Debating Sociomateriality: Entanglements, imbrications, disentangling, and agential cuts

Sociomateriality is on everyone's lips these days. Since Orlikowski (2006; 2007; 2009), together with Scott (Orlikowski and Scott 2008; Scott and Orlikowski 2009) first introduced this term in organisation studies and in information systems (IS) research, we count an impressive number of contributions on this topic along with calls for papers in renowned journals and conferences. Without going so far as to propose sociomateriality as the defining identity of the IS field, as suggested by Hassan and Hovorka (2011), we acknowledge that this new lens offers a way of challenging and expanding the prevailing modus operandi of the theoretical foundations of the relationships between artefacts and agency, technology and practice. This is well expressed by Cecez-Kecmanovic et al. (2010) who argue that sociomateriality can help us question and rethink 'the supposed ontological separation among the social and the technological.'