics
and their role in innovation, and strategically and actively influence ex-
pectations to suit their objectives (Konrad et al. 2012).
148                                                           Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

    The dynamics of expectations show temporal and spatial variations, as
well as a variation in the effects they have in different actor groups (Bo-
rup et al. 2006; Brown and Michael 2003). The variation in the type (from
positive to negative) and attention of expectations is known as the “hype-
cycle” (Figure 1). This cycle, introduced in the ICT world by the Gartner
group consultancy, describes cycles of media attention and content of ex-
pectations that go from over-promising to disappointment, and stabiliza-
tion (Fenn and Raskino 2008). Besides its particular use by the Gartner
group as a tool for management of emerging technologies, hype-cycles
have been identified as a recurrent pattern in expectations dynamics often
referred to in expectation studies. I will detail the main aspects of this cy-
cle in the next section.

2.4. The Dynamics of Expectations: Hypes

    For many emerging technologies it is often the case that early expecta-
tions are overly optimistic. This optimism might lead to exaggeration, fol-
lowed by disappointment when these promises are not fulfilled. From
high temperature superconductivity (Felt and Nowotny 1992) to fuel cells
(Bakker and Budde 2012; Konrad et al. 2012), and the hydrogen econo-
my (Dignum 2013), and from genomics (Fortun 2008) to biotechnology
(Gisler et al. 2011) multiple technologies and technological concepts have
gone through one or many cycles of high attention followed by disap-
pointment – also known as “hype cycles.” While hypes might have a neg-
ative connotation, they are at the core of innovation processes in emer-
gent technologies (Brown and Michael 2003).
    In general, hypes and hype-cycles are understood as the circulation of
over exaggerated promises, often through media, which might lead to un-
founded excitement and disappointment. But before going into extensive
discussions about the dynamics of hypes, it is first necessary to introduce
two clarifications about the use and definition of the notions of hype and
hype-cycle.
    Hype is commonly understood as the act of exaggeration of the prom-
ises and expectations of a technology. Often accusations of hype emerge
in scientific discourses, being attributed to the system of incentives and
competition of science, closely entangled with the system of press releases
and media relations (Caulfield and Condit 2012; Master and Resnik 2013;
Nerlich 2013; Rinaldi 2012). Similarly, hype as act of exaggeration is a
common feature of the discourse of technology actors – it often fulfils a
strategic function for the diffusion and long term development of the
technology (Gisler et al. 2011; Ramiller 2006). The hype-cycle has been
strongly established in the imagination of innovation actors, to become a
shared belief or “folk-theory” among innovation actors (Rip 2006), who
might look for signals of hype and anticipate its occurrence.
    Thus, there may be two understandings of hype: one that refers to the
active production of exaggerated claims (to hype) and another that focus-
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  149
es on the collective effect these exaggerated claims have in the field, and
on what this tells us about the technology (hype-cycles). I would argue,
however, that to understand hypes it is necessary to use a hybrid defini-
tion that situates between two distinct ontological levels: the basic action
of hyping and the meta-level phenomenon of hype. In this definition,
hype-cycles are more than the sum of individual actions and more than
the additive effect of exaggerated claims: hypes have intentional as well as
unintended effects to which innovation actors need to respond (Konrad
et al. 2012).
    It is this last understanding of hypes that I want to develop further. In
doing so, I propose to understand the performativity of expectations in
the context of hypes as the active assembling, or bringing together, of
multiple elements which constitute emergent technology fields. Such as-
sembling can take different forms, which often do not fit the description
of the Gartner group. In fact, their shape and extension varies considera-
bly: there are technologies that can go through several hype cycles, and
the depth of the disappointment and the extension of the peak will vary
among different technologies (van Lente et al. 2013). For example, the
case of high temperature superconductivity during the 80s is a case of
very sharp and short hypes (Felt and Nowotny 1992). In contrast, we can
look to fuel cells (Ruef and Markard 2010), artificial intelligence (Gomes
2014) and peer to peer networking technologies (Oram 2001) as exam-
ples of technologies that have been through multiple cycles of hype and
disappointment without losing out all their credibility.11
    Nevertheless, hype is a useful concept to understand the relation be-
tween technology development and expectations, since it refers to their
specific and dynamic interrelations. Innovation actors are aware of these
cycles of expectations and might strategically respond to them by getting
involved in raising high expectations (Ramiller 2006) or develop specific
innovation activities in moments of strong attention, such as investments,
products or press releases, etc. (Konrad et al. 2012). The responses to
hype vary among innovation actors. While core innovators or developers
of a technology commit for long-term to certain expectations, even during
disappointment, other actors might enter or exit the field during different
stages of the hype (Dignum 2013). Even those who do not agree with the
promises often react and develop strategies in relation to hypes (Gisler
and Sornette 2013; Konrad 2006b). A particularly interesting case is that
of venture capital markets, which behave like and are closely coupled to

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     11
      The case of artificial intelligence is particularly interesting, because although
the vision itself is rather old (one could say at least more than a 100 years) and it
has gone through several disappointments – the last in the ’80s – it is going
through a recent revival under the notions of “big data” and “machine learning.”
One example of this current hype is the Human Brain Project, which has been
funded as an European Flagship project and which has a strong emphasis in the
development of brain-like computing mechanisms (Frégnac and Laurent 2014).
150                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

hypes (Gisler et al. 2011). Investors would react not only in relation to
expectations about the technology, but also in relation to expectations
about the behavior of other financial actors; thus, they need to under-
stand the hype to develop their own strategies (Wüstenhagen et al. 2009).
Hypes, therefore, do not merely rearrange expectations, but also have an
effect on the relations between innovation actors. An example is the way
in which venture capitalists change their attitudes toward opportunistic
investors, who seem to be responding to hype: they anticipate disap-
pointment and consider forming exit strategies.
    These accounts show that hypes are constructed not only by the for-
mulation of a certain type of discourse, but also by the actions of actors,
enabled and embedded in specific material settings. In this respect, the
analogy of hypes with “social bubbles” highlights the notion that such
hypes emerge and produce strong social interactions, reinforcing feed-
back cycles which in turn lead to extraordinary commitments for a tech-
nological project; secondly, this creates entanglements of financial re-
sources, technical capabilities, hopes and expectations, and investments
(Gisler and Sornette 2010). This understanding of hypes stresses two im-
portant aspects: the first is that hypes are the result of a process of assem-
bling heterogeneous elements, and therefore they can be understood as
an assemblage. Second, because this particular assemblage fulfils certain
social functions, there is a performativity aspect to the hype itself. For this
reason, it is possible to speak about the performativity of hypes as a par-
ticular way of framing, modeling and thinking about expectation-
technology dynamics, in addition to the performativity of expectations. I
propose to think of hypes as an anticipatory assemblage that is composed
of a set of interrelated practices. I will develop this idea in the following
section.


3. Anticipatory Assemblages: Understanding
Anticipation through Practices
    In order to develop the notion of anticipatory assemblage, I focus here
on the practices that mobilize expectations and constitute hypes. This
perspective stresses the material embedding of expectations (Brown and
Michael 2003), and the way in which the active arrangement of expecta-
tions leads to overall patterns and patchworks of performative expecta-
tions. In doing so, I examine how specific ways of doing expectation
work in specific local contexts contribute to the construction, stabiliza-
tion and governance of an emergent technological field.12
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
     12
        	
  It is important to note that by introducing local/global relations I do not re-
fer to distinctions such as micro/meso/macro that have been introduced earlier in
the study of expectations (Konrad et al. 2012; van Lente 1993). That is to say, I do
not consider different levels of expectations, but instead I look at the processes of
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     151
    To this end, I focus on the study of practices that compose processes
of anticipation in emergent technologies. I will use the term anticipatory
practices to refer to the socio-material practices in which expectations are
embedded, following and further developing the approach introduced by
Anderson (2007; 2010). By doing so, I want to understand how expecta-
tions are produced, and what are the conditions that enable their produc-
tion and performative character.
    The study of anticipatory practices is not completely new to STS. Pre-
vious studies have focused on either implicit, situated design practices
(Hyysalo 2006; Kinsley 2012; Wilkie 2011), or on the study of explicit
forms of expectation work, such as foresight. These latter are explicit
techniques and tools used for knowing and anticipating futures (van Len-
te 2012). However, these accounts are limited to the analysis of local and
specific practices, and say little about the relations that emerge between
them. Against this background, I am interested in how local and specific
practices produce macro scale phenomena, such as hype-cycles. To ex-
plore this aspect, I will discuss and compare two examples of emerging
technologies that have recently gone through a hype cycle: graphene and
3D printing. There are interesting differences between these two technol-
ogies: graphene stands for a science-push discovery that is turned into a
commodity. In contrast, 3D printing is the result of the activities of user
communities; it represents a bottom-up development that is now being
taken up by market actors. These two technologies, while both hyped,
embody (in principle) different forms of doing “techno-science” (Nord-
mann 2010), which can be roughly related, respectively, to the regime of
economics of techno-scientific promises and to the regime of collective
experimentation (Felt and Wynne 2007; Joly 2010). While graphene fol-
lows the path of a scientific discovery that is transformed into a marketa-
ble technology, 3D printing is a “grassroots”13 technology that is in the
process of becoming a mainstream technology. The type of actors, institu-
tions, networks and even expectations of these two cases are different,
however, strong similarities can nonetheless be identified.
    In what follows, I introduce the analytical categories required to ex-
plore the relations between local anticipatory practices and global dynam-
ics for emerging technologies. I will start by revisiting the very notion of
practice, and later build up conceptually, in order to address the com-
plexity of the emergence of technological fields.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
assembling expectations, actors, practices which lead to the temporal stabilization
of a specific field. 	
  
    13
       	
   Some of the aspects of consumer 3D printers, such as their inception in
hacker and makerspaces, and development of initiatives such as FabLabs, can be
considered “grassroots.” By this, I refer to a bottom-up development which lacks
a hierarchical governance structure and that	
  resembles a social movement to some
extent. For a critical review on the topic see Smith et al. (2013).	
  
                     	
  
152                                                          Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)


3.1. Practice Theories

    Science and technology studies have introduced a practice perspective
to study science not only as knowledge, but as “practice” (Latour 1987).
This approach stresses the material culture of science, which is neither
knowledge nor social relations; rather, science is understood as a hybrid
between the material and the social (Pickering 2008). Practice approaches
have been used to understand the development of infrastructure (Bowker
and Star 1999), organizations (Orlikowski 2007), and marketing (Araujo
et al. 2008), etc. Along these lines, Anderson (2007; 2010) has introduced
the notion of anticipatory practices, to refer to those practices which ac-
tively contribute to shaping “futures.”
    Clear examples of anticipatory practices are the methodologies for fu-
ture technology assessment, including forecast, scenarios, and foresight,
among others. These methodologies have evolved from probabilistic
forms of prediction, into more open and exploratory approaches that
study alternative futures and their underlying frameworks (Martin 2010).
This demonstrates that practices which actively engage with the future
have a history and trajectory of their own. As Anderson (2010) argues,
these practices are central to understanding future-oriented governance
in liberal democracies: they guide and legitimize action. I propose to go
one step further, and argue that this future orientation is not only reflect-
ed in explicit practices aimed at shaping the future (as methodologies,
methods, tools, etc.) but also embedded in other common techno-
scientific practices, from grant applications to venture investment. Taking
this perspective brings to existing studies of techno-scientific practices
the analytical tools to understand how these practices contribute to ex-
pectation dynamics, and consequently, to shaping the future. For exam-
ple, what is the role of a practice such as “filling a patent” in promoting
and/or shaping certain expectations? How does it relate to other practic-
es, and, particularly, to more explicit forms of anticipation?
    Despite the relevance and novelty of this analytical perspective, An-
derson does not provide a detailed “theory of (anticipatory) practices”
that could guide an in-depth analysis. Therefore, it should be clarified
what a practice means for this anticipatory perspective: practices are es-
sentially forms of collective action (Barnes, 2001), which generate order
in the social world as a relational and performative effect (Law and Lien,
2012). They are a form of routinized behaviour, but the routines in ques-
tion can be filled in multiple ways (Glynos and Howarth 2007; Reckwitz
2002), involving both humans as well as technical artefacts (Pickering
2002).
    In introducing a conceptual definition of practice, it is important to
keep in mind what is to be learned about emergent fields from the study
of anticipatory practices. I am interested in the role of expectations in the
emergence, shaping and structuration of technology fields. This means, I
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                153
am not only interested in the detailed accounts of a practice, but also in
how practices evolve in relation to a field and its expectations. In order to
explore this aspect, I follow the practice approach introduced by Eliza-
beth Shove et al. (2012), which focuses on the way practices evolve and
change. Using this approach, she describes, for example, how the practice
of driving a car has evolved from the end of the XIX century to the pre-
sent, which includes not only changes in terms of technologies, but also in
the competences required to ride a car (more evident now with self-
driving cars) and the meaning attributed to the practice. In this context,
my intention is to understand the role of specific anticipatory practices in
technology fields, and how they relate to other practices and to changes in
the field itself. As Shove states, paraphrasing Latour, the approach allows
to “follow the practices” and in this way understanding the social.
    Shove et al.’s (2012) notion is composed of a double conceptualization
of practices, both as entities and as performances. This double definition
highlights the interdependencies between multiple elements. A practice
exists as
          a recognizable conjunction of elements, consequently figuring as
          an entity which can be spoken about and more importantly drawn
          upon as a set of resources. At the same time practices exist as per-
          formances. It is through performance, through the immediacy of
          doing, that the ‘pattern’ provided by the practice-as-an-entity is
          filled and reproduced (ibid, 7, emphasis in the original).
    This definition refers to two aspects of practices: firstly, that practices
as performances take place in a certain spatio-temporal context and so
they are unique every time this happens. It is important to note that “per-
formance” here is different from the Callonian notion of performativity
that I have introduced earlier. The performance of a practice means “do-
ing” a practice, the act of making a practice happen or when a practice
takes place. Secondly, that practices as entities are referred to and talked
about, i.e. there is a recognizable meaning of a practice that is more or
less unchanged between performances (Feldman and Pentland 2003;
Shove et al. 2012). This aspect highlights that practices, despite their re-
peatability and recognizability, are inherently improvisational, and so the
way they are carried out is always somehow novel. It pays attention to the
material dimension of these practices that is mobilized when they are per-
formed, while underlining that practices have a meaning beyond individ-
ual instances of enactment.

3.2. Anticipatory Practices

    For conceptualizing anticipation as a set of practices, it is necessary to
introduce some specifications about the type of practices involved. An-
derson (2007, 2010) introduces the notion of “anticipatory practice” to
154                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

speak of and analyse the practices involved in processes of anticipation.14
Anticipatory practices are practices that give content to futures, and make
them present through specific materialities (Anderson 2010). These prac-
tices range from calculation techniques, forms of imagining futures such
as scenarios, to forms of performing futures such as gaming, role-playing,
etc.; these are collective practices that involve the circulation of collective
expectations (Konrad 2006). This notion accounts not only for those
practices that are explicitly performed in order to give shape to specific
futures (as it is the case for forecasts, models, trends and so on), but also
practices which implicitly shape future expectations and contribute to the
process of anticipation, such as setting up standards, prototyping, filing
patent applications, etc.
    Drawing on Anderson’s work, I further develop the notion of “antici-
patory practice,” drawing on the conceptualization of practice by Shove
et al. (2012) introduced above. In general, practices can be considered an-
ticipatory if some form of future orientation is at the core of the practice
itself. Everything that people do has a history and a setting, and is in
principle future-oriented (Schatzki 2010). Nevertheless, not all practices
are anticipatory. Here I shall introduce a more strict definition of antici-
patory practices, in which a practice can be considered anticipatory if it
fulfils two conditions: firstly, the meaning attributed to it must relate to a
non-immediate and collective future. This means that anticipatory prac-
tices refer to futures that are far enough to be uncertain, and on which a
variety of actors have to agree and ultimately act, despite their uncertain
nature. An example is practices which are expected to have a long-term
effect such as investments (Wüstenhagen et al. 2009). Secondly, a practice
is anticipatory when expectations about the future are mobilized in doing
the practice, and as a result, other future-oriented activities are triggered.
For example, a practice that enables the circulation of expectations such
as the writing of policy reports about a technology (Wilkie and Michael
2009).
    I will illustrate this definition with two techno-scientific practices,
drawing examples from the cases of graphene and 3D printing. The first
case is the graphene roadmap developed in the context of the application

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     14
       Anderson (2007; 2010) introduces the broader concept of “anticipatory ac-
tion” as a framework to understand future-oriented interventions. This is defined
as the “seemingly paradoxical process whereby a future becomes cause and justi-
fication for some form of action in the here and now” (2010, 778). He is interest-
ed in the relation between the future and particular modes of future-oriented
governance in liberal democracies, such as preemption, prevention, and precau-
tion. More broadly, he is concerned with the particular mechanisms that enable
these processes to happen in the first place. He argues that futures are anticipated
in the assembling of three elements: styles, practices and logics. While I do not
follow his approach fully, I take the notions of anticipatory practice and logics,
and develop an interpretation that is adjusted to my research interest.
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                       155
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   15
process to the Flagship funding scheme. This collective practice is pre-
sented as a way to understand what is the most plausible future of gra-
phene, in terms of both science and applications. In this way, graphene’s
full potential to create social and economic growth can be developed.
Creating such a roadmap requires compiling and coordinating the expec-
tations of a large and diverse community, from researchers to industry to
investors, and it is composed of many micro practices such as gathering
opinions through a website, expert meetings, etc. The effect of such a
practice is to enable this future coordination by distributing certain struc-
ture and roles to specific actors within the field; it also serves as a legiti-
mating device for innovation activities.
    A second example of an anticipatory practice is the creation of stand-
ards, a process often caught between being too early to have concrete def-
initions, or too late to regulate, as in the line of Collingridge’s dilemma
(1980). Standards are necessary for the diffusion of a technology, and so
while there is no certainty that a particular product will succeed in the
market, its diffusion can only take place when there are appropriate
standards to support it. For this reason, actors involved in standardization
processes have to anticipate the possible socio-technical configurations of
the technology in order to develop useful standards. This process is not
devoid of contestation, as many of the actors involved in the process have
their own ideas and agendas about the best configuration possible, for
which they mobilize and attempt to position certain expectations. Thus,
the meaning of the practice is related to the future embedding of a tech-
nology in society. To perform it, actors strategically mobilize expectations
to push for their particular interests in the process. The outcome of the
practice has a strong impact on path dependency: it will enable certain
developments while excluding others.
    With these two examples, I wish to highlight that for a practice to be
considered anticipatory, it is not necessary to aim explicitly at shaping
expectations. However, it is necessary that “the future” contributes to the
meaning of the practice, that expectations take part in the practice itself,
and that its performance contributes to anticipation. A caveat is that alt-
hough this definition helps to identify those practices that are anticipa-
tory, it does not explain why some practices are preferred while others are
not, in a given context. Therefore, to characterize the conditions that
structure sets of anticipatory practices (e.g. enable and constrain them, as
understood in Rip and Kemp 1998), I use the notion of anticipatory logic.



	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     15
       The FET Flagship funding scheme was initiated by DG Connect of the Eu-
ropean Commission to fund “ambitious, large and science driven research initia-
tives that aim to achieve a visionary goal, providing a broad basis for future tech-
nological innovation and economic exploitation, as well as benefits for society”
(http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/).
156                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

3.3. Anticipatory Logics

    It is possible to argue that the hype related to graphene is based on a
different set of practices than the hype around 3D printing. While it
seems intuitive that different actor groups, such as scientists versus ven-
ture capitalists or industries, would engage in different forms of anticipa-
tion, it is nevertheless important to analyse the conditions that enable dif-
ferent practices to take place in each case. These practices produce and
sustain a specific social order. However, this order is not static: in fact,
when different actor groups come together, as in the case of the produc-
tion of the consumer 3D printer, where the interests of hackers, makers
and industrialists met, practices change and new ones emerge. In this re-
spect, a concept such as “logic” captures the relation between a diverse
set of practices and their context, and the evolution thereof.
    Logic refers to the “grammar” or rules of a set of practices, and the
conditions that make the practice both “possible and vulnerable;” i.e., the
conditions of possibility or impossibility of a practice (Glynos and
Howarth 2007).16 Anticipatory logics refer to “a coherent way in which
intervention in the here and now on the basis of the future is legitimized,
guided and enacted” (Anderson 2010, 788).17 We can think of this con-
cept in terms of two forms of acting in relation to future threats: precau-
tion and preemption. The logic of precaution18 operates under the as-
sumption that through a precautionary act, a catastrophic event will not
take place, stopping something before it reaches the point of irreversibil-
ity (Stirling, 2008). In contrast, a preemptive logic puts emphasis on ac-
tion under complete uncertainty about a future event, but in a world of
strong interdependencies. It does not follow the logic of risk as a calcula-

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     16
       Glynos and Howard (2007) introduce three types of logics: social logics are
related to the maintenance of certain practices, political logics are related to chal-
lenge and transformation, which leads transformations in institutions, and fantas-
matic logics account for why a specific practice and regime grips subjects, or the
resistance to change of social practices. 	
  
    17 In particular Anderson refers to logics that are mobilized under potential
threats, and that involve actions that “aim to prevent, mitigate, adapt to, prepare
for or preempt specific futures” (Anderson 2010, 779). Nevertheless, these logics
need to be constantly reassembled for each of the cases in which they are enacted,
which explains their transformative capacity. These logics function as a repeatable
means of instantiating the conditions for anticipation – which are based historical-
ly on the presumption that certain forms of	
  knowing the future are possible (Kins-
ley 2012). In fact, forms of prediction and	
  anticipation are often	
  a highly contest-
ed, yet contingent and culturally inflected activity (Andersson and Keizer 2014).	
  
    18
       A well-known example of the logic of precaution is the “precautionary
principle,” which states, “when an activity raises threats of harm to the environ-
ment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some
cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically” (1998 Wing-
spread Statement, from http://www.sehn.org/ppfaqs.html).
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  157
ble entity, and instead it acts in the face of indeterminacy of the nature of
a threat (Massumi 2007).19 There is a fundamental difference between
precaution and preemption: the former acts upon processes that are
known, on empirically apprehended threats. The latter calls for action on
threats that have not yet emerged or even been fully identified. These two
logics embody two different ways of knowing the future – and the as-
sumption of what can be known and by which means – which enable dif-
ferent forms of intervention, and, ultimately, different forms of anticipa-
tory governance.20
    These forms of acting upon the future can be related to or originated
from idealist or ideological discourses (Kinsley 2011). In fact, different
logics can co-exist in a certain field such as in the case of 3D printing, in
which at least two logics characterize anticipation: techno-economic and
open source.21 While the former characterizes practices in which the fu-
ture is associated with a sense of urgency and competition, the latter re-
fers to practices in which the future is reflexive and is a space for experi-
mentation. A techno-economic logic will include practices such as the
economic assessment of promises and risks, or the spread of high expec-
tations through media. An open source logic, in contrast, emphasizes
practices such as the development of open source hardware and open
standards, in which the specificities, aims and ethos of the machine are
negotiated among members of a community.
    A logic provides a certain way of seeing and knowing the future, codi-
fying for specific practices and setting a specific context for a present
sense of “futurity” (Kinsley 2011). In this sense, logics “enable and con-
strain” forms of knowing and acting in relation to the future, and for the
same reason they can be subject to dissent and contestation (Brown et al.
2000). Thus, there is a political dimension to anticipation. While I will
not develop extensively this aspect, it must not be ignored, especially
when framing expectations in relation to governance. Beckert (2014) has
emphasized the distributive and political dimension of expectations and
anticipation. He argues that the contingent nature of expectations makes
them open to interest-based politics.
                                                                If decisions have distributive consequences, and if decisions

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     19
       Massumi (2007) uses as an example of the logic of preemption the Ameri-
can invasion to Irak in 2003, an event that was justified on the basis of a threat
that was not concrete neither could be identified by any methods.
    20
       I use the term “anticipatory governance” in the way Anderson (2010) does.
Thus, it is important to distinguish it from the more normative understanding of
“anticipatory governance” (Barben et al. 2008) which has been developed in the
context of steering innovation processes.
    21
       These two logics are related to the two regimes as introduced by Felt and
Wynne (2007) and Joly (2010): economics of techno-scientific	
  promises (techno-
economic) and collective experimentation (open source). 	
  
                     	
  
158                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

       are based on expectations, then actors have an interest in the ex-
       pectations of other actors. Influencing expectations has become a
       central task of both political regulation and business and is a major
       part of discourses on business and the economy (ibid., 11).
     The “politics of expectations” are played out, for example, in the way
open source 3D printers are developed and promoted, against proprietary
technology. Similarly, it is embedded in the way the “future of graphene”
becomes a European project, through the flagship, by rearranging a scien-
tific, technological and industrial community with the purpose of exploit-
ing the economic promises of the material. This political aspect is related
to the normative considerations that inform certain practices, their ideo-
logical commitments and the way in which anticipation creates inclusions
and exclusions.


4. Anticipatory Assemblages

    In order to fully characterize processes of anticipation, it is necessary
to pay attention to the relations between different practices and their ef-
fects. For this reason, I introduce in this last section the notion of assem-
blage, to account for how different practices come together among a mul-
tiplicity of elements, i.e. how they influence each other and their joint ef-
fects. I use this notion as a heuristic to account for the multiplicities of
practices involved in anticipation, their different contexts and the rela-
tions that emerge from them. Future expectations, as a dynamic phenom-
enon (e.g. hypes) can be understood as an anticipatory assemblage, a pro-
cess that develops over time, in which local activities lead to global ef-
fects. Such is the case of both graphene and 3D printing, technologies
that are currently going through a hype phase; yet the types of actors,
practices and logics that characterize these hypes differ. However, despite
these two technology fields being in principle substantially different, it is
possible to recognize some common dynamics.
    To understand this apparent conundrum, I focus on two aspects of as-
semblages: the first one is its reference to a set of heterogeneous elements
that are brought together, which is constantly re-enacted and has per-
formative effects. The second aspect is that although this specific ar-
rangement can be found in various contexts, local and global, it is more
than a pattern, because its structure is not given but is constantly rear-
ranged. Along these lines, one can think about hypes as the result of a set
of expectations, practices, technologies, and others that are brought to-
gether, partly because of the strategic activities of actors, but largely as a
result of an arrangement of stabilized anticipatory practices that shape the
future in specific and recurrent ways. A hype is both a local and a global
phenomenon; it is the result of strategic and specific actions with local
implications but also global aggregated effects.
    The notion of assemblage, as introduced by Deleuze and Guattari
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                  159
(1988), stresses the way in which heterogeneous elements are brought to-
gether to generate effects that are more than the sum of their parts
(DeLanda 2006).22 It is a way to go beyond the agency/structure dualism,
and instead focus on how “the social” as a whole emerges as a result of
the coming together – or assembling – of its parts (Latour 2005). Because
of its focus on action as embedded in a network, an assemblage can be es-
sentially seen as a theory of practices which stresses that relations within
the assemblage are not given, but made and remade through practices
(Ong 2014). This is a result not just of contingency, but also of the reflex-
ive action of actors (Callon 2007), and it is thus necessary to study the
practical work required to build an assemblage (Bueger 2014).
    For example, we can think about the way in which different anticipa-
tory practices across science, policy and industry are assembled to pro-
duce the “graphene hype.” Scientific actors voice expectations through
practices such as high profile scientific publications, conferences, and
grants applications, which are supported by policy actors. These expecta-
tions are translated into a language that relates to economic growth and
societal impact, which in turn results in opportunities and protected
spaces being created. This brings in industrial actors with their own dy-
namics of market creation, which in turn translate expectations into val-
ues for future markets and opportunities for investment. In this process,
expectations are circulated, translated and contested across different ac-
tor groups, a process in which a variety of anticipatory practices are de-
ployed.
    More than just an arrangement of practices, the notion of assemblage
refers to the performativity of a particular set of practices. An anticipatory
assemblage has a performative effect on a technology, as collective expec-
tations align to and co-produce the world they refer to (Konrad 2006b).
This assemblage fulfils specific functions, helping to generate a specific
order in the world, which is constantly adjusted. For example, hypes fulfil
the social function of bringing together actors to take high risks that oth-
erwise would not be taken individually (van Lente et al. 2013). Thus, it is
possible to consider the Graphene Flagship as a concrete result of the
hype on graphene. In this case, a set of anticipatory practices aligned and
coordinated scientific, industry and policy actors and their expectations,
into a large-scale project with the aim of profiting from the promises of
graphene.
    The second characteristic of assemblages that I refer to is that assem-
blages happen both locally and globally, occurring in different spaces
while at the same time connecting to one another. This dimension has
been introduced through the notion of global assemblage (Collier and
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
    22
       Assemblage theory is a complex body of work; I do not use all the concep-
tual framework of assemblage theory as developed, for example, in the work of
DeLanda (2006). Instead, I use the notion of assemblage as a heuristic to position
and guide other elements of my analysis.
160                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

Ong 2005), which refers to global forms of techno-science, expert systems
or economic rationalism that operate at a transnational level and can be
found in diverging (cultural and geographical) contexts.23 In a similar
way, while expectations about a technology are generalized and shared by
different actor groups, the way they are performed, their anticipatory
practices and their performative effect change in each case. For example,
hypes take place across different actors’ groups and institutional settings.
The promises of a technology are often voiced in different spaces, with
each space having its own ways and practices to articulate and receive
these expectations. While the voicing of an expectation happens locally,
in specific practices, some of these practices can have a global effect and
translate the effects of an expectation beyond the particular setting in
which they are embedded. This is, for example, the way the consultancy
organization Cientifica characterizes the graphene hype. In a 2013 report,
they introduce what is referred to as the typical “nanomaterial hype”
which starts from academia, moves into the corporate domain and then to
financial actors. As a cumulative effect, a sort of bubble is created, which
then “bursts” and provokes disappointment (Cientifica 2013). Expecta-
tions move and are translated across different spaces, creating linkages
between them. The resulting effect is more than the sum of the individual
dynamics of each space, and has an effect on each of them.
    Here, the notion of space refers to a specific arrangement of actors,
practices, rules and institutions, such as science, industry, the financial
sector, etc.; or institutionalized socio-technical configurations that are
characteristic of a certain actor group and can be recognizable as such.
Space in this respect is more than a reference to a spatial and temporal
configuration, and more than just a metaphor for a particular type of so-
cial dynamics. Spaces have dynamics of their own, i.e. their own rules and
structure (Rip and Joly 2012)24; they can themselves be considered as a
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
                     23
        These assemblages are constituted by a series of what they call “reflexive
practices” which include technological, political and ethical forms to organize so-
cial life. These practices are translated into multiple contexts, replicating the as-
semblage in different locations at the same time. The global character of the as-
semblage is largely provided by the technical systems that compose it – calcula-
tions, models, etc. (Prince 2012). This universality means that the assemblage is
decontextualized and recontextualized, having the ability to move through diverse
social and cultural situations in such a way that its functions and effects are main-
tained. This is not to say that an assemblage is something that occurs “locally” or
is the result of structural forces. Rather, it is “the product of multiple determina-
tions that are not reducible to a single logic” (Collier and Ong 2005, 12), because
the forms within the assemblage are always shifting.
     24
        Rip and Joly (2014) argue that spaces are not just a metaphor, but that they
actually have dynamics of their own and specific characteristics: there is a certain
spatiality where actors can “move about” (and which allows room for deliberation
and experimentation; the space itself has boundaries that are more or less perme-
able; and last, it has an internal structure given by the rules of interaction inside
Alvial-Palavicino                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     161
particular type of assemblage, because they are configured by a set of het-
erogeneous elements, and are constantly reconfigured through the inter-
action with other assemblages.
    The concept of space refers to the concrete spatiality25 of an assem-
blage as well as its ability to produce and sustain new spaces.26 In that
sense, the space is a property of the assemblage and it is at the same time
produced by it. For example, in the case of consumer 3D printers, addi-
tive manufacturing technologies which underpin 3D printing are an es-
tablished technology for industrial prototyping – an “industrial” well-
established space. In contrast, the consumer 3D printer was developed in
a different space, constituted by hacker and maker communities. The de-
velopment of the consumer 3D printer led to the emergence of hybrid
spaces such as TechShops or FabLabs27 where radical ideas and practices
meet and merge with market logics (Schneider 2015).
    I will close this essay by making explicit the relation between the ele-
ments that have been introduced earlier: expectations, performativity,
governance, anticipatory practices and logics, and assemblages and spac-
es. I should restate that my analytical focus is on practices and sets of
practices as a means to understand the performativity of expectations lo-
cally and globally, and its relation to governance. In this context, the no-
tions of assemblage and space are used as a heuristic to make sense of
practices that come together. As represented by Figure 2, this framework
has two analytical foci: first, it addresses anticipatory practices at the local
level, as instances for the creation, shaping, mobilization and contestation
of expectations. The practices that do or do not take place are the result
of a particular combination of logics. In this context, there is a reflexive
relation between expectations and practices, which is located in specific
spaces and at the same time reshapes these spaces. The second analytical
focus is what happens when practices come together. Anticipatory prac-
tices do not act in isolation, they act in bundles of practices. Furthermore,
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
the space. Spaces are both stabilized and emergent, they are constantly changing
but they are, at the same time, easily recognizable arenas of interaction.
    25
       By spatiality I want to make explicit that assemblages are not just discursive,
but that they enable certain social interactions through technologies, devices,
rules and institutions, shaping the social – and even the physical, as argued by
Anderson (2010, 2012) – world.	
  
    26
       Space here does not only refer to a geographical space, but it can take the
form of any platform in which a set of actors come together. This includes institu-
tions (both explicit, such as municipalities, and more abstract, such as “science”)
as well as online spaces, emergent platforms, etc.
    27
       Fablabs and Techshops, and other types or makerspaces are shared ma-
chine facilities that resemble industrial production facilities, but they are at small
scale and open to the public. In these spaces people of diverse backgrounds an in-
terest meet to fabricate what is of their own interest (Walter-Herrmann and
Büching 2014; Nascimento 2014) 	
  
                     	
  
162                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 6 (2)

they can move between different spaces and translate expectations from
one space to another and from the local to the global. Such a dynamic can
be conceptualized as an anticipatory assemblage, which I describe in rela-
tion to the practices and expectations that compose it, and which are
brought together and make “the future” actionable and anticipation pos-
sible.
    Through this approach, I introduce to the Sociology of Expectations a
perspective that stresses both the way in which expectations are built, and
the agency of actors and materiality in producing certain expectations dy-
namics. While such an approach is implicit in the basic assumptions of
the sociology of expectations (Borup et al. 2006; van Lente 1993), I intro-
duce an analytical framework explicitly tailored to empirically capture
this phenomenon.




Fig. 2 – Anticipatory Assemblages and spaces. The notion of assemblage accounts
for the multiple ways in which anticipatory practices and expectations are
arranged, and for their performative effects. These assemblages have effects
locally, but as they occur in different spaces, they also result in global effects due
to their influence on the relations between these spaces.


Acknowledgments
    The author wishes to thank Kornelia Konrad and Annalisa Pelizza for their
insightful comments on the different versions of this paper. This project has been
funded by NanoNextNL 1: Risk and Technology Assessment.
Alvial-Palavicino                                                               163

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Alvial-Palavicino                                                               165
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Alvial-Palavicino                                                               167
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Alvial-Palavicino                                                               169
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