Ethnography of scaling, or, how to a fit a national research infrastructure in the room
Abstract
Ethnographers have traditionally studied people in particular times and places. However, sociotechnical systems are often long-term enterprises, spanning the globe and serving vast communities. Drawing from three cases of research infrastructure development, this paper demonstrates a methodology in which the ethnographer examines scalar devices: actors' techniques and technologies for knowing and managing large-scale enterprises. Such devices are enacted in and across concrete times and places; for the ethnographer they are observable as activities of scaling. By examining the enactment of scale we can better investigate diverse kinds of size and growth within sociotechnical systems.
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The authors' findings align with existing work that found these events play a critical role in developing trust and maintaining positive, lasting social relations.
“Our findings align with existing work that has also found these events play a critical role in developing trust and maintaining positive, lasting social relations [90,91,105].”
From The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software Projects (2021) · cites this paper as [105]
Projects have to continuously recalibrate what scale they are currently at, which can be uncertain and labor-intensive.
“As [123] and [105] also discuss in non-F/OSS contexts, projects have to continuously recalibrate what scale they are currently at, which also can be an uncertain and labor-intensive task.”
From The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software Projects (2021) · cites this paper as [105]
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References 44 · Cited by 77
- Authors
- Ribes, D.
- Affiliations
- Georgetown University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ribes, David
- ORCID
- Ribes, David
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2014-02-15
- Pages
- 158-170
- OpenAlex
- W2020008744
- Cited by
- 77
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 3 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 24.68
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet
- University of California, San Diego
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Information Systems Theories and Implementation
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration
- Keywords
- research infrastructure, socio-technical systems, scaling, large-scale enterprises, growth, size, research infrastructure development, ethnographic methods
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