Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reflects a distinctive and coherent combination of different theoretical approaches, including actor network theory, ecological psychology, and cognitive linguistics, and science and technology studies. It focuses on 'Use plans and artefact functions: an intentionalist approach to artefacts and their use'. The book compares how Zapotek and Danish speaking children comprehend spatial relations. It focuses on the 'Cognitive biographies of things'; there is no single locus of order in such activities, but a continual interplay between the human agents and the things they are using. The book examines the active role of things in the organisation of practices and in the practices of organisations and brings out the wider cultural, social, organisational, economic, and educational aspects of things and how they are used. The book talks about how things are used by individual users or informal groups.