Stigmergy in human practice: Coordination in construction work Action editor: Margery Doyle and Leslie Marsh Lars Rune Christensen Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A. C. Meyers Vnge 15, 2450 København S, Denmark Available online 1 July 2012 Abstract Stigmergy is a concept of coordination that may be employed to analyse human practice in complex work settings such as the building process. However, the concept of stigmergy was not originally developed in order to describe human practice, rather it was developed within the field of entomology i.e. the study of social insects. Transposing the concept of stigmergy from the field of entomology to the study of human practice raises a central question: Does the concept of stigmergy add anything to our ability to account for the coor- dination of human cooperative work? We will argue that it does. We will (1) explicitly compare and delimit the concept of stigmergy to well-established concept describing human coordinative practices and show that it differs from these concepts, and we will (2) apply the concept of stigmergy to an analysis of the coordination of construction work in order to explore the utility of the concept in the analysis of human practice. Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Stigmergy; Human practice; Coordination; Articulation work; Construction work 1. Introduction When the concept of stigmergy was first introduced in 1959 by the French entomologist Grasse ´ (1959), an impor- tant step towards understanding the coordination of collec- tive activities in social insects was made. Today, the concept of stigmergy is well established within the field of entomology (Theraulaz & Bonabeau, 1999). Turning from the study of insect behaviour to the study of human practice we find the concept of stigmergy to be less well established. However, criteria for applying the concept of stigmergy to the study of human practice are in fact readily emerging and a series of interesting and illu- minating studies of stigmergy in a human context has been published (e.g. Christensen, 2008; Marsh & Onof, 2008; Parunak, 2006; Ricci, Omicini, Viroli, Gardelli, & Oliva, 2007; Susi & Ziemke, 2001; Tummolini & Castelfrananchi, 2007). This paper aims to contribute to this body of literature. Building on Grasse ´ (1959), we will argue that a coordi- native effect can occur when human individuals act on the physical traces of work accomplished previously by others. That is, we will say that actors may coordinate and integrate their cooperative efforts by acting directly on the physical traces of work previously accomplished by others and that signs left or modifications made by indi- viduals on artifacts may, given an appropriate context of practice, become meaningful to others and in turn inspire new actions on artifacts. This is how stigmergy may unfold in a human context. However, in connection to the study of stigmergy in a human context we need to ask a fundamental question before we “get ahead of ourselves.” The question is this: Does the concept of stigmergy add anything to our ability to account for the coordination of cooperative work in a human context? After all, stigmergy is a concept of coordi- nation (Theraulaz & Bonabeau, 1999) and if we are to apply it to the study of human practice we have to ensure that it is not redundant in this context. That is, we have to make sure that there are no other concepts of coordination already having the analytical role that we are casting for 1389-0417/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2012.06.004 E-mail address: Lrc@itu.dk www.elsevier.com/locate/cogsys Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Cognitive Systems Research 21 (2013) 40–51