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.
Turn to your neighbor and discuss:
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?
Why does Star consider infrastructure relational?
Relationality of Infrastructure
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”
Select one infratucture. How relational? How does it meet the other criteria of infrastructure?
Star’s Definition of 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
Master Narratives
- 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?
Invisible Work
- 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
Bringing an Ethnographic Sensibility to Archives
Switch slide deck if there is time…
Day Eleven: Ethnographies of Infrastructure SDS 237: Data Ethnography Lindsay Poirier Statistical & Data Sciences , Smith College Fall 2023