Infrastructuring public issues
In the last decades, there has been an explosion of "do it yourself" and makers spaces as well as other forms of crowdsourced and low-cost grassroots initiatives that have engaged with research on a number of issues of common concern, from climate change to the ‘open’ production of drugs such as insulin. This talk explores the various ways in which ‘antiobiotic resistance’, a recalcitrant public issue, is being taken care of in an out of the institutions. Drawing on conceptual discussions on infrastructures developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and anthropology, this presentation looks at the work of ‘infrastructuring’ performed by different communities: Institutional scientists, "do it yourself" and makers groups, or just citizens. What type of moral economies does the work of infrastructuring enable? What articulations of the public? How is technical action in this contexts public and political? In order to address these questions, I focus on three features of digital infrastructures: Shareability, reusability and publicity. Drawing on John Dewey (1927) “The Public and its Problems”, I pay special attention to how issues of public concern are articulated and ‘taken care of’, thus, addressing responsibility as a dimension n of the work of infrastructuring.