The notion of a “work-around” is a much-used resource within the sociology of technology, reflecting an interest in showing how users are not simply shaped by technologies but how they, through adopting artifacts in ways other than those for which they were designed or intended, are also shapers of technology. Using the language and concerns of actor-network theory and focusing on recent developments within computer-systems implementation, this article seeks to explore and add to our understanding of work-arounds through unpacking the (...) work of one group of “users” as they attempt to tailor and roll out a system within the administration departments of their university. This article argues that paying attention to the various networks that lead to and from work-arounds can improve our understanding of the way users both shape and are shaped by technologies. Focusing on work-arounds as “networks in place” also allows us to highlight some of their contingencies; for example, the other actors and entities on which these depend and are constituted. (shrink)

In recent years, a dramatic increase in the study of infrastructure has occurred in the social sciences and humanities, following upon foundational work in the physical sciences, architecture, planning, information science, and engineering. This article, authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars, probes the generative potential of infrastructure at this historical juncture. Accounting for the conceptual and material capacities of infrastructure, the article argues for the importance of paradox in understanding infrastructure. Thematically the article is organized around three key points (...) that speak to the study of infrastructure: ruin, retrofit, and risk. The first paradox of infrastructure, ruin, suggests that even as infrastructure is generative, it degenerates. A second paradox is found in retrofit, an apparent ontological oxymoron that attempts to bridge temporality from the present to the future and yet ultimately reveals that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual. Finally, a third paradox of infrastructure, risk, demonstrates that while a key purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, it also involves new risks as it comes to fruition. The article concludes with a series of suggestions and provocations to view the study of infrastructure in more contingent and paradoxical forms. (shrink)