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present a pressing problem for modeling truth, the putative job of scientists. In developing models for this work, Star coined the term ''boundary objects" to talk about how scientists balance different categories and meanings (Star and Griesemer 1989, Star 1989b). Again, the term is not exclusive to science, but science is an interesting place to study such objects because the push to make problem solving explicit gives one an unusually detailed amount of information about the arrangements. |
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Boundary objects are those objects that both inhabit several communities of practice and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them. Boundary objects are thus both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use and become strongly structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete. Star and Griesemer (1989) first noticed the phenomenon in studying a museum, where the specimens of dead birds had very different meanings to amateur bird watchers and professional biologists, but "the same" bird was used by each group. Such objects have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting communities. |
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Another way of talking about boundary objects is to consider them with respect to the processes of naturalization and categorization discussed above. Boundary objects arise over time from durable cooperation among communities of practice. They are working arrangements that resolve anomalies of naturalization without imposing a naturalization of categories from one community or from an outside source of standardization. (They are therefore most useful in analyzing cooperative and relatively equal situations; issues of imperialist imposition of standards, force, and deception have a somewhat different structure.) In this book, sets of boundary objects arise directly from the problematics created when two or more differently naturalized classification systems collide. Thus nursing administrators create classification systems that serve hospital administrators and nursing scientists; soil scientists create classifications of soil to satisfy geologists and botanists (Chatelin 1979). Other outcomes of these meetings are explored as wellthe dominance of one over another or how claims of authority may be manipulated to higher claims of naturalness. |
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