The Ethnography of Infrastructure...by Susan Leigh Star | What Makes This Paper Great? (#11)

This 11th episode of my What Makes This Paper Great? series features "The Ethnography of Infrastructure" by the multidisciplinary scholar, Susan Leigh Star. A detailed and hyperlinked Table of Contents appears below. After a biography of Star, the video sticks close to the paper, except for my own playful demonstration of an ethnography of infrastructure within a hobby, at the end. Viewers, I confess I am not an authority on Star's work and have done my best to explain and celebrate her ideas, with my students in mind. I welcome additional insights on this paper and Star's oeuvre from her expert readers, in the video's comments section. Of note, I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Star around 2002, while a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles; she gave a colloquium presentation on work-in-progress. (Thank you, Dr. Rich Gazan, for inviting me!) I was struck by her kindness and humility, as well as her eagerness to share ideas with a small group of doctoral students.

Here is the paper, The Ethnography of Infrastructure: https://ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/GameLab...

And, here is the online text, Boundary Objects and Beyond: Working with Leigh Star
Edited by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke, Ellen Balka: https://direct.mit.edu/books/edited-v...

00:00 — Welcome and Introduction to the Paper
00:30 — Table of Contents for the Video
00:49 — Biography of Susan Leigh Star
01:19 — Boundary Objects
01:31— "Sorting Things Out" with Geoffrey Bowker
01:36 — The Idea of Infrastructure
01:54 — Star's Motivating Questions
02:07 — Lived Experience, Technologies, and Silences
02:49 — Star's Death and Memorials
03:14 — The Special Issue of American Behavioral Scientist
03:34 — Methodological Challenges of Analyzing Virtual Societies
04:16 — A Bird's-Eye View of the Paper
04:25 — Two Opening Quotations
05:16 — The Celebrated Joke (Society of People Interested in Boring Things)
05:40 — Examples of Infrastructure
06:25 — "Study the Unstudied"
06:48 — Defining Infrastructure (Nine Properties of Infrastructure)
08:40 — Infrastructure and Methods (A Research Methods Toolkit)
09:34 — Highlights of the First Half of the Paper
09:45 — Three Additional Methodological Insights
10:35 — Demonstrating The Ethnography of Infrastructure in a Hobby: The Messier List
12:35 — An Appreciative Critique
13:52 — What Makes This Paper Great?
14:44 — Conclusion: Please Like! Comment! Share! Subscribe to INFIDEOS