The Infrastructural Function: A Relational Theory of Infrastructure for Writing Studies

Abstract

This article theorizes the term infrastructure as a framework for articulating how writing products, activities, and processes underwrite organizational life in technical organizations. While this term has appeared broadly in writing studies scholarship, it has not been systematically theorized there as it has been in other fields such as economics, computing, and information science. This article argues for a fourpart framework that incorporates and builds on Star and Ruhleder's relational theory of infrastructure. Field work from a federally funded supercomputing center for scientific research operationalizes the theory for its contributions to writing studies scholarship and its applications for industry and writing pedagogy.

Infrastructure and technology-enhanced learning: Context, agency, multiplicity

“…For this reason, Guribye (2015, p. 195) argues that approaching "large-scale learning environments" such as MOOCs or learning analytics from an infrastructural perspective affords openings to investigate them ethnographically and situationally. Read (2019) further asserts that if infrastructure, such as learning management systems, are only infrastructural in relation to existing practices, then this creates opportunities to consider inextricable relationships between culture and infrastructure, i.e., how infrastructure is constitutive of socialities and vice versa.…”

“…The first implication of infrastructural theory for TEL is to challenge simplistic depictions of infrastructure as analytically separate from -or even in opposition to -learning contexts. A social and relational view of infrastructure means that infrastructure is determined through use and that, therefore, learning communities develop in and through infrastructure, not separate from it (Guribye, 2015;Read, 2019). Moreover, the ontological focus that I have emphasised throughout my theoretical framework posits a mutually constitutive relationship between individuals and infrastructure.…”

How to Build a Supercomputer: U.S. Research Infrastructure and the Documents That Mitigate the Uncertainties of Big Science

“…Over time I also realized that these connections turned out to be one of the answers to the overall research question that I brought to the field site: "How do documents build a supercomputer?" This insight was a product of the methodological lens that I brought to the data I collected during fieldwork, that of an ANTinformed view of how writing functions infrastructurally for organizations (Read, 2019).…”

“…The main focus of data collection was an annual operational review process that the facility undertook with its funder, the DOE, to renew its funding. Data were coded and analyzed incrementally, resulting in a series of papers reporting on portions of the study (Read, 2018(Read, , 2019Read & Michael, 2016;Read & Papka, 2014, 2017.…”

“…In the case of the supercomputing center as a site of big science, this project begins with the assumption that, similar to economic and material infrastructures, processes of technical reporting and documentation are essential to the national research infrastructure for big science in the United States. Understanding the infrastructural function of documentation processes at the supercomputing center is one step toward a fully theorized notion of writing as infrastructural (Read, 2019).…”