The Premise of Institutioning for the Proliferation of Communities and Technologies Research

Abstract

The role of institutions both as stakeholders in the work that communities and technologies (C&T) researchers are engaged in and as facilitators for ensuring continuity and scale-making of outcomes, impact and community benefits, is starting to be revisited. This paper connects the debate in the C&T community about its relevance and ongoing remit, with debates in the participatory design field about the role of the triad of infrastructuring, commoning, and more recently institutioning. In doing so, it considers the premise of institutioning for the proliferation of C&T research. After a review of institutionalism and its foundational application to these discussions, the paper offers a conceptual framework that illustrates both the triad's interrelatedness and the need for orienting future C&T efforts away from depoliticisation and towards a more active pursuit of targeting meso- and macro-levels of community institutions, political framing, and planetary impact.