Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the technological design of blockchain technologies and the co-relations between people and technology in the creation of meaning. It draws on a collaborative ethnography with the Economic Space Agency and reflects on the particularities of ethnographic fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the Economic Space Agency, a start-up dedicated to 're-engineering' economics and finance. It aims to contribute to thicken the body of ethnographic accounts of blockchain-based practices in particular and of socio-financial experiments more generally. It focuses on the creation of meaning in socio-technical arrangements - in looking at a particular network it identifies order-making elements, consider both objects - such as blockchain - and language - such as metaphors, as strategic points of connection; what is lost is the absolute distinction between representation and things, and what remains is the attention on meaning production (Latour 1987, 1996, Callon 1998, MacKenzie 2009). Methods included virtual ethnography (Kozinets 2010), semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. As a community, the Economic Space Agency is a socio-technical arrangement in itself, mobilizing a series of on-line digital environments for members to establish communication and coordinate action, bringing to life a new, non pre-existing group that must be approached considering its rhizomatic agencement (Callon 2004, 2005). Furthermore, in encountering an epistemic community / community of practice, collaboration is placed as a central tool for the ethnographic research (see Holmes and Marcus 2008). The reflections around the ethnographic fieldwork point to the importance of signaling the creation of situated orders through the orientation of objects and words (Garfinkel 1967) and to the attention on imagination and discursive practices (Sneath et al. 2009, Star 1999, Rorty 1989).