Paper short abstract:

Lessons learned from studying ITD could be useful for understanding potential collaborations between STS and ITD. Based on dynamics I observe in my dissertation, I discuss some of the possible preconditions for exchanges between STS and ITD, centering on the notion of epistemic peerage.

Paper long abstract:

There is a sense in which collaborations between STS and ITD scholars could themselves be considered discipline crossing (or at least field crossing). Although both communities are diverse, there are some central theoretical points of departure in each community that differ from the other. Thus, it seems reasonable to apply some of the lessons we have learned from studying ITD on the case of interactions between STS and ITD scholars.

I therefore draw on two case studies from my doctoral dissertation to discuss some of the dynamics that are to be expected from such collaborations. A key lesson from my cases is that discipline-crossing collaborations coordinate demarcating boundary work and collaborative boundary crossing. Actors deemed too distant or too opposed to the goals of research are kept out of the collaboration, yet there also needs to be theoretically interesting boundaries between participants if new integrative knowledge is to be produced. There is a balance to be struck, making sure that collaborators are different, but not too different.

I argue that the central question regarding this balance is whether collaborators can recognize each other as epistemic peers. Epistemic peerage is a mutual recognition of equal epistemic competence. This allows discipline-crossing collaborators to recognize contributions to a project even if there isn’t a complete consensus regarding the meaning of each contribution. In this presentation, I explore some of the dynamics underlying epistemic peerage in ITD and how it can apply to interactions between STS and ITD.