ANTH 3608: Becoming cyborgs—Technology and society (Semester 2,
2025)
September 26, 2025
Main reading:Star and Griesemer (1989);
Star (2010);
Star and Ruhleder
(1996); Star (1989)
Other reading:Knox (2021); Seaver
(2021)
Notes
There’s a lot on the table already. Let’s bring it all together
before moving on.
How do you define a network? How would you apply a perspective in
which the only real thing in the world is networks and relations, not
people, groups, objects, ideas, or symbols? How would you explain this
idea to someone else?
The assigned readings for this week serve a different purpose than
usual. I’d like everyone to go on a scavenger hunt for Leigh Star’s
concept of a “boundary object.” What is it and what are two examples of
it? Use every means at your disposal, but be sure to bring your
information literacy skills and healthy dose of skepticism. Remember,
Star has let us know that she often has to tell people “This is not a
boundary object” (Star 2010)!
Keywords
scale, boundary object
Learning outcomes
Be able to apply various reading and search strategies to
familiarize oneself with a new concept
Be able to derive an abstract theoretical argument from several
empirically grounded analyses
Be able to identify the fundamental unity of the perspectives in
social studies of science, communication and information studies, and
anthropology
Seaver, Nick. 2021. “Everything Lies in a Space: Cultural Data and
Spatial Reality.”Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 27 (S1): 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13479.
Star, Susan Leigh. 1989. “The Structure of Ill-Structured
Solutions: Boundary Objects and Heterogenous Distributed Problem
Solving.” In Distributed Artificial Intelligence, edited
by Michael N. Huhns and Les Gasser, 2:37–54. San Mateo, Calif.: Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers Inc. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=94079.94081.
———. 2010. “This Is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the
Origin of a Concept.”Science, Technology, & Human
Values 35 (5): 601–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243910377624.
Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional
Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and
Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,
1907-39.”Social Studies of Science 19 (3): 387–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001.
Star, Susan Leigh, and Karen Ruhleder. 1996. “Steps Toward an
Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information
Spaces.”Information Systems Research 7 (1): 111–34. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.7.1.111.