Social Support as Assemblage at the Public Library: How an Organization of Human and More-Than-Human Weak Ties...

This study responds to a dual emphasis within social support literature on computer-mediated-communication and logocentric messaging by focusing on contextual, in-person social support. Specifically, this study examines how social support is provided within an organization of weak ties, namely a rural library system located in Central Appalachia. The study uses qualitative and postqualitative analysis to consider how both human and more-than-human kinds together confer support toward the goal of improving health outcomes. Ultimately, it finds that these agents variously complement and contradict each other within a posthuman assemblage of social support. It also identifies invitational social support, a communication strategy for destigmatizing social support, and non-normative social support, a counterintuitive form of support that involves the disruption of normative approaches. The study concludes with a call for the development of an ecological model of social support.