Infrastructuring for Scientific Data Care as a Neglected Thing

• In Event: Infrastructures, Maintenance and Care - I

Abstract

In our study, we think with Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2011) ‘matters of care’ about scientific data care. We use the notion to reflect on infrastructuring activities in three studies of collective data management in ecology. Drawing from both STS and Participatory Design (PD) traditions, we recount how we not only study but also engage in ‘doing and intervening’ (ibid.) in/with/for the socio-politico-material configurations of ‘infrastructuring’ (Bowker & Star 2002; Karasti 2014) situated in and emerging from ongoing, long-term community-based practices. Articulation of data care together with ethically and politically significant data issues in research infrastructures, reveals in these cases the invisible labors of care by data advocates embedded in the community together with designer-researchers. We reflect on data care by co-creating collaborative processes aligned with each community’s goals and data care; working together on relevant material objects; learning together about the local and the larger landscape of scientific data infrastructures. With digital data work in the sciences increasing and data infrastructures for research under development at a variety of larger scales, the local level engaged in data care is often considered merely a recipient of services, thus a ‘neglected thing’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) within the larger landscapes of research infrastructures, excluded from active participation in design of data practices and research infrastructures intended to support their work. We end by considering the possibilities for data care in different policy regimes of research infrastructure formation and speculate on how things could be different in the data landscape.

Authors

• Karen S. Baker

• Helena Karasti, University of Siegen