Category: publications

Categories
experimental collaborations intravention materials multimodal publications

The Lab is not Blah: Academic encounters, venues to re-train ourselves

Eeva Berglund, Adolfo Estalella,  Anna Lisa Ramella and Tomás Sánchez Criado (#Colleex convenors)

Published as part of the Colleex Open Formats, August 10, 2018 

Position paper introducing ‘A lab of labs: Documenting open formats‘ (a lab at EASA 2018’s conference)

Meetings are, together with papers and books, perhaps the quintessential mechanism for the circulation of academic knowledge. And yet, despite their relevance, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: paper presentations, round tables, etc. Nevertheless, anthropology has recently recognised the need to explore other ways of sharing our knowledge and thinking together. The lab call that EASA has made in the last conferences evinces an interest that we at the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation (#Colleex) network also share.

In our case, we strongly believe that formats to share and think together should be considered as part and parcel of a discussion on ethnographic experimentation. In our work we have been exploring these venues using the rather loose term open formats. What are they? And, most importantly, what can an open format be? In this sense, this documentation project has a twofold goal. First, we aim at bringing for discussion the relevance of experimenting with meeting formats as pedagogical spaces for the apprenticeship of ethnographic experimentation. Second, we argue for the need to document these ‘experiments in meeting’ so that they may travel, be learnt and reproduced elsewhere.

1. Meetings as academic encounters, and venues to re-train ourselves

Adolfo: We meet to share knowledge and learn: at large conferences or intimate workshops, in the classroom with students or in seminars with colleagues. A screen, somebody standing, a series of slides over 10, 20 … even 30 minutes! Sometimes the speaker sits rather than stands. And then, questions at the end. This arrangement applies to most of the meetings we have had and are likely to have over our academic career. We meet to learn, but perhaps, and this is our point, we should learn to meet. Because meetings are, together with papers and books, quintessential in the circulation of academic knowledge. And yet, despite this, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: panels of paper presentations and round tables. We want to explore new ways to get together.

Meetings are extended bureaucratic forms, organisational techniques and forms of relationality across all kinds of collective and organisational contexts. Defined in space and time, meetings always point to a larger context. This is the argument made by Hannah Brown, Adam Reed and Thomas Yarrow (2017) in a special issue devoted to the topic. Thus the relevance of meetings has to do with the effects they produce beyond. To quote Brown et al.: “[meetings] contain and animate social worlds outside the spatially and temporally demarcated arenas through which they take place” (Brown et al. 2017: 12).

There is always something at stake beyond then: interests, contexts and agendas that shape a meeting and will be affected by it. Marilyn Strathern has argued that meetings, as organisational events, constitute miniaturise versions of the collectives they are embedded in: “meetings mimic larger apprehensions of a scaled-up object” (2017: 197). In a period of transformation that seems to call to experiment with new forms of producing knowledge, I would say that we need to mimic in our meeting methods this experimental impulse.

Tomás: At the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation we are trying to open up venues to rethink the norms and forms of ethnography, and more specifically, the ways in which we do and narrate fieldwork. Hence, since we started out almost two years ago now, we have tried to foreground the particular social and material interventions, the devices and the spaces, the discourses and the practices,  through which forms of fieldwork beyond the canonic participant observation could be examined in closer detail.

Seeking to explore alternative meeting formats, we organised our first workshop in Lisbon last year. We devoted half of the programme to an exploration of situation-based,  art-oriented, multi-sensory, spatial and audio-visual and other work that we called ‘open formats’. In this alternative meeting mode to the regular paper presentation, we not only experimented with fieldwork and how to learn to do it differently. Also, open formats became reflexive situations whereby what it might mean to experiment could be centre-staged, highlighted, examined, and debated. But as we would like to discuss today, our interest in ‘open formats’ goes beyond a mere playful exploration in a workshop. This is why we are suggesting to meet today in order to learn how to meet in many different alternative ways: Meeting in order to learn how to do fieldwork otherwise, meeting to appreciate what it means to experiment in fieldwork and what it brings. In fact, we believe that we should devote time and space to understanding open formats as interesting learning and fieldwork devices, and to making them relevant for teaching and research…

An image of one of the open formats organized in the 1st Colleex Workshop (Lisbon, 2017) (Vitor Barros).

Adolfo: One source of inspiration has been the realisation, captured by Michael J. Fischer, that “life is outrunning the pedagogies in which we have been trained” (2003: 37). Or, to put it differently, engaging with forms of ethnographic experimentation has made us realise that conventional ethnographic training–or, to be more specific, the canon expressed in many handbooks and manuals of ethnography–is not adequate to the challenges fieldwork poses today. A second source would be our own very ethnographic engagement: some of us at Colleex we have learnt from our epistemic partners in the field, such artists and activists, alternative ways to come together. This doesn’t just mean that they have shown us specific meeting formats but that we have learn to inhabit in sophisticated ‘how-to’ meeting cultures: ones that mobilise an ecology of practices whose key goal is to get us together to engage in forms of joint research. From our partners we’ve learned about composing ambiences for discussion, arranging spatial layouts, deploying varied technologies for record keeping and documentation, unfolding practices of care…  That is, practices whereby ethnography becomes an art of learning to relate–meet, tell, forge relations– in order to relate–that is, to keep on meeting, telling, and forging relations– .

Eeva: We agree that heterodox and improvisational formats also generate academic value, and that they could and should be supported further through documentation. And so we thank EASA for the way it is seeking to break out of such constraints through, for instance, labs. EASA has been trying to raise awareness and give some relevance in the programme to labs. To us, labs are not just ‘blah’ they are not a mere playful format, but fundamental sites where the renewal of learning and ethnographic fieldwork might be attempted in a miniaturised time and space. Hence, this lab focuses on how labs matter. This is, then, a lab on how labs operate, a lab of labs…

Anna: In that sense, and putting open formats centre-stage, perhaps we should outline some different modes in which open formats happen. I can think of three modes: (a) meetings in which we convey our knowledge through open formats; (b) meetings in which we generate knowledge through open formats; or (c) meetings in which we show experimental fieldwork devices through open formats. Of course they aren’t as distinct from each other as this, but we need to disentangle their different moments: (a) knowledge-production happening before the format takes place, (b) knowledge being simultaneous or reciprocal with regards to the format, and (c) knowledge being derived from the open format. Meetings of academic content combine these by sharing knowledge from the field and generating more knowledge around it in the meeting. By analogy with paper presentations, later developed into articles or fully written-up papers, what would be the most finished form of an open format? How can we translate this step of the process where knowledge becomes more integrated into open formats? How could we generate the situational knowledge we could to take beyond the situation, and how could it be shared? What role would documentation play in this? And, also, what kinds of documentation are we talking about?

Eeva: We recognize a need for more adequate accounts of fieldwork than tropes and modes that build on ‘participant observation.’ We share an imperative to verbalize or articulate in more-than-textual terms but also to embody the formats and devices through which we encounter and engage the world. We also recognize the need to give some structure and even a little order to the space we as #colleex are occupying, and which we hope enables further developments in heterodox forms of research. There are multiple voices and divergent projects in this space, not just the wider network, but even among ourselves as convenors. (We don’t want to kill the network or limit ourselves by trying to agree on everything, let alone reach consensus.)

But if we are to practice new ethnographic modes and have them recognized and valued, we do need to take a position on what experimental fieldwork might constructively be guided towards and why, and this is where documenting and discussing the ways in which we do it, or drawing inspiration from one another to attempt newer ways, plays a fundamental role. Though of course any attempt at articulating this in any genre is likely to be somewhat hesitant, always contingent and probably relational. It’s not reform so much as a recognition of already productive work and thinking that’s needed. This won’t be easy in the university’s profit-oriented institutional set up, but a drive to push along these lines is definitely there. In places it’s already possible to work without reducing ethnographic insight to text or things like ‘key performance indicators’, plus it’s clear that the extremely serious can easily and productively dovetail with the playful. What we now need is a lively, possibly provisional, documentation format that can travel and contribute to pedagogy.

Adolfo: A reflection on how and why to do this, is an integral part of our work about ethnographic experimentation, as a specific ethnographic modality beyond participant observation. But beyond just talking about it or giving it value, the challenge ethnographic experimentation poses is that it requires different forms of ethnographic training. This argument links to a debate on the transformations of fieldwork in the contemporary and the need to re-equip our discipline (Rees 2008). Paul Rabinow, Chris Kelty and Kim Fortun for instance have explored other forms of learning with their students and young researchers (Rabinow 2011, Marcus 2013, Kelty 2008, Fortun 2008). The volume edited by George E. Marcus and James D. Faubion (2009), Fieldwork is not what it used to be, is exemplary in this sense. It makes a strong case for the need to renew pedagogies in the anthropological profession if we want to measure up to the challenges of the contemporary. Specifically the PhD is an exceptional learning moment or space to experiment with the possibilities of ethnography, as Marcus has argued: it constitutes a threshold where the limits of the norm and form of field work are negotiated (Marcus 2009). This has led to rehearsing formats borrowed from other disciplines, such as the ethnocharrette or the design or art studio. In a similar vein, Paul Rabinow has explored what he designates labminar, a space of academic exchange that remediated–that, is, changed from one media to another– the meetings of the laboratories he studied.  In these spaces Rabinow, together with his students, explored the possibility of “new forms of inquiry through ways collaborative guided by an ethic of care” (2011: 142).

An image of one of the 1st Colleex Workshop (Lisbon, 2017) (Vitor Barros).

2. On the importance of archiving documentation of meetings and open formats

Adolfo: If ethnography is moving beyond the solitary to the collaborative, shifting away from the visual to multi-sensory, being captured not just textually but in other mediums, how are these conveyed? Can and should they be captured and re-moved to other locations?

Tomás: Perhaps we need to reflect on how to document, how to tell, how to narrate all these experiences, beyond the very situations in which they happen… How to make them travel?

Anna: And how can the multi-sensory experiences be documented or made relatable at all? For instance, open formats in mode (c) as I introduced it earlier – that is, as meetings in which the production of knowledge derives from the very open format itself – entail a particular form of documentation. And the documentation of fieldwork encounters and experiments is different, I think, from the documentation of the open formats with which we either seek to produce knowledge (b) or to just transmit knowledge (a).

Tomás: What if we gathered the documentation of open formats into something like a collection… Would this help to discern different approaches to ethnographic experimentation, or serve as inspiration to practice more experimental forms of ethnography?

Eeva: Assuming this is desirable, and that documentation should be easily accessible, what should we call this thing? Not a handbook… An inventory or list, taxonomy even? An archive? A library of how-to manuals or toolkits, even a protocol? A recipe collection or a cookbook?

Tomás:  There are implications in calling it an inventory or a cookbook. Both are nice terms, but they connect to different powerful imaginaries and aesthetics that could have a potential impact on the output…

Eeva: Terminology always carries baggage. The term cookbook is perhaps most open and tolerant of gaps. Inventory is perhaps the most rigid and colonizing word we might use. This is certainly so if it consists of standardised entries to be completed in each case, and assuming some underlying structure that is infinitely transferable from context to context.

Tomás: I think there are also different notions of these terms, and I am not that sure that an inventory is colonial per se… It certainly brings to mind an imaginary of knowledge as taxonomy and logistics. Is that the connotation that we want? If we’re talking about a gathering of open formats, their very openness suggests more the idea of recipes people can alter, transform, adapt, that the openness doesn’t just refer to the types of meetings being experimented, but also the types of documentation being attempted, not to speak of the openness of their subsequent uses?

Anna: I think if we use the word cookbook it will need a very clear explanation of our understanding of recipe, that it is a mix of things whose outcome can vary. My first association with recipe is still the “take a+b, get c” type of thing, and I don’t think that’s what we mean. Maybe we could even be more open with our metaphor and use something that is more abstract and doesn’t yet have that connotation, I’m thinking carousel (for dynamics) or something that is a an open collection, not a box and not an a+b=c connotation.

Eeva: Metaphors and words do matter. Still, as texts and in texts, these vocabularies can all be read as if they were fixed, but they can also all be invitations to improvise and work on them further. One of the key motivations for documenting any research is to share experiences and inspire further adaptation. I think what we are calling for is ways of expanding our academic (and other) imagination. At the same time, some people might be reading documents to get going, to learn something totally new, in which case a step-by-step set of instructions might be handy. Documentation as a way of giving an account (whether as a story or financially) is also simply an invitation to engage and respond, to continue. In the case of #colleex, it’s a kind of reconstructed epistemic practice we’re looking for, that cares for the ethnographic in all its dimensions: as interpersonal engagement, fieldwork, description, theory and combinations of them all.

Tomás/Adolfo/Anna/Eeva: Hence, in this spirit, we are meeting today to show you our first steps in attempting how and why to document, something that started after our workshop in Lisbon. In what follows, we will show previous documentation of several open formats. But our aspiration would be to think beyond these first baby steps, and to invite you to join us in meeting to further discuss how we might imagine to document the inventiveness of open formats, and what for? What should be the appropriate genres, archival modes, styles? And, after discussing this, we would also like to propose engaging in a process of documenting the experimental ethnographic practices and accounts of open formats in the conference’s labs: where we think this might be a bit more explicit. But we also reckon that not every lab has to be necessarily experimental, and maybe experimentation in and around open formats might also be discussed in presentations across the conference.

Our proposal would be to display such a documentation in our digital platforms, so that we could open up a further discussion and a learning space on how to train ourselves to undertake experimental ethnographic modes. For this, we could use the hashtag #colleexperiments to collect the documentation gathered by all of us. It is our hope that the reflections and the hands-on work in this lab, could pave the way to something like the alternative to the handbook we discussed beforehand. Perhaps, in doing this we could collectively imagine how to make such a cookbook?

An image of one of the open formats organized in the 1st Colleex Workshop (Lisbon, 2017) (Vitor Barros).

References

Brown, H., Reed, A. & Yarrow, T. (2017). Introduction: towards an ethnography of meeting. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(S1): 10-26.

Faubion, James D. & George E. Marcus (eds.). 2009. Fieldwork is not what it used to be. Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Fischer, Michael M. J. 2003. Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Fortun, Kim. 2009. “Figuring out ethnography”, in James Faubion y George Marcus (eds.), Fieldwork isn’t what it used to be: 167-183. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Kelty,  Christopher et alt. 2008. “Fieldwork after the Internet. Collaboration, coordination and composition”, in James Faubion and George Marcus (eds.), Fieldwork isn’t what it used to be: 184-206. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Marcus, George E. 2009. “Introduction. Notes toward an Ethnographic Memoir of Supervising Graduate Research through Anthropology’s Decades of Transformation”, in James D. Faubion and George E. Marcus, Fieldwork is not what it used to be. Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition:1-34. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Marcus, George E. 2013. “Experimental forms for the expression of norms in the ethnography of the contemporary”. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory3(2):197–217.

Rabinow, P., Marcus, G. E., Faubion, J. D., & Rees, T. (2008). Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary. Durham: Duke University Press.

Rabinow, P. (2011). The Accompaniment: Assembling the Contemporary. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Rees, Tobias. 2008. “Introduction”, in Paul Rabinow, George Marcus, James D. Faubion y Tobias Rees (eds.), Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary: 1-13. Durham, London: Duke University Press

Strathern, M. (2017). Afterword. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(S1).

Categories
events experimental collaborations publications

Experimental Collaborations – Book launch events

‘Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices‘ (#xcol), Adolfo Estalella and I’s co-edited book (Berghahn, 2018), is finally out! *

As stated in the book description:

In the accounts compiled in this book, ethnography occurs through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration. Through creative interventions that unfold what we term as ‘fieldwork devices’—such as coproduced books, the circulation of repurposed data, co-organized events, authorization protocols, relational frictions, and social rhythms—anthropologists engage with their counterparts in the field in the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. In these situations, the traditional tropes of the fieldwork encounter (i.e. immersion and distance) give way to a narrative of intervention, where the aesthetics of collaboration in the production of knowledge substitutes or intermingles with participant observation. Building on this, the book proposes the concept of ‘experimental collaborations’ to describe and conceptualize this distinctive ethnographic modality

The introduction’s PDF is freely available for download here

It has been a long journey, full of conversations and collaborative writing: A process of learning together how to practice contemporary anthropology; a collective project that required the generosity and effort of many people involved in the project. Therefore, we would like to share some of our joy and open up conversations of what it might imply in a series of forthcoming events:

#xcol-book launch event_1 Barcelona, 3 de mayo de 2018, 18–20h [ES]

‘Colaboraciones experimentales. Un inventario de dispositivos para la etnografía contemporánea‘.

Departament d’Antropologia Social, Universitat de Barcelona (Aula 207, 2º piso de la Facultat de Geografia i Història) – Organizado por el Grup de treball sobre Antropologia, Imatge i Cultura Visual (IVAC) de l’ICA y el Grup de Recerca en Antropologia i Pràctiques Artístiques (GRAPA)

#xcol-book launch event_2 Berlin, 3.7.2018 12-14h [EN]

‘Ethnographic Experimentation: An Inventory of Fieldwork Devices‘

Humboldt University of Berlin’s Department of European Ethnology Institutskolloquium ‘Conjunctures & Creations: Anthropological Transformations/Transforming Anthropology’. Moderated by Prof. Dr. Ignacio Farías.

#xcol-book launch event_3 Granada, 4.9.2018 17-18:30h [ES]

Conversation with Prof. Aurora Álvarez Veinguer (Social Anthropology, Granada) at the 4th AIBR International Conference of Anthropology, Granada (Spain)

__

* In the next months, Berghahn is offering a 50% discount code (EST533 & AIBR18) for all individual online orders placed directly on their website

Categories
accessibility caring infrastructures functional diversity & disability rights independent-living participatory & collaborative design of care infrastructures politics and economy of care publications technical aids techniques & ways of doing

Functional Diversity as a Politics of Design? – DISEÑA, 11 (Special issue on Design & Politics)

The Chilean journal DISEÑA has just published its latest bilingual issue (Spanish & English), a detailed reflection on the relations between Politics & Design (DISEÑA #11), carefully edited by Martín Tironi.

I collaborate with a reflection (pp. 148-159) on the ‘politics’ of design–in a Rancièrian sense–undertaken by ‘functional diversity’ activism after the 15-M uprisings, and my participation in the En torno a la silla collective.

¿La diversidad funcional como una política del diseño?

Este artículo es una indagación sobre el activismo de la “diversidad funcional” tras la ocupación de las plazas del 15-M español, y, más concretamente, acerca de cómo a partir de ella la diversidad funcional se convierte en un repertorio que politiza el diseño (particularmente el mercado de ayudas técnicas y entornos accesibles desarrollados de acuerdo con el modelo social de la discapacidad). Para apuntalar una lectura de la política del diseño —en el sentido de la filosofía política de Jacques Rancière— que ahí aparece, tomaré como caso un pequeño proyecto colaborativo desarrollado por el colectivo de diseño abierto radicado en Barcelona En torno a la silla.

15-M _ Diversidad funcional _ En torno a la silla _ política del diseño _ Rancière

Functional diversity as a politics of design?

This article is an inquiry into the activism around ‘functional diversity’ after the public square occupations of the Spanish 15-M movement; and, more specifically, how, in them, ‘functional diversity’ developed into a repertoire for the politicisation of design (notably, the market of technical aids and accessible environments created according to the social model of disability). To underpin the particular reading of the politics of design —in the sense developed by political philosopher Jacques Rancière— that appears there, I will describe a small collaborative project put together by the Barcelona-based open design collective En torno a la silla.

15M _ En torno a la silla _ Functional diversity _ Politics of design _ Rancière

PDF

Categories
accessibility caring infrastructures experimental collaborations functional diversity & disability rights materials multimodal objects of care and care practices open sourcing publications

Vidas fuera de catálogo & Diseño abierto y diversidad funcional (En torno a la silla, videos interactivos, 2013-2015)

* Video interactivo “Diseño abierto y diversidad funcional“, preparado para la convocatoria Funcionamientos: Objetos comunes y cuerpos diversos (Medialab-Prado Madrid, CC BY NC ND 2015)

URL: https://xcol.org/entornoalasilla/objetoscomunes/

Realizado con materiales del proyecto de documentación en video Vidas fuera de catálogo* (2013-2015) por Arianna Mencaroni, con la colaboración del resto de En torno a la silla (T. Sánchez Criado, A. Díaz, R. Vilatovà, N. Gómez, X. Duacastilla, M. Alonso, N. Gómez, P. Rovira & A. Centeno)

* Proyecto “VIDAS FUERA DE CATÁLOGO. UN RECORRIDO A LO LARGO DE UN PROYECTO AUDIOVISUAL INACABADO | VIDAS FUERA DE CATÁLOGO. A JOURNEY THROUGH AN UNFINISHED AUDIOVISUAL PROJECT”, presentado en BIDEOTIK 2017 (Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao)

Diapositivas de la presentación en BideOtik

* Video-documentación exhibida en REHOGAR 7 · Diseño Abierto y Reutilización (MAKEA, Barcelona, 15 al 31 de octubre 2015)

‘Re(u)sar desde la diversidad funcional‘, trabajo en equipo de En torno a la silla para la exposición organizada por MAKEA en el Espai Txema BioBuil(L)t de Barcelona.

* Video-documentación mostrada en el programa La Aventura del Saber (La2, 13 Abril 2015, 30′)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWlvUMnP0VY&w=560&h=315]

* Video-presentación del proyecto: “Vidas fuera de catálogo” (En torno a la silla, Barcelona, 2014)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLSlxuNp230&w=560&h=315]

* Prototipo de la primera idea de webdoc: “La vida dura del modelo” (Medialab-Prado Madrid, 2013)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J26JdJ_ThZQ&w=560&h=315]
Categories
ethics, politics and economy of care objects of care and care practices politics and economy of care publications

Cultural Anthropology – Openings collection on ‘Speed’

culanth32-1-cover

The recent Cultural Anthropology, 32(1) contains an Openings collection on “Speed” edited by Vincent Duclos, Tomás Sánchez Criado, and Vinh-Kim Nguyen.

As the presentation of the issue states: ‘In their introductory essay, the editors discuss how they hope to open anthropological practice to speed by offering a “a timely probe into machinic, productive, pressurizing, and largely intangible energetics that operate within, across, and beyond specific social configurations and forms of life.”’

Another end of the world is possible, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre. Photo courtesy of Audrey Bochaton.

“On every front, life is being mobilized. Connected and put in motion, activated and fast-forwarded, life is sped up in unprecedented ways. This Openings collection is premised on the conviction that the world is accelerating, and that anthropology needs to catch up. We do not make a claim for a faster anthropology, but rather for the crafting of concepts capable of creatively engaging with forces and intensities—technological, but also economic, political, and geological—that constitute and spoil the worlds we are attached to. We aim to open anthropological practice to temporalities that are immanent to both the congealment of life—for instance, of responsive capacities—and to potential deviations and overflows” (from the Introduction)

Table of Contents

Openings and Retrospectives

Speed: An Introduction

by Vincent Duclos, Tomás Sánchez Criado and Vinh-Kim Nguyen

Speed Crash Course

by Carlo Caduff

Inhabiting Media: An Anthropology of Life in Digital Speed

by Vincent Duclos

Viral Speed: Infrastructure, Connectivity, Ontogeny; or, Notes on the Molecular Epidemiology of Epidemics

by Vinh-Kim Nguyen

An Idiotic Catalyst: Accelerating the Slowing Down of Thinking and Action

by Ignacio Farías

Categories
caring infrastructures ethics, politics and economy of care functional diversity & disability rights objects of care and care practices participatory & collaborative design of care infrastructures politics and economy of care publications technical aids techniques & ways of doing urban and personal devices

Caring through Design?: En torno a la silla and the ‘Joint Problem-Making’ of Technical Aids

1119053498

Charlotte Bates, Rob Imrie, and Kim Kullman have edited the challenging compilation Care and Design: Bodies, Buildings, Cities (out November 2016 with Wiley-Blackwell).
In their words, the book: “connects the study of design with care, and explores how concepts of care may have relevance for the ways in which urban environments are designed. It explores how practices and spaces of care are sustained specifically in urban settings, thereby throwing light on an important arena of care that current work has rarely discussed in detail.”
Israel Rodríguez-Giralt and I contribute with the Chapter 11 “Caring through Design?: En torno a la silla and the ‘Joint Problem-Making’ of Technical Aids“ (pp. 198-218).

The idea for a wheelchair armrest/briefcase CC BY NC SA En torno a la silla (2012)

Abstract

In this paper, we engage with the practices of En torno a la silla (ETS), which involve fostering small DIY interventions and collective material explorations, in order to demonstrate how these present a particularly interesting mode of caring through design. They do so, firstly, by responding to the pressing needs and widespread instability that our wheelchair friends face in present-day Spain, and, secondly, through the intermingling of open design and the Independent-Living movement’s practices and method, which, taken together, enable a politicisation and problematisation of the usual roles of people and objects in the design process. In the more conventional creation of commoditized care technologies, such as technical aids, the role of the designer as expert is clearly disconnected from that of the lay or end user. Rather, technical aids are objects embodying the expertise of the designer to address the needs of the user. As we will argue, ETS unfolds a ‘more radical’ approach to the design of these gadgets through what we will term ‘joint problem-making,’ whereby caring is understood as a way of sharing problems between users and designers, bringing together different skills to collaboratively explore potential solutions.

PDF

Categories
accessibility caring infrastructures independent-living legal objects of care and care practices open sourcing participatory & collaborative design of care infrastructures publications technical aids urban and personal devices

Urban accessibility issues: Technoscientific democratizations at the documentation interface

 

Picture CC BY Maria José Agüero
Carrers per a tothom demonstration, Barcelona, 14 March 2015 CC BY M.J. Agüero

As part of a special feature in the journal CITY edited by Ignacio Farías and Anders Blok on “Technical democracy as a challenge for urban studies”, Marcos Cereceda and I are publishing this article on accessibility struggles in Barcelona and their documentation interfaces.

CITY, 2016 VOL. 20, NO. 4, pp. 619-636, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2016.1194004

Abstract

After many struggles from disability rights and independent-living advocates, urban accessibility has gradually become a concern for many urban planners across post-industrial countries. In this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork studies in Barcelona working with urban accessibility professionals and activists, we argue for the importance of the ‘documentation interfaces’ created in their struggles: that is, the relational processes to collaboratively build multi-media accounts in a diversity of formats seeking to enforce different translations of bodily needs into specific urban accessibility arrangements. In discussion with the asymmetries that the ongoing expertization of accessibility might be opening up, we would like to foreground these apparently irrelevant practices as an interesting site to reflect on how urban accessibility struggles might allow us to rethink the project of technical democracy and its applications to urban issues. Two cases are analyzed: (1) the creation of Streets for All, a platform to contest and to sensitize technicians and citizens alike of the problems of ‘shared streets’ for the blind and partially sighted led by the Catalan Association for the Blind; and (2) the organization of the Tinkerthon, a DIY and open-source hardware workshop boosted by En torno a la silla to facilitate the creation of a network of tinkerers seeking to self-manage accessibility infrastructures. These cases not only bring to the fore different takes on the democratization of the relations between technical professionals and disability rights advocates, but also offer different approaches to the politics of universals in the design of urban accessibility arrangements.

Journal’s website (free PDF access)

PDF

Categories
experimental collaborations publications research projects

Colleex: A Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation | Allegra Lab

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ALLEGRA LAB

Fieldwork, the cornerstone to the ethnographer’s magic, seems to be under siege in recent times. The invocation that it ‘is not what it used to be’ runs parallel to intense debates on the place of ethnography in the production of anthropological knowledge (see for instance the recent take and forth on Ingold’s critique on ethnography here, here, and here). Challenges to fieldwork (and ethnography) come from all the corners of the discipline: anthropologist injecting a sensory approach to ethnography, drawing inspiration of design practices to devise new venues for the production of anthropological knowledge or endeavouring into partnerships with other disciplines and substituting the traditional trope of comparison for that of collaboration.

Amid this broad debate on the norm and form of fieldwork, we intend to open a debate on the place of experimentation in anthropology.

The invocation of experimentation in anthropology is not completely new, as we would like to recall, ‘the reflexive turn’ of the 1980s inaugurated a period of creative exploration of writing genres that George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer described in experimental terms: ‘What is happening seems to us to be a pregnant moment in which every individual project of ethnographic research and writing is potentially an experiment’. While this turn focussed on the space of representation (particularly the written form), we suggest now the opportunity to emplace the experimental drive of ethnography into fieldwork. A call that echoes and draws inspiration of a number of projects carried out in recent times by a series of anthropologist (we find especially inspiring the work of Paul Rabinow, George E. Marcus and Douglas Holmes, Kim Fortun, Michael Fortun, Alberto Corsín Jiménez and Annelise Riles, among many others).

A very important caveat, we do not intend to place experimentation and (participant) observation in opposition, only highlight their specificities. Indeed we think that both epistemic practices usually establish complex relationships in our fieldwork, at times they are entangled, juxtaposed or alternated.

Despite these relationships, we contend that experimentation involves a different epistemic practice to participant observation and it constitutes an alternative trope to describe our forms of engagement in the field.

Colleex thus intents to open a space for debate and intervention around experimental forms of ethnographic fieldwork. It seeks to work as a collaboratory whose main agenda is to foster theoretical debates and practical explorations on this topic. Below you can read the statement for the network proposal; if you are interested just send as an email (tomas.criado@tum.de and jestalellaf@uoc.edu) or sign the proposal here. The network builds on and intends to continue the work we have been doing in the previous two years in a series of meetings and writings, you can have a glimpsed of it here.

Colleex: A Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation

Colleex is a network that aims to open a space for debate and intervention around experimental forms of ethnographic fieldwork. Amid profound debates in recent years on the nature and conventions of ethnography, Colleex seeks to explore novel forms of knowledge production for anthropology. The network is organized as a collaboratory whose main agenda is to foster theoretical debates and practical explorations on what we call ethnographic experimentation.

Fieldwork

Fieldwork has traditionally been understood as the cornerstone epistemic situation for the production of anthropological knowledge in ethnography. Both an empirical practice and disciplinary narrative, we know that nowadays fieldwork is not what it used to be —or maybe it has never been what the canon narrates. The solitary confined research practice of ethnography has given way to collaborative projects, far-away locations have been replaced by close-to-home field sites, and traditional visual predominance has been expanded into a multi-sensory concern.

Anthropological imagination has traditionally understood the epistemic practice of fieldwork in observational terms. The core trope of participant observation has worked both as description and prescription for the kind of social relationships and epistemic practices through which anthropologists produce knowledge in the field.

The entrance of anthropology in novel empirical sites and the construction of new objects of study in the last decades seem to require from us to urgently revise and devise other forms of practising fieldwork.

Experimentation

Invoking the figure of the experiment acts as a provocation to investigate alternative epistemic practices in ethnography. Colleex intends to explore the infrastructures, spaces, forms of relationships, methods and techniques required to inject an experimental sensibility in fieldwork. Nevertheless, there is no intention to oppose experimentation to observation. On the contrary, Colleex seeks to discern the multiple forms of relationship between these two epistemic forms —and their correlate modes of relationality— that in different circumstances and situations may be complementary, adjacent or substitutive.

Not alien to the anthropological endeavour, experimentation was invoked decades ago as an opportunity to renovate the discipline through novel forms of ethnographic writing and representation. Colleex network would like to further develop that experimental impulse present in many anthropological sensibilities, shifting its locus from the process of writing to the practice of fieldwork. The intention is to work on a question: What would ethnographic fieldwork look like if it was shaped around the epistemic practice of experimentation?

Hence, fieldwork experimentation is not being invoked just for its own sake but because there is a prospect that it could help foster new forms of anthropological theorization.

Collaboration

The network seeks to connect with anthropologists and other practitioners of ethnography interested in discussing their fieldwork practice. It could be of interest for specialists in the fields of visual anthropology, sensory anthropology, digital ethnography, design anthropology, creative intersections of art and anthropology, or anthropology and STS. The network also seeks to include specialists from other domains like art, cultural producers, designers and practitioners of any discipline interested in the creative experimentation with ethnographic practice. The inventive unfolding of ethnography taking place in those areas could greatly contribute to strengthen the reach of anthropological fieldwork practices.

Colleex is established as a collaboratory, a project that aims at promoting forms of collaboration among all those interested in the topic under discussion.

In contrast with permanent networks, from its very inception Colleex would like to work with a temporary horizon of 5 years, after which we expect to deliver a contribution of the work done by the network in appropriate formats, be it in conventional academic and/or more experimental formats faithful to the collaboratory sensibility we are invoking. Four convenors will develop their task for periods of two years. The network will only continue after the first period of five years if a designed program for its continuity is agreed by its members.

**

+ìnfo on the Colleex Network: EASA website & the network’s blog

Categories
experimental collaborations participatory & collaborative design of care infrastructures publications

CLEENIK: A Clinic for Ethnographic Experimentation Syndromes | Allegra Lab

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ALLEGRA LAB

Have you been affected by Ethnographic Experimentation Breakdown (EEB) or Excess of Engagement Stress (EES)? Are you suffering from breach-of-the-canon infection (BOTS)? Do you know how to detect the symptoms of Collaborative Fieldwork Disorder (CoFD) or Transdisciplinary/Interdisciplinary Associative Disorder (TRIAD)? If you have been experiencing some of these symptoms perhaps the CLEENIK integral treatment could be what you need. CLEENIK is a specialized anthropological clinic treating anthropologists suffering from the multiple syndromes consequence of ethnographic experiments in fieldwork.

This was our call for the laboratory that we organized in the last EASA conference (Milano, 2016). Laboratories grant spaces to play with academic formats and, hence, we took advantage of this opportunity to organize a meeting that staged a group therapy session for all those anthropologists whose fieldwork had taken an experimental detour. Our objective was to create the grounds for a discussion around the epistemic figure of ethnographic experimentation in fieldwork.

This session and our recent work on ethnographic experimentation stems from recent reflections contending that contemporary ethnographic fieldwork ‘is not what it used to be’ (as James D. Faubion and George E. Marcus phrased it in their edited book and debates on the transformation of the norm and form of fieldwork. We may refer to recent projects that have injected an experimental drive in their fieldwork, among them those of Paul Rabinow (in his collaborative work with Gaymon Bennett and Anthony Stavrianakis), Kim and Michael Fortun and Douglas Holmes and George Marcus.

Invoking the figure of experimentation is for us a provocation to investigate epistemic practices and descriptions of fieldwork that may not be encapsulated under the heading of participant observation.

What would ethnographic fieldwork look like if shaped by practices of experimentation? The previously referred authors offer some insights (this is the topic too of a book we have been editing and contributing to for the EASA book series, more on it here). Yet, describing their fieldwork in experimental terms instead of drawing on the trope of participant observation poses anthropologists (especially those in early career stages) difficult questions: Have I been too involved in my fieldwork? Have I correctly followed the method? Have I maintained a proper distance? We designed the workspace of the lab attempting to address scholars facing this kind of questions.

The idea for the CLEENIK was to open a therapeutic space to face the worries that appear in experimental fieldwork, those situations that seem to transgress the methodological canon. It is a playful façade for a topic we take very seriously, an investigation into the appropriate venues to share and discuss these fragile and vulnerable methodological situations. The reference to a therapy group intends to underlie the need for intimacy and care, complicity and collaboration when discussing certain crucial situations of our fieldwork experiences.

The CLEENIK session lasted 90 minutes, in which each participant played alternatively the role of patient and doctor – these positions were made reversible (thanks, Alfred Gell!). The dynamic was organized in four parts around a mundane technology: a file card designed as a clinical report aimed at prompting reflection (here is a sample, feel free to use it). First, each ‘patient’ was asked to fill in a clinical report, where she or he would describe his/her ‘fieldwork symptoms’. Second, each of them passed the report to the participant nearby, who would then analyse these symptoms, identifying the disorder and providing a diagnosis (prior to the start of this we had introduced the Ethnographic Disorder Manual v1.0 who could guide them in the process of attributing syndromes or in compiling new ones. Third, the clinical report was passed again to a third participant who then offered a treatment proposal. In the final stage we shared all the contributions (where some new syndromes were identified like the terrible Lack-of-Funditis) and opened a debate with the lab participants.

The CLEENIK prolongs and adapts for anthropological audiences a methodology we had previously tested in an event organized in Spain in collaboration with ColaBoraBora, a group of cultural researchers that had been part of the fieldwork of some of us. We drew inspiration from their methodologies and brought them to our discipline. Organizing this lab we somehow wanted to bring these ‘foreign’ creative and epistemic resources into our disciplinary spaces. The lab thus evinces a topic of our interest: working with these experts, we wonder how we can use the ‘epistemic contamination’ we experienced in our collaborations to transform our anthropological practices.

We know very well that often, as anthropologists/social scientists, we appear to the eyes of those professionals we study as “too literal” and “too serious”, so bringing an ironic and playful inflection (that, by the way, we think is very appropriate for Allegra’s sensibility) we wanted to self-reflexively play with our anthropological practices and disciplinary-methodological assumptions. Needless to say that perhaps our condition of southern European early academics and our heightened sense of the precariousness of (academic) life, much contributed to the fearless use of such strange-to-the-discipline techniques, we did it to have fun – fun also being a desperate strategy of academic survival.

But acknowledging that fun is also temporary, we want to introduce a proposal to open a permanent space for those playful and experimental moments, the biggest proposal of the closing moments of the laboratory being devoted to discussing the interest to promote an EASA network Colleex: A Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation.

Categories
installation maintenance and repair objects of care and care practices publications

Pensar infraestructuralmente

Colaboro en el número inaugural de la revista INMATERIAL. Diseño, Arte y Sociedad con un ensayo celebratorio ante la publicación del libro de Mongili, A., y Pellegrino, G. eds., 2014. Information Infrastructure(s): Boundaries, Ecologies, Multiplicity. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.

Pensar infraestructuralmente

1. ¿Infra-estructuras? De objetos de frontera y objetos múltiples

En diferentes ramas de las ciencias sociales interesadas por el “giro material” estamos asistiendo a una revitalización y a una creciente oleada de trabajos sobre las infraestructuras como objeto de reflexión, teorización e intervención primordial. De entre los muchos trabajos que actualmente están desarrollando diferentes vertientes de ese giro hacia las infraestructuras, la compilación de Alessandro Mongili y Giuseppina Pellegrino Information Infrastructure(s): Boundaries, Ecologies, Multiplicity es quizá uno de los intentos más sistemáticos y pormenorizados hasta la fecha. El libro, de hecho, presenta catorce interesantes trabajos inspirados por la etnografía de las infraestructuras desarrollada por Susan Leigh Star, una de las más agudas investigadoras etnográficas de nuestra contemporaneidad, y sus colaboradores. El conjunto de capítulos compilado por Mongili y Pellegrino se abre con un prologo escrito Geof Bowker (a la sazón compañero intelectual y sentimental de la recientemente fallecida S.L. Star) que, de alguna manera, responde a la invocación que ya plantearan de “escuchar las infraestructuras” (Star y Lampland, 2009: pp. 11-13).

Tras ello, el libro se inicia con la erudita y profusa introducción de Mongili y Pellegrino, un interesante trabajo de sistematización de las fuentes y los principales rasgos de esta llamada al estudio etnográfico de las infraestructuras. En este texto introductorio encontramos los principales rasgos de un pensamiento que piensa lo social y lo material no como dos cuestiones separadas, sino entrelazadas en complejos entramados no-coherentes pero extremadamente globalizados, como las infraestructuras de la información. Unos particulares conglomerados que a la vez coordinan y son el efecto de muy diversas tareas y trabajos entre muy diferentes tipos de actores. Pero lo interesante es que no nos encontramos ante una mera re-instanciación del debate marxista sobre la infraestructura como modo de producción que permite fundar estructuras sociales y que es escondido o invisibilizado por formas de super-estructura ideológica. Ni tampoco se trata de un trabajo que destaque lo infrastructural para referirse hiperbólicamente al sustrato permanente y sólido de nuestras prácticas cotidianas.

Más bien, y en relación de difracción con estas otras versiones de la infraestructura, nos encontramos ante una indagación sobre formas sociotécnicas extremadamente complejas, cuya organicidad o sistematicidad es, en muchos casos, puesta en duda empíricamente; cuya topología o forma es mucho más compleja: puesto que funcionan según el momento como totalidades más o menos coherentes. Y para resaltar esta cuestión, no pocos de los trabajos del libro recurren a unos operadores conceptuales (denominados en la jerga de Star “objetos de frontera” o boundary objects) que remiten a cómo se conectan sin mezclar modos distintos y a veces inconmensurables de trabajar, organizarse o pensar en común sin la necesidad de que todos los actores tengan una misma interpretación de la situación en curso. Estos boundary objects actúan, por ende, como operadores para pensar las infraestructuras como un trabajo común entre situaciones y agentes a veces inconmensurables, lugar de frontera entre diferentes sujetos, objetos u objetivos de la acción (entre los capítulos del libro tenemos buenos ejemplos de ello, como los textos de Giacomo Poderi sobre infraestructuras de videojuegos de código abierto, o los de Federico Neresini y Assunta Viteritti y Stefano Crabu, sobre diferentes objetos o mediadores implicados en diversos trabajos de laboratorio).

La principal cuestión que esta sensibilidad plantea, por tanto, es que no sabemos nunca si este o aquel fenómeno opera como un entramado sociomaterial, si se trata o no de una infraestructura, sin llevar a cabo un trabajo minucioso de observación y registro de cómo se trabaja, cómo se piensa, o cómo se articula material y prácticamente la organización del trabajo en común en situaciones concretas, prestando atención a quién hace qué, cómo y a través de qué, así como de qué maneras mostramos y hablamos lo que ahí se hace.

Pero además de ser objetos potencialmente múltiples, uno de los aspectos más importantes analizados por Star y Bowker, y sistematizados y resaltados por Mongili y Pellegrino, es el papel de visibilización e invisibilización, así como la oclusión y la violencia que pueden generar estas formas de concertación de la acción: por lo que hacen o no presente, por cómo mantienen y reproducen diferentes categorizaciones que los convierten en algo que va mucho más allá de dispositivos de “ordenación” o de “sistematización de la información”.

Estos efectos puede fácilmente observarse en la construcción de bases de datos o formularios, ejemplos canónicos de entre los estudiados por Bowker y Star (2000), de lo que da buena cuenta el capítulo de Simona Isabella que analiza en detalle los complejos procesos por medio de los cuales alguien es articulado y tratado como usuario de un servicio en las prácticas de un call-centre, y cómo esto no precede a un ímprobo trabajo documental, de compilación y coordinación de registros que permite y/o limita ciertas formas en las que un servicio opera y se puede relacionar con aquellos a los que llama sus “usuarios”.

Pero esto también ocurre en prácticas de estandarización de los más ínfimos procesos no necesariamente relativos al universo digital, que puede ir desde la horma que se pone a un queso en su fabricación (o el molde de un pastel) hasta el tamaño de los folios o el papel moneda, o las convenciones de tráfico, etc. Un buen ejemplo de estas cuestiones son los protocolos que regulan los procedimientos, tamaños o mecanismos concretos de diseños tecnológicos, como los dispositivos de dispensación automática de medicamentos que Stefan Klein y Stefan Schellhammer analizan en su capítulo para el libro.

Toda esta serie de planteamientos nos ponen en la pista de un buen puñado de trabajos que se liberan de que al decir “infraestructuras” sólo sepamos entender esas cosas que llamamos “grandes sistemas tecnológicos conectados” (la luz, el agua, el gas, internet, etc.). Ese planteamiento ayuda más bien a poner el foco en los diferentes formatos, tentativas y propuestas sociomateriales de “poner orden” (Star y Lampland, 2009: pp. 19-21), pero no asumiendo la máxima modernista de que esto se pueda producir limpiamente, purificando y rompiendo con el caos y el desorden: a veces poner orden supone embarullarlo todo quizá cada vez más.

Me explico. Estos trabajos nos ponen ante el problema de observar cómo se da empíricamente la consecución de un orden, pero a la vez prestando atención a cómo ese orden puede ser más bien un efecto, un resultado de este aglomerado de entidades que nos ejecuta, que nos infra-estructura, que nos dice quiénes somos o quiénes podemos ser. Pero (si es que esto tiene sentido) “por detrás”: y digo esto pensando en cómo las bambalinas de un teatro o el trabajo del apuntador son capaces de sostener una actuación, una dramaturgia (Brisset y Edgeley, 1990; Goffman, 1956).

Y digo “por detrás” porque ese trabajo suele ser “invisible”: la mayor parte de las veces una infraestructura es tal y no un verdadero problemón, porque funciona sin que nos demos cuenta; esto es, porque el trabajo de las personas que la sostienen no se nos hace presente para que eso que hacemos o queremos hacer se nos haga tan fácil o difícil).

Esta sugerencia pone el foco en los modos de interconexión múltiples entre entidades (datos, ideas y dispositivos) que fundan esos órdenes sociomateriales (Mol, 2002). Por si no queda lo suficientemente claro, esta sensibilidad analítica fundada en estudios empíricos de orientación etnográfica   parte del convencimiento de que nuestras sociedades no están hechas de meros lazos humanos cognitivos, intelectuales o afectivos inmateriales: para explicar las complejas formas sociales de nuestra contemporaneidad no podemos asumir que para que vivamos en común la gente tenga que opinar lo mismo, tenga unos mismos hábitos, vaya cogida de la mano hacia el futuro. Y, desde luego, esto nos puede ayudar a entender los complejos efectos y prácticas comunes aunque no-coherentes, múltiples y heterogéneos que produce esa red de interconexión que conocemos como Internet.

Efectivamente no es que no sea interesante pensar en la red eléctrica o en la conexión a Internet, pero lo interesante es cómo se producen, distribuyen y mantienen esas relaciones, esas materias circulantes y quizá cambiantes, esos gigantescos emplazamientos. La pregunta es “qué propuestas de vida concreta nos plantean”. Dicho de otro modo, ¿qué invitación nos hacen para vivir qué vida en qué momentos? Y, por tanto, ayudan a entender por qué y cómo cierta gente desarrolla formas y modos de resistencia específicas ante esas invitaciones infraestructuradoras que son, a su vez, el trabajo por otra infraestructura. Un buen ejemplo de ello lo constituye el fantástico y rico capítulo de Jérôme Denis y David Pontille sobre el mapeo voluntario de rutas ciclistas por parte de usuarios de la plataforma OpenStreetMap: un trabajo que pudiera leerse tanto como unos usuarios parásitos de una plataforma abierta o como formas de parasitación del trabajo de los usuarios por parte de una plataforma abierta, donde unos usuarios son parásitos de otros.

Pero que no sólo permiten fundar otras infraestructuras en su totalidad, sino que en ocasiones estos intentos por producir otros modos sociomateriales de ser-en-el-mundo, de gobernar una ecología relacional de otra manera producen entramados de lo más complejo. Ese carácter complejo y de frontera, así como el estudio de los momentos en los que algo se nos muestra bien como infra-estructura o como sistema de interconexión, a su vez nos obliga a pensar en las capas o el multicapado de las prácticas. De alguna manera podríamos decir que la figura de la infraestructura pensada de este modo re-visita la metáfora del “hojaldrado de lo social” o de “lo social como algo multi-capa” (usada desde hace algunas décadas por el historiador Michel de Certeau o el semiólogo Paolo Fabbri), pero detallando las formas concretas en que se producen solapamientos, imbricaciones, fusiones de capas, pero también bloqueos, pegotes, etc. En el resumen del trabajo de Star y Bowker que de forma precisa realizan Mongili y Pellegrino (pp. xxvi-xxvii) queda patente, por tanto que de estos entramados:

1. Suelen están anidados unos en otros…

2. Se distribuyen asimétricamente o de forma desigual (en su impacto y en sus obligaciones) a lo largo de un entorno social

3. Son relativos a “comunidades de práctica” concretas (esto es, un estándar para una persona o colectivo puede no serlo para otrxs: siempre requieren de una economía o una ecología en torno a cada estándar particular, que le da sentido a cierta forma de interpretar su funcionamiento y puesta en marcha).

4. Deben estar en muchas ocasiones integrados con otros de diferentes organizaciones, países y sistemas técnicos (e.g. los protocolos del e-mail, las normas ISO).

5. Codifican, encarnan o prescriben éticas y valores (a menudo con grandes consecuencias para los individuos). De hecho, una estandarización suele suponer que se quede fuera o se descarte la diversidad ilimitada, “e incluso la limitada” de seres, cosas, características, etc. Este potencial silenciamiento de la otredad que implica la estandarización (aunque no siempre se dé en las formas discursivas históricas en que esto se ha solido dar, como el racismo, el clasismo, el machismo y el capacitismo; los derechos humanos también son una forma, y a veces bastante rígida), dicen, es una elección moral así como práctica (relativa a la forma en que se conforman ecologías informacionales y a cómo se busca distribuir o articular un modo de convivencia).

Aunque quizá, más que el estatismo del hojaldrado, una mejor metáfora, empleada por Star y Lampland (2009: 20-21), es la de la “imbricación”: porque nos habla, dicen, de cosas que funcionan juntas, pero sin necesidad de estar bien consolidadas [uncemented] (implicando esta imbricación una cierta “intercambiabilidad” de las partes que componen una potencial infraestructura, siendo la parte sólida a veces la débil en otros arreglos). Totalidades hechas a veces de retales, pero que vienen de muchos sitios para componer posibilidades y restricciones para la acción.

Esta sensibilidad pone el foco en entramados con escalas muy diversas, que pueden ir desde lo ad hoc y lo incompleto a los sistemas enormemente coordinados. Entramados que fundan órdenes con diferentes grados o formatos de delegación entre entidades y personas. Objetos del análisis etnográfico muy ambivalentes, porque no está claro qué es la infraestructura: incluso hay quien hablar de “infraestructuras químicas” (Murphy, 2013) para dar cuenta de las complejas interacciones con nuestro complejo tejido ecológico-industrial. Y esta ambigüedad, que debe resolverse siempre empíricamente, nos remite más bien al estudio de cómo se fundan o se articulan ciertos órdenes sociomateriales y no otros, en momentos dados, en este momento, aquí, ahora. Para los trabajos de esta sensibilidad compilados en el libro las infraestructuras son un asunto empírico, porque no hay nada como la infraestructura en abstracto. No son exactamente planteadas sustantivamente como un “qué” sino que les interesa más bien plantearse el “cómo” y el “cuándo”: porque son algo que se revela sólo en ocasiones y siempre en momentos específicos.

2. ¿Infraestructuras informacionales? In-formación y política infraestructural del relato

Pero más allá de esta caracterización de la infraestructura la compilación de Mongili y Pellegrino incide con acierto en pensar el carácter particular de unas de estas infraestructuras, las vinculadas con la producción y circulación de información. Aunque su objeto central no es tanto cómo circula la información por infraestructuras ya creadas como el intento por pensar cómo las infraestructuras infra-estructuran la información o, por emplear la etimología resaltada por Latour (2001: p. 215), cómo se da la in-formación: esto es, el libro pone en el foco la puesta en forma, o el constante formateo de nuestras formas de vida que las contemporáneas infraestructuras digitales no sólo han ampliado y profundizado hasta la náusea, sino que, quizá, han hecho explícitas de un modo peculiar.

Lo interesante de esto es que frente a los usos de figuras holísticas de la complejidad, como la metáfora de la red, para explicar el mundo contemporáneo, esta idea no supone pensar en la infraestructura como una “red interconectada de datos”, puesto que lo interesante es cómo se llevan a cabo operaciones que permiten la existencia de “datos”, que remiten a innumerables propuestas y actuaciones destinadas al formateo, validación y circulación de ciertos registros y trazos materiales en el seno de o a causa de dispositivos computacionales más o menos interconectados.

Y lo interesante de este modo de mirar a eso que podríamos llamar infraestrucutras es que quizá las nuevas ecologías informacionales que han extendido y expandido el formateo no hagan sino revelar el carácter informacional por medio del que hasta la cosa más ínfima ha venido siendo articulada como un “material informado” (por utilizar la formulación de Barry, 2005). Es decir, en continuidad con numerosos trabajos de los estudios de la ciencia y la tecnología, que han hecho presente cómo los hechos son producidos por la mediación de determinados registros documentales y formatos de circulación específicos (véase Latour, 1998), el libro hace ver magistralmente cómo con la producción y circulación de capas y registros de información los materiales devienen más ricos o desarrollados.

Permítanme que me detenga en este aspecto, porque creo que es enormemente revelador de qué implica la estrategia descriptiva de la etnografía de la infraestructura que los capítulos compilados por Mongili y Pellegrino ponen encima de la mesa. Mientras que en la manera de entender “la producción de datos” de algunos discursos en torno al Big Data o la Smart city, los “datos” se nos aparecen como algo dado –data, cualidades distales, propiedades externas de las cosas–, pensar los procesos de in-formación supone observar el papel que han cumplido en diferentes ecologías informacionales (no sólo digitales contemporáneas) los dispositivos representacionales más ínfimos –desde pequeñas “tecnologías intelectuales” (como las llamaba Goody, 1985) basadas en papel y lápiz, como una lista de la compra, hasta grandes y complejas construcciones como los archivos coloniales o las bases de datos digitales– así como los regímenes de valoración puestos en pie para validar e interpretar esos registros.

Dicho de otro modo, más que en el resultado o el efecto (los datos) esto supone pensar el trabajo concreto para generar, formatear, validar, mantener entidades en circulación: algo que no siempre lleva a generar seres o entidades que viajan sin modificarse (aunque esto es muy interesante, porque nos lleva a preguntas cada vez más concretas: ¿qué viaja y cómo impacta dónde? ¿cómo se valida y se dota de legitimidad a ese dato circulante, por parte de quiénes y para qué?). Si acaso, lo interesante es que ese trabajo de categorización, catalogación, coordinación y gestión que nuestras condiciones informacionales digitales actuales explicitan o hacen visible, con figuraciones siempre concretas, apunta más bien al ingente  trabajo de crear y recrear las condiciones para que esos datos puedan llegar a ser tales, algo que no podemos dar por descontado.

Pero lo interesante que tienen las infraestructuras de la información analizadas profusamente en los diferentes capítulos del libro es que esto no sólo le sucede a los contenidos que circulan por las infraestructuras de la información, sino a las propias infraestructuras de la información misma, con propiedades en muchas ocasiones “recursivas”: por emplear el vocabulario de Kelty (2008) para resaltar el carácter a la vez de medio y objeto de las actividades de profesionales o activistas del software libre y de código abierto, que tienen como tarea principal trabajar sobre los medios digitales que les permiten seguir existiendo como grupo.

De alguna manera ese carácter recursivo, supone un modo peculiar de desarrollar o ampliar el análisis del “trabajo invisible” del trabajo infraestructural que ya pusiera de relieve S.L. Star (un aspecto crucial de su fundamento en metodologías y prácticas feministas). Es cierto que para que muchas infraestructuras puedan operar como tales puesto debe quedar oculto o invisible su funcionamiento, pero en los análisis de los capítulso del libro, en sintonía con el trabajo de Star, esto es también empleado para hablar de cómo la infraestructura lo es sólo para aquellos que tienen el trabajo de la infraestructura como su principal tarea, así como para hacer patente que ese carácter de algo como infraestructura era un resultado efímero o precario de un trabajo silencioso y permanente (con diferentes grados de reiteración o, mejor, de re-iteración, de intentar mantener en el ser con ciertas frecuencias y ritmos).

Y es aquí donde en el planteamiento de Star y, en buena continuidad con ello de los trabajos de esta compilación, hay un intento programático para las ciencias sociales interesadas por los fenómoenos sociales y materiales contemporáneos. Un programa relativo a la consideración de los efectos de los relatos etnográficos que pueden llegar a producirse. Porque el estudio y visibilización etnográfica de lo que podríamos denominar un “trabajo del trasfondo” –en tanto trabajo invisible que funda lo que vemos como infraestructura sin ver el trabajo que supone–, en muchas ocasiones tiene el efecto de producir lo que Bowker (1994) llama “inversiones infrastructurales”. Este concepto remite al hecho de que se trata de relatos que sitúan en el foco lo no considerado, lo a veces invisible, aburrido y gris que funda nuestros órdenes cotidianos.

Estas inversiones infraestructurales en muchos de los relatos de Star (2002) es producido no sólo mediante el análisis (de lo que dan buena cuenta los trabajos del libro), sino a causa del fallo o el error como aquello que permite de una forma menos costosa evidenciar el trabajo de la infraestructura. Y nos arrojan a analizar el trabajo ímprobo de entender cómo se monta la dramaturgia, cómo se instalan los escenarios para que actuemos, así como qué formas de pre-activar modos de subjetivación, agentes o usuarios para que los ocupen con mayor o menor frecuencia y estabilidad en el tiempo; destinando ingentes esfuerzos a entender cómo todos estos seres “mantienen las formas” (esto es, las formas de relacionarse, ser, conectarse que nos propone cada pequeña e ínfima infraestructura).                   

Pero como la propia Star ha planteado en muy diferentes lugares (Star, 2002; Star y Lampland, 2009), relatar nunca es un ejercicio inocente y puede tener innumerables efectos indeseados. Uno de los aspectos más importantes de ello es que visibilizar ciertos órdenes de ciertas maneras puede abrir también  nuevos caminos a la supervisión y la vigilancia. Por no hablar de que un exceso de visibilización puede saturar y densificar hasta la náusea cuando, como en los escritorios de nuestros ordenadores portátiles pulsamos la opción de “traer todo al frente” en mitad de un día de trabajo intenso. Es decir, no podemos pensar en hacer un uso acrítico de los formatos de visualización y de producción de datos (tampoco los producidos por la propia etnografía), porque en ellos se están labrando ya no sólo maneras de interpretar, sino de articular mundos.

Si la etnografía de la infraestructura implica pensar nuestras infraestructuras e intentar dar cuenta de esos trabajos del trasfondo e invisibles que nos articulan, no podemos olvidar lo que Star y Lampland llamaban “la política infraestructural del relato” (2009: pp. 23-24) y los efectos que producen las inversiones infraestructurales, de colocar en el frontstage lo que suele estar en el backstage (y que en ocasiones por estar velado, o escondido, produce efectos diferentes a si se diera con plena visibilidad, con luz y taquígrafos). Es decir, pensar las infraestructuras no tiene por qué llevarnos a un delirio de la transparencia sin considerar los efectos de este acto de “hacer visible”.

Es en relación a esta política infraestructural del relato, si me apuran, donde el libro compilado por Mogili y Pellegrino tiene quizá la única carencia de un trabajo por lo demás riguroso, iluminador y enormemente recomendable. Y no precisamente porque los trabajos aquí compilados demuestren una obsesión o sensibilidad panóptica o una mirada desde ningún sitio (la complejidad y las finas tesituras situadas dibujadas por los análisis de cada uno de los capítulos nos hablan más bien de lo contrario). Pero la compilación no desarrolla ni coloca en su foco los efectos de los relatos que produce ni cómo pudiéramos experimentar con formatos alternativos de hacer presentes y, por ende, de afectar o intervenir en estas infraestructuras más allá de una narración naturalista, olvidando buena parte de la obsesión infraestructural sobre las condiciones de producción de los propios relatos que, al menos en antropología, trajo consigo el llamado “giro reflexivo” y su atención recursiva a los modos en que son producidos los propios relatos y sus efectos (Clifford y Marcus, 1986; Faubion y Marcus, 2009).

Este reconocimiento del potencial efecto de los relatos producidos en los procesos de in-formación requiere que nos hagamos responsables de qué herramientas de visibilización (por no hablar de otras modalidades sensoriales), evaluación o valoración podemos fundar en nuestros ejercicios narrativos de hacer presente el trabajo de in-formación. Porque no es tan sencillo como poner una cámara, grabar y todo listo. El modo concreto de registrar y de armar el relato también forma parte de esos trabajos de la infra-estructuración (véase Marrero, 2008 para un buen resumen), y como sabemos, con enormes efectos potenciales a veces desastrosos.

Documentar y contar o dar cuenta es un gran quebradero de cabeza: a veces puede registrase en el momento y en otros sólo de forma diferida; no es lo mismo el vídeo que las fotos o el dibujo (pero qué tipo de dibujo, qué planos fotográficos para qué fin); si grabamos, ¿cómo lo hacemos y qué clase de cuestiones nos planteamos sobre de qué maneras circulará eso que hemos tomado de una situación y momento especial? Y luego, ¿qué relato producimos y cómo se comparte? Por no hablar de dónde lo colgamos, porque no es lo mismo un tipo de repositorio que otro, que enmarca y produce .

A pesar de sus múltiples virtudes, el libro a juicio humilde de un servidor no aborda la política infraestructural del relato y las experimentaciones con diferentes modos narrativos. No lo digo como una carencia, sino como un objetivo propuesto para quienes nos interesamos por estas cuestiones, puesto que sigue siendo uno de los grandes retos para la etnografía de la infraestructura: ¿cómo visibilizamos y ponemos en común nuestros relatos sobre las infraestructuras y qué efectos podemos producir sobre ellas? Soy consciente de que el libro tiene una intención más declarativa y descriptiva sobre lo que suponen nuestros complejos mundos informacionales actuales, pero pienso que quizá un desarrollo del mismo pudiera poner en el centro el carácter recursivo para los relatos de la infraestructura.

Y considero que quizá pudiera buscarse inspiración para ello en algunos trabajos de corte más artivista, irónicos y reflexivos sobre las propias condiciones infraestructurales de los relatos digitales, como los desarrollados por Shannon Mattern (2013, 2015) para abordar la representación de las infraestructuras y los complejos entramados mediáticos contemporáneos. Una serie de trabajos que, de alguna manera, desarrollan la preocupación contemporánea por la “poética de las infraestructuras” (Larkin, 2013) –esto es por entender qué construyen o traen a la existencia las infraestructuras– intentando explorar diferentes formatos de la “poética del relato”, diferentes medios y aproximaciones sensoriales para experimentar con formas reflexivas e irónicas sobre los modos en que producimos las “inversiones infraestructurales”; esto es, sobre cómo nuestros relatos también pudieran llegar a in-formar nuevas infraestructuras, o nuevas formas de pensar y relatar infraestructuralmente.

Referencias

Barry, A., 2005. Pharmaceutical Matters: The Invention of Informed Materials. Theory, Culture y Society, 22(1), pp. 51–69.

Bowker, G., 1994. Information mythology: the world of/as information. In: L. Bud-Freierman, ed. Information Acumen: The Understanding and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business. London: Routledge, pp. 23–47.

Bowker, G., y Star, S. L., 2000. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Brissett, D., y Edgley, C., 1990. The Dramaturgical Perspetive. In: D. Brissett y C. Edgley, Eds., Life as theater: a dramaturgical sourcebook. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. pp. 1–46.

Clifford, J., y Marcus, G. E. eds., 1986. Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: California University Press.

Faubion, J. D., y Marcus, G. E., eds. 2009. Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be: Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Goffman, E., 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.

Goody, J., 1985. La domesticación del pensamiento salvaje. Madrid: Akal.

Kelty, C. M., 2008. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Larkin, B., 2013. The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), pp. 327–343.

Latour, B., 1998. Visualización y cognición: pensando con los ojos y con las manos. La Balsa de La Medusa, 45-46, pp. 77–128.

Latour, B., 2001. “Thou Shalt Not Take the Lord’s Name in Vain”: Being a Sort of Sermon on the Hesitations of Religious Speech. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 39, pp. 215–234.

Marrero Guillamón, I., 2008. Luces y sombras. El compromiso en la etnografía. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 44(I), pp. 95–122.

Mattern, S., 2013. Infrastructural Tourism: From the Interstate to the Internet. Places [e-journal]. Disponible en http://places.designobserver.com/feature/infrastructural-tourism/37939/ [Accedido el 1 de febrero de 2016].

Mattern, S., 2015. Deep Mapping the Media City. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Mol, A., 2002. The body multiple. Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press.

Murphy, M., 2013. Chemical Infrastructures of the St. Clair River. In: N. Jas y S. Boudia, eds. Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945. London: Pickering and Chato. pp. 103-115

Star, S. L., 2002. Infrastructure and ethnographic practice: Working on the fringes. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 14(2), pp. 107–122.

Star, S. L., y Lampland, M., 2009. Reckoning with Standards. In: M. Lampland y S. L. Star, eds., Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 3–34

***

Publicado como Criado, T. S. (2016). Pensar infraestructuralmente. INMATERIAL. Diseño, Arte y Sociedad. 1, 1 (jun. 2016), 86–95 | PDF