[ICTs-and-Society] Cfp 'To maintain, to repair: Infrastructures and design-in-use'@ 5th STS Italia Conference

[Giuseppina Pellegrino]

Dear all,
this June (12-14) the Politecnico in Milan will host the 5th STS Italia
conference. Please consider submitting an abstract to the track
'To maintain, to repair: Infrastructures and design-in-use' (track 23).
Details follow, abstract submission (500 words) is due by *15th February
2014* through the conference website.
More info at: http://www.stsitalia.org/?p=1434&lang=en and
http://www.stsitalia.org/conferences/STSITALIA_2014/AMD_Track23.pdf

Circulation through all of your lists and contacts is more than welcome,
please spread the word!
Many regards,
Giuseppina Pellegrino

Track 23 - To maintain, to repair. Infrastructures and design-in-use.
Convenors: Alessandro Mongili (University of Padua, Italy,
alessandro.mongili at unipd.it); Giuseppina Pellegrino (University of
Calabria, gpellegrinous at yahoo.com); Giacomo Poderi (University of Trento,
Italy, giacomo.poderi at gmail.com).
Language(s) of submissions: ITA | ENG
 Infrastructures exist in the background of other activities and support
them. They are usually taken for granted and become evident only after
breakdown or malfunctionings. However, in contemporary society and
especially with reference to Information and Communication Technologies,
inforrmation infrastructures became central to academics and practitioners'
interests, as they are expected to support a more and more complex as well
as fast-changing world. To understand how information infrastructures adapt
to sustain such a world is crucial.
 In this framework, a major mode of change and evolution of information
infrastructures is represented by practices of maintenance and repair
performed by both designers and users.
When being designed, information infrastructures need to embed in
themselves procedures and routines of maintenance and repair in order to
work out well.
While being used, even more than during the design process, information
infrastructures are transformed and drifted through modes of maintenance
and repair enacted by proactive and expert users, as well as by 'naive'
ones.
 The English verb 'to maintain' means both 'to keep in good conditions',
'to take care of', and 'to assert'. This double meaning evokes a link
between the ontology and existence (resilience) of infrastructures and the
resources which keep them updated, consistent and 'stable' over time.
 Therefore, this track welcomes contributions on the topic of information
infrastructures from the point of view of their maintenance and repair over
the design and usage process.
Amongst possible topics to submit to this track, consider the following
ones:
 - how are maintenance and repair performed in design and use of
infrastructures? Are these practices different or similar from design to
use? Is it possible to envisage a 'design-in-use' process through
maintenance and repair as bridging practices?
 - prescribed and inscribed procedure of maintenance and repair in the
design of information infrastructures;
 - emerging and creative modes of maintenance and repair enacted by
different users (e.g. work-around, bypassing, and so on);
 - ethnographies of information infrastructures at different stages of
evolution, with particular reference to repair practices;
 - theoretical reflections on the importance of maintenance and repair in
the ecology of information infrastructures;
 - theoretical reflections on how the focus on maintenance and repair of
information infrastructures reconfigures roles and processes that are
typical of traditional design and use
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