57 Tagungen

Organisationskomitee

Universität Rostock, Dr. Christoph Schmitt, Institut für Volkskunde (Wossidlo-Archiv), Am Reifergraben 4, 
D-18055 Rostock, www.volkskunde.uni-rostock.de

Universität Rostock, Dr. Holger Meyer, Institut für Informatik, Database Research Group
Albert-Einstein-Str. 22, D-18059 Rostock, dbis.informatik.uni-rostock.de

Universität Rostock, Robert Zepf, Bibliotheksdirektor Universitätsbibliothek
Albert-Einstein-Str. 6, D-18059 Rostock, www.ub.uni-rostock.de

Kontakt

Dr. Stefanie Janssen, Institut für Volkskunde (Wossidlo-Archiv), CEO-Symposium, Am Reifergraben 4,
D-18055 Rostock, Tel.: +49 381 498 1056, Fax: +49 381 498 118 1053, E-Mail: Stefanie.Janssen@unirostock.de


Ethnography of socio-material collaborations

CfP Open Panel at the EASST/4S Meeting 2012

Starting from the premise that design is best viewed as an ongoing process (e. g. Callon
2004), one of the ensuing issues pertains to opportunities for collaborative interventions
which could be made visible with, for example, interactions, path constitution, planning,
agendas or design-in-use. Embracing Holmes‘ and Marcus‘ call for a „re-functioning of
ethnography“ (2005), the panel would like to invite a discussion on the effectiveness and
benefts of actor-/process-oriented approaches to an ethnography of socio-material collaborations. The specifc contribution of an anthropological perspective is that it affords thick 

descriptions and insights into the local politics/strategies/routines in order to account for
limits or relations of design visions and actual operations. It is suggested here to use the
notion of the „socio- material“ in the sense of performative entanglements in dynamic processes
 of de- and re-arrangements (or: de- and re-alignments). The social and the
material (and it should be emphasized here that this dissociation is made only for analytical
 purposes) collaborate in producing the environments or worlds into which new artefacts
will enter – e. g. via ideas, agendas, plans, technoscientifc innovations, etc. – and wish to 
be accommodated (e. g. Callon 1987). By focusing on locally enacted effects, anthropological re-arrangements make it possible to take into consideration the specifc materialities 

of particular associations / agencements, thus cutting across, or splicing, concepts of, on
the one hand, local knowledge, and, on the other, global fows. Thus, ethnography is in an 
advantageous position to investigate processes of systems design, requirements, specifcations and implementations in particular socio-material arrangements / agencements of 

knowledge production, agenda-setting, path-creation and epistemic practices. Our panel,
consequently, approaches design as a socio-material practice embedded in the framework
from which it emerges, and which it, in turn, redesigns.
We invite everybody who deals with ethnographic approaches in a broader sense to participate
 with paper- or session-proposals. Feel free to contact the organizers (see above) in
case of further questions.