System-phenomenology: An empirical case for collectives in mediation theory

Postphenomenology and mediation theory strongly explain the micro-level interactions between human individuals and objects. Recently, humans as a collective have been added to the theory at the political macro-level, which we argue that is an important contribution. However, the enlargement of the theory would also merit a meso-level explanation of the role of collectives, in between the micro- and the macro-level. For this purpose, we introduce the mediation triangle, illustrating three bidirectional relations, all mediated by technology: human-object, human-collective, and collective-object. The mediation triangle we combine with three borrowed concepts from systems philosophy to aid in our framework design: differentiality, emergence, and irreducibility. This approach, named system-phenomenology, can explain the interaction between objects, individuals, collectives, political levels, and technology. We illustrate this using an empirical case of boarding and deboarding at train stations. We conclude that system-phenomenology is promising, but further research is needed to develop this theory conceptually.