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Susan Leigh Star's (1954-2010) research encompasses aspects of infrastructural and social theory, knowledge ecologies, feminism and theories of marginality. For the first time, this volume introduces the American science and technology sociologist's most important writings in German. Her texts on border objects, marginality, infrastructures and standards are commented upon by academics and scientists in these fields, and analyzed for their relevance to media studies. With commentaries by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Cora Bender, Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, Christine Hanke, Bernhard Nett, Jörg Potthast, Gabriele Schabacher, Cornelius Schubert, Erhard Schüttpelz and Jörg Strübing

This article asks methodological questions about studying infrastructure with some of the tools and perspectives of ethnography. Infrastructure is both relational and ecological—it means different things to different groups and it is part of the balance of action, tools, and the built environment, inseparable from them. It also is frequently mundane to the point of boredom, involving things such as plugs, standards, and bureaucratic forms. Some of the difficulties of studying infrastructure are how to scale up from traditional ethnographic sites, how to manage large quantities of data such as those produced by transaction logs, and how to understand the interplay of online and offline behavior. Some of the tricks of the trade involved in meeting these challenges include studying the design of infrastructure, understanding the paradoxes of infrastructure as both transparent and opaque, including invisible work in the ecological analysis, and pinpointing the epistemological status of indictors.

This paper examines the transformation of local uncertainties encountered by working scientists into global certainty, or `scientific facts'. It discusses six mechanisms by which scientists transform local uncertainty: attributing certainty to the results of other fields; substituting processual for production evaluations in the face of technical failures; ideal type substitutions; shifting clinical and basic evaluation criteria; ad hoc generalizing of case studies; and the subsuming of epistemological questions in internal debates. The data are drawn from a study of late nineteenth-century British neurophysiologists (surgeons, neurologists, pathologists, physiologists). The approach is drawn from the sociology of work.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of simplification processes in the scientific work place. Any scientific task involves complex sets of problems and contingencies. But the conclusions produced do not represent all details of the work performed, nor do consumers take full account of the complexity of results. This paper examines the ways in which chains of inference are simplified at all stages of the research work, from research design and sampling to publication. What is deleted in the `fact-making' process? What constraints operate to make this deletion necessary? This paper examines institutional and intersectional constraints and processes which affect the final work. The analytic approach of the paper is symbolic interactionist/Pragmatist, and field data were collected by participant observation.

This article analyzes the strategies and means by which universalist claims about human nature become successful in science. Of specific interest are the conditions under which claims of this sort are taken to be inherently superior to those which are particularistic or context-specific (a hierarchy of values which we term "universality bias"). We trace the birth of universalists claims in neglected fields, their growth through methodological agreements and the use of invisible referents, and their roots in multiple audiences with different evaluation criteria. Our analysis complements philosophical and political critiques of theories about human nature and demonstrates the historical specificity of universalist claims.

Can the principles of participatory design be applied in large infrastructure projects? We address our experience as social scientists co-developing a larger digital library project funded by the US government. We focus on how to understand the ways in which potential use, new and old infrastructure, and large project organization interact. We use three concepts: commitments, object worlds, and trajectories, and their associated processes (crystallization, maintainm g ambiguity, finding users, and building on the inertia of the installed base). We discuss the importance of linked visions and dreams, drawing on Watson- Verran's notion of "imaginary."

Scientific work is heterogeneous, requiring many different actors and viewpoints. It also requires cooperation. The two create tension between divergent viewpoints and the need for generalizable findings. We present a model of how one group of actors managed this tension. It draws on the work of amateurs, professionals, administrators and others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, during its early years. Extending the Latour-Callon model of interessement, two major activities are central for translating between viewpoints: standardization of methods, and the development of `boundary objects'. Boundary objects are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them. We distinguish four types of boundary objects: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries and standardized forms.

Susan Leigh Stars (1954-2010) Werk bewegt sich zwischen Infrastrukturforschung, Sozialtheorie, Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Ökologie und Feminismus. Die wegweisenden historischen und ethnografischen Texte der US-amerikanischen Technik- und Wissenschaftssoziologin liegen mit diesem Band erstmals gesammelt auf Deutsch vor. Ihre Arbeiten zu Grenzobjekten, Marginalität, Arbeit, Infrastrukturen und Praxisgemeinschaften werden interdisziplinär kommentiert und auf ihre medienwissenschaftliche Produktivität hin befragt. Mit Kommentaren von Geoffrey C. Bowker, Cora Bender, Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, Christine Hanke, Bernhard Nett, Jörg Potthast, Gabriele Schabacher, Cornelius Schubert, Erhard Schüttpelz und Jörg Strübing.