Day Eleven: Ethnographies of Infrastructure

SDS 237: Data Ethnography

Lindsay Poirier
Statistical & Data Sciences, Smith College

Fall 2023

Select a favorite dataset. Brainstorm a long list of infrastructures that support that dataset.

Pick one supporting infrastructure:

How often do you think about this infrastructure? Did you notice it pre-breakdown?
Who has a say in the design of this infrastructure, and who is excluded?

infrastructue is a fundamentally relational concept, becoming real infrastructure in relation to organized practice.

Often we think of infrastructure as “just there”
Assumes that infrastructure is the same thing for all people all of the time
Viewing infrastructure as “relational” acknowledges that certain things become infrastructure to different people in different moments
Not so much “what is infrastructure” but “when is infrastructure”

Embeddedness: Sunk into other socio-technical structures
Transparency: Does not need to continuously be reassembled
Reach or Scope: Connects more than one site
Learned as part of membership: Use naturalized through communities of practice
Embodiment of standards: Component parts can connect through standardized conventions
Built on an installed base: Wrestles with the logics of its underlying infrastructures
Visible upon breakdown: Often taken for granted until breaking

Singular voice designed into infrastructures that do not attend to diversity
Assumed to speak for everyone
Identifying involves asking: what has been made other by the design of this infrastructure?

Work that fades into the background when presenting an infrastructure
Sometimes invisible because that work is “tacit” or rote
Sometimes structurally hidden from view
Identifying involves asking: what forms of labor tend to go unrecognized when looking at this infrastructure

Switch slide deck if there is time…