A heterogeneous composition of material and expressive components that maintains its identity while remaining open to change. Not a static structure but a process of becoming, characterized by relations of exteriority where components retain autonomy.

Processes that stabilize an assemblage by increasing internal homogeneity, sharpening boundaries, and coding components. Examples: standardization, regulation, identity formation.

Processes that destabilize an assemblage by increasing heterogeneity, blurring boundaries, and decoding components. Includes lines of flight, mutation, and resistance to capture.

The degree to which an assemblage's components are rigidly defined versus flexibly interpreted. High coding = strict categorization; low coding = interpretive openness.

A key principle of assemblage theory: components of an assemblage maintain their autonomy and can be detached and plugged into different assemblages. Contrasts with relations of interiority (essence).

A heterogeneous network of aligned interests, including both human and non-human actors. Networks are not given but must be constantly performed and maintained through translation work.

The process by which actors modify, displace, and appropriate each other's goals to create alignment. Includes problematization, interessement, enrollment, and mobilization.

A situation that must be traversed by all actors in a network. Whoever controls the passage point gains power to define the network's trajectory.

A stabilized network that functions as a single actor, hiding its internal complexity. Opening black boxes reveals the heterogeneous work that sustains them.

AI-generated interpretations marked as tentative and subject to researcher ratification. Embodies hermeneutic design principle that AI outputs are one reading among many, not authoritative truth.

The iterative process of interpretation where understanding of parts depends on understanding of the whole, and vice versa. Applied to algorithmic analysis: micro-traces inform macro-patterns, which reframe micro-interpretations.

All knowledge is produced from specific embodied positions. Challenges the 'view from nowhere' by insisting on accountability for one's location in knowledge production.

The continuity of colonial forms of domination after formal colonialism ended. Manifests in knowledge hierarchies, economic extraction, and racialized social classification.

The appropriation of human life through data extraction, processing, and commodification. Extends colonial logics of resource extraction to the digital realm.

Recognition of marginalized groups as knowers and the inclusion of diverse knowledge systems. Challenges the universalization of Global North epistemologies.

Foucauldian concept for struggles against techniques of power that seek to conduct conduct. Includes refusal, reappropriation, and alternative ways of being governed.

Brazilian Portuguese term for creative workarounds and improvised solutions. Represents situated knowledge and tactical resistance to imposed systems.

Trajectories of escape from stratified assemblages. Not mere resistance but creative deterritorialization that opens new possibilities.

Socially constructed patterns of practices, assumptions, values, and rules that organize social reality. Multiple logics (Market, State, Professional, Community) coexist and conflict.

Distinct moral frameworks for justifying actions and claims (Market, Industrial, Civic, Domestic, Inspired, Fame, Green, Projective). Actors draw on multiple orders to build legitimacy.

The movement, mutation, and translation of policies across jurisdictions. Policies are not transferred intact but transformed through local assemblages.