10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17383
application/pdf
2038-3460
17383
2
en
Alessandro Narduzzo
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke and Ellen Balka (eds.), Boundary Obects and Beyond. Working with Leigh Star, MIT Press, 2016
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
8
Book Reviews
2018-01-29
2023-06-25
2018-01-29
2023-08-24
222-225
TS
Alessandro Narduzzo
2017
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17383
222
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
2038-3460
2
en
225
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke and Ellen Balka (eds.), Boundary Obects and Beyond. Working with Leigh Star, MIT Press, 2016
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17383/16243
8
222                                                            Tecnoscienza – 8 (2)

    T. Moreira
Science, Technology and the Ageing Society, London and New York,
Routledge, 2017, pp. 240
   by Roberto Lusardi

    T. Scholz and N. Schneider (eds.)
Ours to Hack and to Own. The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New
Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet, New York and
London, OR Books, 2016, pp. 252
   by Giacomo Poderi




                                     ***



   Geoffrey C. Bowker, Stefan Timmermans, Adele E. Clarke
and Ellen Balka (eds.)
Boundary Obects and Beyond. Working with Leigh Star, Cambridge,
MA, MIT Press, 2016, pp. 560

Alessandro Narduzzo Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

    This book is the result of a conference that fellows, students and co-
authors dedicated to the beloved scholar, Leigh Star, to celebrate her in-
spirational work. The book’s editors avoided the favourable tone that is
typical – and to some extent, involuntary – in such works, by putting to-
gether a balanced selection of essays by Star and on Star, which flows
seamlessly and ultimately provides a rich and precise portrait of the
scholar. The book ultimately covers not only her intellectual contribu-
tions to scientific knowledge, but also her mindful self-reflection on the
role of researchers in society as part of an epistemological discourse. Al-
together, the book provides a thick web of reflections displaying the po-
tential of Star’s intellectual contribution and suggesting possible direc-
tions in which to extend her work.
    In fact, one major trait that characterises Star’s legacy relates to her in-
fluential contributions across a wide spectrum of scientific domains. This
is exemplified by her most cited publication, where Star and James R.
Book Review                                                             223
Griesemer introduced the concept of “boundary object” (addressed in
Ch. 7). It is worth to get back to Star and Griesemer’s definition. For
them, a “boundary object” is an object that is “both plastic enough to
adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing [it],
yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites”. There-
fore, a “boundary object” is “weakly structured in common use, and be-
come strongly structured in individual-site use” (pp. 176-177). Because of
these features a “boundary object” can have a different meaning in differ-
ent social worlds, but its structure is common enough to make it recog-
nisable, so that it can work as a means of translation.
    It is worth noting that citations of Star and Griesemer’s article appear
in publications across more than 90 research areas. The top three areas in
terms of the number of citations, based on the Web of Science classifica-
tion, are Business Economics, Computer Science, History and Philosophy
of Science; Sociology comes in at the sixth place. Such an influential
presence across various distinct fields not only qualifies the relevance of
Star’s scientific contribution, but also suggests that her theorisation is a
boundary object in itself, being plastic enough to be adopted as a tool for
research investigations by various scientific communities, while preserv-
ing its own identity.
    Dick Boland (Ch. 10) effectively explains why and how the concept of
boundary objects was so influential in management and organisation
studies. The concept demarcates concrete and situated things that actors
with heterogeneous knowledge can use and refer to, while cooperating
and working together, without setting or agreeing on the nature of the
objects, actions or goals to be achieved. Further, this concept brings in a
perspective that is entirely different from what was previous offered by
semiotics, where symbols may be ascribed different meanings by different
people but the spectrum of those meanings is constrained within a space
of mutual understanding (i.e., individual expectations on everyone’s
meanings).
    In a similar vein, Griesemer (Ch. 8) reflects on the ideas discussed by
Star and himself at the time they were elaborating on the concept of
boundary objects, from the perspective of Science and Technology Stud-
ies (STS). They wanted to develop a “heuristic methodological category
to think with as much as an ontological category of object to think about”
(p. 207). Thus, the concept of boundary objects has both epistemological
and ontological consequences. In the former case, it provides STS with a
methodological tool that increases standardisation across studies and,
therefore, scientific rigor. As for the latter, the concept embodies the
complexity of relationships among agents at multiple levels (e.g. mean-
ings, action, goals) of interaction.
    As anticipated, the concept of boundary objects became extremely
popular in various fields, causing its core meaning to be undermined. Star
(2010), in turn, was compelled to explain and elaborate on what a
224                                                          Tecnoscienza – 8 (2)

boundary object is not. On the one hand, she expanded the concept by
clarifying that boundary objects are not restricted to the four types men-
tioned in her 1989 work, namely, repositories, ideal types, coincident
boundaries and standardised forms. On the other, she called for a deeper
analysis of boundary objects to incorporate their organisational structure,
as well as their intrinsic processual dimension, as connectors of coopera-
tive work. The emphasis on the organisational structure of boundary ob-
jects led Star to reflect on systems constituting boundary objects that she
identifies as infrastructures, a conceptualisation that also occupies a spe-
cial place in Star’s theorisations as well as in her epistemology. The cen-
trality of this concept and its ramifications can also be observed in the
writings selected for this book as the idea of infrastructure is relevant in a
number of essays (i.e. Chs. 2, 7, 20, 21, 23, 24); this includes the seminal
paper written with Karen Ruhleder (Ch. 20) on the design, development
and use of WCS – the Worm Community System – which is a data repos-
itory as well as a platform to support the formal and informal communi-
cation of a distributed community of biologists, who are active in more
than 100 different laboratories around the world. Through this study,
Star and Ruhleder outlined their theory of infrastructure. Infrastructures
are scaled-up systems of boundary objects, inheriting from the latter their
relational and ecological nature: they “mean different things to different
people” and are “part of the balance of action, tools and the built envi-
ronment, inseparable from them” (p. 473). Infrastructures both anchor
and are anchored to organised, context-dependent practices. Star charac-
terises infrastructures in detail as embedded and transparent, but visible
upon breakdown (i.e. infrastructural inversion); as able to support tasks
and practices; as able to afford membership in a community of practice,
which evolves in a mutual adjustment with infrastructures.
    Star leverages the concept of infrastructure to develop some critical
insights on the realm of the philosophy of science. In her view, science is
conceived as a socially constructed ecology of knowledge (Ch. 1). Con-
sistent with the STS approach, Star’s analyses of science and technology
includes the process – and not only the product – of the production of
scientific knowledge to unveil what is otherwise taken for granted as sci-
entific infrastructure.
    “As chains of causation are simplified and purified, the standard indi-
cators they are built on become substitute theories. We forfeit the infra-
structural conditions that afford us the possibility of formulating alterna-
tive explanations” (p. 432). When the understanding of a phenomenon
essentially relies on dominant chains of causal relationships, supported by
infrastructures such as standard indicators and tools, this understanding
expunges, as residual evidence, anomalies that would provide the
grounds for richer insights into that phenomenon.
    Furthermore, Star enhances her reasoning on infrastructures by offer-
ing thorough reflections on the methodological challenges posed by this
Book Review                                                                 225
concept (Ch. 24). The study on WCS is the result of fieldwork spanning
three years; despite a strict adherence to the principles of participatory
design, the new system was disregarded by most biologists. This disap-
pointing result led the research team to deepen their analysis of the situa-
tion and, ultimately, to better understand how critical and intensive the
relational nature of infrastructure was.
    This book can claim many merits. The selection of essays offers an ex-
cellent resource for scholars interested in understanding and tracing the
origins of very influential concepts (i.e. boundary objects and infrastruc-
tures), the research questions that sparked them and how particular em-
pirical settings influenced their formulation. This book will also be useful
for researchers, such as PhD students, who are deliberating on the meth-
odological aspects of their work. In fact, although the book is certainly
not meant to be a handbook on methodology, it offers rich and rigorous
reflections on fundamental methodological themes from the first-person
perspective and deeply reflects the common emotional and cognitive
identity of researchers.
    On this point, a representative example is offered by the notion of
“triangulation from the margins”, as described by John King (Ch. 17).
Triangulation is certainly a widespread practice in the social sciences to
improve the understanding of complex phenomena. Star questioned the
idea that this understanding could be achieved by primarily triangulating
the narrative of those who have the most to gain or lose. In contrast, Star
theorised the importance of triangulating using the narratives of those
who exist in the margins: these individuals can observe elements, which
are totally neglected by the dominant views, and therefore, they contrib-
ute to the enrichment of the triangulation through insights that would
otherwise be lost.
     As Leigh Star writes, “as a graduate student, I searched for years for
teachers who would not try to divorce me from my life experience, feel-
ings, and feminist commitments. At the same time, I didn’t want just a
‘touchy-feelings’ sort of graduate education. […] I was looking for a way
simultaneously to incorporate formal and informal understanding” (p.
122). For those who recognise themselves in such yearning, this book will
certainly offer an opportunity to reflect on their own path.

References
Star, S. L. (2010) This is not a boundary object: Reflections on the origin of a
        concept, in “Science, Technology, & Human Values”, 35 (5), pp. 601-617.



                                      ***
