Developing the Vectorial Glance Infrastructural Inversion for the New Agenda on Government Information Systems (March 2016)
Integrating information systems (IS) has become a key goal for governments worldwide. Systems of “authentic registers,” for instance, provide government agencies with information from databases acknowledged as the only legitimate sources of data. Concerns are thus arising about the risks for democratic accountability constituted by more and more integrated governmental IS. Studies call for a new research agenda that investigates the redistribution of authority and accountability entailed by interoperable IS. This article contributes to this endeavor by suggesting the “vectorial glance” as a research framework that works along two lines. First, by recovering the science and technology studies notion of “infrastructural inversion,” it looks at the technical minutiae of interoperability projects as strategic sites where institutional shifts—and eventually state transformation—can become visible. Second, by defining interoperability as a performative process of boundary reordering, it opens research to the possibility that institutional identities be reconstituted along different lines. Just as vector graphics are based on paths that lead through control points without being bound to underlying pixels, so the vectorial glance runs across boundaries without implicitly assuming that they are immutable and/or a priori relevant for the analysis. This article draws on a case study observed while working at a major project of civil registers integration in Italy.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Norma Möllers;
(January 2021)
Making Digital Territory: Cybersecurity, Techno-nationalism, and the Moral Boundaries of the State
(/isis/citation/CBB777052436/)
Book
Huub Dijstelbloem;
(2021)
Borders as Infrastructure: The Technopolitics of Border Control
(/isis/citation/CBB684823908/)
Article
Malte Ziewitz;
(January 2016)
Governing Algorithms: Myth, Mess, and Methods
(/isis/citation/CBB061486372/)
Article
Luciana Landgraf Castelo Branco;
(2023)
Rethinking governance through Samarco’s dam collapse in Brazil: a critique from the STS perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB165051260/)
Article
Lucas D. Introna;
(January 2016)
Algorithms, Governance, and Governmentality: On Governing Academic Writing
(/isis/citation/CBB779308670/)
Article
David Moats;
Liz McFall;
(2019)
In Search of a Problem: Mapping Controversies over NHS (England) Patient Data with Digital Tools
(/isis/citation/CBB339833803/)
Article
Rebecca Slayton;
(January 2021)
Governing Uncertainty or Uncertain Governance? Information Security and the Challenge of Cutting Ties
(/isis/citation/CBB911361449/)
Article
Udo Pesch;
Georgy Ishmaev;
(April 2019)
Fictions and frictions: Promises, transaction costs and the innovation of network technologies: Research Note
(/isis/citation/CBB272675718/)
Article
Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero;
(2019)
Light is like water: Flooding, blackouts, and the state in Barranquilla
(/isis/citation/CBB476051463/)
Article
Kris Hartley;
(November 2021)
Public Trust and Political Legitimacy in the Smart City: A Reckoning for Technocracy
(/isis/citation/CBB172268665/)
Article
Akos Kokai;
Alastair Iles;
Christine Meisner Rosen;
(November 2021)
Green Design Tools: Building Values and Politics into Material Choices
(/isis/citation/CBB745455255/)
Article
Abraham S. D. Tidwell;
Jessica M. Smith;
(September 2015)
Morals, Materials, and Technoscience: The Energy Security Imaginary in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB992433257/)
Article
Rob Bellamy;
(March 2015)
A Sociotechnical Framework for Governing Climate Engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB453591963/)
Article
Paraskevas Vezyridis;
Stephen Timmons;
(August 2021)
E-Infrastructures and the divergent assetization of public health data: Expectations, uncertainties, and asymmetries
(/isis/citation/CBB744787120/)
Book
Cardoso, Bruno;
Lucas Melgaço;
Fernanda Bruno;
Fernanda Glória;
Guilhon, Luciana;
(2018)
Tecnopolíticas da vigilância: Perspectivas da margem [Technopolitics of surveillance: Perspectives from the margin]
(/isis/citation/CBB281517009/)
Article
Katherine Chandler;
(2022)
Apartheid drone: Infrastructures of militarism and the hidden genealogies of the South African Seeker
(/isis/citation/CBB611340328/)
Article
Tal Zarsky;
(January 2016)
The Trouble with Algorithmic Decisions: An Analytic Road Map to Examine Efficiency and Fairness in Automated and Opaque Decision Making
(/isis/citation/CBB775587512/)
Book
Zachary Callen;
()
Railroads and American political development: Infrastructure, federalism, and state building
(/isis/citation/CBB971566202/)
Article
Christopher Lawless;
(2020)
Assembling airspace: The Single European Sky and contested transnationalities of European air traffic management
(/isis/citation/CBB169587089/)
Article
Rebecca A. Adelman;
(May 2018)
Security Glitches: The Failure of the Universal Camouflage Pattern and the Fantasy of “Identity Intelligence”
(/isis/citation/CBB695441230/)
Be the first to comment!