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Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
Published in: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 3/2017

19-04-2017

Digital Infrastructure for the Humanities in Europe and the US: Governing Scholarship through Coordinated Tool Development

Author: Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner

Published in: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) | Issue 3/2017

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Abstract

In this paper, I provide a comparative perspective on current digital infrastructure policies for the humanities in Europe and the US. Thereby I mean to move beyond analyzing the shaping of technology within individual infrastructure projects and instead trace in a more encompassing way how dynamics at the institutional and policy level mediate the reorganization of disciplinary tool development. Drawing conceptual inspiration from the work of Sheila Jasanoff, I propose that digital infrastructure actually functions as a regulatory technology, i.e. as an interface through which the different actor groups (researchers, funders, policy makers) rearticulate their mutual relations. European initiatives, I argue, are based on a more centralizing, technology-driven vision of digital infrastructure that serves the European Commission’s policy goal of integrating national research systems in institutional and epistemic terms. This causes a certain disconnect between tool developers and prospective scholarly users who are often unfamiliar with digital approaches, but the emphasis on central coordination also ensures that no single community gains exclusive control over technology development. In the US, by contrast, the original impetus to adopt a concerted strategy for digital infrastructure has not been provided by science policy makers and administrators, but by researchers in the area of digital humanities. These scholars have successfully promoted a sociotechnical view of infrastructure as an emergent, evolutionary phenomenon, which also implies that conceptual and managerial authority should be situated at well-established digital humanities centers. While avoiding problems related to the implementation of technology in more traditional scholarly practices, this arrangement will tend to privilege the intellectual and technological preferences of existing elites within digital humanities over those of other research communities.
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Footnotes
1
In my usage, the term ‘infrastructure’ denotes purposefully coordinated assemblages of tools and the actors who maintain them. By ‘tools’ and ‘instruments’ – which I use interchangeably – I thus refer to constituent elements of a larger infrastructure.
 
2
Following the European incentive, many countries have since started to develop their own national roadmaps, which are typically closely aligned with the shared European perspective (ESFRI 2011).
 
3
This is a well-known problem in the development of large-scale information systems, see for example Finholt and Birnholtz (2006) as well as Livari et al. (2010).
 
4
For a formal critique along those lines, see Piersma and Ribbens (2013).
 
5
Skype interview with Mirjam Blümm (8 May 2014).
 
6
Skype interview with Tobias Blanke, 7 May 2014.
 
7
Skype interviews with Tobias Blanke (7 May 2014) and Christof Schöch (22 May 2014); personal interview with Joris van Zundert (8 April 2014, The Hague).
 
8
Skype interviews with Steven Krauwer (15 May 2014), Laurents Sesink (21 May 2014), and Jan Odijk (4 June 2014).
 
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Metadata
Title
Digital Infrastructure for the Humanities in Europe and the US: Governing Scholarship through Coordinated Tool Development
Author
Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner
Publication date
19-04-2017
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) / Issue 3/2017
Print ISSN: 0925-9724
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7551
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-017-9272-2

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