10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17443
This paper aims to uncover the agential character of writing research in the light of the concept of ethico-onto-epistemology. Theoretically, it unpacks the debate around reflexivity and the performativity of theories and methods, underlining the active role of writing research accounts that do not just “capture” the world, but rather enact multiple worlds. This argument is developed with the support of empirical accounts belonging to an ethnographic study in a telecommunication company, which are informed by conceptual sensibilities from STS and Feminist Science Studies intended as two related yet distinct theoretical frameworks. I conclude by arguing that taking up the call for ethico-onto-epistemology when writing research accounts call us to trouble the character of writing as a neutral practice, and to grapple with the power of accounting for – thus producing – multiple realities that differ in terms of epistemological, ethical and political relations.
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Mariacristina Sciannamblo
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
performativity
In Other Words: Writing Research as Ethico-onto-epistemic Practice
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
10
Essays
2020-01-30
2023-06-26
2020-01-30
2023-10-09
79-98
TS
Mariacristina Sciannamblo
2019
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17443
79
Sapienza University of Rome
2038-3460
2
performativity
en
98
In Other Words: Writing Research as Ethico-onto-epistemic Practice
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17443/16293
10
                                                                               Essay
In Other Words: Writing Research as
Ethico-onto-epistemic Practice
Mariacristina Sciannamblo
Sapienza University of Rome


     Abstract: This paper aims to uncover the agential character of writing re-
     search in the light of the concept of ethico-onto-epistemology. Theoretically,
     it unpacks the debate around reflexivity and the performativity of theories
     and methods, underlining the active role of writing research accounts that do
     not just “capture” the world, but rather enact multiple worlds. This argu-
     ment is developed with the support of empirical accounts belonging to an
     ethnographic study in a telecommunication company, which are informed by
     conceptual sensibilities from STS and Feminist Science Studies intended as
     two related yet distinct theoretical frameworks. I conclude by arguing that
     taking up the call for ethico-onto-epistemology when writing research ac-
     counts call us to trouble the character of writing as a neutral practice, and to
     grapple with the power of accounting for – thus producing – multiple realities
     that differ in terms of epistemological, ethical and political relations.

     Keywords: writing research; qualitative methods; Feminist Science Studies;
     STS; reflexivity; performativity.

     Submitted: October 20, 2018 – Accepted: September 29, 2019

     Corresponding author: Mariacristina Sciannamblo, DISSE – Dipartimento
     di Scienze Sociali ed Economiche, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Salaria,
     113, 00198 Roma, Italy. Email: cristina.sciannamblo@amarceurope.eu




1. Introduction

    Science and Technology Studies (STS) have a strong history of ac-
counting for the epistemic practices behind the production of technosci-
ence as well as of reflecting on its own practices of knowledge produc-
tion. The account for its own practices of knowledge production is a
long-standing concern in STS since its origins, with the introduction of
‘reflexivity’ among the basic tenets of the Sociology of Scientific
Knowledge (SSK) (Bloor 1991).

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Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies                                     79
10(2) pp. 79-98 - ISSN 2038-3460                  2019
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80                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

    The debate around reflexivity has been addressed from different per-
spectives – by pointing out that the patterns of explanation employed to
account for technoscientific practices would have to be applicable to so-
ciology itself (Bloor 1991), by stressing the issue of ‘representation’ and
its practices (Woolgar 1988a; Lynch 1994), by describing the role of the
STS researcher as ‘the stranger’ (Latour and Woolgar 1986; Shapin and
Schaffer 1985), by advocating different configurations of knowledge ex-
pression (Bowker 2014) – and criticized within STS itself (Pinch 1993;
Lynch 2000).
    More recent approaches have stressed the performative character of
social inquiry and methods (Law and Urry 2004), according to which re-
search methods generate not only representations of reality, but also the
realities those representations depict. This is not just a pure epistemologi-
cal concern – i.e. assessing the conditions of STS knowledge production –
as the principle of reflexivity outlined by Bloor (1991) points out, but a
political one insofar as it urges to focus on the consequences and ontolog-
ical implications of doing research and coming to know. It is not by
chance that Annemarie Mol (1999) has phrased such understanding of
theories and methods in terms of ‘ontological multiplicity’, namely the
argument by which reality is done and enacted through specific material-
semiotic practices rather than simply observed. Such and understanding
of reality has been framed in terms of ‘ontological politics’ insofar as it
calls into question the political character of social methods.
    This interpretation of social research is close to what John Law (2009)
has defined as ‘interference’, namely the act of making differences by
means of descriptions and knowing practices. According to Law, feminist
thinking has challenged the absence of radical politics in mainstream STS
– such as SSK and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) – by showing the ex-
tent to which making knowledge means making difference, that is inter-
fering with the object of the study. In this respect, feminist physicist Ka-
ren Barad argues that “‘each of us’ is part of the intra-active ongoing ar-
ticulation of the world in its differential mattering” (Barad 2007, 381),
pointing out that we make particular cuts through our methods and we
need to acknowledge that these cuts are performative, and that other cuts
are possible. This argument has important ontological and ethical impli-
cations which Barad has phrased through the concept of ‘ethico-onto-
epistemology’, a compound word that appreciates the intertwining of eth-
ics, knowing and becoming. What happens if we put Barad's call for ethi-
co-onto-epistemology at work?
    In this article I shall attend this question by focusing on the practice
of writing research. More specifically, I shall provide and discuss empiri-
cal accounts drawn upon two years of ethnographic study in a telecom-
munication company. I will present four excerpts from ethnographic
notes that I have written as informed by two related yet different concep-
tual sensibilities, STS and Feminist Science Studies1, thus uncovering dif-
ferent ethnographic postures. A brief illustration of the debate around
Sciannamblo                                                                 81
reflexivity and the performativity of theories and research methods in
STS precedes the empirical part along with a discussion regarding how
the agential character of research writing constitute a fruitful research
topic within this debate, with particular reference to the concept of ‘ethi-
co-onto-epistemology’ (Barad 2007).
    The contribution of the paper is twofold. On the one hand, I aim to
unpack the debate around the performativity of theories and methods in
the light of the practice of writing research; on the other hand, I shall
bring the theoretical discussion into the empirical realm with examples of
ethnographic accounts in order to argue for the importance of research
writing as both knowledge-making and world-making practice.


2. From Reflexivity to Ethico-onto-epistemology: Feminist
Science Studies Confront STS

     Since their inception, STS grounded its intellectual roots into the crit-
ical commitment towards the constructive nature of technoscientific facts.
One of the most significant threads that links the various strands of STS
together is thus the acknowledgment that the production of technoscien-
tific knowledge is a social and historical situated process. The principles
of ‘reflexivity’, ‘symmetry’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘causality’ (Bloor 1991), set
out by the so-called Strong Programme in SSK, have definitively stressed
the importance of studying the very content of science as a social domain.
     According to Bloor, being STS concerned with the account of the pat-
terns of explanation which produce beliefs or states of knowledge (with-
out any real differentiation between internal and external causes), that
would also be the case for the accounts of technoscientific practices craft-
ed by STS itself. The formulation of ‘reflexivity’ aims precisely to recog-
nize such position as “an obvious requirement of principle because oth-
erwise sociology would be a standing refutation of its own theories”
(Bloor 1991, 7).
     Since this first formulation, the concept of ‘reflexivity’ has triggered a
sparkling debate within STS, with a number of different positions and
perspectives2. Steve Woolgar (1988a), for example, articulates the distinc-
tion between ‘introspection’ and ‘constitution reflexivity’ by drawing in-
sights on Harold Garfinkel’s work. According to Woolgar, at the base of
the discussion about reflexivity in and of sociological accounts of scien-
tific work there is the problematic distinction between research methods
and research object, an issue on which natural sciences and a large part of
social sciences share the same view. As we shall see in the next section,
the same concern about research methods and the conditions of textual
production affects those ethnographic studies that set up the so-called
‘linguistic turn’ in anthropology (Marcus and Cushman 1982; Clifford
and Marcus 1986).
82                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

    Additionally, the debate around reflexivity problematizes the alleged
detachment of the researcher from his/her field of inquiry, arguing that
the presence of the researcher strongly affects the field where s/he is situ-
ated. This concern has been mentioned in notable STS works (e.g. Latour
and Woolgar 1986; Shapin and Schaffer 1985) by describing the re-
searcher playing the role of ‘the stranger’. At the basis of such issues lies
the relationship among researcher, subjects and objects of research,
which, in turn, unveils different understandings of objectivity and
knowledge production.
    The situated and embodied character of knowledge production and
the related critique of objectivity intended as the core mark and value of
scientific authority have been deeply unpacked by feminist thinking. Per-
haps the most popular text in this regard is the seminal essay by Donna
Haraway (1988) on “situated knowledges” and the “privilege of partial
perspective”, in which, among other things, she introduces the figure of
the “god-trick” to emphasize the pitfalls of both relativism and totaliza-
tion, regarded as “twins” in the ideology of objectivity.
    Against this backdrop, Feminist Science Studies (i.e. Harding 2011)
take exception to the original formulation of reflexivity and impartiality
as developed by the Strong Programme and social studies of science more
in general, as they aim to mark out a reality that is not a premise of the
representational nature of knowledge, but that is transformed through
material-discursive practices. As Rouse (1996) points out, Feminist Sci-
ence Studies have provided a more nuanced understanding of ‘reflexivity’
and its epistemic, rhetorical, and sociopolitical implications, arguing that
knowledge is constructed as multidimensional relationships between
knowers and knowns, rather than a simple relation of representation. This
concern has also been phrased in term of “plain reflexivity” and “respon-
sible reflexivity” as delivered by STS constructionist approaches and fem-
inist epistemologies respectively (Lohan 2000). The equal consideration
of epistemic and political issues as well as the concern to make knowledge
more adequately accountable lead feminist scholars to conceive writing
and speaking as forms of action that produce consequences on subjects
and objects involved. Accordingly, in response to the notion of reflexivity
as developed by constructionist approaches, Haraway (1997) counter-
poises another optical metaphor – that of ‘diffraction’ – in order to un-
derline the performative character of knowledge-making intended as
world-making practices. Unlike reflection (and reflexivity), Feminist Sci-
ence Studies (Haraway 1997; Barad 2007, 2003) have emphasized the mu-
tual enactment of subjects and objects of research, moving beyond self-
referential statements that, according to Haraway, resist to making strong
knowledge claims and a difference in the world.
    Barad (2007) borrows from Haraway the metaphor of diffraction in
order to highlight the emergence of realities that are dependent on (more
than) human activities and transformed through material-discursive prac-
tices. Unlike constructivist approaches, the focus here is not on the ways
Sciannamblo                                                                 83
whereby facts are constructed through rhetoric and inscription devices
(Latour and Woolgar 1986) or on a reality that is “out there” and that the
social scientist has to investigate without being in the action, finite and
dirty (Haraway 1997, 36); rather, the ontology that Barad and Haraway
point out is informed by the principle of responsibility, therefore it re-
minds to the “ontological politics” discussed by Mol (1999) insofar as it
uncovers the ethical significance of research practices and the entangle-
ment of epistemological, methodological and ethical issues typical of fem-
inist critique. Here it is important to stress the fact that the notion of dif-
fraction does not reject the notion of representation, but it invites to con-
sider representations as performative in that they are constituted by
meaning and matter, and have the power to interfere with the world’s be-
coming (Timeto 2016).
    The concept of ‘ethico-onto-epistemology’ developed by Barad serves
precisely to argue that how we practice our research (epistemology) is
constitutive of what becomes enacted as knowledge (ontology), and
“therefore, we are not only responsible for the knowledge that we seek
but, in part, for what exists” (Barad 1999, 7) (ethics). The value of bring-
ing such a broad concern to bear on the specific practice of writing re-
search lies in its capacity to uncover the agential and world-making power
of the mundane practices – such as writing – informing the construction
of knowledge. As Rouse puts it: “Observing, writing, and reading are not
merely proposing or accepting the content of certain beliefs, but are
themselves actions with consequences (one must consider to whom one
writes, in what language, available to whom, drawing upon what patterns
of interaction, using what narrative conventions and authorial stances,
and who is permitted to respond, with what effects)” (Rouse 1996, 203).
It is precisely such an understanding of writing – as a research practice
that intersects epistemological, ontological, and ethical issues – that in-
form the four ethnographic postures presented in the following sections.
(see section 4).
    In what follows I will try to unpack the research question “what hap-
pens if we put Barad's call for ethico-onto-epistemology at work?” by dis-
cussing the practice of writing research, with particular reference to the
concept of ‘ethico-onto-epistemology’.


3. Ethico-onto-epistemology and the Practice of Writing
Research

    STS reflection on research methods has provided compelling reflec-
tions on the issue of research writing (Law 2004; Lury and Wakeford
2012).
    Early concerns about research methods and the conditions of textual
production affect those ethnographic studies that set up the so-called
84                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

‘linguistic turn’ in anthropology (Marcus and Cushman 1982; Clifford
and Marcus 1986). These authors criticize the conventions of the realist
genre that draws a clear line between the observer and the subject/object
of research, so evident in the accounts provided by classical anthropolo-
gists such as Malinowski. In this case, ‘the text is a neutral medium for
conveying pre-existing facts about the world’ (Woolgar 1988a, 28), such
as the exotic characteristic of the subjects under scrutiny regarded as in-
ner qualities rather than a symbolic construction. Moreover, the per-
formative character of social research applies to writing as well according
to Emerson et al. (2011), so that not only a writer’s theoretical stance in-
fluences compositional choices, but the reverse also happens: writing
styles reflect a theoretical orientation. Such mutual influence between
theories and writing is differently articulated in the four ethnographic
postures discussed in the following sections (par. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4), which
show how different epistemologies inform different modes of writing as
much as different modes of writing resonate with specific theoretical sen-
sibilities. The emphasis on the constructed character of ethnographic
writings, conceived by postmodern anthropology as the product of the
research rather than as a method (Marcus and Cushman 1982), leads us
to envisage ethnographic accounts, as well as scientific work, as a matter
of ‘bricolage’ (Lévi-Strauss 1962), a crafted product that makes visible
some of the many realities at stake.
    A similar spirit informs one of the most popular writing experiments
in STS, that is Bruno Latour’s book Aramis, or the love of technology
(1996). It develops a hybrid literary genre called “scientifiction” as a re-
sult of the fusion of three distinct literary genres – the novel, the bureau-
cratic report, and the sociological commentary – in order to investigate
the reasons behind the failure of Aramis, a project of a guided-
transportation system carried out by RATP, the public transport authori-
ty for Paris. According to Latour, such a hybrid account, which is set up
as a detective novel revolving around the mystery of “Who killed Ara-
mis?”, is meant to bring a technological object into the center of the nar-
rative and to bring three different target audiences together: humanists,
technologists, and social scientists.
    Law (2004) takes a step forward in this debate by making a distinction
between academic writing and novel writing. He argues that the distinc-
tion concerns means and ends, in that novels are ends in themselves and
they make use of language as a world-making practice, whereas academic
writings are means to other ends (namely a reality that is “out there” to be
described and referred to). In observing how the writing of poetry and
novels cannot be dissociated from what is being made, Law asks: “if we
had to write our academic pieces as if they were poems, as if every word
counted, how would we write differently?” and “how, then, might we im-
agine an academic way of writing that concerns itself with the quality of
its own writing?” (Law 2004, 12). The understanding of writing provided
by Law reflects a broader argument concerning the enactment of multiple
Sciannamblo                                                                85
realities that the act of writing performs, and the consequent acknowl-
edgement that writing, as a central feature of methods, is not innocent or
purely referential. To rephrase Law (2004), writing does not ‘report’ on
something that is already there. Instead, in one way or another, it makes
things more or less different, and these different arrangements have polit-
ical implications because they could be otherwise.
    According to Law (2004), feminist writing (Haraway 1988, 1997; Mol
2002) has demonstrated the fluid, fractional, multiple, indefinite and ac-
tive nature of realities, and, in doing so, it has showed how to write (label,
name, classify) means to enact some realities and, accordingly, setting up
a class-politics of ontology that the scientific system typically regards as
objective and universal. In the case of the workplace ethnography pre-
sented in this paper, the political aspect of research writing (Marcus and
Cushman 1982) lies in the challenge of making work practices visible
from different positions, rather than providing a single-issue account
from a supposed neutral stance (Suchman 1995). In this respect, Haraway
(2013) has often recalled the impact of science fiction literature on her
education and storytelling practice, arguing that writing and research are
tightly coupled as they both require the factual, the fictional, and the fa-
bulated. This claim seems to evoke Law’s distinction between academic
writing and fictional writing, and the call to imagine an academic way of
writing that concerns itself with the quality of its own writing. STS eth-
nographer and poet Laura Watts (2009) have exemplified this blend of
factual, fictional, and fabulated elements by elaborating two different sto-
ries based on the same ethnography of the mobile telecoms industry in
order to enact two different methods: the first one is a reflective critique
of the future in the industry, the second one is a generative and inventive
interference. In doing so, Watts argues that storytelling is always a social,
material and political practice, and that arguments and critical accounts
are also a story with a particular literary form. Therefore, it matters what
version of the story is told, being storytelling a means to construct
knowledge, and being knowledge a situated construction of multidimen-
sional relationships between knowers and knowns (Rouse 1996).
    In the light of these reflections, in what follows I shall present four
excerpts drawn upon fieldnotes written during an ethnographic research
I conducted in an Italian telecommunication company for two years. I
will begin by briefly describing the research setting and questions, the
theoretical approaches that informed my research, and the performative
role that such conceptual sensibilities play in shaping the writing.
86                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

4. Passic TV: Humans and Non-humans Between STS and
Feminist Science Studies

    Passic TV is an Italian company that delivers an on-demand streaming
TV service within the broader business of Passic Mobile. Passic Mobile is
a branch of Passic Network, an Italian ICT company which provides te-
lephony services, mobile services, and DSL data services. Its headquarters
are based in Rome and Milan, and it has many branch offices in several
Italian cities. The company has several internal divisions, services and in-
ternational partnerships.
    The research I conducted in Passic TV focused on the work of a spe-
cific group – “the production team” as it is called within the organization
– and the related development of a digital tool (a content management
system) to support collaborative work. The design of this tool has uncov-
ered not just technical concerns, but conflicts and tensions among differ-
ent groups as well as the controversial role played by material artifacts in
the process of organizing.
    The ethnographic study – which comprised observations, interviews,
attendance to meetings, informal conversations, and visits to the different
offices of Passic TV located in Rome – unfolded over a span of 18
months, which I mostly spent by attending the work of the production
team. At the time of the research, the groups consisted of 10 people with
different roles (content editors, project, product, content traffic manag-
ers, and engineers). The work that the production team carries out is ra-
ther technical-based and consists of encoding contents (movies, TV se-
ries, documentaries, etc.), namely converting audiovisuals into different
profiles according to the specificities of different devices (decoder, An-
droid, Xbox and Apple) on which Passic TV runs.
    During my participation at the first weekly meeting of the team, I
identified two main organizational tasks involving the group: the devel-
opment of an automatic encoding systems for contents and the design of
a tool for workflow management. As I came to learn later in the field-
work, these projects are interrelated as the tool, besides being a database
of contents’ information, was supposed to work in order to assemble the
final product, namely to put the multimedia encoded and its editorial da-
ta together. Accordingly, the tool was later conceived to take over the
human tasks of adding editorial data (e.g the title of the content, year, di-
rector, etc.) to the multimedia.
    As the theoretical setup of my research was informed by the aim to
explore the relationship between STS and Feminist Science Studies em-
pirically, my ethnographic journey within Passic TV gave me the oppor-
tunity to focus on the role of the information infrastructure in shaping the
cooperative work practices among different organizational groups. The
analysis of the literature on Workplace Studies (Heath and Luff 2000;
Suchman et al. 2002) and my first approach to the field have spurred the
Sciannamblo                                                                     87
following questions: what is the role of material artifacts in the process of
organizing? What kind of and in what ways do feminist concerns emerge
from the investigation of technology in organizations?
    In attending such questions empirically, I increasingly realized the ex-
tent to which doing fieldwork with neighbouring, yet different, conceptu-
al sensibilities poses different concerns and informs different ethnograph-
ic postures, thus enacting multiple and different realities (Mol 1999; Law
and Urry 2004; Barad 2003). Such process of enactment inevitably in-
volves the practice of research writing, being it the fundamental means
through which delivering data, accounts, and the overall research experi-
ence.
    The excerpts from fieldnotes presented below aim to pinpoint the
heterogeneity of such research engagement as it has unfolded by follow-
ing inputs and concepts from two conceptual approaches (STS and Fem-
inist Science Studies), which affected both the type of content and the
form of writing of the accounts.
    The four excerpts presented here focus on the invisibility of the re-
searcher as a “modest witness” (that is, according to Haraway, the andro-
centric stance that guarantees objectivity), the researcher as an active ac-
tor in the field, the “view from above”, and the writing of passions. As we
shall see, these issues materialize into different forms as result of different
ethnographic postures, and, conversely, different styles of writing allow
these distinct issues, as informed by distinct conceptual sensibilities, to
materialize.
    As the excerpts belong to the same ethnographic study, it is worth
clarifying that they do not epitomize different literary genres; rather, they
present different linguistic and discursive elements (e.g. passive verbs,
personal pronouns, comparisons) that engender different ethnographic
postures and forms of knowledge production and, accordingly, different
realities that matter from an epistemological and ethical point of view.
The excerpts are presented alternately, so that the first and the third ones
are framed within a STS framework, whereas the second and the fourth
ones are informed by Feminist Science Studies sensibilities.

4.1 Invisibility: the researcher as “modest witness”

    The first excerpt refers to the early days of my ethnography in Passic
TV, when I came to approach for the first time different places and peo-
ple. These encounters prompted the writing of various accounts with de-
scriptions of the internal and external appearance of the places that con-
stituted the setting of the research, along with the routine actions that I
learned to carry out in order to get access to Passic offices:

            The building in A street is very large, part of a larger whole.
        Even in this case it is a facility located at a bottom of a secondary
        street, not immediately visible from the main road. Unlike the
88                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

       place in B street, the indoor environment appears bare, dark and
       sparsely populated: the building seems to be much larger com-
       pared to the number of people that actually contains. (Fieldnote)

            Upon my arrival at the Passic headquarters, I call Dario [pro-
       ject manager and my gatekeeper] as agreed and I wait for him out-
       side the building. The structure looks very large, consisting of sev-
       eral blocks and several floors, even if it is located in a non-central
       and not very visible part of the city. The giant Passic logo that
       stands at the top of the building is in fact visible only after travel-
       ing several hundred meters from the entrance of A street (where
       the headquarters are located).
            To gain access to the offices, it is necessary to stop at the re-
       ception, register, release a document and tell the name of the per-
       son (a Passic employee) under whose responsibility the guest is
       admitted. After obtaining the guest badge, I pass the turnstiles and
       go to the auditorium, on the lower floor of the building, where the
       company meeting is about to start. (Fieldnote)

    These notes contain a plain description of the human and material en-
vironments characterizing Passic TV. The writing stands on a denotative
level, as it means to draw a direct and literal link between a signifier (e.g.
“street”) and its referent. The articulation of writing, therefore, is not
meant to elicit particular meanings, allusions and feelings, even in the
presence of qualifiers (e.g. “bare, dark and sparsely populated”) that, in
this case, are used according to a reporting style in order to collect data
characterized by the lack of personal opinion and beliefs.

4.2 The researcher as an active actor in the field

   These extracts from fieldnotes refer to my early interaction with the
workers of the production team (first one) and to a particular event hap-
pened after the first year of the ethnography (second one). Both concern
the theme of the researcher as active actor in the field, which have been
explored in several ethnographic studies of organizations (i.e. Bruni,
Gherardi and Poggio 2005). The first one accounts for what happened
during my first interaction with Silvia (the coordinator of the production
team at that time, then content and multimedia manager) when I asked
her some preliminary information regarding the configuration of the
technical infrastructure in Passic TV, which Silvia sketched on a sheet of
paper.

           As I got to learn later on during the fieldwork, this sketch rep-
       resents just a part of the whole technical system that supports con-
       tents processing and their release on the different devices. Rather,
       this visual representation became a matter of concern to me be-
       cause, after that meeting, Viviana – who is the oldest member and
       the newcomer of the team – approached me asking if I could show
Sciannamblo                                                                     89
        her the sheet of paper wherein Silvia sketched the technical sys-
        tem. Intrigued by such request, I asked her about the reasons of
        such a request. She answered that, as she was new to that group,
        she had not the chance to get a full picture of the organizational
        structure of Passic TV yet. (Fieldnote)

    This note shows the set of unexpected events that an informal conver-
sation can trigger. The question about the functioning of the technical
infrastructure happened in fact right before the beginning of the weekly
meeting involving the production team. Nevertheless, the detailed de-
scription of the technical infrastructure that Silvia sketched became a
matter of concern (Latour 2008) as, through that, I came to learn about
the peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of Viviana (project
manager), which I then decided to further explore by asking her an inter-
view.




                      Figure 1. Sketch of technical infrastructure


   If the note just described refers to my early days of research in Passic
TV, the following extract accounts for a particular event happened after
the first year of the ethnography, involving Carlo, the Web developer,
who was initially managing the development of a content manage system.

            At this point Carlo jumps into the conversation, asking for
        clarifications on the research I am doing in Passic. He is interested
        in knowing the real reason why I am there. The question is legiti-
        mate but unexpected, so I try to better understand. He tells me
90                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

        that he would not be surprised if my work were also a consulting
        activity for the company, given the changes at the top in the last
        period. Carlo specifically asks me: “Is what you are doing here
        concerning your PhD project or is it connected to some other rea-
        son?”. He does not have an inquisitorial tone, it seems to me he is
        more interested in clarifying his doubts.
            I answer that my research in Passic only concerns my PhD, try-
        ing to use words and arguments that can support this statement. I
        explain again (I already interviewed Carlo as the developer of a
        computer-supported cooperative work platform, that they call
        “tool”) that I am interested in understanding how the internal
        technical infrastructure works, following the development of the
        tool in particular. Carlo replies that even such an interest, together
        with the questions I asked him in the interview, concern the work
        dynamics and activities. I reiterate that my research concerns only
        my PhD as a way to reassure him, even if I do not think he needs
        reassurance. (Fieldnote)

     A few weeks after this conversation with Carlo…

            It’s a long time since I don’t see Carlo in the office. When we
        go for lunch at the canteen, I have the chance to talk with Silvia,
        who, during the weekly meeting, has hinted at the corporate re-
        structuring and some changes at the top, and their impact on the
        work of the production team. Silvia also tells me that the develop-
        er of the tool has been replaced, there is a new person coming
        from a consulting company which, according to her, holds another
        approach to the work to be done on the tool, a better one than the
        one of Carlo according to Silvia.
            This news reminds me to the last conversation I had with Car-
        lo a few weeks ago. I remember his questions about the reason be-
        hind my work and my presence there, and, although I told him the
        truth, I cannot help think that he might have blamed my research
        work for the termination of his job at Passic. (Fieldnote)

    These notes point out how the presence of the researcher in the or-
ganizational routine is not only a source of small incidents that make the
observation substantially different from that of ‘a fly on the wall’ (Bruni,
Gherardi and Poggio 2005), but it can also be controversial, if not pain-
ful. The recognition that the presence of the researcher – with her body,
appearance, gestures, discourses and the interactions these may trigger –
can be troubling as well as a source of unexpected events affecting other
actors in the field suggests that the ethnographic account is not con-
structed as simple relation of representation and correspondence, but as a
form of action producing consequences on subjects and objects involved
(Lohan 2000).
Sciannamblo                                                                      91
4.3 The view from above: linear thinking and writing

    The following two excerpts of fieldnotes concern that part of my re-
search that was specifically devoted to the understanding of the overall
functioning of the technical infrastructure as well as of the daily work of
the production team. The first extract refers precisely to the troubles that
an apparently simple operation, such as that of naming a file, can gener-
ate:

            If Ludovico [content editor] describes the operation of put-
        ting a name to file as an apparently naïve operation, in the words
        of Laura [service development manager] such convention of prac-
        tice becomes problematic when the naming assigned by Ludovico
        and his colleagues does not coincide with the naming in the pro-
        gram schedule. (Fieldnote)

    On the other hand, the following note reports a conversation I had
with Carlo (Web Developer) regarding a new feature to be implemented
into the tool:

            Carlo and I continue our conversation talking about updates
        on the development of the tool. What attracts my attention is a
        new feature that is being implemented on the tool. Carlo tells me
        about a script that one of their colleagues developed to improve
        the performance of the entire work chain, from the tool to the
        end-user. I think this information is interesting, so I ask Carlo to
        better explain me. Carlo tells me that it is a script that enables a
        function to search for content starting from data coming from Pas-
        sic users’ decoders. In this way, Carlo says, the control of quality
        over the content improves considerably since it will be even more
        rare to run into errors such as, for example, the failure to publish
        content (e.g. an episode of a television series). This technical inno-
        vation reminds me of one of the first conversations I had with Da-
        rio regarding the use of big data to improve the customer service.
        Actually, that conversation with Dario concerned the use of data
        generated by users for marketing purposes, but, in hindsight, I
        think what Carlo tells me has to do with the same issue, as the
        script they are developing builds on the data produced by the user
        experience on Passic devices. (Fieldnote)

    If the notes in the previous section uncover a process of learning and
writing that is embodied and mediated by the subjectivity of the research-
er, these two fragments construct a mode of thinking as objective and de-
tached, which follows a “logic of discovery” rather than a “power-
charged social relation of conversation” (Haraway 1988). Here the re-
searcher plays the role of ‘the stranger’ (Latour and Woolgar 1986;
Shapin and Schaffer 1985) since she appears to be only interested in dis-
covering the functioning of organizational processes, without any bodily
92                                                                Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

and emotional involvement. This posture results in a disembodied ac-
count because the researcher, although holding an active reflective stance,
is interested in providing plain descriptions that do not problematize the
relationship among researcher, subjects and objects of research.

4.4 Writing passions: the problem of access

    The following account reports about one of the most popular issues
concerning ethnography, that is the access into the field. It specifically
concerns my first day of fieldwork and the consequences occurred after I
incidentally arrived late to the scheduled appointment:

           Today, at 2 pm, there is an important meeting in which the
       chief of Passic Entertainment will be outlining major plans and
       objectives for the year in front of all the organizational groups.
       Given the importance and rarity of general meetings such as this
       one, Dario [my gatekeeper] has thought it could be a good way to
       start my research. The appointment is scheduled at 1:20 pm, 40
       minutes before the meeting starts, since he has also arranged a
       brief introduction of myself and my work to two women execu-
       tives: the chief of Passic TV and the chief of Passic Entertainment.
       I have been given some background information about them, so I
       am somewhat prepared for the day, yet I cannot help but feel a
       sense of uneasiness, because this is my first day of my first ethnog-
       raphy and I am about to approach two executives without having
       in mind a clear design of my study.
           Since the office is quite far from my house, I have checked the
       directions out so as to make sure to get to the place on time. Ac-
       cording to Google Maps, the trip to Passic office will take around
       45 minutes with the scooter. I then decide to leave quite early at
       11:45 as in Rome it is likely to get lost in unfamiliar areas or, at
       least, that has been my experience so far. If I get lost – I think – I
       will have time to work it out and be on time.
           [...] After some kilometres, I decide to make a stop and check
       directions online: the road is quite large and there is no one to
       whom I can ask for information as I usually do. The place seems
       quite close to where I am. I look at the clock, it’s 12:45: I can
       make it. I drive for further 5 minutes, but there is no sign of car
       dealerships and I have the sense of having gone too far. I’m getting
       nervous, I don’t want to call Dario because I don’t want he thinks
       I’m not able to arrive just by myself, but it’s 1:10 pm and our ap-
       pointment is at 1:20 pm, so I have to ask him. [...]

           When the appointed time comes, I am still on my scooter,
       finding the way to reach my field. I am more than annoyed. In
       years of job meetings, interviews, important appointments – I
       think – I have always arrived earlier. Today is the first day of field
       research of my PhD, I have to meet for the first time two people
       who are very influential for my work, and I’m late…
Sciannamblo                                                                    93
            I arrive eventually, around 1:40 pm, still in time for attending
        the meeting, but not for talking with the two women. I feel overtly
        embarrassed because I think that what has happened is a bad
        mark on my credibility and, above all, I feel ashamed for having
        put Dario, my gatekeeper, in a negative light with his bosses.
        (Fieldnote)

    As Barbara Czarniawska notes (1998; 2004), the problem of physical
access is well known in organization research and it has nothing to do
with age or experience. It nonetheless points to a critical issue of organiz-
ing, that is ‘logistics’, which requires people and things to be in the right
place at the right time. In reading the above fieldnote, I also acknowledge
the feeling of vulnerability and fear of entering an “alien landscape”
(Czarniawska 1998; 2004). This is all the more significant as, according to
outstanding ethnographic examples (i.e. Reinharz and Davidman 1992),
female researchers usually have an easier time than men in accessing
mixed-gender field sites. As Czarniawska points out (1998; 2004), the fact
that fieldwork is major threat to the identity of the researcher is not a very
common topic in discussing field methods perhaps because the feeling of
“being threatened” is at odds with the image of a mature adult and a
competent professional. What I did not know at the time was that such
feeling of uneasiness was not a methodological bug, but rather a field ma-
terial and a source of knowledge, to become later an actual research strat-
egy. In fact, shortly after the beginning of my ethnography in Passic TV, I
have started to recognize that ‘instability’ and ‘unpredictability’ would
have been two distinctive words by which to pattern my research experi-
ence. The ever-changing environment in which I worked allowed me to
understand gaining access as a relational process (Feldman, Bell and Ber-
ger 2003) and a form of emotional labor (Blix and Wettergrenthat 2015),
which that include self-representation, building and nurturing relation-
ships as well as dealing with rejections, uncertainties and breakdowns.


5. Discussion: Writing Research as Ethico-onto-epistemic
Practice

    The extracts of fieldnotes presented in this paper invite to pay atten-
tion to the material and ontological implications of knowing practices
(Mol 1999; Law and Urry 2004; Barad 2003, 2007). Being my overall re-
search guided by the understanding of theories and methods as performa-
tive (Mol 1999; Law 2004; Law and Urry 2004), I sought to stay sensitive
to such an understanding while conducting my ethnography; at the same
time, such an approach to theories and methods as generative material-
ized during the ethnography in different postures as means to shed light
on issues that otherwise would have remained invisible.
94                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

    The excerpts presented and discussed account for typical issues in or-
ganizational ethnographies, such as the description of places and rou-
tines, the role of the technical infrastructure and the different degree of
participation of actors in their communities of practices, and the problem
of access. These have been thematized according to the conversation and
tensions between the two related, yet distinct, conceptual sensibilities that
inform the research (STS and Feminist Science Studies). As a result, they
uncover different themes such as the researcher as a “modest witness”,
the researcher as an active actor in the field, the “view from above”, and
the disclosure of passions, which, in turn, take shape through different
ethnographic postures and styles of writing that are an essential part of
such conceptual setup. Indeed, the use of different linguistic and rhetoric
tools such as passive verbs, personal pronouns, comparisons are not
merely communicative instruments that convey a neutral content and
meaning, but active practices that shape different forms of knowledge
production that are not neutral as they matter from an ethico-
epistemological point of view. Emerson, Fretz and Shaw (2011) captured
the constructed and agential character of ethnographic fieldnotes with the
expression “writing up” (rather than “writer down”) insofar as “just as
the ethnographer-as-observer participates with members in constructing a
social reality, so too the ethnographer-as-writer creates the world through
language”. In doing so, I have tried to attend the call to imagine an aca-
demic way of writing that concerns itself with the quality of its own writ-
ing (Law 2004). As the ethnographic excerpts show, attending the quality
of research writing means, in the first place, to interrogate the authorial
stance that can craft knowledge in different forms, as either partial, finite
and dirty (Haraway 1997) or as bearer of a supposed detached and neu-
tral point of view.
    Such an acknowledgement allows us to interrogate and value the
character of our writing practices as a meaningful component of our the-
oretical and methodological apparatus in that they may (or may not) ad-
dress and affect different audiences, with different consequences. In this
respect, Brit Ross Winthereik and Helen Verran (2012) offer a compel-
ling discussion of the crafting character of knowing practices, with a spe-
cific emphasis on ethnographic stories based on STS research cases.
Drawing on feminist-informed notions, such as Strathern’s ‘partiality’ and
Haraway’s ‘double vision’, the authors grapple with the question of how
to write ethnographic stories and make generalizations upon them. The
main assumption behind such concerns is an ethical one, that is the
acknowledgement of the agential character of ethnographic stories, inas-
much as they are “generative for the people and practices that the stories
are about” (Winthereik and Verran 2012, 37, emphasis in original). In
mobilizing the notions of ‘partiality’ and ‘double vision’, the authors seek
to call into question the dualism between a traditional academic perspec-
tive that regards research as non-interventionist and its opposite, namely
the engaged and interventionist research. Against this background, partial
Sciannamblo                                                                95
perspective and double vision suggest that the stories we write “are gen-
erative for some of the practices we study and for some of our own col-
leagues in social theory” (Winthereik and Verran 2012, 38, emphasis in
original), and that other stories are possible. These insights resonate with
Suchman’s argument (1995) about the ambivalences of representational
practices, with particular reference to work practices. In stressing the val-
ues of (workplace) ethnographies, she recalls Clifford and Marcus’ “poet-
ics and politics” (1986), arguing that we can begin to build representa-
tions that are aimed at working disparate knowledges together. In this re-
spect, experimenting with research writing becomes a method whereby to
address the challenge of making work practices visible from different po-
sitions, rather than claiming to provide descriptions from a supposed
neutral stance. Accordingly, writing practices become examples of ethico-
onto-epistemology “in situ” producing multiple realities that differ in
terms of power, knowledge, gender relations, location and visibility.


6. Conclusion

    In addressing the problem of how STS researchers make the objects
of their research, Lucy Suchman (2011) argues that research methods
constitute a practice, and that this practice is itself an object of research.
In this paper, I have argued that this is a longstanding concern in STS
since the elaboration of the concept of ‘reflexivity’ as one of the key pil-
lars of science studies (Bloor 1976; Woolgar 1988a, 1988b; Ashmore
1989; Pollner 1991; Pinch 1993; Lynch 2000). However, I join Suchman’s
argument according to which Feminist Science Studies have shaped our
thinking about this in a more radical way. She draws on Barad’s elabora-
tion in arguing that the sense of the apparatus extends “beyond the by
now well accepted premise that instruments have material effects in the
construction of scientific facts, to more deeply conjoin agencies of obser-
vation, including subjects, and their objects. She [Barad] emphasizes that
we are neither outside of the world looking at it, nor are we inside of it.
Rather we are of it” (Suchman 2011, 21-22).
    Following this input, in this paper I have sought to shed light on the
importance of writing research as a practice that contributes significantly
to the “material entanglements that participate in (re)configuring the
world” (Barad 2007, 91). This acknowledgement solicits STS researchers
to trouble the character of writing as a neutral practice, and open up fur-
ther questions that inevitably shape the form of our account: what and
who is this written for? Whose voices and visions do it comprise? Who
and what is left out? How could it be otherwise?
96                                                                Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

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    1
      I use the phrase ‘Feminist Science Studies’ as in Barad (2011) to indicate a
research and activitist field that questions the entanglements among matters of
science, politics and power. To further clarify, as Barad puts it: “Feminist science
studies was never a subfield of science studies that talked about women and gen-
der. Feminist science studies, for all its diversity and because of all its diversity, is
a richly inventive endeavor that is committed to making a better world” (Barad
2011, 9).
    2
       To reconstruct the entire debate about reflexivity is out of the scope of this
paper since this task would deserve an entire study on its own. To know more
about the debate in STS, I would remind the reader to the following essential ref-
erences: Woolgar (1988a, 1988b), Ashmore (1989), Pollner (1991), Pinch (1993),
Lynch (2000).
