In their seminal book on classifications and infrastructures, Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star conclude: We have argued in this book that it is politically and ethically crucial to recognize the vital role of infrastructure in the “built moral environment.” Seemingly purely technical issues like how to name […]
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells a number of stories that challenge the ways Western science constructs knowledge, and therefore understands nature. In one example, she discusses the ways trees help and communicate with each other through symbiotic mycelia. Because experts study individual trees, or via Darwinism, competition for survival/reproduction, it was impossible for […]
Data systems in non-profits are nearly always built to track, manage, and analyze individual clients/service users. In fact, this is a base assumption of such systems, and the vast majority of the literature on the topic supports this assumption. The problem with tracking service users.. well, there’s a lot. Here’s a few: We need not […]
Of the 5 prompts for Conceptualizing better data work in non-profits, Participatory (Action) Research, Evaluation, and Design is the approach I’ve already advocated for the most. In my most recent paper, we suggested that an opportunity for approaching data work in non-profits involves trying to “Build ways for youths and frontline staff to help create […]
Whether self-help or helping profession, the act of improving the human and their well-being will become increasingly relegated to the efforts of algorithms. ChatGPT and its siblings are merely the latest and most visible actors in this game. The use of robots to provide physical help and company to the elderly, apps that surveil and […]
These are the notes from my presentation with Ben Anderson-Nathe entitled How the Rapidly Evolving Open Access and Open Data Movements will Transform Child & Youth Care Research in the 21st Century presented at the Child & Youth Care in the 21st Century, Victoria, CA in May 2014. The notes and slides for the presentation are […]
A presentation I gave at the Minnesota Social Services Association (MSSA) in March, 2014. This was the first iteration of an ongoing series of presentations and writing on the political economy and infrastructures of “data”, as well as the concept of #DataJustice. The goals of this session were to: (1) spark conversation, debate, and collaboration around the use […]
I’ve been spending little fragments of free time over the last several years engaging with Maker and Open Source communities. For a long time, I’ve seen them as part of claiming a more open, democratic (in real, everyday democracy kind of terms) way of life. The ideas I see behind both movements are: (1) we […]
When I created this blog, the original purpose was to engage the unfinished, draft fragments of my work. I had two primary purposes. The first was simply to challenge academic processes of production which recognize work as either in process (and therefore relatively secret) or as finished/published (and therefore complete, unchanging, and static). The second […]
Social work practice and research are divided, contested spaces. There are many divisions in social work, and in my education at both the masters and Ph.D. level, these divisions occupy an incredible amount of our time and energy. In the arena of practice, we construct arguments between micro and macro practice; between different models of […]