Shadowing Software and Clinical Records: On the Ethnography of Non-Humans and Heterogeneous Contexts

Recent years have seen growing sociological interest in the role that objects and non-human actors perform in everyday life. Whether as machines, information technologies, artworks, commodities or architec- tures, objects today raise issues of complexity and controversy (Pels et al., 2002). Borrowing from actor network theory the idea that humans and non- humans are actively involved in the making of social worlds, there are already those who call for a post-social world and an object-centred sociality (Knorr-Cetina, 1997). But how can non-humans be observed? Sociologists are accustomed to socio-constructionist approaches to the sociology of science, or to analyses of tools and innovations couched in terms of networks of actants; methodologically, however, it seems that ideas about how to proceed methodologically are not very well worked out. On the basis of a four-month ethnography conducted in a hospital that has recently introduced a digital clinical records system, I discuss the meth- odological aspects of shadowing non-humans. In particular, adopting Star’s insight of an ‘ethnography of the infrastructure’ (Star, 1999), I concentrate on how to account for contexts characterized by multiple and non-homogeneous actors and practices and on the implications of such a perspective for organizational analysis.