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Studying Infrastructuring Ethnographically

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Abstract

This paper is motivated by a methodological interest in how to investigate information infrastructures as an empirical, real-world phenomenon. We argue that research on information infrastructures should not be captive to the prevalent method choice of small-scale and short-term studies. Instead research should address the challenges of empirically studying the heterogeneous, extended and complex phenomena of infrastructuring with an emphasis on the necessarily emerging and open-ended processual qualities of information infrastructures. While existing literature identifies issues that make the study of infrastructuring demanding, few propose ways of addressing these challenges. In this paper we review characteristics of information infrastructures identified in the literature that present challenges for their empirical study. We look to current research in the social sciences, particularly anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) that focus on how to study complex and extended phenomena ethnographically, to provide insight into the study of infrastructuring. Specifically, we reflect on infrastructuring as an object of ethnographic inquiry by building on the notion of “constructing the field.” Recent developments in how to conceptualize the ethnographic field are tied both to longstanding traditions and novel developments in anthropology and STS for studying extended and complex phenomena. Through a discussion of how dimensions of information infrastructures have been addressed practically, methodologically, and theoretically we aim to link the notion of constructing the ethnographic field with views on infrastructuring as a particular kind of object of inquiry. Thus we aim to provide an ethnographically sensitive and methodologically oriented “opening” for an alternative ontology for studying infrastructuring ethnographically.

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Acknowledgements

Karasti acknowledges the funding by Velux Visiting Professor Program of Villum Foundation and the generosity of Prof. Jesper Simonsen that made possible to work on this article as Guest Professor at the Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark during 2015-2016. In addition, Karasti acknowledges Academy of Finland funded research project ‘Multi-scoped Infrastructuring’ #285903 that has provided support for finalizing the article in 2016-2017. Blomberg acknowledges the support of IBM Research, particularly the Cloud and Mobile Enterprise Research group, for allowing her time to work on this article.

Notes

  1. 1

    Star and Ruhleder identified eight characteristics of information infrastructure in (Star and Ruhleder 1996, p. 112–113) and a ninth was added in (Star 1999, p. 382; Bowker and Star 1999, p. 35). The nine characteristics are (1) embeddedness, (2) transparency, (3) reach or scope, (4) learned as part of membership, (5) links with conventions of practice, (6) embodiment of standards, (7) built on an installed base, (8) becomes visible upon breakdown, and (9) is fixed in modular increments, not all at once or globally. While there is no one-to-one or single mapping of these characteristics to our five dimensions, we see connections between our dimensions and Star and colleagues’ characteristics: our relational most closely related to (1, 5, 7), invisible to (2, 4, 8), connected to (3, 6), emerging and accreting to (7, 9), and intervention and intentionality to (7, 9).

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  1. INTERACT Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Helena Karasti

  2. IBM Research, San Jose, CA, USA

    Jeanette Blomberg

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Karasti, H., Blomberg, J. Studying Infrastructuring Ethnographically. Comput Supported Coop Work 27, 233–265 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-017-9296-7

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