Brit Ross Winthereik
Biographic Data
| ID | 135571 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brit Ross Winthereik |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brit Ross |
| FAMILY NAME | Winthereik |
| SIGNATURE | WINTHEREIK B R |
| AFFILIATIONS | IT University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1837-2385 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 163 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Infrastructural Participation in Digital Societies
User and citizen participation in the form of micro-actions scripted by digital systems has become indispensable to the functioning of government and society. In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘infrastructural participation’ to evaluate this phenomenon and investigate empirical instances of it in four topical areas: automated vehicles, digital education, citizen science and data protection. We formulate four societal challenges arising…
Fibreglass and steel
Artificial intelligence (AI) creates value' is a phrase that circulates through Danish policy documents and consultancy reports, across conference stages and appears in opinion pieces and political speeches. Through ethnographic fieldwork with small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and AI experts involved in AI pilot projects, as well as observations at AI promotional events, we trace how SMEs are enrolled in AI adoption as vehicles for acces…
Inventorying data
The capital success of multinational tech companies is usually understood to be a result of innovative business models that offer free user access to digital services in return for data. This article shows that besides platformization, the political, economic, and cultural embedding of multinational tech companies depends on the specific ways in which datacenters are established locally. Our ethnographic study of a hyperscale datacenter demonstra…
Data as Relation
This paper examines how the intense focus on data in political digitalization strategies takes effect in practice in a Danish municipality. Building on an ethnographic study of data-driven management, the paper argues that one of the effects of making data a driver for organizational decision-making is uncertainty as to what data are and can be taken to mean. While in political discourse and strategies, data are considered as a resource for colla…
Narrating Digital Access, Trauma, and Disability Through Comics and Image Description in Denmark
Anthropologists explore sequential art, particularly comics, as an accessible medium to co-produce knowledge about trauma and disability with research collaborators. However, practices of image description developed by blind scholars and artists need to be integrated into these projects to ensure visual studies are accessible. Collaborating with sighted service users of drop-in centers in Denmark, we reflect on the process of creating comics and …
Computational Ethnography: A Case of Covid-19’s Methodological Consequences
Knowing, Unknowing, and Re-knowing
Most technologies are knowledge-intensive, and contemporary knowledge production is often technology-intensive. Hence, knowledge practices are a central theme for a handbook for the anthropology of technology. Knowledge about knowing has mostly been considered a branch of philosophy or alternatively of theology. In this section we argue that the study of knowledge practices is part of both the foundation of the anthropological discipline and its …
Infrastructures, Linkages, and Livelihoods
Policy Concepts and Their Shadows
In this article, we explore the form of care known as ‘active ageing’ by attending to its expression in care policies and within a Danish care home. We argue that active ageing policies gain their efficacy through reference to ‘the good life’, which is something the policies frame as ensuing if the elderly take on an active lifestyle. In the care home, the concept of active ageing gains its efficacy through its relation to other concepts of care,…
Organising Artificial Intelligence and Representing Work
This chapter explores effects of the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) on the organisation of work in the Danish Customs and Tax Administration in a situation where a machine learning algorithm was expected to make the work of customs officers more efficient. The chapter highlights how experiments with machine learning algorithms may redraw intra-organisational boundaries, responsibilities, as well as divisions and meanings of work. …
The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology
This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving and diverse field of anthropological studies of technology. It features 39 original chapters, each reviewing the state of the art of current research and enlivening the field of study through ethnographic analysis of human-technology interfaces, forms of social organisation, technological practices and/or systems of belief and meaning in different parts of the world. The Handbook is organised aroun…
Experimenting with Ethnography
Experimenting with Ethnography collects twenty-one essays that open new paths for doing ethnographic analysis. The contributors—who come from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions—enliven analysis by refusing to take it as an abstract, disembodied exercise. Rather, they frame it as a concrete mode of action and a creative practice. Encompassing topics ranging from language and the body to technology and modes of collaboration, t…
Experimenting with Ethnography
We are grateful to all the people and institutions that made this book pos sible.The In de pen dent Research Councils of Denmark (funding id 0602-02551b) supported Brit
Digitalizing the State
Big-Tech's data centres have recently emerged as important socio-political figures in the ongoing digitalisation of the Danish state. Locating vast swathes of data in a country renowned for its renewable energy has prompted a series of questions about the nature of the relationship between these two actors. Our ethnographic interest resides in analysing how, and why, Denmark is rapidly becoming Europe's primary US data centre location, and in exp…
Electrifying Anthropology
Smukke, Rå Og Beskidte
Data er i dag et socialt og kulturelt anliggende, som ikke er til at komme uden om for antropologer. Vi lever i et univers af data, et 'datavers', hvor vores kroppe og identitet i utallige sammenhænge gøres til data (Bowker 2013). Dataficering har forandret økonomien (Zuboff 2019) og medierer nu også de politiske relationer, som antropologer altid har interesseret sig for
Professor Evelyn Ruppert - Data Som Etnografisk Objekt
Dette interview fandt sted på IT-Universitetet i København den 20. marts 2019, i forbindelse med at professor Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths) leverede en keynotetale på konferencen 'Big Data and the Power of Narrative'. Vi gik ind i universitetets podcast-rum for at høre mere om, hvordan Ruppert kom til at arbejde med data, og hvad det vil sige at arbejde etnografisk i en datatæt verden
Infrastrukturer Og Dataarbejde
Science and Technology Studies, eller STS, er stadig et relativt nyt akademisk felt. Det er studiet af, hvordan sociale, politiske og kulturelle værdier påvirker videnskabelig forskning og teknologisk innovation og omvendt, altså hvordan den videnskabelige og teknologiske udvikling påvirker samfundsmæssige forhold
Electrifying Anthropology
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about ‘it’ in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions a…
The Energy Walk
Electrifying Anthropology
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions a…
Anticipatory infrastructural practices
Praktisk Ontologi
I denne artikel diskuterer vi spørgsmået om, hvorvidt vi bebor mangfoldige verdener med udgangspunkt i en amoderne tilgang til videnskabs- og teknologistudier (science and technology studies eller STS), som vi kalder praktisk ontologi. På den ene side er denne analytiske position nært beslægtet med antropologiens nylige interesse for ontologi. På den anden side præsenterer vores tilgang en række vigtige forskelle. Disse forskelle vedrører ikke mi…
Noortje Marres (forthcoming, March 2017) Digital Sociology
Learning from experiments in optimization
This article examines attempts by professionals in the Danish branch of the environmental NGO NatureAid to optimize their practice by developing a local standard. Describing these efforts as an experiment in optimization, we outline a post-critical alternative to critiques that centre on the reductive effects of management and audit. The notion that reduction is inherently negative fails to recognize that achieving specific forms of reduction is …
Infrastructuring Environments
New Environments, New Challenges
Introduction
This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled "Comparative Relativism" outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usu…
Experimenting with Ethnography
Experimenting with Ethnography collects twenty-one essays that open new paths for doing ethnographic analysis. The contributors—who come from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions—enliven analysis by refusing to take it as an abstract, disembodied exercise. Rather, they frame it as a concrete mode of action and a creative practice. Encompassing topics ranging from language and the body to technology and modes of collaboration, t…
Digitalizing the State
Big-Tech's data centres have recently emerged as important socio-political figures in the ongoing digitalisation of the Danish state. Locating vast swathes of data in a country renowned for its renewable energy has prompted a series of questions about the nature of the relationship between these two actors. Our ethnographic interest resides in analysing how, and why, Denmark is rapidly becoming Europe's primary US data centre location, and in exp…
The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology
This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving and diverse field of anthropological studies of technology. It features 39 original chapters, each reviewing the state of the art of current research and enlivening the field of study through ethnographic analysis of human-technology interfaces, forms of social organisation, technological practices and/or systems of belief and meaning in different parts of the world. The Handbook is organised aroun…
The Electronic Patient Record as a Meaningful Audit Tool
Health authorities increasingly request that general practitioners (GPs) use information and communication technologies such as electronic patient records (EPR) for accountability purposes. This article deals with the use of EPRs among general practitioners in Britain. It examines two ways in which GPs use the EPR for accountability purposes. One way is to generate audit reports on the basis of the information that has been entered into the recor…
Experimenting with Ethnography
We are grateful to all the people and institutions that made this book pos sible.The In de pen dent Research Councils of Denmark (funding id 0602-02551b) supported Brit
Anticipatory infrastructural practices
Learning from experiments in optimization
This article examines attempts by professionals in the Danish branch of the environmental NGO NatureAid to optimize their practice by developing a local standard. Describing these efforts as an experiment in optimization, we outline a post-critical alternative to critiques that centre on the reductive effects of management and audit. The notion that reduction is inherently negative fails to recognize that achieving specific forms of reduction is …
Making Energy Infrastructure
Integrating renewable energy sources into the power grid and ensuring public interest in energy is a key concern in many countries. What role may art play, and what political strategies do artists employ, in order to intervene in the infrastructuring of energy and public environments? As the case study here, a Copenhagen art and energy competition invited artists and designers from around the world to submit ideas for large-scale public artworks …
The Making of Self-Monitoring Asthma Patients
Those calling for more evidence to support ever-increasing efforts to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in medical work argue that rigorous facts are necessary to make viable in practice substantiated use of these technologies. By contrast, socio-technical studies researchers, who focus on the use of ICT in everyday clinical practices, argue against the need for evidence produced under controlled, thus 'unrealistic' conditions.…
Hopeful Comparisons on the Brink of the Grave
This commentary on Isabelle Stengers's article "Comparison as a Matter of Concern," takes its entry point in a battle between comparisons: imposed comparisons, where extraneous, irrelevant criteria are laid down, and active, interested comparisons, where rapport is established between the scientist and the phenomenon she studies. According to Stengers, the comparison, which establishes rapport, is a crucial ingredient in good science. In the cont…
Talking About Distributed Communication and Medicine
In this commentary we reflect on the articles in this special issue on computer-mediated communication (CMC) "about things." We do this from our perspective as researchers of the sociotechnical practices of developing, using, and evaluating information technologies for health care work. The relevance of the articles for a medical setting is evaluated, and we also indicate that the material embeddedness of CMC should be "unpacked." By focusing on …
ICT and Integrated Care
Connecting practices
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The Electronic Patient Record as a Meaningful Audit Tool
Health authorities increasingly request that general practitioners (GPs) use information and communication technologies such as electronic patient records (EPR) for accountability purposes. This article deals with the use of EPRs among general practitioners in Britain. It examines two ways in which GPs use the EPR for accountability purposes. One way is to generate audit reports on the basis of the information that has been entered into the recor…
The Making of Self-Monitoring Asthma Patients
Those calling for more evidence to support ever-increasing efforts to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in medical work argue that rigorous facts are necessary to make viable in practice substantiated use of these technologies. By contrast, socio-technical studies researchers, who focus on the use of ICT in everyday clinical practices, argue against the need for evidence produced under controlled, thus 'unrealistic' conditions.…
Der er fedtede fingeraftryk overalt på tal
Intet resumé
Introduction
This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled "Comparative Relativism" outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usu…
Hopeful Comparisons on the Brink of the Grave
This commentary on Isabelle Stengers's article "Comparison as a Matter of Concern," takes its entry point in a battle between comparisons: imposed comparisons, where extraneous, irrelevant criteria are laid down, and active, interested comparisons, where rapport is established between the scientist and the phenomenon she studies. According to Stengers, the comparison, which establishes rapport, is a crucial ingredient in good science. In the cont…
Ethnographic Stories as Generalizations that Intervene
Located within classic and more recent works in STS the paper grapples with the question of how to write ethnographic stories that generalize particular spacetime places, and simultaneously generalize about their own modes of existence. Growing as a prolonged, cross-generational, and transcontinental conversation between the two authors the paper discusses the capacities of ethnographic stories to work as generative interventions. We begin with t…
Monitoring Movements in Development Aid
An examination of emerging information infrastructures that are intended to increase accountability and effectiveness in partnerships for development aid. In Monitoring Movements in Development Aid, Casper Jensen and Brit Winthereik consider the processes, social practices, and infrastructures that are emerging to monitor development aid, discussing both empirical phenomena and their methodological and analytical challenges. Jensen and Winthereik…
Innovating Relations – or Why Smart Grid is not too Complex for the Public
Revamping the electricity infrastructure to allow for an increased usage of renewable energy sources is a matter of concern in many parts of the world. In Europe, a major policy question is how to move energy demand to periods with surplus of renewable energy in the grid. In this paper we follow prominent Danish and German delegates working towards realizing the intelligent electricity infrastructure commonly known as ‘smart grid’ envisioned to b…
Optimeringseksperimenter
I denne artikel undersøger vi en lille gruppe miljøkonsulenters bestræbelser på at udvikle en standard for monitorering og evaluering af udviklingsprojekter. Vi undersøger disse bestræbelser som et eksperiment i optimering, hvor både kvaliteten af projekterne og den interne kommunikation søges forbedret. Analysen fokuserer på, hvordan konsulenternes evalueringsarbejde begrænser verdens kompleksitet for på den måde at lade den (verden) komme til s…
Zuiderent-Jerak Teun (2015) Situated Intervention
This article is a elaborate review of Teun Zuiderent's book 'Situated Intervention: Sociological Experiments in Health Care' (2015) The MIT Press. The article is based on our comments and the discussions made during the launch of the book at Linköping University in Sweden in October 2015
Infrakritik og proximering. Om at finde den rette afstand
In this paper, we compare critical practices on the Danish fishery inspection ship The West Coast to such practices at the Nordic Folk Center for Renewable Energy. These cases are the ingredients for examining the role of critique in organizational experimentation and research. Taking our point of departure in a notion of critique as finding the right proximity introduced by Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway, we discuss alternatives to critique as b…
Making Energy Infrastructure
Integrating renewable energy sources into the power grid and ensuring public interest in energy is a key concern in many countries. What role may art play, and what political strategies do artists employ, in order to intervene in the infrastructuring of energy and public environments? As the case study here, a Copenhagen art and energy competition invited artists and designers from around the world to submit ideas for large-scale public artworks …
Infrastructuring Environments
New Environments, New Challenges
Noortje Marres (forthcoming, March 2017) Digital Sociology
Learning from experiments in optimization
This article examines attempts by professionals in the Danish branch of the environmental NGO NatureAid to optimize their practice by developing a local standard. Describing these efforts as an experiment in optimization, we outline a post-critical alternative to critiques that centre on the reductive effects of management and audit. The notion that reduction is inherently negative fails to recognize that achieving specific forms of reduction is …
Anticipatory infrastructural practices
Praktisk Ontologi
I denne artikel diskuterer vi spørgsmået om, hvorvidt vi bebor mangfoldige verdener med udgangspunkt i en amoderne tilgang til videnskabs- og teknologistudier (science and technology studies eller STS), som vi kalder praktisk ontologi. På den ene side er denne analytiske position nært beslægtet med antropologiens nylige interesse for ontologi. På den anden side præsenterer vores tilgang en række vigtige forskelle. Disse forskelle vedrører ikke mi…
Electrifying Anthropology
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about ‘it’ in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions a…
The Energy Walk
Electrifying Anthropology
What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about 'it' in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions a…
Electrifying Anthropology
Smukke, Rå Og Beskidte
Data er i dag et socialt og kulturelt anliggende, som ikke er til at komme uden om for antropologer. Vi lever i et univers af data, et 'datavers', hvor vores kroppe og identitet i utallige sammenhænge gøres til data (Bowker 2013). Dataficering har forandret økonomien (Zuboff 2019) og medierer nu også de politiske relationer, som antropologer altid har interesseret sig for
Sociology (24 works) · Political science (19 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Engineering (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Business (10 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Knowledge management (8 works) · Law (8 works)