ABSTRACT
In this chapter I outline how recent work on the anthropology of infrastructure can provide a particularly fruitful set of resources for framing and designing ethnographic analyses of digital technologies. This chapter aims to go beyond work that focuses on digital media practices and the way in which digital devices are given meaning and used by dierent social groups in order to draw attention to the material, ontological and relational qualities that are built into digital devices. Building on the work of the Infrastructures of Social Change group at the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded Centre for Research on SocioCultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester, the chapter outlines the potential for developing an ethnographic approach to understanding the formation, circulation and use of digital infrastructural systems and their implications for social life.
