On June 1, 2015, Professor Lucy Suchman delivered the CSISP/Sociology Annual Lecture at Goldsmiths entitled “Digital practices: some methodological reflections.” In this lecture, Suchman returns to her earlier ethnographic research on airline ground operations and the use of CAD software by structural engineers to develop an account of ‘digital practices.’ Connecting her earlier studies with current work on robotic warfare, the lecture outlines some of the important methodological issues these practices have raised and continue to raise in social research as well as in social life.

Drawing on a variety of empirical materials – videos recordings, screenshots, and annotated documents – Suchman makes the case for an expanded understanding of the digital: the lecture shows how capacities that are often ascribed to technology – to represent reality, order information, sequence action – are actually accomplished in practice by a far more heterogenous assemblage of entities, including people, settings and things.… Continue reading