ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Sophia the Robot as a boundary object and case study that can contain multiple meanings depending on the audience and way of presenting. Robots are emissaries of technological development and have fascinated humans for a long time. Nowadays, robots like Sophia have a massive social media following, appear as celebrity guests in multiple venues, and can even have citizenship. We investigate Sophia, including our own encounter with “her,” through a feminist technoscience analysis to see how gender is performed and constructed through the robot’s actions and appearances. We find that a bricolage of symbolic meaning is embedded in her, as gender becomes entangled with autonomy, citizenship, performativity, and contradictory social values. We argue socio-technical constructs like Sophia challenge social constructs such as gender.
