Entangled Inversions: Actor/Analyst Symmetry in the Ethnography of Infrastructure

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the day-to-day work of designing and using information systems necessarily involves reflecting on these systems in ways that parallel how we, as social scientists, approach those same systems in the course of our analyses. This reflexive symmetry has important consequences for our research methods because it entails a shift in our form of research from a ‘study of’ a given community or project and towards an entangled process of collective reflection on these systems and practices. To articulate this reframing, we explore the notion of ‘infrastructural inversion’ to show how information infrastructure studies has always tacitly understood actors and analysts as both doing socio-technical analyses, and we extend this insight to how we think about our own methods. Next, we relate two of our recent fieldwork experiences amongst designers of information systems in the sciences to show practically how, through the course of research, we became entangled with our subjects through the sharing of notes and analytical insights, engaging in jointly authored papers, and other collectively sensemaking of the partially connected worlds in which we work. Finally, we move to a discussion of what we see are the entailments of this reframing of fieldwork, focusing on how all of this challenges our understandings of collaboration and reflexivity in ethnography. Overall, we suggest that our frame promotes an attunement to the field as a place of heterogenous collaboration rather than simple observation, and asks the fieldworker to be both conceptually and ethically open to the possibilities and consequences of collaboration with those that they study or work with.