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Short abstract:

The precariousness of situativity in digital work makes necessary more advanced theoretical notions of situations, requiring investigating participants’ situational practice. I present some ideas developed from ongoing research into practices of cybersecurity.

Long abstract:

Under widespread digitization, a number of notions in theories of practice have emerged as having been taken for granted for far too long. In my talk, I will focus on one such notion, the position of social situations within practice theory. Viewing situations as presupposable staging ground for the enactment of social practices (Bourdieu) is proving more and more difficult when situational breakdown lies only one failed video conference call away. In developing a more theoretically advanced view, important groundwork has been laid by criticizing an underlying Goffmanian bias toward situations of physical copresence, instead proposing to make sense of contemporary situativity as synthetic layering (Knorr Cetina). I argue that in order to further our understanding of “digitized” practice we can seek alternative notions of situativity in the practices of participants themselves. Drawing on ongoing research into practices of cybersecurity, I will offer some suggestions on how to move forward. Cybersecurity, positioned at the heart of digital infrastructural work, makes for an especially interesting empirical case: It provides “seen but unnoticed” (Garfinkel) ongoing conditions for telecommunication between participants (together with the situational accomplishments of the latter). Simultaneously, cybersecurity is politically contested, highly reflexive and at times critical of its own digital boundary work allowing the creation and managing of “virtual” situations. Finally, in an outlook into the military entanglements of cybersecurity and its practical consequences as well as its critiques, I will argue in favor of a conceptual and epistemological preference for constructivist, rather than ontological, understandings of digital practices.