Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
boundary work to describe the ideological style used by nineteenth-
century scientists in their attempts to create a public image favorable to
science by contrasting it favorably to nonscientifi c intellectual or techni-
cal activities. Depending on what they thought would be most convincing
to the audience that they were addressing, these scientists would repre-
sent their activities alternatively as being empirical or theoretical, pure
or applied. In other word, scientists used rhetoric that was intrinsically
fl exible, that allowed them to use different, and sometimes even contra-
dictory, defi nitions of what science was in an attempt to justify their
claims to authority or resources.
This process of boundary work serves a number of practical purposes
for practitioners: the expansion of intellectual authority and career
opportunities; the denial of resources to deviants and nonprofessionals;
and the protection of autonomy from external infl uences. Boundary
work, according to Gieryn, functions as a “sociological parallel to the
familiar literary device of a 'foil.' Just as readers come to know Holmes
better through contrasts to his foil Watson, so does the public better
learn about science through contrasts to non-science.”
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The concept of boundary work is an indispensable tool for the histo-
rian of computing. Computer science as an academic discipline and
computer programming as an occupation have struggled with various
degrees of success to establish institutional boundaries. Programmers
have struggled to distinguish themselves from mere technical craftspeo-
ple, on the one hand, and scientists and engineers, on the other. In doing
so, they alternatively refer to the practice of programming as either an
art or a science, depending on whom is being addressed and for what
purpose. In the language of sociology, the “vocabularies” of the literary
arts and scientifi c engineering are the “cultural repertoires” that pro-
grammers use in the construction of “ideological self-descriptions.”
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The process of doing boundary work allowed programmers to mobi-
lize the internal inconsistencies of their discipline as ideological resources
with which to distinguish themselves from both craftspeople and scien-
tists. When it helped them accomplish their particular individual or
professional agenda, they talked about programming in artistic or arti-
sanal terms; at other times they portrayed it as a scientifi c or engineering
discipline. Although not every member of the computing community
valued equally the craft tradition and artistic sensibilities of the “black
art” of programming, enough did to make personal expressions of cre-
ativity an important aspect of the programming tradition. This concern
for aesthetics functioned as a shared community value, unifying the
