Boundary Objects Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of World Making in Avant-Garde Fashion Design and Animal Husbandry

Abstract

Drawing on Susan Leigh Star's conceptualization of boundary objects as a corpus of actions through which an imaginary context for doing social work emerges, this article examines how two seemingly disparate sites of cultural production can be comparatively brought into conversation with one another. These sites include specific expert communities where actors within the fields of fashion design and livestock husbandry both evaluate and theorize new social possibilities. By attending to how these practices unfold through an experimental rendering of expertise this article employs the notion of a boundary object to comparatively analyzing the speculative practices of these two sites.

Design and Anthropology

“…Building on classic studies of fashion and its relations to social class (Simmel 1957), social meaning (Barthes 1990), and social change (Richardson & Kroeber 1940), much of this research has centered on analyzing indigenous garments or styles of dress and how they relate to consumption practices and identity performances (Hansen 2004). More recently, however, anthropologists have begun exploring the conditions of fashion production in more depth (Moon 2009, Sadre-Orafai 2016, including a heightened sensitivity to designers (Luvaas 2012) and designing (Nicewonger 2015) in their own right.…”

Boundary objects in information science

“…How BOs function Bounding communities; Impact and influence of BOs reflexive combination of perspective making and perspective taking (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995) making and reshaping; negotiation and open recognition of power and tensions (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995;Bowker & Star, 2000, p. 254) negotiation with adjacent communities (Fomin & Keil, 2000) transforming knowledge by offering alternative views (Carlile, 2002;Feldman et al, 2006) shaping and conveying identities (Gal et al, 2004) having agency (Fleischmann, 2006) bounding entities as discourses (Oppermann, 2011) political shaping and authoring with respect to rights and liabilities (Huvila, 2011(Huvila, , 2012 world-making (Nicewonger, 2015) Table 3. Acts & processes performed by boundary objects in timeline A review of the references to BOs in the literature and the plethora of new related boundary concepts demonstrates the perceived relevance of boundaries and BOs in an empirical sense but even more so as analytical concepts.…”