Person
Susan Leigh Star
Science studies scholars of boundary objects—artifacts that coordinate work across communities with different stakes.
Why this matters
Boundary objects explain how serious systems keep partial alignment without full shared meaning.
Works3 sources
book
Sorting Things Out: Classification and
Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
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article
Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work.
Star, Susan Leigh, and Anselm Strauss. "Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work." Social Problems 46, no. 3 (1999): 301–24.
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article
Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects.
Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects." Social Studies of Science 25, no. 3 (1985): 393–438.
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Related books3 books
Book
Living in Sediment
How Structures Outlive Their Reasons
We live inside inherited systems built for constraints that no longer exist. When structures survive after their reasons disappear, meaning drifts—and the danger is forgetting the sediment is sediment.
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Book
Trust Beyond Similarity
How Trust Remains Possible Across Difference
How people learn to trust perspectives they do not share—and why trust becomes more valuable when perspectives differ.
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Book
Why Collaboration Is So Hard
And Why the Effort Still Matters
Why joint work fails when incentives, trust, and shared understanding do not line up—and why the effort to collaborate still matters.
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