Relationally scoping the literature on emergent phenomena: A diffractive reading of 'human augmentation'

The purpose of systematic reviews is to synthesize state-of-the-art knowledge about any given topic. However, this method is inherently ill-fitted for the study of emergent phenomena characterized by non-linearity, uncertainty and conceptual ambiguity. In this paper, we introduce the concept “relational systematicity” as a way to approach literature reviews – in this case, scoping reviews – as entangled, fluid, and situated processes of synthesis. We selected the case of human augmentation as an emergent topic that benefits from being studied from a relational systematic review perspective. Drawing on feminist new materialist theories, we operationalized our synthesis process through a diffractive reading of literature on human augmentation “through one another” (Barad, 2007). Instead of categorizing the content of the selected publications under fixed concepts or numbers, we tried to understand the particularities of the elements of definition given by the authors of the primary studies included, and how the process of defining human augmentation is entangled in a web of concepts, ideas, and frameworks. This led us to create a typology of human augmentation that is itself entangled, fluid, and situated and a better fit to account for the ambiguity, uncertainty, and non-linearity of the phenomenon. We conclude that our relational systematic approach highlighted four different kinds of relationships present in scoping reviews: relationships between researchers and their texts, between researchers and their background, among researchers, and among ideas or concepts.